Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1872-10-18

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In his speech at the recent dedication of
the soldiers monument in Pittsield, Mass,
George w. Curtis paid the following elo-
quent tribute to our Northern soldiers who
conquered the late Rebellion.
And how rich our war was in these per-
sonal qualities. How profound the influ-
ence of this statue in showing us that the
heroic excellence ofhuman character which
we associate with the past, and suppose to
be the exclusive property of tradition and
poetry, are of our own age and country as
much as any other We read Plutarch
until our imaginations flame with the Gre
clan story. The trophies of Miltiades will
not let US sleep. History and poetry and
heroic legend make the names of Marathon
and of Salamis, of Thermopyle and Pla-
tea, names OF unrivaled glory. Pericles,
Themi stocles, Aicibiades, Demosthenes,
Timoleon, stand in our fancies proudly
aloof and superior, reproving the mean
ness of later men and the bitterness of
modern times. But our own history is not
less heroic. The mighty torrent of Asiatic
barbarism that threatened for time to
sweep away Grecian civilization was not
more formidable than that which threaten
cd American liberty. If the statesmen and
the heroes who stayed that earlier desola-
tion, and the fields on which their battles
were fought, are renowned and precious to
Americans today, how much more our own
| fields and our own brothers Xerxes sent
a herald to Leonidas, ordering him TO give
up his armies. Let him come and take
them,' said Leonidas, and for whole sum-
mer day he held all Asia at bay at Their
mopyle. Surrender ! Surrenderr cried
a rebel leader to the commander of Union
company in Missouri, cut off from The
main body. Not much replied the Union
captain, and he won the victory. The war
has taught us that the poetry of heroism is
in the deed, not in the distance. The brave
youth seems a poetic hero when we
see him, three hundred years ago, called
Phillip Sidney, riding into the fight against
the Spaniards, on misty morning, upon
the Isel. Suddenly he sees his friend,
Lord Wiloughby, surrounded and sorely
pressed, and Sir Phillip dashing to the res
cue is shot and MORALLY wounded. Borne
fainting upon his horse from the field he
asks for water. But as it is brought to him
and he is raising it to his lips, he sees the
eyes of a dying soldier fixed upon 1t with
passionate longing. Then leaning from
the saddle, the gentleman of gentlemen, the
flower of English manhood, hands the cup
10 the soldier and the dying hero whispers
to his dying comrade, Friend, thy necessi-
ty is yet greater than mine History will
Af tkn hoo, r.,l D,,t
more than three hundred years later a gum
ner at Gettysburg falls MORALLY wounded
by his gun, which is sorely pressed by the
enemy. The battle RACES on and, tortured
by thirst, the dying man says TO his COM
rade, serving the gun alone, Johnny,
Johnny, for the love of God give me a drop
of water 'Ah, jamie, said his comrade,
there's not a drop in my canteen, and if /
60 to fetch it the rebs will have the gum
NO matter then, Johnny, stick to the gun,
is the answer, and when, after desperate
struggle, with a ringing shout of victory,
the line moves forward, it is over Jamie's
dead body. Does it need three hundred
years to make that self-sacritice as beauti-
ful as Sidneys? Jamie is not less hero
than the Englishman, and the brave Sid
ney clasps hands with him in paradise
The past was a good time, but the present
Is a better. Ihemlstocles standing upon
MS galley ana driving the enemy at Sala-
mis-, the image in the Greek war with Per-
sia, is not nobler figure than Farragut
lashed into the maintop of the old Hartford
at New Orleans, the image of American
liberty IN the war with slavery. When
Ilmsieoh, the palriotlc general OF Corlnth,
freed Sicily, the citizens OF Syracuse put
even the wives and daughters OF the oppos-
ing general to death. When General Grant
by his final victory secured the emancipa-
ton of a race and the perpetuity of the
Union, he spared the enemy every humili-
alton and would not even enter their capi-
tai, while in the same great spirit his fell
low citizens forbore to shed one drop of
blood. The shadow of a political scafrold
has never stained the land and To dav.
with the exception of the inelegibility TO
office of some two hundred or three hum
dred persons.-a disability which the same
wise and humane policy will soon sweep
away, the laws of the United States rest
with perfect equality upon every mart of
the land.
Let us be eratified for Greece two thou
sand years ago, and thank God that we live
in America today. The war scattered the
glamour of the mast and showed ms that we.
too, live among great virtues, great cbarac-
ters and great men. Through these streets
the culture Of Greece, the heroism of Rome,
the patriotism of our own revolution, have
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49, - rho s w, - VIC 80.
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