JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY

[Speech of John Morley at the banquet of the Royal Academy, London, May 3, 1890. Sir Frederic Leighton, President of the Academy, said in introducing Mr. Morley: "With Literature I associate, not for the first time, the name of a master of strong and sober English, a man in whose writings the clear vision of a seeker after truth controls the generous fervor of an idealist, and of whom every appreciator of a fine literary temper must earnestly hope that the paths upon which he has so long trod with growing honor may never become wholly strangers to his feet—I mean Mr. John Morley."]

Mr. President, Your Royal Highness, My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen:—I feel that I am more unworthy now than I was eight years ago to figure as the representative of literature before this brilliant gathering of all the most important intellectual and social interests of our time. I have not yet been able like the Prime Minister, to go round this exhibition and see the works of art that glorify your walls; but I am led by him to expect that I shall see the pictures of Liberal leaders, including M. Rochefort. [Laughter.] I am not sure whether M. Rochefort will figure as a man of letters or as a Liberal leader, but I can understand that his portrait would attract the Prime Minister because M. Rochefort is a politician who was once a Liberal leader, and who has now seen occasion to lose his faith in Parliamentary government. [Laughter and cheers.] Nor have I seen the picture of "The Flowing Tide," but I shall expect to find in that picture when I do see it a number of bathing-machines in which, not the younger generation, but the elder generation are incarcerated. [Laughter.] The younger generation, as I understand, are waiting confidently—for the arrival of the "Flowing Tide," and whenit arrives, the elderly gentlemen who are incarcerated in those machines [laughter] will be only too anxious for a man and a horse to come and deliver them from their imminent peril. [Laughter and cheers.]

I thought that I detected in the last words of your speech, in proposing this toast, Mr. President, an accent of gentle reproach that any one should desert the high and pleasant ways of literature for the turmoil and the everlasting contention of public life. I do not suppose that there has ever been a time in which there was less of divorce between literature and public life than the present time. ["Hear! Hear!"] There have been in the reign of the Queen two eminent statesmen who have thrice had the distinction of being Prime Minister, and oddly enough, one of those statesmen [Lord Derby] has left behind him a most spirited version of Homer, while the other eminent statesman [William E. Gladstone]—happily still among us, still examines the legends and the significance of Homer. [Cheers.] Then when we come to a period nearer to ourselves, and look at those gentlemen who have in the last six years filled the office of Minister for Ireland, we find that no fewer than three [George Otto Trevelyan, John Morley, and Arthur Balfour] were authors of books before they engaged in the very ticklish business of the government of men. ["Hear! Hear!"] And one of these three Ministers for Ireland embarked upon his literary career—which promised ample distinction—under the editorial auspices of another of the three. We possess in one branch of the Legislature the author of the most fascinating literary biography in our language. We possess also another writer whose range of knowledge and of intellectual interest is so great that he has written the most important book upon the Holy Roman Empire and the most important book upon the American Commonwealth [James Bryce]. [Cheers.]

The first canon in literature was announced one hundred years ago by an eminent Frenchman who said that in literature it is your business to have preferences but no exclusions. In politics it appears to be our business to have very stiff and unchangeable preferences, and exclusion is one of the systematic objects of our life. [Laughter and cheers.] In literature, according to another canon, you must have a freeand open mind and it has been said: "Never be the prisoner of your own opinions." In politics you are very lucky if you do not have the still harder fate—(and I think that the gentlemen on the President's right hand will assent to that as readily as the gentlemen who sit on his left) of being the prisoner of other people's opinions. [Laughter.] Of course no one can doubt for a moment that the great achievements of literature—those permanent and vital works which we will never let die—require a devotion as unceasing, as patient, as inexhaustible, as the devotion that is required for the works that adorn your walls; and we have luckily in our age—though it may not be a literary age—masters of prose and masters of verse. No prose more winning has ever been written than that of Cardinal Newman; no verse finer, more polished, more melodious has ever been written than that of Lord Tennyson and Mr. Swinburne. [Cheers.]

It seems to me that one of the greatest functions of literature at this moment is not merely to produce great works, but also to protect the English language—that noble, that most glorious instrument—against those hosts of invaders which I observe have in these days sprung up. I suppose that every one here has noticed the extraordinary list of names suggested lately in order to designate motion by electricity [laughter]; that list of names only revealed what many of us had been observing for a long time—namely, the appalling forces that are ready at a moment's notice to deface and deform our English tongue. [Laughter.] These strange, fantastic, grotesque, and weird titles open up to my prophetic vision a most unwelcome prospect. I tremble to see the day approach—and I am not sure that it is not approaching—when the humorists of the headlines of American journalism shall pass current as models of conciseness, energy, and color of style. [Cheers and laughter.]

Even in our social speech this invasion seems to be taking place in an alarming degree and I wonder what the Pilgrim Fathers of the seventeenth century would say if they could hear their pilgrim children of the nineteenth century who come over here, on various missions, and among others, "On the make." [Laughter.] This is only one of the thousand such like expressions which are invading the Puritansimplicity of our tongue. I will only say that I should like, for my own part, to see in every library and in every newspaper office that admirable passage in which Milton, who knew so well how to handle both the great instrument of prose and the nobler instrument of verse—declared that next to the man who furnished courage and intrepid counsels against an enemy he placed the man who should enlist small bands of good authors to resist that barbarism which invades the minds and the speech of men in methods and habits of speaking and writing.

I thank you for having allowed me the honor of saying a word as to the happiest of all callings and the most imperishable of all arts. [Loud cheers.]

[Speech of John Lothrop Motley, United States Minister to England at the eighty-fourth annual banquet of the Royal Literary Fund, London, May 28, 1873. The Right-Hon. William E. Gladstone, First Minister of the Crown, was chairman. The Bishop of Derry proposed the toast, "The Literature of the United States, and Mr. Motley," which was loudly cheered.]

Mr. Chairman, My Lords and Gentlemen:—I can scarcely find fitting words to express my gratitude for the warm and genial manner in which the toast of "American Literature" has been received by this distinguished assembly. I wish that the honor of responding to it had been placed in worthier hands. Two at least of our most eminent men of letters I thought were in England, or near it—one, that most original, subtle, poetical and graceful of thinkers and essayists, Mr. Emerson [cheers]; the other, one of our most distinguished poets and prose-writers, second to none in the highest spheres of imagination and humor: Mr. Lowell. [Cheers.] I had hoped to meet them both, but I look in vain for their friendly and familiar faces. In their absence, I venture to return thanks most sincerely, but briefly, for the eloquent and sympathetic words with which the distinguished prelate has spoken of our literature. I do so in behalf of the eminent poets and prose-writers in every department of literature and science, many of whose names tremble on my lips, but the long roll-call of which I will not enumerate, who are the living illustrators of our literature, and who it is a gratification to know are almost as familiar and highly appreciated in the old land of our forefathers as they are at home [cheers]; but I for onelike to consider them all as fellow-citizens in the great English-speaking Republic of letters—where all are brothers, not strangers to each other. And as an illustration of this, I believe that it is not long since one of our famous poets whose exquisite works are familiar in every palace and every cottage all over the world where the English language is spoken—Mr. Longfellow—was recently requested to preside at one of your meetings. [Cheers.]

I can produce nothing new on that great subject, which seems the inevitable one for an American on such an occasion as this, the international bond of a common language, a common literature, and centuries of common history and tradition, which connects those two great nations, the United Empire and the United Republic. May the shadows of both never grow less and may that international bond strengthen its links every year! [Cheers.] What is the first hallowed spot in the Transatlantic pilgrimage of every true American? What is the true Mecca of his heart? Not the hoary tombs of the Pharaohs, and the one hundred gated cities of the Nile. Not the Acropolis and the Parthenon, the plains of Marathon, the Pass of Thermopylæ, thrilling as they are with heroic and patriotic emotion; not the Forum and the Coliseum and the triumphal arches of Rome. No; the pious pilgrim from the Far West seeks a sequestered, old-fashioned little town, in the heart of the most delicious rural scenery that even old England can boast; he walks up a quiet, drowsy, almost noiseless street, with quaint old houses, half brick, half timber, hardly changed of aspect since they looked out on the Wars of the Roses. He comes to an ancient, ivy-mantled tower hard by a placid, silvery stream on which a swan is ever sailing; he passes through a pleached alley under a Gothic gateway of the little church, and bends in reverence before a solitary tomb, for in that tomb repose the ashes of Shakespeare. [Cheers.] We claim our share in every atom of that consecrated dust. Our forefathers, who first planted the seeds of a noble civilization in New England and Virginia, were contemporaries and countrymen of the Swan of Avon. So long as we all have an undivided birthright in that sublimest of human intellects, and can enjoy, as none others can, those unrivalled masterpieces, Americans and Englishmen can never be quiteforeigners to each other though seas between as broad have rolled since the day when that precious dust wore human clothing. [Cheers.]

And what is the next resting-place in our pilgrim's progress—the pilgrim of Outre-Mer? Surely that stately and beautiful pile which we have all seen in our dreams long before we looked upon it with the eyes of flesh, time-honored Westminster Abbey. I can imagine no purer intellectual pleasure for an American than when he first wanders through those storied aisles, especially if he have the privilege which many of our countrymen have enjoyed, of being guided there by the hand of one whose exquisite urbanity and kindliness are fit companions to his learning and his intellect, the successor of the ancient Abbot, the historian of the Abbey, the present distinguished Dean of Westminster [Dean Stanley], to whom we have listened with such pleasure to-night. [Cheers.] And it will be in the Poets' Corner that we shall ever linger the longest. Those statues, busts and mural inscriptions are prouder trophies than all the banners from the most ensanguined battle-fields that the valor of England has ever won, and with what a wealth of intellect is that nation endowed which after the centuries of immortal names already enshrined there has had the proud although most melancholy honor of adding in one decade—scarcely more than ten years—the names of Macaulay, Grote, Dickens, Thackeray, and Lytton? [Cheers.] They are our contemporaries, not our countrymen; but we cannot afford to resign our claim to some portion of their glory as illustrators of our common language. And I would fain believe that you take a fraternal interest in the fame of those whom we too have lost, and who were our especial garland—Washington Irving, Fenimore Cooper, Everett, Hawthorne, and Prescott.

But I have trespassed far longer upon your attention than I meant to do when I arose; and I shall therefore only once more thank you for the great kindness with which you have received the toast of the Literature of the United States. [Cheers.]

[Speech of Rev. Dr. John P. Newman, at the 115th annual banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, May 8, 1883. The President, George W. Lane, presided, and said: "Gentlemen, I give you the fifth regular toast: 'Commerce—distributing to all regions the productions of each, and, providing for the wants of all, it combines in friendly intercourse the nations of the earth.' To this toast the Rev. Dr. Newman will respond."]

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Chamber Of Commerce of New York:—This is a beautiful toast—beautiful both in structure and sentiment and would that it were true. [Applause.] It is true in theory but not in history. It may be the voice of prophecy whose fulfilment shall be a sublime fact. It is in the highest degree worthy of this Chamber of Commerce and cannot fail in its peaceful mission among the nations of the earth. [Applause.] But the ages testify that selfishness and greed have marked the commercial history of the world. How splendid have been the achievements of commerce, and how deplorable its failure to realize its legitimate mission—to unify the human race. "Get all you can, and keep all you get," were the selfish maxims that influenced the Dutch merchants in Sumatra, Java, and Ceylon. The renowned merchants of Portugal planted their commercial colonies on the rich coasts of Malabar, took possession of the Persian Gulf and transformed the barren island of Ormus into a paradise of wealth and luxury. But of that far-famed island Milton sung in these truthful and immortal lines:—

"High, on a throne of royal state which farOutshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind.Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand,Show'rs on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,Satan exalted sat."

There is no less truth than poetry in that last line, for there the devil sat, and Tom Moore's "Fair Isle of Kisham" has faded from the visions of the world. [Applause.]

The Spanish merchants grasped the wealthy States of South America, and held as captives the affluent Incas of Peru and Bolivia. But Spain has long since retired from her commercial supremacy and the South American Provinces are left poor indeed.

While every Anglo-Saxon is justly proud of England's greatness in art and learning, in statesmanship and martial prowess, yet her commercial history does not always reflect credit upon her foreign trade. Rapacity so characterized her merchants who composed the old East India Company that the British Government felt compelled to revoke the charter of that famous monopoly. Influenced by some of her merchants the guns of her invincible navy opened the treaty ports of China and forced the opium trade upon the Celestials against their earnest protests, and in that protest not a few of the best Englishmen joined.

To-day France and England, Belgium and Holland are contending for commercial supremacy in the "Dark Continent," which an American explorer and traveler opened to the foreign trade of all nations [applause]; but, judging from the past, the sable sons of Africa are yet to learn the selfishness of commerce.

Happily for us, the United States has been more fortunate because more honorable in her commercial intercourse with other lands. [Applause.] By his justice, by his prudence, by his firmness, Commodore Perry [cheers], our great sailor diplomatist, not only opened to us Japan, that "Kingdom of the Rising Sun," but secured for America the friendship and admiration of the Japanese. And there is to-day, awaiting the action of our nation, a treaty of amity and commerce, drawn by the wisest of men, the most sagacious of statesmen, the greatest of living soldiers; and when that treaty shall have been ratified, the United States and Mexico will be united in friendly intercourse, sweet and pleasant, like the love of David and Jonathan. [Applause.]

It is a great question whether this country shall repeat the commercial history of the world, or carry to glorious consummation the noble sentiment of this toast. All the signs of the times seem to indicate that the commercial sceptre of the world, held by the Phœnicians for 1,000 years, held by the Romans through a whole millennium, held by the Venetians during five centuries, held by the Portuguese for three hundred years, and since held by the English—whether that sceptre is not rapidly to pass into the hands of the American merchant; and when that is an accomplished fact, we shall hear less of the decline of American shipping or that the balance of trade is against us. [Applause.] Our vast domain, our immense resources, our unparalleled productive capacity, all seem to prophesy that we are largely to feed and clothe Adam's innumerable family. [Applause.] If so, then any calm and sagacious mind must realize that our present methods of forming commercial treaties should be radically changed. If it has been found necessary to have a Department of Agriculture, a Department of Education, why not a Department of Commerce, connected with the National Government, and from which shall come the suggestions, the facts, and the influence for the formation of commercial treaties, and at the head of which shall be a wise and prudent merchant conversant with the products of all lands and familiar with the best interests of our own country? [Applause.] The science of political economy is so profound, so complicated, so far-reaching as to transcend the capacity of the average statesman. It has become a specialty. Congressional committees on Commerce and on Foreign Relations are hardly adequate to the task. Not a few of the members of such know more about ward elections than tariff laws, and know as little about products and trade of foreign lands as of the geography of other nations. Let us lift the whole subject of commerce from the arena of partisan politics. [Applause.]

This toast looks forward to the friendship of nations. The merchant is the chosen John the Baptist of that better day. The merchant is the true cosmopolitan—the citizen of the world. Farmers with their products of the soil, flocks and herds are local; miners with their metallic mines and mineral mountains are local; manufacturers with their fabrics of skill are local; inventors with their manifold contrivances to lift the burden of toil from the shoulders of humanity, are local; artists, with their canvas that glows and their marble that breathes, are local; authors, with their mighty thoughts of truth and fiction, are local; statesmen with their laws, wise and otherwise [laughter], are local; but the merchant is the cosmopolitan citizen of the world, the friend of all, the enemy of none, a stranger nowhere, at home everywhere; who sails all seas, travels all lands, and to whom all come with their fruit of hand and brain, waiting for a home or a foreign market. [Applause.]

Commerce should ever be the voice of peace. Aided by science, and sanctified by religion, it should be the all-powerful stimulant to universal amity. The honest and honorable merchant is the natural antagonist of the factious politician, the ambitious statesman, the glory-seeking warrior. [Applause.] While the merchant is the most ardent of patriots, commerce is the unifier of nations, whereby is to be fulfilled the dream of poets and the vision of seers in the brotherhood of man, in a congress of nations, and a parliament of the world. The old German Hanseatic League, representing sixty-six maritime cities and forty-four dependencies, seemed to prophesy an international chamber of commerce for the peace of the whole earth. If the high interests of our Christian civilization demand International Congresses of Law, of Geography, of Peace, how much more an International Congress of Commerce, to give direction to the relations of peace and trade between all peoples. This would approach the realization of the dream of a universal republic. [Applause.]

It is eminently proper that from this Christian city should go forth the voice of commercial peace, honesty and honor; give us such Christian merchants as Peter Cooper [cheers], as William E. Dodge [cheers], as Governor Morgan [cheers], dealing fairly and honorably with the weaker States with which we shall trade. [Applause.] For say what you please, Christianity is the religion of industry, of thrift, of wealth demanding the comforts of life and enriching all who follow its divine precepts, and giving to the world that code of higher and better commercial morality whereby wealthis permanent, and riches are a benediction. [Applause.] Awakened by this unseen power, it is commercial enterprise that has transformed our earth into one vast neighborhood, that has made air and ocean whispering galleries, that has started the iron horse to stride a continent in seven days and launched the majestic steamer which touches two continents between two Sundays. [Applause.]

I confess to you, gentlemen, that I have no fear from the accumulations of vast mercantile wealth when under the benign constraints of religion. Wealth is the handmaid of religion. Such wealth has beautified the face of society, has advanced to this consummation those great philanthropic enterprises which have delivered the oppressed and saved the Republic, and which have filled our city with schools of learning, galleries of art, halls of justice, houses of mercy, and temples of piety. [Continued applause.]

[Speech of Charles Eliot Norton at the "Whittier Dinner," in celebration of the poet's seventieth birthday, and the twentieth birthday of the "Atlantic Monthly," given by the publishers of the magazine, Boston, December 17, 1877. William Dean Howells, then editor of the "Atlantic," officiated as chairman. Mr. Norton spoke for James Russell Lowell, the first editor of the "Atlantic," then serving as United States Minister to Spain.]

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen:—We miss to-night one man to whom many names are equally befitting: the humorist, the wit, the wise thinker, the poet, the scholar, the worker, the friend—but the man who, of all others, should be here to do honor to our guest. We miss the first editor of the "Atlantic," whose comprehensive sympathies, wide as his vast, broad genius; whose cultivated taste, whose various and thorough learning gave to our Monthly, from the beginning, first place among American magazines and secured for it that deserved popularity which you, sir [Mr. Howells], are doing so much to maintain. The same qualities which made him eminent as an editor will make him eminent as the representative abroad of what is best in the social and political life of our country. No man could more truly exhibit, as comprehending them in himself, the high spirit, the noble aims, the varied achievements of a generous and large-minded nation—a nation not always so careful as it ought to be that its ministers accredited to foreign powers should be servants creditable to itself. But in the place that he now fills I cannot but regard him as, in a special sense, the envoy of the company gathered around this table. I believe that every one of us has, or at least has had, possessions in Spain that require to be well looked after; they are possessions of extraordinary, enormous, quite incalculable value, of which the title deeds are not always as complete as we could wish. Lowell himself had large estates of this sort:—

"When I was a beggarly boy,I lived in a cellar damp,I had not a friend, nor a toy,But I had Aladdin's lamp."When I could not sleep for the cold,I had fire enough in my brain,And I built with their roofs of goldMy beautiful castles in Spain."

And so too, he, the friend of us all, whose presence makes us all glad to-night, and whom we always greet with all love and honor, has had possessions in the same fair land:—

"How much of my heart, O Spain,Went out to thee in days of yore!What dreams romantic filled my brain,And summoned back to life againThe Paladins of Charlemagne,The Cid Campeador?"

How many "castles in Spain not built of stone" has he dwelt in, and with what delightful hospitality has he welcomed us as guests within their spacious and splendid halls! And even you, sir, for whose sake we have met to-night, even you, modest as your retirement has seemed to be in that quiet home, which you have made dear to the lovers of poetry and purity and peace, you have privately had your speculations in real estate in that land of romance, from which you have drawn large revenues. You will pardon me for reminding you of one of them, where—

"On the banks of the Xenil, the dark Spanish maidenComes up with fruit of the tangled vine laden."

I have sometimes fancied that even the Concord River had its springs somewhere in the snowy Sierras of Estremadura, toward which the windows of the sage-poet's dwelling were turned, and from whose heaven-reaching summits he has so often caught the fresh airs of celestial breath. Few of us, indeed, have had the good fortune to add to their vast realestates in Spain any substantial articles of personal property, but one of us, rich in the gifts of Don Quixote's land, has actually a piece of plate, a silver punch bowl, which at times, when filled, has, I doubt not, given him assurance of undisputed rights in the most magnificent castles:—

"A Spanish galleon brought the bar—so runs the ancient tale—'Twas hammered by an Antwerp smith, whose arm was like a flail."

And even you and I, Mr. Editor, and all the rest of us, possess, as I have said, our smaller domains in that distant land, all of them with castles; but not all the castles, I fear, in good repair or quite habitable; and some of us would be perplexed to say if they lay in Granada or Andalusia, La Mancha—or to tell exactly how many turrets they had, or how large a company they could accommodate with good entertainment. Now, sir, such being the case, all of us having such real, but too often, alas! neglected possessions in Spain, I am not surprised that Lowell writes to me that he finds the Spanish Legation one of the busiest in Europe. He is to establish our titles, and the work is not without its difficulties. Let us send him our God-speed. May he come back to us to assure us, as he better than any other can do, of the henceforth undisturbed enjoyment of all our castles in Spain. [Applause.]

[Speech of Ex-Governor Richard Oglesby at the banquet of the Fellowship Club, Chicago, September 9, 1894, on the occasion of the Harvest-Home Festival. The Toast-master was Franklin H. Head, and the toast that he gave to each speaker was, "What I Know About Farming." In the report by Volney W. Foster, member of the Club, it is recorded that the Governor rose slowly, after being called upon by the toast-master, and was seemingly waiting for an inspiration. He looked deliberately upon the harvest decorations of the room and finally his eyes seemed to rest upon the magnificent stalks of corn that adorned the walls. He then slowly and impressively paid the following impromptu tribute to the corn.]

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen:—The corn, the corn, the corn, that in its first beginning and its growth has furnished aptest illustration of the tragic announcement of the chiefest hope of man. If he die he shall surely live again. Planted in the friendly but sombre bosom of the mother earth it dies. Yea, it dies the second death, surrendering up each trace of form and earthly shape until the outward tide is stopped by the reacting vital germ which, breaking all the bonds and cerements of its sad decline, comes bounding, laughing into life and light, the fittest of all the symbols that make certain promise of the fate of man. And so it died and then it lived again. And so my people died. By some unknown, uncertain and unfriendly fate, I found myself making my first journey into life from conditions as lowly as those surrounding that awakening, dying, living, infant germ. It was in those days when I, a simple boy, had wandered from Indiana to Springfield, that I there met the father of this good man [Joseph Jefferson] whose kind and gentle words to me were as water to a thirsty soul, as the shadow of a rock to weary man. I loved his father then,I love the son now. Two full generations have been taught by his gentleness and smiles, and tears have quickly answered to the command of his artistic mind. Long may he live to make us laugh and cry, and cry and laugh by turns as he may choose to move us.

But now again my mind turns to the glorious corn. See it! Look on its ripening, waving field! See how it wears a crown, prouder than monarch ever wore, sometimes jauntily; and sometimes after the storm the dignified survivors of the tempest seem to view a field of slaughter and to pity a fallen foe. And see the pendant caskets of the corn-field filled with the wine of life, and see the silken fringes that set a form for fashion and for art. And now the evening comes and something of a time to rest and listen. The scudding clouds conceal the half and then reveal the whole of the moonlit beauty of the night, and then the gentle winds make heavenly harmonies on a thousand-thousand harps that hang upon the borders and the edges and the middle of the field of ripening corn, until my very heart seems to beat responsive to the rising and the falling of the long melodious refrain. The melancholy clouds sometimes make shadows on the field and hide its aureate wealth, and now they move, and slowly into sight there comes the golden glow of promise for an industrious land. Glorious corn, that more than all the sisters of the field wears tropic garments. Nor on the shore of Nilus or of Ind does nature dress her forms more splendidly. My God, to live again that time when for me half the world was good and the other half unknown! And now again, the corn, that in its kernel holds the strength that shall (in the body of the man refreshed) subdue the forest and compel response from every stubborn field, or, shining in the eye of beauty make blossoms of her cheeks and jewels of her lips and thus make for man the greatest inspiration to well-doing, the hope of companionship of that sacred, warm and well-embodied soul, a woman.

Aye, the corn, the Royal Corn, within whose yellow heart there is of health and strength for all the nations. The corn triumphant, that with the aid of man hath made victorious procession across the tufted plain and laid foundation for the social excellence that is and is to be. This glorious plant, transmuted by the alchemy of God, sustains the warriorin battle, the poet in song, and strengthens everywhere the thousand arms that work the purposes of life. Oh that I had the voice of song, or skill to translate into tones the harmonies, the symphonies and oratorios that roll across my soul, when standing sometimes by day and sometimes by night upon the borders of this verdant sea, I note a world of promise, and then before one-half the year is gone I view its full fruition and see its heaped gold await the need of man. Majestic, fruitful, wondrous plant! Thou greatest among the manifestations of the wisdom and love of God, that may be seen in all the fields or upon the hillsides or in the valleys!

[Speech of John Boyle O'Reilly at a banquet held in Boston, May 27, 1879, in commemoration of the centenary of Thomas Moore. Mr. O'Reilly, as chairman of the banquet, sat at the head of the table, with Oliver Wendell Holmes on his right, and Mayor Frederick O. Prince on his left. The company numbered more than one hundred, and was a representative gathering, mostly of Irish-American citizens. The toast to the memory of Moore, with which Mr. O'Reilly's speech closed, was drunk by the company standing, the orchestra meanwhile playing "Should auld acquaintance be forgot?"]

Gentlemen:—The honorable distinction you have given me in seating me at the head of your table involves a duty of weight and delicacy. At such a board as this, where Genius sits smiling at Geniality, the President becomes a formality, and the burden of his duty is to make himself a pleasant nobody, yet natural to the position. Like the apprentice of the armorer, it is my task only to hold the hot iron on the anvil while the skilled craftsmen strike out the flexible sword-blade. There is no need for me to praise or analyze the character or fame of the great poet whose centennial we celebrate. This will be done presently by abler hands, in eloquent verse and prose. Tom Moore was a poet of all lands, and it is fitting that his centenary should be observed in cosmopolitan fashion. But he was particularly the poet of Ireland, and on this point I may be allowed to say a word, as one proud to be an Irishman, and prouder still to be an American.

Not blindly but kindly we lay our wreath of rosemary and immortelles on the grave of Moore. We do not look to him for the wisdom of the statesman or the boldness of the popular leader. Neither do we look for solidity to the rose-bush, nor for strength to the nightingale, yet each is perfect of its kind. We take Tom Moore as God sent him—not only the sweetest song-writer of Ireland, but even in this presence I may say, the first song-writer in the English language, not even excepting Burns. The harshness of nature or even of human relations found faint response in his harmonious being. He was born in the darkness of the penal days; he lived to manhood under the cruel law that bred a terrible revolution; but he never was a rebel. He was the college companion and bosom friend of Robert Emmet, who gave his beautiful life on the gibbet in protest against the degradation of his country; but Moore took only a fitful part in the stormy political agitation of the time. When all was done it was clear that he was one thing and no other—neither a sufferer, a rebel, an agitator, nor a reformer, but wholly and simply a poet. He did not rebel, and he scarcely protested. But he did his work as well as the best, in his own way. He sat by the patriot's grave and sang tearful songs that will make future rebels and patriots.

It was a hard task for an Irishman, in Moore's day, to win distinction, unless he achieved it by treason to his own country. In his own bitter words:—

"Unpriz'd are her sons till they've learned to betray;Undistinguished they live, if they shame not their sires;And the torch that would light them thro' dignity's wayMust be caught from the pile where their country expires."

And yet Moore set out to win distinction, and to win it in the hardest field. The literary man in those days could only live by the patronage of the great, and the native nobility of Ireland was dead or banished. A poet, too, must have an audience; and Moore knew that his audience must not only be his poor countrymen, but all who spoke the English language. He lived as an alien in London, and it is hard for an alien to secure recognition anywhere, and especially an alien poet. The songs he sang, too, were not English in subject or tone, but Irish. They were filled with the sadness of his unhappy country. He despaired of the freedom of Ireland, and bade her:—

"Weep on, weep on, your hour is past,Your dream of pride is o'er;"

but he did not turn from the ruin to seek renown from strange and profitable subjects. As the polished Greeks, even in defeat, conquered their Roman conquerors by their refinement, so this poet sang of Ireland's sorrow and wrong till England and the world turned to listen. In one of his melodies, which is full of pathetic apology to his countrymen for his apparent friendship to England, he sighs in secret over Erin's ruin:—

"For 'tis treason to love her and death to defend."

He foresaw even then the immortality of his verse and the affection of future generations for his memory, when he wrote:—

"But tho' glory be gone, and tho' hope fade away,Thy name, loved Erin, shall live in his songs;Not e'en in the hour when the heart is most gay,Will he lose the remembrance of thee and thy wrongs.The stranger shall hear thy lament on his plains;The sigh of thy harp shall be sent o'er the deep;Till thy masters themselves, as they rivet thy chains,Shall pause at the song of their captive and weep."

But this was not his entire work for Ireland and for true literature and art; nor is it for this sentimental reason that his centenary is observed throughout the world. In some countries we are able to see the beginning of the artistic or literary life of the nation; we can even name the writer or artist who began the beautiful structure; and though the pioneer work is often crude, it merits and receives the gratitude of the nation. Though Moore was an original poet of splendid imagination, he undertook a national work in which his flights were restrained by the limitations of his task. He set himself to write new words to old music. He found scattered over Ireland, mainly hidden in the cabins of the poor, pieces of antique gold, inestimable jewels that were purely Irish. These were in danger of being lost to the world, or of being malformed, or stolen from their rightful owners, by strangers who could discover their value. These jewels were the old Irish airs—those exquisite fabrics which Moore raised into matchless beauty in his delicious melodies. This was his great work. He preserved the music of his nation and made it imperishable. It can neverbe lost again till English ceases to be spoken. He struck it out like a golden coin, with Erin's stamp on it; and it has become current and unquestioned in all civilized nations. For this we celebrate his centennial. For this, gentlemen, I call on you to rise—for after one year, or a hundred, or a thousand, we may pour a libation to a great man—I ask you to rise and drink—"The memory of Tom Moore."

[1]Chauncey M. Depew, who, earlier in the evening, had spoken on the subject of municipal consolidation.

[2]By Sir Archibald Alison.

[3]Burlesque Comedians.

[4]Henry Ward Beecher.

[5]John P. Newman.

[6]The Negro minstrel.

[7]The portrait referred to is that of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, killed at Fort Wagner, South Carolina, July 18, 1863.

[8]The bust is that of General Charles Russell Lowell, who died October 20, 1864, of wounds received at Cedar Creek, Va., October 19.

[9]William McKinley.

[10]He was not knighted till 1895.

[11]Professor Stokes, President of the Royal Society.

[12]Members of this organization are exempted from jury service.

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