Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 20.djvu/300

 294 Southern Historical Society Papers.

heart has been tried in the fire; it has passed through the fire. I would not be guilty, and believe I am not guilty of irreverence when I say that in the midst of the fiery ordeal into which that heart was thrown there was one walking by it in the flames, whose form was as the Son of God. To adhere to success is easy. Constancy under an adverse star is the rare and holy virtue. The standard of steadfast honor has been borne aloft by men, who knew there was for them no other reward than the self-respect which only such fidelity can purchase. The heroic temper of that heart and the army it supplied, in victory and defeat, is a parable of the constancy of the human mind, which does us more good to-day than all our oppressions have done us harm.

THE EMBODIMENT OF THE STORY.

Our embodiment of this story is the work before which we will stand to-day with uncovered heads and I might add with uncovered hearts. From our own ranks sprang the genius which has created it. Our own fellow-Howitzer is our artist. The companion of our toils preserves them for us. He has translated into temporal bronze the infinite meaning of our struggle and our sorrow; the image of a soul which can arm itself against the executioner of the body; as it were, the free soul in the captive body. The delicate and living lines, the lines of solemn thought and silent sorrow, which unite and con- verge upon the clear countenance of honor, outline a spirit over which the great calm has come of one who has leared the worst that fate can do. It is the truth which is wrought by action into a unanimity of soul and body, making each a portrait of the other. There is our Howitzer, "his soul well-knit and all his battles won.'* There he stands, waiting in silence. The breastwork he surmounts he has made his own. He stands upon the rampart which is only built in a people's heart. He who stands there is victor. There he stands, with mute appeal, as if to say: " The self I sacrifice is the lower and transitory self to the higher and eternal." A prayer in bronze supplicates the heavens that prayer of which it has been written, qui precari novit premi potest opprimi non potest. A figure of faith stands upon the pedestal of war. To plant the hopes of rea- son on the prophesies of the heart, as Leverrier planted himself on the calculations of his science, is faith. To follow the heart's sense of rectitude through doubt and disaster ; to stand in the crash which drives virtue to despair ; to see the overthrow of hope and all its