Chapter V: Part 5

"For this, a generation of our manhood offered itself without
question, and almost without the need of a summons. Those proofs
of virtue, which we honour here to-day, are to be found throughout
the world and its waters--since we can truly say that the whole
circuit of the earth is girdled with the graves of our dead.
Beyond the stately cemeteries of France, across Italy, through
Eastern Europe in well-nigh unbroken chain they stretch, passing
over the holy Mount of Olives itself to the furthest shores of the
Indian and Pacific Oceans--from Zeebrugge to Coronel, from Dunkirk
to the hidden wildernesses of East Africa.

"But in this fair land of France, which sustained the utmost fury
of the long strife, our brothers are numbered, alas! by hundreds
of thousands.

"They lie in the keeping of a tried and generous friend, a
resolute and chivalrous comrade-in-arms, who with ready and quick
sympathy has set aside for ever the soil in which they sleep, so
that we ourselves and our descendants may for all time reverently
tend and preserve their resting-places.

"And here, at Terlinchthun, the shadow of his monument falling
almost across their graves, the greatest of French soldiers--of
all soldiers--stands guard over them. And this is just, for side
by side with the descendants of his incomparable armies they
defended his land in defending their own.

"Never before in history have a people thus dedicated and
maintained individual memorials to their fallen, and, in the
course of my pilgrimage, I have many times asked myself whether
there can be more potent advocates of peace upon earth through the
years to come than this massed multitude of silent witnesses to
the desolation of war. And I feel that, so long as we have faith
in God's purposes, we cannot but believe that the existence of
these visible memorials will eventually serve to draw all peoples
together in sanity and self-control, even as it has already set
the relations between our Empire and our Allies on the deep-rooted
bases of a common heroism and a common agony.

"Standing beneath this Cross of Sacrifice, facing the great Stone
of Remembrance, and compassed by these sternly simple headstones,
we remember, and must charge our children to remember, that as our
dead were equal in sacrifice, so are they equal in honour, for the
greatest and the least of them have proved that sacrifice and
honour are no vain things, but truths by which the world lives.

"Many of the cemeteries I have visited in the remoter and still
desolate districts of this sorely stricken land, where it has not
yet been possible to replace the wooden crosses by headstones,
have been made into beautiful gardens which are lovingly cared for
by comrades of the war.

"I rejoice I was fortunate enough to see these in the spring, when
the returning pulse of the year tells of unbroken life that goes
forward in the face of apparent loss and wreckage; and I
fervently pray that, both as nations and individuals, we may so
order our lives after the ideals for which our brethren died that
we may be able to meet their gallant souls once more, humbly but
unashamed."

Hard indeed must it be for any Englishman whose heart is quick within his bosom not to feel it beat faster with thanksgiving and pride as he reads the flawless periods of this glorious speech.

As the final word of consolation, sanctification, and benediction, closing the awful agony of the greatest of all wars, preserve, Antony, this magnificent threnody in your memory imperishable.

Your loving old G.P.

35

MY DEAR ANTONY,

I have come now to the end of my citations for the present. My object, Antony, has been to rouse in your heart, if I can, a love, admiration, and reverence for the wonders to be found in the treasure-house of English prose literature.

I have only opened a little door here and there, so that you can peep in and see the visions of splendour within.

Some day perhaps, when you have explored for yourself, you may feel surprised that in these letters I have quoted nothing from Sir John Eliot, or Addison, or Scott, or Thackeray, or Charles Lamb, or De Quincey, or Hazlitt, or other kings and princes of style innumerable. Many, many writers whom I have not quoted in these letters have adorned everything they touched, but do not seem to me to reach the snow-line or rise into great and moving eloquence. Charles Lamb, for example, never descends from his equable and altogether pleasing level, far above the plain of the commonplace, but neither does he reach up to the lofty altitudes of the lonely peaks; and if I began to quote from him, I see no obstacle to my quoting his entire works! And of Addison, Johnson wrote, "His page is always luminous, but never blazes in unexpected splendour"; and he adds, "Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison."

In selecting such passages as I have in these letters I have necessarily followed my own taste, and taste--as I said when I first began writing to you--is illusive. I could do no more than cite that which makes my own heart beat faster from a compelling sense of its nobility and beauty.

When I was young, Antony, I lived long in my father's house among his twelve thousand books, with his scholarly mind as my companion, and his exact memory as my guide; for more than a quarter of a century since those days I have lived in the more modest library of my own collecting, and have long learnt how much fine literature there is that I have never read, and now can never read. But, Antony, you may not find, in these crowded days, even so much time for reading, or so much repose for study as I have found, and therefore it is that I have offered you in these letters the preferences of my lifetime, even though it has been the lifetime of one who makes no claim to be a literary authority.

As you look back at those from whom you have sprung, you will see that for five generations they have been men of letters--many distinguished, and one world-famous; and though I myself am but a puny link in the chain, yet I may perhaps afford you the opportunity of hitching your wagon by and by to the star that has for so long ruled the destinies of our house.

Farewell, then, dear Antony; and if "the dear God who loveth us" listens to the benedictions of the old upon their children's children, may He guide and bless you to your life's end.

Your loving old G.P.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Glory of English Prose, by Stephen Coleridge