Page:Dean Aldrich A Commemoration Speech.djvu/30

 goes down to the grave with its possessor; but it is such characters as this that repay historical research by the play, the fullness, the delicacy, the life, the beauty, with which they soften, refine, and colour the past. In them we see how the big principles of history are resolved down into, and reconciled with, the life that all men live; they are the media between abstract law and common things; they fill up the middle distance; they are the underground working by which the heart and the brain of humanity hold communion. The life of Dean Aldrich transforms hard history for us into something possible, conceivable, loveable: and men might well be content that their names should drop out of the roll of public glory, could they leave behind a memory as gentle, as pleasant, as beautiful as his.