enerous emulation.
The inheritance from which England has gained these things is ours also.
We, too, are of the Saxon strain.

In our halls is hung
Armory of the invincible knights of old.

Our temple covers a continent, and its porches are upon both the seas.
Our fathers knew the secret to lay, in Christian liberty and law, the
foundations of empire. Our young men are not ashamed, if need be, to
speak with the enemy in the gate.

But to the illustrious lady, type of gentlest womanhood, model of mother
and wife and friend, who came at eighteen to the throne of George IV.
and William; of purer eyes than to behold iniquity; the maiden presence
before which everything unholy shrank; the sovereign who, during her
long reign, "ever knew the people that she ruled;" the royal nature that
disdained to strike at her kingdom's rival in the hour of our sorest
need; the heart which even in the bosom of a queen beat with sympathy
for the cause of constitutional liberty; who, herself not unacquainted
with grief, laid on the coffin of our dead Garfield the wreath fragrant
with a sister's sympathy,--to her our republican manhood does not
disdain to bend.

The eagle, lord of land and sea,
Will stoop to pay her fealty.

But I am afraid this application might have had the fate of its
predecessors but for our special good fortune in the fact that Mr.
Bayard was our ambassador at the Court of St. James. He had been, as I
said in the beginning, the ambassador not so much of the diplomacy as of
the good-will of the American people. Before his powerful influence
every obstacle gave way. It was almost impossible for Englishmen to
refuse a request like this, made by him, and in which his own sympathies
were so profoundly enlisted.

You are entitled, sir, to the gratitude of Massachusetts, to the
gratitude of every lover of Massachusetts and of every lover of the
country. You have succeeded where so many others have failed, and where
so many others would have been likely to fail. You may be sure that our
debt to you is fully understood and will not be forgotten.

The question of the permanent abiding-place of this manuscript will be
settled after it has reached the hands of His Excellency. Wherever it
shall go it will be an object of reverent care. I do not think many
Americans will gaze upon it without a little trembling of the lips and a
little gathering of mist in the eyes, as they think of the story of
suffering,