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Show A GREAT ORATION. Senator Smoot has sent to the Commercial Club a book containing the memorial addresses by the great George Bancroft on Lincoln, by James G. Blaine on Garfield, and by John Day, on Mc-Kinley. Mc-Kinley. That upon Lincoln is about the finest piece of literature in our language. There is such a depth of scholarship, so profound a.tiom prehension of political history and all its bearings, upon mankind and nations, such chaste and lofty diction, words and sentences that exactly express the thoughts intended; the completed expression to which no word could be added, from which no word could be omitted without a jar to the absolute ab-solute rhythm, with the sympathy of the great writer running through the whole, not as something some-thing to bo seen, but to be felt like the deeper thrill of a great anthem, not the music made by organ and choir, but something like an echo of their softer notes sublimated and vibrating not upon the ear, but the nerves of the listener. It was delivered long ago, and on an occasion when men's hearts were on fire and hot passions North and South made men prejudiced readers, else it would then have been accepted as a classic unparalleled un-paralleled in funeral oratory. The best translation transla-tion of the great oration of Pericles over the Greek heroes does not attain to the majesty of this by Bancroft. Reading, it is hard to shake off the impression impres-sion that it is a voice, low and sweet, coming down to us through the long-distance telephone of the ages to awe us with the renewed knowledge knowl-edge that "there were giants in those days," giants that set marvelous scholarship to such words as compassed the exact meaning intended to give to the men of later generations a knowledge knowl-edge of the characters of those who, when the nation seemed almost in extremis, still kept their judgment clear and their patriotism equal to any trial, even unto death. The great author of this oration could never again equal it. Unconsciously the excitement and anxiety of four years of war were warming his arteries as he wrote; the sorrows of the war gave a gentle cadence to what he wrote. A marvel mar-vel of It is the easy flow of the simple words of which it is composed. If there was any effort to round its periods the art was so perfect that it Is not apparent. The words roll on as does the Gulf Stream through the sea with a rhythm that has to be felt, not heard. It is a plain statement of history and the story of an humble life told in simple words, but as Macaulay said of Milton's English: "They are words of enchantment. New forms of beauty start at once into existence ard all the burial plans of the memory give up their dead." It will bear any manner of test. It is as ,Iogical as it is scholarly; it is as profound as it is exquisite. It Is a habit with some miners, when they come upon a rare or beautiful specimen to put it aside and make a cabinet of imch specimens speci-mens while the rougher ore goes to the reduction reduc-tion works. Mr. Bancroft wrote history all his life, and to make his work invaluable went to the bottom causes out of which history grew. But in that groping in the deep mines of knowledgo he found some rare ideas, and this oration is his cabinet. Reading it one can realize what a joy his studies must have been to him, what a joy it was for him to weave those fabrics of his brain into garments of light. One can see, too, how, as the years ebbed and flowed, he more and more mastered his impulses to amplify choice features, fea-tures, until his mind was disciplined like the sculptor's hand, that not one extra chip should be overlooked, not one chip too many should be chis-Qled chis-Qled off, but that the finished statue should seem like perfect life merely suspended and ready In a moment to break into smiles. Young people who have literary aspirations or who love fine literature should try to get . H copy of this oration, not only lor the benefit they may derive from it, but for the pleasure the study I of it would give them. H |