tions, like kings, are not good by facility and complaisance. "The kindness of kings consists in justice and strength." Easy good nature has been the dangerous foible of the Republic, and it was necessary that its enemies should outrage it, and drive us to unwonted firmness, to secure the salvation of this country in the next ages.

The ancients believed in a serene and beautiful Genius which ruled in the affairs of nations; which, with a slow but stern justice, carried forward the fortunes of certain chosen houses, weeding out single offenders or offending families, and securing at last the firm prosperity of the favorites of Heaven. It was too narrow a view of the Eternal Nemesis. There is a serene Providence which rules the fate of nations, which makes little account of time, little of one generation or race, makes no account of disasters, conquers alike by what is called defeat or by what is called victory, thrusts aside enemy and obstruction, crushes everything immoral as inhuman, and obtains the ultimate triumph of the best race by the sacrifice of everything which resists the moral laws of the world.' It makes its own instruments, creates the man for the time, trains him in poverty, inspires his genius, and

arms him for his task. It has given every race its own talent, and ordains that only that race which combines perfectly with the virtues of all shall endure.'

xvi

HARVARD COMMEMORATION

SPEECH

JULY 21, 1865

...Old classmate, say

Do you remember our Commencement Day?
Were we such boys as these at twenty?' Nay,
God called them to a nobler task than ours,
And gave them holier thoughts and manlier powers,
This is the day of fruits and not of flowers!

Are the same men we read of in old pages -
The bronze recast of dead heroic ages!
We grudge them not, our dearest, bravest, best,
Let but the quarrel's issue stand confest:
'Tis Earth's old slave-God battling for his crown
And Freedom fighting with her visor down."

HOLMES,

* MANY loved Truth, and lavished life's best oil

Amid the dust of books to find her,

Content at last, for guerdon of their toil,

With the cast mantle she hath left behind her.
Many in sad faith sought for her,

Many with crossed hands sighed for her;
But these, our brothers, fought for her,
At life's dear peril wrought for her,

So loved her that they died for her,
Tasting the raptured fleetness
Of her divine completeness:

Their higher instinct knew

Those love her best who to themselves are true,
And what they dare to dream of, dare to do;
They followed her and found her
Where all may hope to find,

Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind,

But beautiful, with danger's sweetness round her.
Where faith made whole with deed

Breathes its awakening breath
Into the lifeless creed,

They saw her plumed and mailed,

With sweet, stern face unveiled,

And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death.”’

LOWELL, Commemoration Ode

COMMEMORATION SPEECH

MR. CHAIRMAN, AND GENTLEMEN:

With whatever opinion we come here, I think it is not in man to see, without a feeling of pride and pleasure, a tried soldier, the armed defender of the right. I think that in these last years all opinions have been affected by the magnificent and stupendous spectacle which Divine Providence has offered us of the energies that slept in the children of this country, — that slept and have awakened. I see thankfully those that are here, but dim eyes in vain explore for some who are not.

The old Greek Heraclitus said, “ War is the Father of all things." He said it, no doubt, as science, but we of this day can repeat it as political and social truth. War passes the power of all chemical solvents, breaking up the old adhesions, and allowing the atoms of society to take a new order. It is not the Government, but the War, that has appointed the good generals, sifted out the pedants, put in the new and vigorous blood. The War has lifted many other people besides Grant and Sherman into