ple. We are not straining every nerve, struggling under immense
financial burdens, wrenching away tender household ties, sacrificing
cheerfully and eagerly private interests, brilliant prospects, and high
hopes, only to prove that twenty millions of men are physically stronger
than twelve. God forbid! This is no latter-day Olympic game, whoso
victors are to be rewarded with the applause of a party or a generation.
All the dead heroes and martyrs of the past will crowd forward to offer
their unheard thanks; all the years to come will embalm with blessings
the memory of the patriots who open the door to wide advancement,
prosperous growth, and high activity of a universal intelligence.

And among these brave men, whom the world shall delight to honor, let
our deepest grief and our justest pride be for LYON. We have given his
honest life too little notice;--this man whose sincerity was equalled
only by his zeal; who, in a rarely surpassed spirit of self-abnegation,
was content to lie down and die in the first heat of the great conflict,
and to leave behind for more favored comrades the triumphal arches and
rose-strewn paths of victory. The world has known no truer martyr than
he who fell at Wilson's Creek, August 10th, 1861.

'The history of every man paints his character,' says Goethe; and scanty
and imperfect as are the recorded details of General Lyon's life, enough
is known to prove him to have been high-minded and brave as a soldier,
with a perseverance and a penetration that analyzed at once the
platforms of contending factions, and read in their elements the
principles which are to govern the future of our nation.

He came of the stout Knowlton stock of Connecticut, a family of whom
more than one served England in the old French war, and afterward
distinguished themselves against her in the Revolution. We hear of the
gallant Captain Knowlton at Bunker Hill, throwing up, in default of
cotton, the breastwork of hay, which proved such an efficient protection
to the provincials during the battle. Once more he appears as colonel,
at Harlem Plains, rushing with his Rangers ('Congress' Own') upon the
enemy on the Plains, and, cut off shortly from retreat by
reinforcements, fighting bravely between the foes before and their
reserves behind, and, falling at last, borne away by sorrowing comrades,
and buried at sunset within the embankments. 'A brave man,' wrote
Washington, 'who would have been an honor to any country.' With