Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/101

 Ceremonies at Unveiling of Statue of General Lee. 95

to whom pride and self-seeking were unknown, and whose uncon- scious nobiHty of conduct answers to the description of a virtuous man given by the imperial philosopher, Marcus Antoninus: "He does good acts as if not even knowing what he has done, and is like a vine which has produced grapes and seeks for nothing more after it has produced its proper fruit. Such a man, when he has done a good act, does not call for others to come and see, but goes on to another act, as a vine goes on to produce again the grapes in season."

The social philosopher will see in it a tribute to the highest type of gentleman, in birth, in manners, in accomplishments, in appear- ance, in feeling, in habit.

The lover of the heroic will find here honor paid to a chivalry and courage which place Lee by the side of Bayard and of Sidney, " from spur to plume a star of tournament."

It is fitting that monuments should be erected to such a man.

The imagination might, alas ! too easily, picture a crisis in the fu- ture of the Republic, when virtue might have lost her seat in the hearts of the people, when the degrading greed of money-getting might have undermined the nobler aspirations of their souls, when luxury and effeminacy might have emasculated the rugged courage and endurance upon which the safety of States depends, when cor- ruption might thrive and liberty might languish, when pelf might stand above patriotism, self above country. Mammon before God, and when the patriot might read on every hand the sure passage:

'' 111 fares the land, to hastening^ ills a prey. Where wealth accumulates and men decay! "

In such an hour — quarn Dii avertite — let some inspired orator, alive to the peril of his country, summon the people to gather round this monument, and, pointing to that noble figure, let him recount his story, and if aught can arouse a noble shame and awaken dor- mant virtue, that may do it.

The day is not distant when all citizens of this great Republic will unite in claiming Lee as their own, and rising from the study of his heroic life and deeds, will cast away the prejudices of forgotten strife and exclaim :

"We know him now ; all narrow jealousies Are silent, and we see him as he moved — How modest, kindly, all-accomplished, wise. With what sublime repression of himself — Wearing: the white flower of a blameless life."