And now the martyr is moving in triumphal march, mightier than when alive.  The nation rises up at every stage of his coming.  Cities and States are his pallbearers, and the cannon beats the hours with solemn progression.  Dead, dead, dead, he yet speaketh.  Is Washington dead?  Is Hampden dead?  Is David dead?  Is any man that ever was fit to live dead?  Disenthralled of flesh, and risen in the unobstructed sphere where passion never comes, he begins his illimitable work.  His life now is grafted upon the infinite, and will be fruitful as no earthly life can be.  Pass on, thou that hast overcome.  Your sorrows, O people, are his peace.  Your bells and bands and muffled drums sound triumph in his ear.  Wail and weep here; God made it echo joy and triumph there.  Pass on.

Four years ago, O Illinois, we took from your midst an untried man and from among the people.  We return him to you a mighty conqueror.  Not thine any more, but the nation’s; not ours, but the world’s.  Give him place, O ye prairies.  In the midst of this great continent his dust shall rest, a sacred treasure to myriads who shall pilgrim to that shrine to kindle anew their zeal and patriotism.  Ye winds that move over the mighty places of the West, chant his requiem.  Ye people, behold a martyr whose blood, as so many articulate words, pleads for fidelity, for law, for liberty.

LORD BELHAVEN (1656-1708)

Scotland ceased to exist as a nation by the act of union, May 1st, 1707.  As occasions have been so rare in the world’s history when a nation has voluntarily abdicated its sovereignty and ceased to exist by its own free act, it would be too much to say that Lord Belhaven’s speech against surrendering Scotch nationality was worthy of so remarkable a scene as that presented in he Scotch Parliament when, soon after its opening, November 1st, 1706, he rose to make the protest which immortalized him.

Smollet belongs more properly to another generation, but the feeling against the union was rather exaggerated than diminished between the date of its adoption and that of his poem, ‘The Tears of Scotland,’ into the concluding stanza of which he has condensed the passion which prompted Belhaven’s protest:—­

  “While the warm blood bedews my veins
   And unimpaired remembrance reigns,
   Resentment of my country’s fate
   Within my filial heart shall beat,
   And spite of her insulting foe,
   My sympathizing verse shall flow;—­
   ’Mourn, helpless Caledonia, mourn,
   Thy banished peace, thy laurels torn!’”

If there is nothing in Belhaven’s oration which equals this in intensity, there is power and pathos, as well as Ciceronian syntax, in the period:  “Hannibal, my lord, is at our gates; Hannibal is come within our gates; Hannibal is come the length of this table; he is at the foot of this throne; if we take not notice he’ll seize upon these regalia, he’ll take them as our spolia opima, and whip us out of this house, never to return.”