Page:Dean Aldrich A Commemoration Speech.djvu/18

. Nothing angers; no one can fret him. Throughout he is self-possessed in the heart of turmoil, child-like in the midst of bewilderment. While Atterbury is raging up and down the ranks of the foe clamouring for a battle, Aldrich sits aloft in the quiet supremacy of silent influence, if less potent in the fray, yet unsullied by the heat of the mélée, uncorrupted by the fanaticism of conquest. This he can do without ceasing to be looked up to as a champion by his friends, and he can carry himself as a champion without being hated by his foes. In the pamphlets of the time, though temper ran high and words were hot, I have not found a word of malice or offence against our Dean.

The strength of his silence is astonishing. Except as chosen spokesman, hardly a word escapes him throughout all these turbulent debates, and, indeed, throughout his whole career. There is a marvellous absence of pushing and pressing, of hurry and bustle about him. History, listening in her blindness to the loud and blustering heroes who shout their glories to her out of the past, might never have caught the sound of Aldrich's name, if it were not for the consistency with which, in times of trial, all eyes turned to him, and bore witness, by the prominence into which he was thus drawn, to the power of his personal presence. It is when we light up this shy reserve of his, this retiring tranquillity, by the evident brilliancy of his effect upon his contemporaries, that we can appreciate all the truth of Hearne's record, 'He was humble and modest to a fault.'

So much for the events of his life. I turn now to his intellectual position. And here I can only recall to you the