that--

All that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.

Most naturally am I more than usually touched and pained by the death of
him which now hangs its somber drapery around the walls of our hearts
and casts its pall over this Chamber. It is a death within the
representative circle of which I am a member. It is the death of a
colleague, a friend, whose presence in that circle always brought
sunshine and never shadow.

Tributes to his memory, clothed in language of beauty and breathing
with love and burning with pathos, have already been paid, and others
will follow; and now, while I can not hope to charm with the tongue of
eloquence or touch the soul with the figures of rhetoric, I come with my
tribute.

It will be plain and unadorned, but it will at least have the merit of
sincerity, and, like the widow's mite, be all that I can give.

WILLIAM HENRY FITZHUGH LEE, of Virginia, is no more.

How the name of Lee, whenever uttered, wherever chivalry has erected her
altar, sends a thrill like an electric current through every fiber of
the manly man.

How the name of Virginia has been upon every tongue since Queen
Elizabeth, nearly three centuries ago, gave that name to that section
around which to-day historic memories linger and traditions and glories
cluster as thick "as the stars in the crown of night," the section where
Christopher Newport and his devoted followers "builded an altar unto the
Lord and in the savage wilderness" deposited the germ of this mighty
nation, "and where God blessed them as He blessed Noah and his sons,
saying unto them, 'The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon
every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that
moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your
hand are they delivered.'"

Virginia! The land of legends and lays--the land where the cradle of
republican liberty was rocked, and where, in 1765, the first denial was
heard of the right of the British Parliament to levy taxes upon the
Colonies which kindled the fire of patriotic fervor and led to the
ever-living, soul-inspiring words of her Henry and the raising up of her
Jefferson to heights of imperishable fame and her Washington to the
pinnacle of everlasting renown.

Virginia! The land of battlefields and battle gore, colonial relics and
Revolutionary monuments, spotless fame and unsullied honor; the land of
patriot soldiers and heroes, and of a York