New-York tribune., 1872-12-05

AFTER THE BURIAL.
4 at IS d0ncn Earth TO earth ashes TO
\ ashes: dust to dust. To the dead there re-
mains rest and to the living the burden OF
life. Into the hands of his servant God gave
/ great possibilities. He took back to God
great achievements. 1t did not need the press
Y and throng of yesterday; the mute mourning
Of men and women of all ages, and conditions,
! and avOcatons, and religious faiths; the SOM
Der state of the funeral train wherein the
! highest officers Of the nation bore their part
4 not less than the humblest citizens; the great
/ multitude Of people who waited for hours
& under the wintry sky only to bow their heads
!, rs their friend was borne past them to his
4 burial lit did not need all these TO show the
4 curiously vide significance of Horace Greeley 8
4 life.
Tho generations that most misses him Is the
generation that he finely touched to so fine
] issues. Thirty years ago two classes of young
men awaited him. The first was made up OF
farmers, mechanics, artisans; industrious and
thrifty fellows, strong, honest, and capable,
! but coarse, narrow, and uncultured. To them
The TRIBUNE came as the revelation of life
undreamed of. A life of books, and art and
/ daily beauty. A life of noble thinking, and
| large action. They knew labor to be their
inevitable portion They saw how it might
! become their highest dignity. Into prairie
cabin, and frontier hut, and settlers saw-mill,
! and artisans tenement went these vivid
/ thoughts of a new thinker, and kindled wise
4 discomfort and better endeayor.
The,second class was made up of diettante
and delicate youth. They did not like the
smell nor the manners of the cOmmOnalty.
I They doubted, after all, whether paternal
government was not best for the masses.
Culture was their shibboleth. Life, at best,
seemed a little botched to them. They were
persons of the most cultivated dlstaste. To
them came this same TRIBUNE like the sound
of a trumpet, like the blast Of the north wind.
/ II was full of rude health and rustic honesty.
J 1t shook them off their narrow pedestals and
gave them the broad earth to stand on. 1t
taught them that the value of culture was its
service to humanity
From these two ranks of men came the first
recruits of that great army which Horace
Greeley, more than any other one man, raised
up for liberty and the rights of all men every
where. The time is coming when Napoleon
aud Wellington will no longer seem heroic
figures in a peoples eyes, because the ideas
they typifed viii be seen to have been base and
selfish. And in that day the dead journalist,
I DETAINED and misunderstood and ridiculed
while he lived, will come to tardy mOnumen-
! tai honOrs as the real hero, the human expo
nent of the divine idea of love.
1t is common to call him four later Frank
"lin." But that is to belittle him. There is
likeness in the good-natured shrewdness, the
practical wisdom, the pithy speech, the wish to
benefit men in homely ways. But the moral
] nature of the pupil was infinitely broader and
sweeter than that of the master; and while
the aphorisms Of the older sage have a slight
taste of copper, q certain two-penny ha-penny
morality and exactness, the frugality and alb
stemousness which the younger practiced only
gave him the larger means of charity, while
saving for the sake of saving seemed to him
only less ignoble than spending for the sake
of spending.
More than to most men it was given to him
to see of the travail OF his soul and be salts
fed. Yet the nation is coming to understand
that no success Of his was 80 triumphant as
that which, on the fifth of November, we all
called defeat. To have educated people
into such a stern and high love of liberty,
that, when it fancied, however blindly, his
feet TO be turning into strange paths, it should
choose to follow his great cOunsels rather
than his great leadership, is such glory as a
man might well spend himself to win. There
may be an end DOW of the cruel taunt that
his vanity persuaded him to be a candidate,
and that he counted on love and confidence
from the people which he had never possessed.
Tho universal grief declares that not his most
sanguine friends, not he, himself, dreamed
of the real affection that went out to
him. Never able quito to keep pace
with him, the people had painfully struggled
up to position from which, with larger vision,
he had stepped to higher. When they
seemed to deny him, they were his truest dis
cipes. God permits us tho high ends we set
ourselves, but often changes the means to bet
ter. Our leader, and those of us who followed
him, believed that his words and his works
would convince the people that magnanimity
begets magnanimity; forgiveness, repentance
and deeds meet for repentance; and love the
acts Of love. We SEQ now that only his death
could DO thus eloquent. Beside graves. men