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Sumner and the South-It was certainly a gracious act on the part of Charles Sumner towards the South, though unhappily it jarred upon the sensibilities of the people at the other extreme of the Union, to propose to erase from the banners of the national army the mementoes of the bloody internal struggle which might be regarded as assailing the pride or wounding the sensibilities of the Southern people. That proposal will never be forgotten by that people so long as the name of Charles Sumner lives in the memory of man. But while it touched the heart and elicited her profound gratitude, her people would not have asked of the North such an act of selfrenunciation. Conscious that they themselves were animated by devotion to constitutional liberty, and that the brightest pages of history are replete with 'evidences of the depth and sincerity of that devotion, they can but cherish the recollections of the battles fought and the victories won in defense of their hopeless cause; and respecting, as all true and brave men must respect, the martial spirit with which the men of the North vindicated the integrity of the Union, and their devotion to the principles of human freedom, they do not ask, they do not wish the North to strike the mementoes of heroism and victory from either records or monuments or battle-flags. They would rather that both sections should gather up the glories won by each section, not envious, but proud of each other, and regard them as a common heritage of American valor. Let us hope that future generations, when they remember the deeds of heroism and devotion done on both sides, will speak, not of Northern prowess or Southern courage, but of the heroism, fortitude, and courage of Americans in a war of ideas; a war in which each section signalized its consecration to the principles, as each understood them, of American liberty, and of the Constitution received from their fathers.

Charles Sumner in life believed that all occasion for strife and distrust between the North and South had passed away, and there no longer remained any cause for continued estrangement between these two sections of our common country. Are there not many of us who believe the same thing? Is not that the common sentiment, or, if not, ought it not to be, of the great mass of our people, North and South? Bound to each other by a common Constitution, destined to live together under a common government, forming unitedly but a single member of the great family of nations, shall we not now at last endeavor to grow toward each other once more in heart

as we are already indissolubly linked to each other in fortunes? Shall we not, while honoring the memory of this great champion of human liberty, this feeling sympathizer with human sorrow, this earnest pleader for the exercise of human tenderness and heavenly charity, lay aside the concealments which serve only to perpetuate misunderstandings and distrust, and frankly confess that on both sides we most earnestly desire to be one,-one not merely in political organization; one not merely in identity of institutions; one not merely in community of language, and literature, and traditions, and country, but more, and better than all that, one also in feeling and in heart! Am I mistaken in this? Do the concealments of which I speak still cover animosities which neither time nor reflection nor the march of events have yet sufficed to subdue? I cannot believe it. Since I have been here I have scrutinized your sentiments, as expressed not merely in public debate, but in the abandon of personal confidence. I know well the sentiments of these my Southern friends, whose hearts are so infolded that the feeling of each is the feeling of all; and I see on both sides only the seeming of a constraint which each apparently hesitates to dismiss. The South, prostrate, exhausted, drained of her lifeblood as well as of her material resources, yet still honorable and true, accepts the bitter award of the bloody arbitrament without reservation, resolutely determined to abide the result with chivalrous fidelity. Yet, as if struck dumb by the magnitude of her reverses, she suffers on in silence. The North, exultant in her triumph and elevated by success, still cherishes, as we are assured, a heart full of magnanimous emotions toward her disarmed and discomfited antagonist; and yet, as if under some mysterious spell, her words and acts are words and acts of suspicion and distrust. Would that the spirit of the illustrious dead, whom we lament to-day, could speak from the grave to both parties to this deplorable discord, in tones which should reach each and every heart throughout this broad territory. My countrymen! know one another and you will love one another.-(From his Eulogy of Charles Sumner.)

Lamartine, Alphonse Marie Louis (France, 1790-1869.)

Godlessness of the French Revolution The Republicans of Cromwell sought only the way of God, even in the blood of battles. But look at Mirabeau on the bed of death. «Crown me with flowers," said he; "intoxicate me with perfumes. Let me die to the sound of delicious music.» Not a word was there of God or of

his own soul! Sensual philosopher, supreme sensualism was his last desire in his agony! Contemplate Madame Roland, the strong-hearted woman of the Revolution, on the cart that conveyed her to death. Not a glance toward heaven! Only one word for the earth she was quitting: "O Liberty, what crimes in thy name are com

mitted!" Approach the dungeon door of the Girondins. Their last night is a banquet,their only hymn the "Marseillaise"! Hear Danton on the platform of the scaffold: "I have had a good time of it; let me go to sleep." Then, to the executioner: "You will show my head to the people; it is worth the trouble!" His faith, annihilation; his last sigh, vanity.

Lardner, Dionysius (Ireland, 1793-1859.)

The Question of the Skies - When we I walk forth on a serene night and direct our view to the aspect of the heavens, there are certain reflections which will present themselves to every mind gifted with the slightest power of contemplation. Are those shining orbs which so richly decorate the firmament peopled with creatures endowed, like ourselves, with reason to discover, with sense to love, and with imagination to expand toward their limitless perfection the attributes of him of "whose fingers the heavens are the work" ? Has he who "made man lower than the angels to crown him," with the glory of discovering that light in which he has "decked himself as with a garment,» also made other creatures with like powers and like destinies; with dominion over the works of his hands, and having all things "put in subjection under their feet? And are those resplendent globes which roll in silent majesty through the measureless abysses of space the dwellings of such beings? These are questions which will be asked, and which will be answered. These are inquiries against which neither the urgency of business nor the allurements of pleasure can block up the avenues of the mind. These are questions that have been asked, and that will continue to be asked, by all who view the earth as an individual of that little cluster of worlds called the solar system.

Latimer, Hugh (England, c. 1490-1555.)

The Tears of the Widow - The greatest man in a realm cannot so hurt a judge as the poor widow, such a shrewd turn she can do him. And with what armor I pray you? She can

bring the judge's skin over his ears, and never lay hands upon him. And how is that? Lacrima miserorum descendunt ad maxillas (the tears of the poor fall down upon their cheeks), et ascendunt ad cælum (and go up to heaven), and cry for vengeance before God, the judge of widows, the father of widows and orphans. Poor people be oppressed even by laws. Væ iis qui condunt leges iniquas (woe worth to them that make evil laws). If woe be to them that make laws against the poor, what shall be to them that hinder and mar good laws? Quid facietis in die ultionis? What will ye do in the day of vengeance when God will visit you? He saith he will hear the tears of poor women when he goeth on visitation. For their sakes he will hurt the judge, be he never so high. Deus transfert regna. He will, for widows' sakes, change realms, bring them into subjection, pluck the judges' skins over their heads.

Laurier, Sir Wilfrid (Canada, 1841-.)

Four Great Men-This last half century in which we live has produced many able and strong men, who, in different walks of life, have attracted the attention of the world at large; but of the men who have illustrated this age, it seems to me that in the eyes of posterity four will outlive and outshine all others - Cavour, Lincoln, Bismarck, and Gladstone. If we look simply at the magnitude of the results obtained, compared with the exiguity of the resources at command-if we remember that out of the small kingdom of Sardinia grew United Italy, we must come to the conclusion that Count Cavour was undoubtedly a statesman of marvelous skill and prescience. Abraham Lincoln, unknown to fame when he was elected to the Presidency, exhibited a power for the government of men which has scarcely been surpassed in any age. He saved the American Union, he enfranchised the black race, and for the task he had to perform he was endowed in some respects almost miraculously. No man ever displayed a greater insight into the motives, the complex motives, which shape the public opinion of a free country, and he possessed almost to the degree of an instinct the supreme quality in a statesman of taking the right decision, taking it at the right moment, and expressing it in language of incomparable felicity. Prince Bismarck was the embodiment of resolute common sense, unflinching determination, relentless strength, moving onward to his end, and crushing everything in his way as unconcerned as fate itself. Mr. Gladstone undoubtedly excelled everyone of these men. He had in his person a combination of varied powers of the human intellect rarely to be found in one single individual. He had the imaginative fancy, the poetic conception of things, in which Count Cavour was deficient. He had the aptitude for business, the financial ability which Lincoln never exhibited. He had the lofty impulses, the generous inspirations which Prince Bismarck always discarded, even if he did not treat them with scorn. He was at once an orator, a statesman, a poet, and a man of business.

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ernments. No, sir; the law of liberty must be inscribed on the heart of the citizen, "the Word," if I may use the expression without irreverence, must become Flesh. » You must have a whole people trained, disciplined, bred,— yea, and born, as our fathers were, to institutions like ours. Before the Colonies existed, the Petition of Rights, that Magna Charta of a more enlightened age, had been presented, in 1628, by Lord Coke and his immortal compeers. Our founders brought it with them, and we have not gone one step beyond them. They brought these maxims of civil liberty, not in their libraries, but in their souls; not as philosophical prattle, not as barren generalities, but as rules of conduct; as a symbol of public duty and private right, to be adhered to with religious fidelity; and the very first pilgrim that set his foot upon the rock of Plymouth stepped forth a living constitution, armed at all points to defend and perpetuate the liberty to which he had devoted his whole being. Lincoln, Abraham (American, 1809-1865.)

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"A House Divided Against Itself »-«A house divided against itself cannot stand." believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved,-I do not expect the house to fall,- but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new-North as well as South.- (Springfield, Illinois, June 17th, 1858.)

« Government of the People, By the People, and For the People»-Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting-place of those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a large sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate,- we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work that they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion;

that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.-(Complete. Gettysburg, November 19th, 1863.)

Livy (Rome, 59 B. C.-17 A. D.)

Canuleius Against the Patricians - This is not the first time, O Romans, that patrician arrogance has denied to us the rights of a common humanity. What do we now demand? First, the right of intermarriage; and then that the people may confer honors on whom they please. And why, in the name of Roman manhood, my countrymen, -why should these poor boons be refused? Why, for claiming them, was I near being assaulted, just now in the senate house? Will the city no longer stand, - will the empire be dissolved, because we claim that plebeians shall no longer be excluded from the consulship? Truly the patricians will, by and by, begrudge us a participation in the light of day; they will be indignant that we breathe the same air; that we share with them the faculty of speech; that we wear the forms of human beings!

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Lowell, James Russell 1891.)

(American, 1819

The Empire of the Soul-John Quincy Adams, making a speech at New Bedford, many years ago, reckoned the number of whaleships (if I remember rightly) that sailed out of that port, and, comparing it with some former period, took it as a type of American success. But, alas! it is with quite other oil that those far shining lamps of a nation's true glory which burn forever must be filled. It is not by any amount of material splendor or prosperity, but only by moral greatness, by ideas, by works of imagination, that a race can conquer the future. No voice comes to us from the once mighty Assyria but the hoot of the owl that nests amid her crumbling palaces. Of Carthage, whose merchant fleets once furled their sails in every port of the known world, nothing is left but the deeds of Hannibal. She lies dead on the shore of her once subject sea, and the wind of the desert only flings its handfuls of burial sand upon her corpse. A fog can blot Holland or Switzerland out of existence. But how large is the space occupied in the maps of the soul by little Athens or powerless Italy! They were great by the soul, and their vital force is as indestructible as the soul!- (1855. )

Lubbock, Sir John (England, 1834-.)

A Rule of Study-I remember years ago consulting Mr. Darwin as to the selection of a course of study. He asked me what interested me most, and advised me to choose that subject. This, indeed, applies to the work of life generally.

"Bags of Wind for Sacks of Treasure » -In old days books were rare and dear. Now,

on the contrary, it may be said with greater truth than ever that,

Words are things, and a small drop of ink, Falling like dew upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think."

Our ancestors had a difficulty in procuring them. Our difficulty now is what to select. We must be careful what we read, and not, like the sailors of Ulysses, take bags of wind for sacks of treasure. (1887.)

Luther, Martin (Germany, 1483-1546.)

Here I Stand; I Cannot Do Otherwise— I cannot choose but adhere to the word of God, which has possession of my conscience; nor can I possibly, nor will I ever make any recantation, since it is neither safe nor honest to act contrary to conscience! Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise; so help me God! Amen. (Before the Diet at Worms, 1521.)

Lycurgus (Greece, 396-323 B. C.)

Peroration of the Speech Against Leocrates - Be sure, judges, that each of you, by the vote which he now gives in secret, will lay his thought bare to the gods. And I deem that this day, judges, you are passing a collective sentence on all the greatest and most dreadful forms of crime in all of which Leocrates is manifestly guilty; on treason, since he abandoned the city to its troubles and brought it under the hand of the enemy; on subversion of the democracy, since he did not stand the ordeal of the struggle for freedom; on impiety, since he has done what one man could to obliterate the sacred precincts and to demolish the temples; on ill-treatment of parents, for he sought to destroy the monuments and to abolish the liturgy of the dead; on a soldier's desertion of his post and avoidance of his duty, for he did not place his personal service at the disposal of the generals. Who, then, will acquit this man,-who will condone misdeeds which were deliberate? Who is so foolish as, by saving this man, to place his own safety at the mercy of cowardly deserters, who will show compassion to this man, and so elect to die unpitied at the hands of the enemy? Who will conciliate the gratitude of his country's betrayer in order to make himself obnoxious to the vengeance of the gods?

In the cause of my country, of the temples, and of the laws, I have fairly and justly set forth the issue, without disparaging or vilifying the defendant's private life or bringing any irrelevant accusation. You must reflect, every one of you, that to acquit Leocrates is to pass sentence of death and enslavement on your country. Two urns are before you, and the votes which you give are, in the one case, for the overthrow of your city; in the other, for its safety and its domestic welfare. If you absolve Leocrates, you will vote for betraying the city, the temples, and the ships, -if you put him to death, you will exhort

men to cherish and preserve their country, her revenues, and her prosperity. Deem, then, Athenians, that a prayer goes up to you from the very land and all its groves, from the harbors, from the arsenals, from the walls of the city; deem that the shrines and holy places are summoning you to protect them, and, remembering the charges against him, make Leocrates a proof that compassion and tears do not prevail with you over solicitude for the laws and for the common weal.-(Delivered at Athens.)

Lysias (Greece, c. 459-c. 380 B. C.)

Denouncing the Thirty Tyrants-Remember the cruel indignities which you suffered; how you were dragged from the tribunal and the altars; how no place, however sacred, could shelter you against their violence; while others, torn from their wives, their children, their parents, after putting a period to their miserable lives, were deprived of funeral rites. For these tyrants imagined their government to be so firmly established that even the vengeance of the gods was unable to shake it.

But you who escaped immediate death, who fled you knew not whither, no asylum affording you protection; everywhere taking refuge, yet everywhere abandoned; who, leaving your children among strangers or enemies, and destitute of all the necessaries of life, made your way to the Pireum, where, overcoming all opposi tion, you showed the triumph of virtue over numbers and force, regained the city for yourselves and freedom for your countrymen, — what must have been your situation had you proved unfortunate in the engagement ?

Again compelled to fly, no temples, no altars, could have saved you. The children who accompanied you would have been reduced to the vilest servitude; those whom you left behind, deprived of all help, would, at a mean price, have been sold to your enemies.

But why should I mention what might have happened, not being able to relate what was actually done? For it is impossible for one man, in the course of one trial, to enumerate the means which were employed to undermine the power of this state, the arsenals which were demolished, the temples sold or profaned, the citizens banished or murdered, and whose dead bodies were impiously left disinterred.

Those slaughtered citizens now watch your decree, uncertain whether you will prove accomplices in their death, or avengers of their murder.

I will cease accusing. You have heard, you have seen, you have suffered! It only remains for you to give sentence !-(Peroration against Eratosthenes, one of the Thirty Tyrants accused of murder.(Text from "The World's Best Orations.")

Lytton, Lord (Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer, Baron Lytton, England, 18031873.)

Demosthenes and the Classics-All men in modern times, famous for their eloquence,

have recognized Demosthenes as their model. Many speakers in our own country have literally translated passages from his orations and produced electrical effects upon sober English senators by thoughts first uttered to passionate Athenian crowds. Why is this? Not from the style, -the style vanishes in translation. It is because thoughts the noblest, appeal to emotions the most masculine and popular. You see in Demosthenes the man accustomed to deal with the practical business of men,-to generalize details, to render complicated affairs clear to the ordinary understanding, and, at the same time, to connect the material interests of life with the sentiments that warm the breast and exalt the soul. It is the brain of an accomplished statesman in unison with a generous heart, thoroughly in earnest, beating loud and high-with the passionate desire to convince breathless thousands how to baffle a danger and to save their country.

A little time longer and Athens is free no more. The iron force of Macedon has banished liberty from the silenced Agora. But liberty had already secured to herself a gentle refuge in the groves of the Academy, — there, still to the last, the Grecian intellect maintains the same social, humanizing, practical aspect. The immense mind of Aristotle gathers together, as in a treasure-house, for future ages, all that was valuable in the knowledge that informs us of the earth on which we dwell, - the political constitutions of states, and their results on the character of nations, the science of ethics, the analysis of ideas, natural history, physical science, critical investigation, omne immensum peragravit; and all that he collects from wisdom he applies to the earthly uses of man. Yet it is not by the tutor of Alexander, but by the pupil of Socrates, that our vast debt to the Grecian mind is completed. When we remount from Aristotle to his great master, Plato, it is as if we looked from nature up to nature's God. There, amidst the decline of freedom, the corruption of manners, - just before the date when, with the fall of Athens, the beautiful ideal of sensuous life faded mournfully away, there, on that verge of time, stands the consoling Plato, preparing philosophy to receive the Christian dispensation, by opening the gates of the Infinite, and proclaiming the immortality of the soul. Thus the Grecian genius, ever kindly and benignant, first appears to awaken man from the sloth of the senses, to enlarge the boundaries of self, to connect the desire of glory with the sanctity of household ties, to raise up, in luminous contrast with the inert despotism of the old Eastern World, the energies of freemen, the duties of citizens; and, finally, accomplishing its mission as the visible Iris to states and heroes, it melts into the rainbow announcing a more sacred covenant, and spans the streams of the heathen Orcus with an arch lost in the Christian's heaven.- (From the "World's Best Orations." Delivered at Edinburgh, 1854.)

Macaulay, Thomas Babington

1800-1859.)

(England,

The Life of Law-It is easy to say: "Be bold; be firm; defy intimidation; let the law have its course; the law is strong enough to put down the seditious." Sir, we have heard this blustering before, and we know in what it ended. It is the blustering of little men, whose lot has fallen on a great crisis. Xerxes scourging the waves, Canute commanding the waves to recede from his footstool, were but types of the folly. The law has no eyes; the law has no hands; the law is nothing-nothing but a piece of paper printed by the king's printer, with the king's arms at the top-till public opinion breathes the breath of life into the dead letter... (1831.)

The New Zealander in the Ruins of London-She (Rome) saw the commencement of all the governments and of all the ecclesiastical establishments that now exist in the world; and we feel no assurance that she is not destined to see the end of them all. She was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain,- before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flourished at Antioch,-when idols were still worshiped in the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigor when some traveler from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's.

Fitness for Self-Government-Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim! If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may, indeed, wait forever.

Government Makes the Difference- When I look to one country as compared to another, at the different epochs of their history, I am forced to believe that it is upon law and government that the prosperity and morality, the power and intelligence, of every nation depend. When I compare Spain (in which the traveler is met by the stiletto in the streets, and by the carbine in the high roads) to England, in the poorest parts of which the traveler passes without fear, I think the difference is occasioned by the different governments under which the people live.

MacDuffie, George (American, 1788-1851.) Representative Government- It is obvious that liberty has a more extensive and durable foundation in the United States than it ever has had in any other age or country. By the representative principle, —a principle unknown and impracticable among the Ancients, - the whole mass of society is brought to operate in constraining the action of power, and in the conservation of public liberty.

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