sealed and sacred episode. wrote, "is a world to come. or rapture recognize my lost, my ever dear Mary, whose bosom was fraught with truth, honor, constancy and love." But he had, as the French say, the defects of his qualities. His imagination was a supreme and celestial gift, but his imagination often led him wrong and never more than with woman. The chivalry that made Don Quixote see the heroic in all the common events of life made Burns (as his brother tells us) see a goddess in every girl he approached; hence many love affairs, and some guilty ones; but even these must be judged with reference to time and circumstances. This much is certain-had he been devoid of genius they would not have attracted attention. It is Burns' pedestal that affords a target. And why, one may ask, is not the same treatment measured out to Burns as to others? The illegitimate children of great captains and statesmen and princes are treated as historical and ornamental incidents. They strut the scene of Shakespeare and ruffle it with the best. It is for the illegitimate children of Burns, though he and his wife cherished them as if born in wedlock, that the vials of wrath are reserved. They were two brilliant figures both descended from the Stuarts who were alive during Burns' life. We occupy ourselves endlessly and severely with the offenses of Burns, we heave an elegant sigh over the hundred lapses of Charles James Fox and Charles Edward Stuart. [Cheers.]

"What a flattering idea," he once There shall I with speechless agony

Again, it is quite clear that, though exceptionally sober in his earlier years, he drank too much in later life, but this, it must be remembered, was but an occasional condescendence to the vice and habit of the age. The gentry who pressed him to their houses and who were all convivial have much to answer for. His admirers who thronged to see him, and who could only conveniently sit with him in a tavern, are also responsible for this habit so perilously attractive to men of genius from the decorous Addison and the brilliant Bolingbroke onward. The Eighteenth century records hard drinking as the common incident of intellectual eminence. To a man who had shone supreme in the most glowing society, and who was now an exciseman in a country town, with a home which cannot have

been very exhilarating, with the nervous system highly strung, the temptation of the warm tavern and the admiring circle there, may well have been almost irresistible.

Some attempt to deny that his intemperance was exaggerated. I neither affirm nor deny it. If he succumbed it was to goodfellowship and cheer. Remember, I do not seek to palliate or excuse, and, indeed, none will be turned to dissipation by Burns' example-he paid too dearly for it. But I will say this, that it all seems infinitely little, infinitely remote. Why do we strain at this distance to discern this dim spot on the poet's mantle? Shakespeare and Ben Johnson took their cool tankard at the "Mermaid." We cannot afford, in the strictest view of dietary responsibility, to quarrel with them for it. When we consider Pitt and Goethe we do not concentrate our vision on Pitt's bottles of port or Goethe's bottles of Moselle. Then why, we ask, is there such a chasm between the "Mermaid" and the "Globe"; and why are vintages of Wimbledon and Weimar so much more innocent than the simple punch-bowl of Inverary marble and its contents? [Cheers.]

I should like to go a step further and affirm that we have something to be grateful for even in the weaknesses of men like Burns. Mankind is helped on its progress almost as much by the study of imperfection as by the contemplation of perfection. Had we nothing before us in our futile and halting lives but saints and the ideals, we might well fail altogether. We grope blindly along the catacombs of the world, we climb the dark ladder of life, we feel our way to futurity, but we can scarcely see an inch around or before us. We stumble and falter and fall, our hands and knees are bruised and sore, and we look up for light and guidance. Could we see nothing but distant, unapproachable impeccability we might well sink prostrate in the hopelessness of emulation, and the weariness of despair. Is it not then, when all seems blank and lightless and lifeless, when strength and courage flag, and when perfection seems remote as a star, is it not then that imperfection helps us? When we see that the greatest and choicest images of God have had their weakness like ours, their temptations, their hour of darkness, their bloody sweat, are we not encouraged by their lapses and catastrophes to find energy for one more effort,

one more struggle? Where they failed, we feel it a less dishonor to fail; their errors and sorrows make, as it were, an easier ascent from infinite imperfection to infinite perfection. Man, after all, is not ripened by virtue alone. Were it so, this world were a paradise of angels. No. Like the growth of the earth, he is the fruit of all seasons, the accident of a thousand accidents, a living mystery moving through the seen to the unseen; he is sown in dishonor; he is matured under all the varieties of heat and cold, in mists and wrath, in snow and vapors, in the melancholy of autumn, in the torpor of winter as well as in the rapture and fragrance of summer, or the balmy affluence of spring, its breath, its sunshine; at the end he is reaped, the product not of one climate but of all, not of good alone but of sorrow, perhaps mellowed and ripened, perhaps stricken and withered and sour. How, then, shall we judge any one?-how, at any rate, shall we judge a giant, great in gifts and great in temptation, great in strength, and great in weakness? Let us glory in his strength and be comforted in his weakness, and when we thank Heaven for the inestimable gift of Burns, we do not need to remember wherein he was imperfect, we cannot bring ourselves to regret that he was made of the same clay as ourselves. [Cheers.]

CARL SCHURZ

GENERAL SHERMAN

Address by Carl Schurz at a special meeting of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, February 17, 1891, upon seconding resolutions before the Chamber on the death of General William Tecumseh Sherman. Carl Schurz, born in Prussia, 1829, died in New York, 1906, general, orator, statesman, left his native country after the revolution of 1849 and became an eminent American.

GENTLEMEN:-The adoption by the Chamber of Commerce of these resolutions which I have the honor to second, is no mere perfunctory proceeding. We have been called here by a genuine impulse of the heart. To us General Sherman was not a great man like other great men, honored and revered at a distance. We had the proud and happy privilege of calling him one of us. Only a few months ago, at the annual meeting of this Chamber, we saw the familiar face of our honorary member on this platform by the side of our President. Only a few weeks ago he sat at our banquet table, as he had often before, in the happiest mood of conviviality, and contributed to the enjoyment of the night with his always unassuming and always charming speech. And as he moved among us without the slightest pomp of self-conscious historic dignity, only with the warm and simple geniality of his nature, it would cost us sometimes an effort of the memory to recollect that he was the renowned captain who had marshaled mighty armies victoriously on many a battlefield, and whose name stood, and will forever stand, in the very foremost rank of the saviors of this Republic, and of the great soldiers of the world's history. Indeed, no American could have forgotten this for a moment; but the affection of those who were so happy as to come near to him, would sometimes struggle to outrun their veneration and gratitude.

Death has at last conquered the hero of so many campaigns; our cities and towns and villages are decked with flags at halfmast; the muffled drum and the funeral cannon-boom will resound over the land as his dead body passes to the final restingplace; and the American people stand mournfully gazing into the void left by the sudden disappearance of the last of the greatest men brought forth by our war of regeneration-and this last also finally become, save Abraham Lincoln alone, the most widely beloved. He is gone; but as we of the present generation remember it, history will tell all coming centuries the romantic story of the famous "March to the Sea"-how, in the dark days of 1864, Sherman, having worked his bloody way to Atlanta, then cast off all his lines of supply and communication, and, like a bold diver into the dark unknown, seemed to vanish with all his hosts from the eyes of the world, until his triumphant reappearance on the shores of the ocean proclaimed to the anxiously expecting millions, that now the final victory was no longer doubtful and that the Republic would surely be saved.

Nor will history fail to record that this great general was, as a victorious soldier, a model of republican citizenship. When he had done his illustrious deeds, he rose step by step to the highest rank in the army, and then, grown old, he retired. The Republic made provision for him in modest republican style. He was satisfied. He asked for no higher reward. Although the splendor of his achievements, and the personal affection for him, which every one of his soldiers carried home, made him the most popular American of his day, and although the most glittering prizes were not seldom held up before his eyes, he remained untroubled by ulterior ambition. No thought that the Republic owed him more ever darkened his mind. No man could have spoken to him of the "ingratitude of Republics," without meeting from him a stern rebuke. And so, content with the consciousness of a great duty nobly done, he was happy in the love of his fellow citizens.

Indeed, he may truly be said to have been in his old age, not only the most beloved, but also the happiest of Americans. Many years he lived in the midst of posterity. His task was finished, and this he wisely understood. His deeds had been