feet where mine have trod, and a sheriff shall never lay hand on your shoulder." And the great lawyer kept his pledge.

This unmatched, long-continued power almost passes belief. You can only appreciate it by comparison. Let me carry you back to the mob-year of 1835, in this country, when the Abolitionists were hunted; when the streets roared with riot; when from Boston to Baltimore, from St. Louis to Philadelphia, a mob took possession of every city; when private houses were invaded and public halls were burned; press after press was thrown into the river; and Lovejoy baptized freedom with his blood. You remember it. Respectable journals warned the mob that they were playing into the hands of the Abolitionists. Webster and Clay and the staff of Whig statesmen told the people that the truth floated farther on the shouts of the mob than the most eloquent lips. could carry it. But law-abiding, Protestant, educated America could not. be held back. Neither Whig chief nor respectable journals could keep these people quiet. Go to England. When the Reform Bill of 1831 was thrown out from the House of Lords, the people were tumultuous; and Melbourne and Grey, Russell and Brougham, Lansdowne, Holland, and Macaulay, the Whig chiefs, cried out, "Don't violate the law: you help the Tories! Riots put back the bill." But quiet, sober John Bull, law-abiding, could not do without it. Birmingham was three days in the hands of a mob; castles were burned; Wellington ordered the Scots Greys to rough-grind their swords as at Waterloo. This was the Whig aristocracy of England. O'Connell had neither office nor title. Behind him were three million people steeped in utter wretchedness, sore with the oppression of centuries, ignored by statute.

For thirty restless and turbulent years he stood in front of them, and said, “Remember, he that commits a crime helps the enemy." And during that long and fearful struggle, I do not remember one of his followers ever being convicted of a political offense, and during this period crimes of violence were very rare. There is no such record in our history. Neither in classic nor in modern times can the man be produced who held a million of people in his right hand so passive. It was due to the consistency and unity of a character that had hardly a flaw. I do not forget your soldiers, orators, or poets-any of your leaders. But when I consider O'Connell's personal disinterestedness,―his rare, brave fidelity to every cause his principles covered, no matter how unpopular, or how embarrassing to his main purpose, that clear, farreaching vision, and true heart which, on most moral and political questions, set him so much ahead of his times; his eloquence, almost equally effective in the courts, in the senate, and before the masses; that sagacity which set at naught the malignant vigilance of the whole imperial bar,

watching thirty years for a misstep; when I remember that he invented his tools, and then measure his limited means with his vast success, bearing in mind its nature; when I see the sobriety and moderation with which he used his measureless power, and the lofty, generous purpose of his whole life,-I am ready to affirm that he was, all things considered, the greatest man the Irish race ever produced.

§ 25

AT HIS BROTHER'S GRAVE

By Robert G. Ingersoll

(Read at the funeral of E. C. Ingersoll, in Washington, June 2, 1879.)

MY FRIENDS: I am going to do that which the dead often promised he would do for me. The loved and loving brother, husband, father, friend died where manhood's morning almost touches noon, and while the shadows still were falling toward the west. He had not passed on life's highway the stone that marks the highest point, but being weary for the moment he laid down by the wayside, and, using a burden for a pillow, fell into that dreamless sleep that kisses down his eyelids still. While yet in love with life and raptured with the world, he passed to silence and pathetic dust. Yet, after all, it may be best, just in the happiest, sunniest hour of all the voyage, while eager winds are kissing every sail, to dash against the unseen rock, and in an instant hear the billows roar, a sunken ship. For whether in mid sea or among the breakers of the farther shore, a wreck must mark at last the end of cach and all. And every life, no matter if its every hour is rich with love and every moment jeweled with a joy, will, to its close, become a tragedy, as sad, and deep, and dark as can be woven of the warp and woof of mystery and death. This brave and tender man in every storm of life was oak and rock, but in the sunshine he was love and flower. He was the friend of all heroic souls that climbed the heights and left all superstitions here below, while on his forehead fell the golden dawning of a grander day. He loved the beautiful, and was with color, form and music touched to tears. He sided with the weak, and with a willing hand gave alms; with loyal heart and with the purest hand he faithfully discharged all public trusts. He was a worshiper of liberty

ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL. Born at Dresden, N. Y., August 11, 1833; died at Dobbs Ferry, N. Y., July 21, 1899; practised law in Peoria, Ill.; entered the Federal Army in 1862 as a Colonel; in 1866 Attorney General of Illinois; later practised law in Washington, D. C., and in New York City.

and a friend of the oppressed. A thousand times I have heard him quote the words: "For justice, all place a temple and all season summer." He believed that happiness was the only good, reason the only torch, justice the only worshiper, humanity the only religion and love the priest. He added to the sum of human joy, and were everyone for whom he did some loving service to bring a blossom to his grave he would sleep to-night beneath a wilderness of flowers. Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two, eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of a wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word; but in the night of death hope sees a star and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing. He who sleeps here, when dying, mistaking the approach of death for the return of health, whispered with his latest breath, "I am better now." Let us believe, in spite of doubts and dogmas and tears and fears, that these dear words are true of all the countless dead. And now, to you who have been chosen from among the many men he loved to do the last sad office for the dead, we give his sacred trust. Speech cannot contain our love. There was-there is no gentler, stronger, manlier man.

8 26

THE MEMORY OF BURNS

By Ralph Waldo Emerson

(Speech at the festival of the Boston Burns Club, at the Parker House, Boston, Mass., January 25, 1859, commemorating the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Burns.)

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN: I do not know by what untoward accident it has chanced-and I forbear to inquire-that, in this accomplished circle, it should fall to me, the worst Scotsman of all, to receive your commands, and at the latest hour, too, to respond to the sentiment just offered, and which, indeed, makes the occasion. But I am told there is no appeal, and I must trust to the inspiration of the theme to make a fitness which does not otherwise exist.

Yet, sir, I heartily feel the singular claims of the occasion. At the first announcement, from I know not whence, that the twenty-fifth of

RALPH WALDO EMERSON. Born at Boston, Mass., May 25, 1803; died at Concord, Mass., April 27, 1882; graduated from Harvard, 1821; studied at the Divinity School and for a short time was minister of the Second Unitarian Church in Boston.

January was the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, a sudden consent warned the great English race, in all its kingdoms, colonies and states, all over the world, to keep the festival. We are here to hold our parliament with love and poesy, as men were wont to do in the Middle Ages. Those famous parliaments might or might not have had more stateliness, and better singers than we-though that is yet to be known-but they could not have better reason.

I can only explain this singular unanimity in a race which rarely acts. together but rather after their watchword, each for himself-by the fact that Robert Burns, the poet of the middle class, represents in the mind of men to-day that great uprising of the middle class against the armed and privileged minorities-that uprising which worked politically in the American and French Revolutions, and which, not in governments so much as in education and in social order, has changed the face of the world. In order for this destiny, his birth, breeding and fortune were low. His organic sentiment was absolute independence, and resting, as it should, on a life of labor. No man existed who could look down on him. They that looked into his eyes saw that they might look down the sky as easily. His muse and teaching was common sense, joyful, aggressive, irresistible. Not Latimer, nor Luther, struck more telling blows against false theology than did this brave singer. The "Confession of Augsburg," the "Declaration of Independence," the French "Rights of Man," and the "Marseillaise," are not more weighty documents in the history of freedom than the songs of Burns. His satire has lost none of its edge. His musical arrows yet sing through the air. He is so substantially a reformer, that I find his grand, plain sense in close chain with the greatest masters-Rabelais, Shakespeare in comedy, Cervantes, Butler, and Burns. If I should add another name, I find it only in a living countryman of Burns. He is an exceptional genius. The people who care nothing for literature and poetry care for Burns. It was indifferent-they thought who saw him-whether he wrote verse or not; he could have done anything else as well.

Yet how true a poet is he! And the poet, too, of poor men, of hoddengray, and the Guernsey-coat, and the blouse. He has given voice to all the experiences of common life; he has endeared the farmhouse and cottage, patches and poverty, beans, and barley; ale, the poor man's wine; hardship, the fear of debt, the dear society of weans and wife, of brothers and sisters, proud of each other, knowing so few, and finding amends for want and obscurity in books and thought. What a love of nature! and shall I say it?-of middle-class nature. Goethe, in the stars, or like Byron, on the ocean, or Moore, in the luxurious East, but in the homely landscape which the poor see around them

Not great, like

-bleak leagues of pasture and stubble, ice, and sleet, and rain, and snow-choked brooks; birds, hares, field-mice, thistles, and heather, which he daily knew. How many "Bonny Doons," and "John Anderson my Joes," and "Auld Lang Synes," all around the earth, have his verses been applied to! And his love songs still woo and melt the youths and maids; the farm work, the country holiday, the fishing cobble, are still his debtors to-day.

And, as he was thus the poet of the poor, anxious, cheerful, working humanity, so had he the language of low life. He grew up in a rural district, speaking a patois unintelligible to all but natives, and he has made that Lowland Scotch a Doric dialect of fame. It is the only example in history of a language made classic by the genius of a single man. But more than this. He had that secret of genius to draw from the bottom of society the strength of its speech, and astonish the ears of the polite with these artless words, better than art, and filtered of all offense through his beauty. It seemed odious to Luther that the devil should have all the best tunes; he would bring them into the churches; and Burns knew how to take from fairs and gipsies, blacksmiths and drovers, the speech of the market and street, and clothe it with melody.

But I am detaining you too long. The memory of Burns-I am afraid heaven and earth have taken too good care of it to leave us anything to say. The west winds are murmuring it. Open the windows behind you, and hearken for the incoming tide, what the waves say of it. The doves, perching always on the eaves of the Stone Chapel [King's Chapel] opposite, may know something about it. Every home in broad Scotland. keeps his fame bright. The memory of Burns-every man's, and boy's, and girl's head carries snatches of his songs, and can say them by heart, and, what is strangest of all, never learned them from a book, but from mouth to mouth. The wind whispers them, the birds whistle them, the corn, barley, and bulrushes hoarsely rustle them; nay, the music-boxes at Geneva are framed and toothed to play them; the hand-organs of the Savoyards in all cities repeat them, and the chimes of bells ring them in the spires. They are the property and the solace of mankind. [Cheers.]