hen every instant is priceless, the Senate
proceeds by unanimous consent to consider resolutions of the highest
privilege, and reverently pauses in obedience to the holiest impulses of
human nature to contemplate the profoundest mystery of human
destiny--the mystery of death. In the democracy of death all men at
least are equal. There is neither rank, nor station, nor prerogative in
the republic of the grave.

At that fatal threshold the philosopher ceases to be wise and the song
of the poet is silent. At that fatal threshold Dives relinquishes his
millions and Lazarus his rags. The poor man is as rich as the richest
and the rich man is as poor as the pauper. The creditor loses his usury
and the debtor is acquitted of his obligation. The proud man surrenders
his dignity, the politician his honors, the worldling his pleasures.
James Nelson Burnes, whose life and virtues we commemorate to-day, was a
man whom Plutarch might have described and Vandyke portrayed. Massive,
rugged and robust, in motion slow, in speech serious and deliberate,
grave in aspect, serious in demeanor, of antique and heroic mold, the
incarnation of force. As I looked for the last time upon that
countenance, from which no glance of friendly recognition nor word of
welcome came, I reflected upon the impenetrable and insoluble mystery of
death.

If death be the end, if the life of Burnes terminated upon "this bank
and shoal of time," if no morning is to dawn upon the night in which he
sleeps, then sorrow has no consolation, and this impressive and solemn
ceremony which we observe to-day has no more significance than the
painted pageant of the stage. If the existence of Burnes was but a
troubled dream, his death oblivion, what avails it that the Senate
should pause to recount his virtues? Neither veneration nor reverence is
due the dead if they are but dust; no cenotaph should be reared to
preserve for posterity the memory of their achievements if those who
come after them are to be only their successors in annihilation and
extinction. If in this world only we have hope and consciousness duty
must be a chimera; our pleasures and our passions should be the guides
of conduct, and virtue is indeed a superstition if life ends at the
grave. This is the conclusion which the philosophy of negation must
accept at last. Such is the felicity of those degrading precepts which
make the epitaph the end. If the life of Burnes is as a taper that is
burned out then we