There was a benignancy, a sweetness of demeanor, which attracted them to him, and while his name may not be sounded in the trump of fame, yet the subtile power of his gentleness and goodness has permeated many lives, will shape many destinies, and will have a force in the history of the world greater than that which will be exerted by many who will succeed him here.  He was a soldier, yet he was gentle and kind.  He was a descendant of a long line of honored ancestry, yet he did not believe that mere wealth was necessary either to respectability or to greatness.  He was a farmer and loved the soil.  He looked upon the ripened grain as the flower of human hope and as a minister to human needs.  He loved the breath of cattle, and he regarded the occupation of an agriculturist as the noblest and the best in which a man could be engaged.  He was a true son of the soil—­hearty, simple, gentle, true.

But, sir, the particulars of his career, both public and private, have been recounted by those who knew him well; have been recounted with great force, with great eloquence and propriety.  There is, however, one part of that career to which I wish to refer.  He was engaged in the memorable struggle which convulsed this nation from center to circumference and which fastened the gaze of the civilized world.  I wish upon this occasion to say emphatically, that wherever we may have stood in that struggle, whatever was good and great in any man participating on either side of it is a precious heritage to the entire American people to-day.  We proved that, North, South, East, West, we had not degenerated in the qualities which make a nation great.

Grant and Lee, Sherman, Sheridan, and the two Johnstons have gone from us forever, and every day the green sward of peace, the flowers of affection, are placed above the grave of some hero of the blue or the gray.  But I love to think that above these graves stands the Genius of American freedom, serene and grand, and bids the world behold how brave the sons of the Republic were in the past; how united they are in one purpose and one destiny in the present; how certain they are to be a people noted for reasonable liberty, for perfect union, and for sufficient material power to be formidable and just alike to the other nations of the earth.

And so, sir, I come and lay the flowers of my Northern home upon the bier of this son of Virginia, this good citizen, this patriot, this man who, I am proud to believe, held even me in his affection.  And when gentlemen here speak of the terror and the mystery of death, I tell them that to such a man death has no terrors, and that to the good man it has no mystery; for in that illimitable hereafter, which must be populated by all the sons of men, it must be, it will be, well with all of us.

ADDRESS OF MR. WILSON, OF WEST VIRGINIA.