abbey where the parliaments of kings and churches oft did meet! Little wonder that men, worn and weary by life's fierce strife, make long pilgrimages to the Duomo in Florence, or the great square in Venice, or to that marble hall in Milan. Frederic Harrison thinks the Parthenon of Phidias is as sacred as the "Iliad" of Homer; Giotto's tower in Florence is as precious as the "Paradiso" of Dante; the Abbey of England is as immortal as the "Hamlet" of Shakespeare. No punishment can be too severe for him who lifts a vandal's hand to destroy these treasure-houses of great souls.

And then, like a sweet voice falling from the sky, come the words: "Ye are the temple of God. This house not made with hands is eternal in the heavens." He who asks men to guard dead statues and the decaying canvas will himself guard and keep in immortal remembrance the soul-temple of the dying statesman, and hero, and martyr. If Milton says that "a book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit embalmed and treasured up on purpose for a life beyond life," and affirms that we may as well "kill a man as kill a good book," then the divine voice whispers that the soul is the precious lifetemple into which three-score years and ten have swept their thoughts, and dreams, and hopes, and prayers, and tears, and committed all this treasure into the hands of that God who never slumbers and never sleeps.

Slowly the soul's temple rises. Slowly reason and conscience make beautiful the halls of imagination, the galleries of memory, the chambers of affection. When success makes the colors so bright as to dazzle, trouble comes in to soften the tints. If adversity lends gloom to some room of memory, hope enters to lighten the dark lines. For character is a structure that rises under the direction of a divine Master Builder. Full often a divine form enters the earthly scene. Thoughts that are not man's enter his mind. Hopes that are not his, like angels, knock at his door to aid him in his work. Even death is no "Vandal." When the body hath done its work, death pulls the body down his scaffold to reveal to men a ceiling glorious with lustrous beauty. At the gateway of ancient Thebes watchmen stood to guard the wicked city. Upon the walls of bloody

Babylon soldiers walked the long night through, ever keeping towers where tyranny dwelt. And if kings think that dead stones and breathless timbers are worthy of guarding, we may believe that God doth set keepers to guard the living city of man's soul. He gives us angels' charge over the fallen hero, the dying mother and the sleeping child. He will not forget His dead. Man's soul is God's living temple. It is not kept by earthly hands. It is eternal in the heavens.

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

IN MEMORY OF MARK TWAIN

Opening address at the Memorial Meeting in honor of Mark Twain, held by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Mr. Howells, President of the Academy, presiding; November 30, 1910. Another address by Mr. Howells is given in Volume I.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, FELLOW ACADEMICIANS AND GUESTS OF THE ACADEMY:-At other times and in other places I have said so much of the friend whom all the world has lost in the death of Samuel Langhorne Clemens that I need say very little of him here to-night. It is my official privilege to ask you rather to hear what shall be said by the distinguished men whom the Academy of Arts and Letters has invited to join us in our commemoration of him. It is they who will determine what the mood and make of this commemoration shall be. If the question could be left to him, with the hope of answer, I could imagine his answering:

"Why, of course, you musn't make a solemnity of it; you mustn't have it that sort of obsequy. I should want you to be serious about me—that is, sincere; but not too serious, for fear you should not be sincere enough. We don't object here to any man's affections; we like to be honored, but not honored too much. If any of you can remember some creditable things about me, I shouldn't mind his telling it, provided always he didn't blink the palliating circumstances, the mitigating motives, the selfish considerations, that accompany every noble action. I shouldn't like to be made out a miracle of humor, either, and left a stumbling-block for any one who was intending to be moderately amusing and instructive, hereafter. At the same time, I don't suppose a commemoration is exactly Copyright by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and reprinted by special permission.

the occasion for dwelling on a man's shortcomings in his life or his literature, or for realizing that he has entered upon an immortality of oblivion."

So, I believe, or in some such terms, I imagine he might deliver his preference, if indeed it were his preference. He would put it in the lowest terms, for the soul of the man was modest. Yet no man loved more to bask in the sunshine of full recognition. He loved the limelight of life's stage, and for long years he sought it. The time came when physically he could not bear it. But now again, when all physical inadequacy is past for him, I cannot help thinking how he would have glowed, how he would have gloried, in such a magnificent presence as this, where every man and woman of it is his loving and praising friend.

I must speak of him as if he were still alive, with a living interest in this occasion. He is indeed alive, as part of the universal life we shared with him and share with one another here. But he is living for us in yet another sense. In that microcosm which each man is, there will remain till he dies such an image of his epoch as he has been capable of receiving. The great men he has known by living in sight and hearing of them abide his contemporaries as long as he lives after them. For him they do not become of the past; through his unsevered association they continue of the present. The man whom we commemorate survives in us our contemporary, because in our several measure or manner we personally knew him. Others hereafter may prove him the greatest humorist, the kindest and wisest moralist. We alone who were of his acquaintance can best offer by our remembrance a composite likeness of him which will keep him actual in the long time to come.

In certain details our respective impressions of him must vary one from another, but in the large things, the vital traits that characterize, they must be alike. What he would do next no man could forecast from what he had done last; but he could be unerringly predicted from what he was, and he could be expected wherever a magnanimous word, or a generous deed, or a sanative laugh was due. He was not only a lover of the good, but a lover of doing good. If you were of his mere acquaintance you could not help seeing this; if you were of

his intimacy, you felt in your heart a warmth, a joy. Then you understood how he could be one of the subtlest intelligences, because he was one of the openest natures. Sanguine, sorrowful; despairing, exulting; loving, hating; blessing, cursing; mocking, mourning; laughing, lamenting: he was a congeries of contradictions, as each of us is; but contradictions confessed, explicit, positive; and I wish we might show him frankly, as he always showed himself.

We may confess that he had faults, while we deny that he tried to make them pass for merits. He disowned his errors by owning them; in the very defects of his qualities he triumphed, and he could make us glad with him at his escape from them. We can be glad with him now at his escape from them to that being, hoped for in our faltering or unfaltering faith, where the cosmic defects of the cosmic qualities, the seeming aberrations of the highest Wisdom and the primal Love which so daunt and bewilder our reason here, shall haply or surely be justified to all doubting souls, and a world where death is, shall be retrieved by a world where death is no more.