re his only competitors. He was the admirer and
friend of both, and both repaid his affection and his esteem. He had the
superior charm of youth and novelty, with a nature more varied, and
more versatile faculties and endowments than either. He had a far more
artistic and formative nature and genius. His thoughts ran into moulds
of beauty."

The judgment of California as to Starr King's unequalled service to the
State and the Nation was officially rendered when upon the announcement
of his death, the Legislature adjourned for the space of three days
after resolving "that he had been a tower of strength to the cause of
his country."

Brilliant as was the record of King as the champion of the Sanitary
Commission in California it was by no means the beginning and end of
his philanthropic labors. The forlorn condition of the Chinese--as men
without rights of citizenship--stirred his sympathy and he made earnest
effort to secure for them such civic rights as belong to industry. The
cause of labor, seldom thought in those days to come within the scope
of a minister's interest or duty, commanded his eager attention, and
he improved every opportunity to declare his reverence for the world's
workers in earth, and stone, and iron. In a fine passage in a lecture on
"The Earth and the Mechanic Arts," he writes:

"If we were to choose from the whole planet a score of men to represent
us on some other globe or in some other system in a great human fair of
the universe, it would not be kings, dukes, prime-ministers, the richest
men, we should appoint as ambassadors to show what our race is, and
what it is doing here, but the great thinkers, artists, and workers, the
thinkers in ink, the thinkers in stone and color, the thinkers in force
and homely matter, the men who are bringing the globe up towards the
Creator's imagination and purpose; and on this mission the leaders of
mechanic art would go side by side with Shakespeare and Milton, Angelo
and Wren, Newton and Cuvier.

"In England, now, they are preparing statues of Brunel the engineer, and
the Stephensons, father and son, to be finished and erected about the
same time with those of Macaulay and Havelock. The nation is beginning
to bow to the occupations and the genius that have added to her power
ten thousand fold,--is beginning to bow to labor, noble, glorious,
sacred labor."

Not alone in public pleas for unpopular causes but in private charity
King seemed tireless. "He ha