Kinley to go as Ambassador of the United States to Great Britain, and there "to promote the welfare of both countries by cultivating the most friendly relations between them." How wonderfully he accomplished this mission is indicated in the volume of addresses in England published under the title "Abraham Lincoln and Other Addresses." In the scope and breadth of these eleven addresses of which seven concerned exclusively Americans or America, every true American will find fresh cause for admiration of the delightful speaker. I can quote now from only one of them, noteworthy for its range and raciness, that delivered at the dinner given to Mr. Choate by the Bench and Bar of England at Lincoln's Inn, April 14th, 1905. Rollicking fun and tender pathos alike lighted the avenue to his hearers' hearts. For example of fine foolery take this:

Our barristers appear in plain clothes in court. The Judgessome of them-wear gowns, but never a wig. I think it would be a very rash man that would propose that bold experiment to the democracy. If the Lord Chancellor had wished that our primitive and unsophisticated people should adopt that relic of antiquity and grandeur he should not have allowed his predecessors in his great office to tell such fearful stories about each other in respect to that article of apparel. We have read the story of Lord Campbell as given in his diary annotated by his daughter, as to what became of Lord Erskine's fullbottomed wig when he ceased to be Lord Chancellor. That it was purchased and exported to the coast of Guinea in order that it might make an African warrior more formidable to his enemies on the field of battle. We have a great prejudice to anything that savors of overawing the jury, and if any such terrors are to be connected with that instrument, our pure democracy will never adopt it.

And then listen to this fascinating tribute to the Chairman, Lord Chancellor Halsbury:

I am especially proud that the chair is occupied by the Lord Chancellor whose name in both countries is a synonym for equity and justice. In spite of his thirty-five years at the Bar and his eighteen. years upon the woolsack, he is the very incarnation of perennial youth. Time like an ever-rolling stream bears all its sons away, but the Lord Chancellor seems to stem the tide of time. Instead of retreating like the rest of us before its advancing waves he is actually working his

way up stream. He demonstrates what I have been trying to prove for the last three years that the eighth decade of life is far the best, and I am sure he will join with me in advising you all to hurry up and get into it as soon as you can.

The world struggle dominated him as powerfully as the passion of his early youth for freedom.

I started in life with a belief that our profession in its highest walks afforded the most noble employment in which any man could engage, and I am of the same opinion still. Until I became Ambassador and entered the terra incognita of diplomacy I believed a man could be of greater service to his country and his race in the foremost ranks of the Bar than anywhere else and I think so still. To be a priest and possibly a high priest in the temple of justice, to serve at her altar and aid in her administration, to maintain and defend those inalienable rights of life, liberty, and property upon which the safety of society depends, to succor the oppressed and to defend the innocent, to maintain constitutional rights against all violations whether by the Executives, by the Legislature, by the resistless power of the Press, or worst of all by the ruthless rapacity of an unbridled majority, to rescue the scapegoat and restore him to his proper place in the world— all this seemed to me to furnish a field worthy of any man's ambition.

He was zealous for justice and for the good of his country and of the world. He was the head and the heart of much more than our Bar.

As a writer and speaker his fame would be secure had he delivered only his addresses on Abraham Lincoln and on Rufus Choate. This last was considered his masterpiece, and when this was said to him, he answered: "Yes, that is the best. I never worked so hard on a speech as on that one." And herein lay an explanation. The finished, flowing, easy, self-speaking address in this case, as in the others, was something that had not merely happened. It was, and most of the others were, the sum of painstaking labor and of earnest reflection.

His ending was almost an apotheosis. At the reception of the British Commission in the City Hall the Mayor of New York hailed him as our first citizen. At that glorious service at the Cathedral on the morning of Sunday, May 13th, full of honors, crowned with love, carrying dignity and reverence in

his presence, he was in his beautiful old age, uttering a nunc dimittis, without precedent since the days of the ancient Sim

eon.

All honored him and those admitted to his intimacy loved him. In sincerity and love, his own tribute to Rufus Choate may be repeated of him:

Emerson most truly says that "character is above intellect" and this man's character surpassed even his exalted intellect and controlling all his great endowments made the consummate beauty of his life.

HENRY VAN DYKE

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA

Henry van Dyke is well known throughout the country by his books. He is almost equally well known as a speaker. For many years pastor of the Brick Presbyterian Church, New York, and since 1900 Professor of English Literature at Princeton, he has preached and lectured to the delight and benefit of many an audience. He was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1852, graduated from Princeton College in 1873 and from the Theological Seminary in 1877. He was United States Minister to The Netherlands in 1913-17, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The address on William Dean Howells was given at the memorial service held under the auspices of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York in 1920. Other addresses by Dr. van Dyke are given in Volumes III and VII.

THE Dean of American Letters passed away gently and serenely, as he was wont to go in life's affairs. Having lived with a fine faithfulness and joy in labor for more than fourscore years, having finished the last page of his many-leaved manuscript, William Dean Howells laid down his pen, and set out cheerfully on his long voyage to the Undiscovered Country, -shall we not call it his Golden Wedding Journey?

It was sixty years ago that he made his début as an author in "Poems of Two Friends," written in comradeship with John James Piatt. Then he wrote a campaign "Life of Abraham Lincoln," and afterward illuminated the ledger of his youthful

Reprinted from the Notes and Monographs of the American Academy Copyright 1920 by the kind permission of the author and the Academy; also by permission of the author from "Camp-Fires and Guide Posts," Chas. Scribner's Sons, Copyright 1920.