ANDREW LANG

[Speech of Horatio Herbert, Lord Kitchener, at a banquet given by the Lord Mayor of London, at the Mansion House, London, November 4, 1898, in celebration of the campaign in the Sudan and the successful recovery of Khartum from the Dervishes, thereby avenging the death of General Gordon. Lord Salisbury, in a brilliant speech, proposed the health of Lord Kitchener, to which the latter replied with the speech that follows.]

My Lord Mayor, Your Royal Highnesses, My Lords And Gentlemen:—It is not easy for me to find words to express the gratitude I feel for the manner in which the toast proposed by Lord Salisbury has been received by this magnificent audience, or for the too kind and too flattering words in which it has been recommended to your notice. Such a recognition by such an audience is more than sufficient recompense for any services which it may have been my good fortune to render. But, my lords and gentlemen, I am fully aware that it is not in my individual capacity but as representing the Anglo-Egyptian army that this great honor has been done me. [Cheers.] It is to the excellent and devoted services of the troops that the success of the campaign is due. A general would have been indeed incapable who failed to lead such men to victory; for it was not only, nor even principally, on the day of battle, that the great qualities of these troops were displayed. The cheerful endurance and soldier-like spirit with which they bore long delay during the Sudan summer, between the battle of Atbara and the advance on Omdurman, was as high a test of discipline and efficiency as the endurance exhibited in the long marches, or the courage shown atthe trenches at Atbara or on the plains of Omdurman. [Cheers.]

A man may be proud indeed whose good fortune has placed him in command of troops capable of deeds like these. And remember, my lords and gentlemen, I include in this not merely the British army but the Egyptian army also. [Loud cheers.] For, proud as I may well be of having commanded the British troops in the Sudan, I am no less proud of having as Sirdar led the Egyptian and Sudanese troops to victory, side by side with men of my own race and blood. It is on behalf of those and the combined forces that are absent as well as those that are present that I desire to tender you our sincere thanks for the great honor you have done us. It has been contended and in former days with some plausibility, that the material from which the Egyptian army is recruited is not capable of being made into good soldiers, but we in the Egyptian army never held that view; we felt confidence in our men, and that confidence has been justified. We tested them at Gemeizeh, Tokar, Toski, Ferkeh, and Abu Hamed, and were not disappointed; and under the circumstances, perhaps the most competent military critics, the Dervishes [laughter] showed no disposition to underrate the fighting power of our men. And when therôlewas changed and from the defensive we were able to take the offensive they soon acquired that respect for the Egyptian soldiers that all good troops engender in the minds of their opponents. [Cheers.]

I had to give the Egyptian army arduous work. They had to construct the railway; they had to build gunboats, and sailing craft through the dangerous cataracts, they had to be on incessant fatigues, moving stores and cutting wood for the steamers. It may be fairly said that had it not been for the work of the Egyptian army the British troops could not have reached Omdurman without far greater suffering and loss of life, and it was not only in these pioneer duties that the Egyptian army distinguished themselves, for when they came in contact with the enemy their discipline, steadiness and courage were prominently displayed. At Ferkeh, and at Abu Hamed, they, with the Sudanese troops, turned the Dervishes out of their positions. At Atbara,they were not behind their British comrades, and at Omdurman, when Macdonald's brigade repulsed the fierce and determined attacks that were brought against them, I am sure that the thought occurred to the mind of every officer in the British brigades, who saw it: "We might have done it as well; we could not have done it better." ["Hear! Hear!"] And how was this obtained? By good training, good discipline and mutual confidence between officers and men. It was on these lines that the army was formed and organized under Sir Evelyn Wood and Sir Francis Grenfell, and I, with the assistance of the finest body of officers that the British army can produce, have merely followed in their footsteps, and developed the principles that they had already laid down.

There is one other point to which I would like to refer before bringing a speech which may have already been too long ["No! No!"] to a conclusion. In this great commercial centre it may be of interest if I allude to the financial side of the campaign. Although the accounts have not yet been absolutely closed, you may take it as very nearly accurate that during the two and a half years' campaign, extra military credits to the amount of two and a half millions have been expended. In this sum I have included the recent grant that has been made for the extension of the railway from Atbara to Khartum, the work on which is already on hand. Well, against this large expenditure we have some assets to show. We have, or shall have, 760 miles of railway, properly equipped with engines, rolling stock, and a track with bridges in good order. I must admit that the railway stations and waiting-rooms are somewhat primitive, but then we do not wait long in the Sudan. [Laughter.] Well, for this running concern I do not think that £3,000 a mile will be considered too high a value. This represents two and a half millions out of the money granted, and for the other quarter of a million, we have 2,000 miles of telegraph lines, six new gunboats, besides barges and sailing craft, and—the Sudan. [Laughter and cheers.]

Of course the railway did not cost me £3,000 a mile to construct, and many other heavy charges for warlike stores, supplies and transport on our long line of communication, including sea transports of troops from England and elsewhere had to be made; but however it was done the result remains the same. We have freed the vast territories of the Sudan from the most cruel tyranny the world has ever known, and we have hoisted the Egyptian and British flags at Khartum, never, I hope, to be hauled down. I have again to thank you, my Lord Mayor, for the great honor done us on this occasion. I have only one regret which, I feel sure, is shared by all present, and which has been given expression to by Lord Rosebery and Lord Salisbury, and that is, that Lord Cromer, who has supported me during the last two and a half years, is not here to support me to-night and to receive in person the thanks to which he is so justly entitled, and which, I am sure, you would willingly have given. [Loud cheers.]

[Speech of Andrew Lang at the annual banquet of the Royal Academy, London, May 6, 1894. This speech on some of the aspects of modern fiction was delivered by Mr. Lang in response to the toast "The Interests of Literature," regularly proposed on these occasions. The President of the Academy, Sir Frederic Leighton, said in introducing Mr. Lang: "Your Royal Highness, My Lords and Gentlemen: Let us drink to the honor of science and of letters. If of the latter it may be affirmed without fear that few things are more often misapprehended than their true relation to art, it is not less certain that no body of men are more than artists responsive to their stimulating force. How closely science, which is knowledge, is interwoven on many sides with art, it is needless here to say. In the name of letters I have to call upon one of the most versatile of their votaries, a man whose nimble intellect plays with luminous ease round many and various subjects; delicate as a poet, acute and picturesque as a critic, a sparkling journalist, no one has pursued with more earnest and more fruitful zeal the graver study of the birth and evolution of natural myths than Mr. Andrew Lang, to whom I turn for response."]

Your Royal Highness, Mr. President, My Lords And Gentlemen:—He to whom it falls or rather on whom falls the task of replying for English literature may well feel ground to dust by the ponderous honor. Who can be the representative of such a Parnassian constituency of divine poets, philosophers, romancers, historians, from Beowulf to the last new novel? The consciousness is crushing. The momentary representative feels himself to be like Mr. Chevy Slyme "the most littery fellow in the world," who is over-borne like the bride of the Lord of Burleigh—

"By the burden of an honorUnto which she was not born."

Naturally he flies to thoughts which whisper of humility. He finds them easily. In the first place literature is but avery insignificant flake on the foam of the wave of the world. As Mr. Pepys reminds us, most people please themselves "with easy delights of the world, eating, drinking, dancing, hunting, fencing," and not with book learning. Easy he calls them! I wish they were:—

"I cannot eat but little meat,My stomach is not good."

Still less can I dance or hunt. Yet to the general public these things come easier than reading; and their good-humored contempt keeps us poor "littery gents" in our proper place and frame of mind. I have lately read somewhere about a man of letters who conceived himself to be the idol of the great and good-natured American people. They sent him the kindest letters, they invited him to lecture, but ah! when his publishers' accounts came in, he found there "To American sales: six and twopence!" [Laughter.] Here is matter for mortification!

Again, one is not so much to speak for English literature as to speak about it; one is not a representative but a reporter; we critics are but the cagots or despised pariah class in the world of letters. If we ever give in to the belief that we might attempt something creative, we, like the insects celebrated by the poet, "have lesser" critics upon our backs to bite us [laughter] and to remind us of our limitations. Our function in the game is like that of the scorers and umpires at Lords or the Oval; men of accurate intellectual habit, and incorruptible integrity from whom not much is to be expected with bat or ball. We are not to do anything "off our own bats." For these reasons I only talk humbly of literature as an interested professional observer. When the philosopher Square spoke of religion, he meant the true religion, and when he said the true religion he indicated the Protestant religion, and by the Protestant religion he meant the religion of the Church of England. In the same way if I venture a few remarks on English literature I mean modern English literature, and by modern English literature I mean modern English novels.

We are indeed quite destitute of poets. As Henry V is said by a French chronicler to have ennobled all his armyon the eve of Agincourt, so perhaps it might be well to make all our poets poets-laureate [laughter]—there must be a sip for each of them in the butt of malmsey or sack. But when the general public says "literature" the general public means fiction.

Now, though I have some optimistic remarks to end with, it does appear to myself that the British novel suffers from diverse banes or curses. The first is the spread of elementary education. Too many naturally non-literary people of all ranks are now goaded into acquiring a knowledge of the invention of Cadmus. When nobody could read, except people whose own literary nature impelled them to learn, better books were written, because the public, if relatively few, was absolutely fit. Secondly, these new educated people insist on our national cursed "actuality." They live solely in the distracted moment, whereas true literature lives in the absolute; in the past that perhaps never was present, and that is eternal; "lives in fantasy."

Shakespeare did not write plays about contemporary problems. The Greek dramatists deliberately chose their topics in the tales of Troy and Thebes and Atreus's line. The very Fijians, as Mr. Paisley Thomson informs us, "will tell of gods and giants and canoes greater than mountains and of women fairer than the women of these days, and of doings so strange that the jaws of the listeners fall apart." They do not deal with "problems" about the propriety of cannibalism or the casuistry of polygamy [Laughter.] The Athenians fined for hismodernitéthe author of a play on the fall of Miletus because he reminded them of their misfortunes. But many of our novelists do nothing but remind us of our misfortunes. Novels are becoming tracts on parish councils, free love and other inflammatory topics [laughter], and the reason of this ruin is that the vast and the naturally non-literary majority can now read, and of course can only read about the actual, about the noisy wrangling moment. This is the bane of the actual.

Of course I do not maintain that contemporary life is tabooed against novelists, but if novels of contemporary life are to be literature, are to be permanent, that life must either be treated in the spirit of romance and fantasy as by Balzac and the colossally fantastic Zola; or in the spirit ofhumor as by Charles de Bernard, Fielding, Thackeray, Dickens. The thrifty plan of giving us sermons, politics, fiction, all in one stodgy sandwich [laughter] produces no permanent literature, produces but temporary "Tracts for the Times."

Fortunately we have among us many novelists—young ones luckily—who are true to the primitive and eternal Fijian canons of fiction. [Laughter.] We have Oriental romance from the author of "Plain Tales from the Hills." We have the humor and tenderness—certainly not Fijian I admit—which produced the masterpiece, "A Window in Thrums." We have the adventurous fancy that gives us "A Gentleman of France," "The Master of Ballantrae," "Micah Clarke," "The Raiders," "The Prisoner of Zenda," and the truly primeval or troglodyte imagination which, as we read of a fight between a knob-nosed Kaffir dwarf and a sacred crocodile, brings us in touch with the first hearers of Heracles's or Beowulf's or Grettir's deeds, "so strange that the jaws of the listeners fall apart." Thus we possess outlets for escape from ourselves and from to-day. We can still dwell now and then in the same air of pleasure as our fathers have breathed since the days of Homer.

Such are the rather intolerant ideas of a bookworm who by no means grudges the pleasure which other readers receive from what does not please him to enthusiasm. And pleasure, not edification, is the end of all art. We are all pleased when we write; the public of one enthusiast every author enjoys, and the literary men who depreciate the joys of their own art or profession may not be consciously uncandid, but they are decidedly perverse. [Laughter and applause.]

[Speech of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Premier of Canada, at a banquet given by the Imperial Institute to the Colonial Premiers, London, June 18, 1897, on the occasion of Her Majesty's Diamond Jubilee. The Prince of Wales presided. In introducing Sir Wilfrid Laurier, he said: "Gentlemen, this is not the time nor is it necessary to allude to the loyalty of our great colonies. We have heard what has been spoken here to-night, and we shall hear still more. We know that our colonies look toward the mother country with affection; and in the hour of need and danger I feel convinced that they will always come forward to our assistance. [Cheers.] During the remarkable record reign of Her Majesty the Queen great changes have occurred. When she came to the throne, there were only thirty-two colonies; now there are sixty-five. [Cheers.] As Lord Lansdowne has said we have met here in times of peace. God grant that it may last, but should the occasion come when our national flag is endangered I have but little doubt, gentlemen, that the colonies will unite like one man to maintain what exists and what I hope will remain forever as integral parts of the British Empire. It is now my pleasant duty to propose the toast of the evening: 'Our Guests the Colonial Premiers.' We welcome them as ourselves. We hope that their stay here may not be made in any way irksome to them. I feel sure that no one will be more grateful than the Queen herself to see that these gentlemen have come here on the invitation of the Colonial Office to do honor to a great epoch in our history. This toast we connect with the health of the Hon. Wilfrid Laurier. I now beg you with all the honors to drink this toast—'Our Guests, I may say, our friends, the Colonial Premiers.'"]

Your Royal Highness, My Lords and Gentlemen:—The toast which your Royal Highness has just proposed in such graceful terms is one which is important at all times and opens a subject which at the present time perhaps more than at any other engrosses and absorbs the minds of all thinking men. ["Hear! Hear!"] During the few days in which my colleagues and myself have had the privilege to be in England, we have had hourly evidences that the Colonies at the present moment occupied no small part in theaffections of the people of England. [Cheers.] Sir, Colonies were born to become nations. In my own country, and perhaps also in England, it has been observed that Canada has a population which in some instances exceeds, in many others, rivals the populations of independent nations, and it has been said that perhaps the time might come when Canada might become a nation of itself. My answer is this simply: Canada is a nation. [Cheers.] Canada is free, and freedom is its nationality. Although Canada acknowledges the suzerainty of a Sovereign Power, I am here to say that independence can give us no more rights than we have at present. ["Hear! Hear!"]

Lord Lansdowne has spoken of a day when perhaps our Empire might be in danger. England has proved at all times that she can fight her own battles, but if a day were ever to come when England was in danger, let the bugle sound, let the fires be lit, on the hills and in all parts of the Colonies, though we might not be able to do much, whatever we can do shall be done by the Colonies to help her. [Cheers.] From all parts of this country since I have been here, both in conversation and in letters, I have been asked if the sentiments of the French population of Canada were characterized by absolute loyalty towards the British Empire. I have been reminded that feuds of race are long and hard to die, and that the feuds of France—the land of my ancestors—with England have lasted during many generations. Let me say at once that though it be true that the wars of France and England have their place in history, it was the privilege of the men of our generation to see the banners of France and England entwined together victoriously on the banks of the Alma, on the heights of Inkerman, and on the walls of Sebastopol. [Cheers.]

It is true that during the last century and the century before, a long war, a long duel, I might call it, was waged between England and France for the possession of North America, but in the last battle that took place on the plains of Abraham, both generals, the one who won and the one who failed, fell. If you go to the city of Quebec, you will see a monument erected in commemoration of that battle. What is the character of that monument? Monuments to record victories are not scarce in England or in France; butsuch a monument as this which is in Quebec, I do not think you will find in any other part of the world, for it is a monument not only to him who won but also to him who failed. [Cheers.] It is a monument dedicated to the memory of Wolfe and Montcalm, and the dedication, which is one of the noblest and best of the kind, not only for the sentiments which it records but also as a literary expression, is as follows: "Mortem virtus communem famam historia monumentum posteritas dedit." Here is a monument to the two races equal in fame, courage, and glory, and that equality exists at the present time in Canada. In this you have the sentiments of my countrymen—we are equal to-day with those who won on the battle-field on the plains of Abraham. It is by such acts that England has won the hearts of my fellow-countrymen; it is by such acts that she can ever claim our loyalty. Your Royal Highness, let me now thank you from the bottom of my heart for the kind words you have just spoken. Your Royal Highness has been kind enough to remind us that at one time in its earlier day you visited Canada. Many changes have taken place since that time, but let me assure your Royal Highness there has been no change in the loyalty of the people of Canada. [Cheers.]

[Speech of Frank R. Lawrence at the fourth annual dinner given by the Poughkeepsie District Members of the Holland Society of New York, October 3, 1893. The banquet was held in commemoration of the relief of the Siege of Leyden, 1574. J. William Beekman, the President of the Holland Society, said: "Gentlemen, we will now proceed to the next regular toast. It is of interest to all: 'New York, the child of New Amsterdam—Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined.' I call upon Mr. Frank R. Lawrence, President of the Lotos Club, to respond to that toast."]

Gentlemen of the Holland Society:—Under any circumstances it would be difficult to follow the distinguished master of the art [Horace Porter] who has just taken his seat, but when to his glowing words is added the diffidence inspired by this illustrious company, the difficulty of the succeeding speaker is great indeed.

Mr. President, I am like the needy knife-grinder, when asked for his tale: "Story—God bless you, I have none to tell, sir,"—and must beg you to accept from me a few disjointed sentences instead of a more formal speech. Indeed, it is not entirely clear to me which side of the question suggested by the text I am to take; I do not entirely know whether I am expected to prove the truth or to expose the falsehood of the old proverb which adorns your menu, and it is commonly the case with sayings that are supposed to represent the wisdom of the ages, that the one may as readily be established as the other. It might be suggested by one of sceptical mind that the saying that "as the twig is bent the tree's inclined," may not be literally true as applied to this company and this occasion; on the contrary, might it not be true that if your early Dutch ancestors could come back and gaze for amoment upon this sumptuous banquet and these gorgeous surroundings, their first impulse, in accordance with the frugal simplicity of their lives and their habits, would be to repudiate it, and repudiate their descendants, with reprehension and with horror? [Laughter.] And would they not straightway proceed, had they the power, to enact such sumptuary laws as should confine you all henceforth and for evermore, to the same simple fare upon which they and their children throve a couple of centuries ago?

Yet, Mr. President, by whatever strange process of evolution the simple festivities of the first settlers upon this island may have grown into an occasion so distinguished as this, I conceive that, after all, the adage which you quote is well applied and has a serious meaning; for despite the lapse of time and the introduction of new races of men, New York is the child of Nieuw Amsterdam—and how the child has outgrown the parent!

I believe it to be true, sir, that New York to-day bears more traces of the less than fifty years of Dutch government than of the more than one hundred years of British rule which followed. New York is, indeed, erected upon the foundation of Nieuw Amsterdam; yet how impossible to compare the New York of to-day with the original settlement established by your forefathers. As well might we compare the great gathering of the navies of the world which occurred in the Hudson River a year ago with the first expedition sent hither by their High Mightinesses the States-General two hundred and fifty years before. New York to-day, grown up from the Nieuw Amsterdam of a former generation, is a great emporium and a mighty city. To appreciate the greatness and the swiftness of its growth, we must recall that since this century began its population has increased more than twenty-fold. When this city and its vicinity shall once more have doubled their inhabitants, the result will be the formation of almost the largest mass of people congregated upon the globe. [Applause.]

Contemplating these marvellous changes, past and to come, our reflections are not all pleasant. Often do we regret with Washington living the passing away of the Arcadian simplicity which once prevailed upon this island. Often do we recall his plaintive words, applied to this very community: "Let no man congratulate himself when he beholds the child of his bosom or the city of his birth increasing in magnitude and importance." Yet mournful reflections over the passing away of childhood's days have small place in the ceaseless activity of modern life. New York can no more again become the happy village whose departure Irving laments, than the river which nears the ocean can turn back and again become a tiny stream. Like a man approaching his prime, it must go forward to its destiny—and what a destiny seems to await our city! As the nineteenth century—greatest of periods known to man—draws to a close, and opens the way for its successor which we expect will be rich with broader and greater and higher achievements still than the century of our birth, what a future seems to await our city of New York! Is it not manifest destiny that old Nieuw Amsterdam, the present New York, should become a greater city than any on the earth to-day? And it seems to me, sir, that it is in a very large measure, indeed, to the rugged industry—to the sturdy honesty—to the indomitable will of your Dutch ancestors,—to the spirit which animated William the Silent, to the spirit and the qualities which sustained the early Dutch settlers upon this island, Wouter Van Twiller and Peter Stuyvesant and the men of their generation, that we and our children must look, to maintain civic virtue, to foster commercial enterprise, and to make the city of New York in the twentieth century the metropolis of the civilized world. [Applause.]

[Speech of William B. H. Lecky at the annual banquet of the Royal Academy, London, May 5, 1888. Sir Frederic Leighton, the President of the Academy, said in introducing him: "In connection with 'Letters,' I turn to yet another son of that many-gifted sister island [This toast was coupled with that of "Science," to which John Tyndall was called upon to respond.] on which all Englishmen must heartily invoke the blessings of prosperity and of peace restored [cheers], to a man whose subtle and well-balanced mind has delighted, now in tracing through the centuries the growth of the spirit of Rationalism, now in following the history of morals in Europe, through the first eight centuries of our era, and more lately in illuminating the great page of English history in the century which precedes our own, Mr. William Edward Lecky."]

Your Royal Highnesses, My Lords, and Gentlemen: I cannot but remember that the last time I heard this toast proposed in this room the task which now devolves upon me was discharged by that true poet and great critic whose recent loss all England is deploring. In few respects did Mr. Arnold render a greater service to Literature than by the stress he always placed upon the importance of its artistic side—upon that "grand style," as he loved to call it, which the very last words he uttered in public were employed in extolling. It was not without a sound, critical instinct that he dwelt on it, for it is, I think, on this side, that contemporary literature is apt to be weakest. A great wave of German influence has swept over English literature, and however admirable may be the German intellect in its industry and its thoroughness, in its many-sided sympathies, and in its noble love for truth, it will hardly be claimed for it, even by its greatest admirers, that it is equally distinguished for its sense of the beauty of form or for the great art of perspective or proportion. [Cheers.]

Whether it be owing to this cause, or to the reaction from the brilliantly pictorial literature of Macaulay and his contemporaries, or to the excessive predominance of the critical spirit, or to some other more subtle or far-reaching cause, I know not; but I cannot but think that we find in contemporary literature some want of the freshness, the simplicity, or the directness of the great literatures of the past. History is apt to resolve itself into archeology or politics. In poetry or fiction we find more traces of the mind that dissects and analyzes than of the mind that embodies and creates. Passion itself assumes the aspects or affects the subtleties of metaphysics, and much of our modern literary art bears a strong resemblance to a school of painting which seems very popular beyond the Channel, in which all definite forms and outlines seem lost under vague masses of luminous but almost unorganized color.

And yet, though this be true of a large part of our literature, we have still great painters among us. It would be idle, it would be, perhaps, invidious, for me to mention names, many of which will rise unbidden to your minds; but it is not, I think, out of place to remind you that it is since the doors of the last Academy exhibition closed that the illustrious historian [Kinglake] of the Crimean war has completed that noble historic gallery, hung with battlepieces as glowing and as animated, with portraits as vivid and as powerful, as any that have adorned these walls. And if it be said that this great master of picturesque English was reared in the traditions of a more artistic age, I would venture to point to a poem which has been but a few weeks in the world, but which is destined, if I am not much mistaken, to take a more prominent place in the literature of its time—poem which among many other beauties contains pictures of the old Greek mythology that are worthy to compare even with those with which you, Mr. President, have so often delighted us. I refer to "The City of Dreams," by Robert Buchanan. ["Hear! Hear!"] While such works are produced in England, it cannot, I think, be said that the artistic spirit in English literature is very seriously decayed. [Cheers.]

[Speech of General Fitzhugh Lee at a dinner given by the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick and the Hibernian Society of Philadelphia, at the city of Philadelphia, September 17, 1887. The occasion of the dinner was the one hundredth anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution of the United States. General Lee, then Governor of Virginia, was the guest of Governor Beaver at the dinner. The Chairman, Hon. Andrew G. Curtin [Pennsylvania's war governor], in introducing General Lee said: "We have here to-day a gentleman whom I am glad to call my friend, though during the war he was in dangerous and unpleasant proximity to me. He once threatened the Capitol of this great State. I did not wish him to come in, and was very glad when he went away. He was then my enemy and I was his. But, thank God, that is past; and in the enjoyment of the rights and interests common to all as American citizens, I am his friend and he is my friend. I introduce to you, Governor Fitzhugh Lee."]

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Hibernian Society:—I am very glad, indeed, to have the honor of being present in this Society once more; as it was my good fortune to enjoy a most pleasant visit here and an acquaintance with the members of your Society last year. My engagements were such to-day that I could not get here earlier; and just as I was coming in Governor Beaver was making his excuses because, as he said, he had to go to pick up a visitor whom he was to escort to the entertainment to be given this evening at the Academy of Music. I am the visitor whom Governor Beaver is looking for. He could not capture me during the war, but he has captured me now. I am a Virginian and used to ride a pretty fast horse, and he could not get close enough to me. [Laughter.]

By the way, you have all heard of "George Washington and his little hatchet." The other day I heard a story thatwas a little variation upon the original, and I am going to take up your time for a minute by repeating it to you. It was to this effect: Old Mr. Washington and Mrs. Washington, the parents of George, found on one occasion that their supply of soap for the use of the family at Westmoreland had been exhausted, and so they decided to make some family soap. They made the necessary arrangements and gave the requisite instructions to the family servant. After an hour or so the servant returned and reported to them that he could not make that soap. "Why not," he was asked, "haven't you all the materials?" "Yes," he replied, "but there is something wrong." The old folks proceeded to investigate, and they found they had actually got the ashes of the little cherry tree that George had cut down with his hatchet, and there was no lye in it. [Laughter.]

Now, I assure you, there is no "lie" in what I say to you this afternoon, and that is, that I thank God for the sun of the Union which, once obscured, is now again in the full stage of its glory; and that its light is shining over Virginia as well as over the rest of this country. We have had our differences. I do not see, upon reading history, how they could well have been avoided, because they resulted from different constructions of the Constitution, which was the helm of the ship of the Republic. Virginia construed it one way. Pennsylvania construed it in another, and they could not settle their differences; so they went to war, and Pennsylvania, I think, probably got a little the best of it. [General laughter.]

The sword, at any rate, settled the controversy. But that is behind us. We have now a great and glorious future in front of us, and it is Virginia's duty to do all that she can to promote the honor and glory of this country. We fought to the best of our ability for four years; and it would be a great mistake to assume that you could bring men from their cabins, from their ploughs, from their houses and from their families to make them fight as they fought in that contest unless they were fighting for a belief. Those men believed that they had the right construction of the Constitution, and that a State that voluntarily entered the Union could voluntarily withdraw from it. They did not fight for Confederate money. It was not worth ten cents a yard. Theydid not fight for Confederate rations—you would have had to curtail the demands of your appetite to make it correspond with the size and quality of those rations. They fought for what they thought was a proper construction of the Constitution. They were defeated. They acknowledged their defeat. They came back to their father's house, and there they are going to stay. But if we are to continue prosperous, if this country, stretching from the Gulf to the lakes and from ocean to ocean, is to be mindful of its own best interests, in the future, we will have to make concessions and compliances, we will have to bear with each other and to respect each other's opinions. Then we will find that that harmony will be secured which is as necessary for the welfare of States, as it is for the welfare of individuals. [Applause.]

I have become acquainted with Governor Beaver—I met him in Richmond. You could not make me fight him now. If I had known him before the war, perhaps we would not have got at it. If all the Governors had known each other, and if all the people of different sections had been known to each other, or had been thrown together in business or social communication, the fact would have been recognized at the outset, as it is to-day, that there are just as good men in Maine as there are in Texas, and just as good men in Texas as there are in Maine. Human nature is everywhere the same; and when intestine strifes occur, we will doubtless always be able by a conservative, pacific course to pass smoothly over the rugged, rocky edges, and the old Ship of State will be brought into a safe, commodious, Constitutional harbor with the flag of the Union flying over her, and there it will remain. [Applause.]

[Speech of Sir Frederic Leighton, as President of the Royal Academy, at the banquet held by that society, May 5, 1894. This speech followed upon that of Dr. Mandell Creighton, Bishop of Peterborough, who had proposed the "Prosperity of the Royal Academy," and the health of the President.]

My Lord Bishop:—I thank you for the appreciative tone in which you have spoken of art in general and of English art in particular. The kind terms in which you have commended this institution and its work to this distinguished assembly must have gratified my colleagues as much as it has gratified me, and we thank you most warmly. I would also gratefully acknowledge the lenient words you have addressed to the occupant of this chair. More fortunate than last year at this season, I have to note to-day the loss of one only among the acting members of this body—that of a sculptor of much repute, whose first steps in art were taken under the stimulating guidance of a powerful artist, whose name is a just boast to the green island which gave him birth—John Henry Foley. Less vigorous, no doubt, than his eminent master, Charles Bell Birch, he yet imparted to his works great life and spirit, and the charm of a facile and picturesque execution, and, even in this day of renovation and growing strength in the practice of that stately art, sculpture in this country will miss him in its ranks. ["Hear! Hear!"] From amongst the honorary retired Associates of this body another sculptor, W. F. Woodington, has been removed by death—an artist whom, for many years, age and infirmity had withdrawn altogether from public ken. The work of his vigorous prime may still be appreciated on the base of the Nelson column of Trafalgar Square.

But whilst our active ranks have suffered diminution by one death only within the year, two justly conspicuous men have fallen in the wider field of English art, both of them men of marked and distinctive personality—both painters, both, to me, deeply interesting. One of them, Albert Moore, an unbending upholder of the sufficiency in art of whatever is nobly decorative, was a devoted student of the severer graces of Hellenic art, and married in his works spontaneous and supple gesture with forms of chaste sobriety, clothing them in delicately harmonious tones, of which the studied arrangement announced to the first glance the refined idiosyncrasy of his artistic temper. ["Hear! Hear!"]

How great a psychological contrast is offered to the placid charm of these works by the fervor of those of the artist whom I have next to name, an artist of strong intellectual bent and steeped in human sympathies, the originator of the movement which startled humdrum people forty or more years ago, and produced a most interesting phase of English art! I speak of Ford Madox Brown, who recently passed away in the fulness of respected years and in the unabated intensity of his convictions. I am not here to defend in every point the nature of those convictions; I am not wholly at one with them. Ardently admired by many, stimulating and highly interesting to a still larger circle of the intelligent, who did not, perhaps, wholly follow his doctrine, he was not altogether acceptable to the wider and less cultured public, which so largely influences the creation of that empty and fickle thing called popularity; for there was that in his work which was apt to rouse the uneasy dread of the not usual, which mostly marks the middling mind. But this, I fearlessly affirm, apart from his technical endowments and rare vividness of dramatic vision, in the work of no English hand burns a more ardent sympathy with human emotion or is revealed a more subtle observation of the outward signs and gestures by which these emotions are conveyed. [Cheers.]

The artistic memories which associate themselves in our mind with Madox Brown and his concentrated energies, bring vividly before us, as we look upon the walls of this exhibition, or glance in thought over the wide area of contemporary production in England, the changes which two-score years have wrought in the character and tendencies of art in this country. As we wander through these—I rejoice to say, more than ever catholic and hospitable—galleries, within which the still young unfold, this year, so much vitality and promise—and, gentlemen, to us, the old, there is, believe me, no gladder sight or one more full of comfort—we are struck, not with a concentration of aim or purpose in the school, but rather with a radiation and scattering of effort in innumerable directions. No one, I think, can fail to observe the extraordinary differences of mood and manner shown in the works which have found equal shelter on these walls, and the wide multiplicity of individual personalities which they proclaim. In the range of figure painting, for instance, what variety of subject as well as of temper meets us! We see, not historic or domestic scenes alone; not alone scenes in which the rhythmic dream of beauty and of style is aimed at; but works also, not a few, of purely imaginative character—fanciful, mythological, allegorical, symbolic—amongst which latter, one especially, I think, is dominant in its powerful originality and the weird charm of its decorative pomp. In the region of landscape, no less, every mood is touched, and every association evoked, from the infinite solemnity of the silent Arctic solitudes to the infinite sweetness of a Surrey homestead nestling within its sheltered nook, or the laughter of the flower-fields of the Alps in June. What various temperament, too, we note in the expressional use of tone and color—here vivid and vibratory; there grave and soberly subdued.

In sculpture, again, though the display is numerically small, there are amongst various good works some that are salient. I will name one by a late alumnus of these schools, which has passed into the hands of the nation, and, in another room, the dazzling sketch of a monument deeply pathetic in its occasion, and of which this country will, I believe, be justly and lastingly proud. On all hands then, in sum, we are conscious of Life. With it, we are aware in much of the art of the day of a certain feverish tentativeness, groping, as it were, sometimes after a new spirit, sometimes after a repristination of the old in a modern form; but everywhere, I repeat, we see Life. And, gentlemen, tothose who, like myself, believe in the necessary triumph of the high over the less high, in the eventual sure survival of the wholesome and the strong, and in the falling away and withering of the vicious or the morbid, this sign is the most welcome, the most inspiriting, and the most hopeful sign of all. [Loud cheers.]

[Speech of Charles G. Leland at a dinner given in his honor by the Lotos Club, New York, January 31, 1880. Mr. Leland had just returned from a sojourn of eleven years abroad. Whitelaw Reid, the President of the Club, introduced Mr. Leland, and said in part: "Well, his long exile is over. With a true Philadelphian's fear of envious and jealous New York, he stayed abroad till they started a Pennsylvania line of steamers for him, and so smuggled him past Manhattan Island and into the Quaker City direct. Captured as he is to-night, I will not abuse his modesty by eulogy, yet this much I venture to say, and it is the eulogy the true humorist and the true man of letters will most highly prize. He deserves all the grateful honor we can pay him because he has made substantial additions to the sum of human enjoyment in the world. I give you the health of Mr. Leland, and with it our best wishes for his long life and prosperity to the end."]

Mr. President and Gentlemen:—I have been asked several times since my return what struck me most, after an eleven years' absence, and I should say it is the fact that I am remembered. It has never struck me so forcibly as this evening. I have been for eleven years over the sea; I have returned like the proverbial story, somewhat worn, perhaps, but still accepted, and I am very much gratified that it is so. Time passes so rapidly, and especially here in New York, that to be remembered after so long an absence is especially gratifying.

I met in Europe a Mr. Boyd, whose family two centuries before had resided in Ireland. Mr. Boyd thought one day that he would go back and visit his relatives, and so he went back and met with an Irish cousin. "Ah, Cousin Boyd," said his relative, "I am glad to see you, and though you have not been here for more than two hundred years, still I can easily trace the illegant resemblance." [Laughter.]Gentlemen, you seem inclined to trace the resemblance. I am still known, and that has touched me more than anything.

But I am not altogether so great a stranger to New York. To be sure, I was born in Philadelphia; that cannot be denied; but I have also lived in New York. I was a long time in New York, and, indeed, was a freeholder of the city. I once owned a piece of property here, on which a Dutchman planted his cabbages but never paid any rent—and I never asked him for any; finally I gave a man eighty dollars to take the property off my hands altogether. I also voted in New York; and in this I fared better than in freeholding, for I voted for Abraham Lincoln at his first election. [Applause.]

I have also been a business man in New York. I started "Vanity Fair," with Charles Browne [Artemus Ward] as an assistant, and I remember how I used to suggest the subjects to him, and how he used to write out the series of articles which have since become so widely known. The "Revue des Deux Mondes" recently gave a detailed account of the manner in which I brought out Artemus Ward, in which by far too much credit was given to me and too little to him. But this was all done in New York, and you will give me some credit for having aided such a man as Artemus Ward. But I am growing gossipy. I say all this, however, just to show that I have some claim to call myself a New Yorker. I was here for a long time, and here some of my best work was done. But what can I say to thank you for the kind manner in which you have received me?

Before I left London a gentleman said to me: "The two greatest honors of your country are to get a degree from Harvard, and to be a guest of the Lotos Club;" for you must know that they talk a great deal about you. [Laughter.] This was said to me by an English gentleman of letters, for, as I said, you are extremely well known over there, and your hospitality is so celebrated that to have received the stamp of it is to be distinguished.

I said it was very strange, but the last thing that happened to me before leaving America was to receive the degree of A. M. from Cambridge, but I did not venture to aspire to the other one. And now the first thing that happens to me onmy return is to receive your invitation. Gentlemen, ambition can no further go. [Laughter.] As Horace says, a man may change his skies, but not his disposition, and I wish to show you that I have not forgotten my manners while abroad; and, in this connection, that a good speech should have a short answer. A very excellent speech preceded mine. I have made my answer altogether too long. Thanking you from my heart, for your courteous kindness. I now take my seat. [Applause.]

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