The Irish standard., 1897-11-20
THE CHURCH AND ART.
A Tribute From william Winter at
u Cathoile Club.

Catho'lc Club.
At the Catholic club banquet in New
York in honor of Justice Joseph F. Daily.
the poet William Winter. Protestant.
paid the following beautiful tribute to
the Catholic church for promoting and
preserving art:
Mr.. President, and Gentlemen of the
Catholic Club: Speech is said to be sill
yer, silence to be golden, and since
was ever believer in the gold standard
it would be my preference to remain
silent-to listen, not to speak. But.
since you wish it to be otherwise, will
say few words (and, because l have
Teen warned against the excitement of
public speaking, they must be very few,
to thank you for your kind greeting
and for the pleasure of participating in
your festival. 1t is a festival with which
I deeply sympathize, because Its pnr-
pose is to express affection for be-
loved comrade, and to pay tribute Of
honor to noble gentleman. For the
privilege for being present ON this &C.
casion l am indebted to no merit Of my
own, but to long existent friendship
with your distinguished guest, friend
ship, which, beginning thirty years ago,
has never known a single passing cloud,
but has grown ever lovelier and more
precious as those years have drifted
away Your kind invitation, according
ly, came to NE more as a command than
a request; and also, let me add, con-
sidering the name and character of your
club, it came to me with a certain allure
ment.
The bond of your society. as COM
prehend 1t, is not only that of friendship,
but that Of religion. Behind the Catho-
lie club stands the Catholic church, and
to think Of the Catholic church is to
think of the Oldest, the most venerable
and the most powerful institution exist
ing among men. I am not church,
man of any kind; that, possibly, Is my
misfortune; but 1 am conscious of a
profound obligation of gratitude to that
wise, august, austere, yet tenderly hui
man ecclesiastical power which, self
centered amid all the vicissltudes of hui
man affairs, and provident for all men
OF learning, Imagination and sensibility
throughout the world, has preserved
the literature and art of all the cell
turtles, has made architecture the living
symbol of celestial aspiration, and in
poetry and music has heard, and has
transmitted, the authentic voice of God
l say that l am not a churchman; but
would also say that the best hours of
my life have been hours of meditation
passed in the glorious cathedrals and
among the sublime ecclesiastical ruins
OF England. I have worshiped in Can
terbury and York; in Winchester and
Salisbury; in Lincoln and Durham; in
Ely, and in Wells. I have stood in
Tintern, when the green grass and the
white daisies were waving in the sum-
mer wind, and have looked upon those
gray and russell walls, and upon those
lovely arched casements-surely the
most graceful ever devised by human
art-round which the sheeted ivy droops,
and through which the winds of heaven
sing perpetual requiem. have seen
the shadows Of evening slowly gather
and softly fall over the gaunt tower,
the roofless nave, the giant pillars and
the shattered arcades of Fountains Alb
hey, In it's sequestered and melancholy
solitude, where ancient Ripon dreams,
In the spacious and verdant Valley Of
the Skell. l have unused upon Netley,
and Kirkstall, and Newstead, and Boil
ton, and Melrose, and Drybough. And,
at midnight hour, have stood in the
grim and gloomy chancel of St. Column
+ ba's Cathedral, remote in the storm
swept Hebrides, and looked upward to
the cold stars, and heard the voices Of
the birds of night, mingled with the
desolate moaning of the sea.
With awe, with reverence, with many
strange and wild thoughts, have lin
gered and pondered in those haunted,
holy places; but one remembrance was
always present-the remembrance that
it was the Catholic church that created
these forms of beauty, and breathed
into them the breath of divine life, and
lalloWed them forever, and, thus think
ing, have felt the unspeakable pathos
of her long exile from the temples that
her passionate devotion prompted and
her loving labor reared. 1t was natural
that l should be allured by your invita-
tion--should be attracted to the votaries
of this Catholic club, to whom such
relics are sacred, and to whom such
thoughts, however inadequate, may not
seem entirely vain.
1t was especially natural that should
be attracted to this society, assembled
to honor an old friend, who, in every
walk of life, has borne himself with
dignity and ability, and who stands now.
without blemish and without reproach,
at the white summit of his noble career.
Rich in scholarship, copious and delicate
In humor, accomplished in Jurisprudence
Foil ~ md j,,ct T,<1uo nal,