conquered and
died.

Remember, too, that while your ancestors were fighting well by land, and
Washington and such as he were learning their lesson at Fort Duquesne and
elsewhere better than we could teach them, we were fighting well where we
knew how to fight--at sea. And when, near to Wolfe's monument, or in the
Nave, you see such names as Cornwallis, Saumarez, Wager, Vernon--the
conqueror of Portobello--Lord Aubrey Beauclerk, and so forth--bethink you
that every French or Spanish ship which these men took, and every convoy
they cut off, from Toulon to Carthagena, and from Carthagena to Halifax,
made more and more possible the safe severance from England of the very
Colonies which you were then helping us to defend. And then agree, like
the generous-hearted people which you are, that if, in after years, we
sinned against you--and how heavy were our sins, I know too well--there
was a time, before those evil days, when we fought for you, and by your
side, as the old lion by the young; even though, like the old lion and
the young, we began, only too soon, tearing each other to pieces over the
division of the prey.

Nay, I will go further, and say this, paradoxical as it may seem:--When
you enter the North Transept from St. Margaret's Churchyard you see on
your right hand a huge but not ungraceful naval monument of white marble,
inscribed with the names of Bayne, Blair, Lord Robert Manners--three
commanders of Rodney's, in the crowning victory of April 12, 1782--fought
upon Tropic waters, over which I have sailed, flushed with the thought
that my own grandfather was that day on board of Rodney's ship.

Now do you all know what that day's great fight meant for you,--fought
though it was, while you, alas! were still at war with us? It meant
this. That that day--followed up, six months after, by Lord Howe's
relief of Gibraltar--settled, I hold, the fate of the New World for many
a year. True, in one sense, it was settled already. Cornwallis had
already capitulated at York Town. But even then the old lion, disgraced,
bleeding, fainting, ready to yield--but only to you, of his own kin and
blood--struck, though with failing paw, two such tremendous blows at his
old enemies, as deprived them thenceforth of any real power in the New
World; precipitated that bankruptcy and ruin which issued in the French
and Spanish revolutions; and made certain, as I believe, the coming day
when the Anglo-Saxon race shall be the real mast