te knowledge of them than was possessed by
their contemporaries. The work they leave behind them is the sum-total
of their lives--expresses their ruling passion--reveals, perhaps, their
real sentiment. To the eyes of those placed on the stage with them, they
walked as in a show, and each life was a narrative gradually unfolding
itself. We discover the moral. We see the results of that completed
history. We judge the quality and value of that life by the residuum. As
"a prophet has no honor in his own country," so one may be misconceived
in his own time, both to his undue disparagement, and his undue
exaltation; therefore can another age better write his biography than
his own. His work, his permanent result, speaks for him better--at least
truer--than he spoke for himself. The rich man's wealth,--the sumptuous
property, the golden pile that he has left behind him;--by it, being
dead, does he not yet speak to us? Have we not, in that gorgeous result
of toiling days and anxious nights,--of brain-sweat and soul-rack,--the
man himself, the cardinal purpose, the very life of his soul? which we
might have surmised while he lived and wrought, but which, now that it
remains the whole sum and substance of his mortal being, speaks far
more emphatically than could any other voice he might have used. The
expressive lineaments of the marble, the pictured canvas, the immortal
poem;--by it, Genius, being dead, yet speaketh. To us, and not to its
own time, are unhoarded the wealth of its thought and the glory of its
inspiration. When it is gone,--when its lips are silent, and its heart
still,--then is revealed the cherished secret over which it toiled,
which was elaborated from the living alembic of the soul, through
painful days and weary nights,--the sentiment which could not find
expression to contemporaries,--the gift, the greatness, the lyric power,
which was disguised and unknown so long. Who, that has communed with
the work of such a spirit, has not felt in every line that thrilled his
soul, in every wondrous lineament that stamped itself upon his memory
forever, that the dead can speak, yes, that they have voices which
speak most truly, most emphatically when they are dead? So does Industry
speak, in its noble monuments, its precious fruits! So does Maternal
Affection speak, in a chord that vibrates in the hardest heart, in the
pure and better sentiment of after-years. So does Patriotism speak, in
the soil liberated and enriched