e cannon itself, in mute pause at
the whispering news, will briefly cease its roar around the walls of
Paris. The task is not without pain, while yet his manly frame lies
stretched upon his bier, to attempt to analyze the elements that made
him truly great. It has been my fortune in life from circumstances to
have come in contact with some whom the world pronounced great--some
of the earth's celebrated and distinguished; but I declare it here
to-day that, of any mortal man whom it has ever been my privilege to
approach, he was the greatest; and I assert here that, grand as might
be your conceptions of the man before, he arose in incomparable
majesty on more familiar acquaintance. This can be affirmed of few men
who have ever lived or died, and of no other man whom it has ever been
my fortune to approach. Like Niagara, the more you gazed the more his
grandeur grew upon you, the more his majesty expanded and filled your
spirit with a full satisfaction that left a perfect delight without
the slightest feeling of oppression. Grandly majestic and dignified in
all his deportment, he was genial as the sunlight of this beautiful
day, and not a ray of that cordial, social intercourse but brought
warmth to the heart as it did light to the understanding.

"But as one of the great captains will General Lee first pass review
and inspection before the criticism of history. We will not compare
him with Washington. The mind will halt instinctively at the
comparison of two such men, so equally and gloriously great. But with
modest, yet calm and unflinching confidence we place him by the side
of the Marlboroughs and Wellingtons who take high niches in the
pantheon of immortality. Let us dwell for a moment, my friends, on
this thought. Marlborough never met defeat, it is true. Victory marked
every step of his triumphant march; but when, where, and whom did
Marlborough fight? The ambitious and vain but able Louis XIV. But he
had already exhausted the resources of his kingdom before Marlborough
stepped upon the stage. The great marshals Turenne and Conde were
no more, and Luxembourg the beloved had vanished from the scene.
Marlborough, preeminently great as he certainly was, nevertheless led
the combined forces of England and of Holland, in the freshness of
their strength and the fulness of their financial ability, against
prostrate France, with a treasury depleted, a people worn out,
discouraged, and dejected. But let us turn to another co