ATLANTA, GA.

A crowded meeting assembled in this city on October 15th.  After an impressive prayer from the Rev. Dr. Brantly, the meeting was addressed by

GENERAL JOHN B. GORDON.

“My Friends:  We have met to weep, to mingle our tears, and give vent to our bursting hearts.  The sorrowing South, already clad in mourners’ weeds, bows her head afresh to-day in a heart-stricken orphanage; and if I could have been permitted to indulge the sensibilities of my heart, I would have fled this most honorable task, and in solitude and silence have wept the loss of the great and good man whose death we so deplore.  I loved General Lee; for it was my proud privilege to know him well.  I loved him with a profound and all-filial love, with a sincere and unfaded affection.  I say I would have retired from this flattering task which your kindness has imposed, but remembering that his words, his deeds, his great example, has taught us that duty was the most commanding obligation, I yield this morning to your wishes.

“We have met to honor General Lee, to honor him dead whom we loved while living.  Honor General Lee!  How utterly vain, what a mockery of language do these words seem!  Honor Lee!  Why, my countrymen, his deeds have honored him!  The very trump of Fame itself is proud to honor him!  Europe and the civilized world have united to honor him supremely, and History itself has caught the echo and made it immortal.  Honor Lee!  Why, sir, as the sad news of his death is with the speed of thought communicated to the world, it will carry a pang even to the hearts of marshals and of monarchs; and I can easily fancy that, amid the din and clash and carnage of war, the 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.