of his day. The practice of the law sharpens the intellect, but narrows its powers of comprehension. It had no unfavorable influence on his genius. The great Erskine, unrivalled in his day in the forum, disappointed the hopes of all when he sat in Parliament. But Baker was an Erskine at the bar and a Chatham in the Senate. The magnificent Burke, whose splendid diction grows better by time, had no power to stir men's blood as Baker had. Excepting our own Webster, no man of modern times has been so successful as Baker in the forum, in the Senate, and before popular assemblies. I have already referred to his surprising power in addressing audiences of literary or benevolent character. Which of us that heard or read his speech on the occasion of celebrating the laying of the Atlantic cable, in 1858, can ever forget his beautiful apostrophe to science? Oh Science, thou thought-clad leader of the company of pure and great souls that toil for their race and love their kind! Measurer of the depths of earth and the recesses of heaven! Apostle of civilization, hand-maid of religion, teacher of human equality and human right, perpetual witness for the Divine wisdom, be ever, as now, the great minister of peace! Let thy starry brow and benign front still gleam in the van of progress, brighter than the sword of the conqueror, and welcome as the light of heaven. Who can forget his reference on the same occasion to the magnificent comet, then kindling the admiration of all beholders in its pathway of celestial glory?— "But even while we assemble to mark the deed and rejoice at its completion, the Almighty, as if to impress us with our weakness when compared with his power, has set a new signal of his reign in heaven. If to-night, fellow-citizens, you will look out from the glare of your illuminated city into the northwestern heavens, you will perceive low down on the edge of the horizon a bright stranger pursuing its path across the sky. Amid the starry hosts that keep their watch, it shines, attended by a brighter pomp and followed by a broader train. No living man has gazed upon its splendors before. No watchful votary of science has traced its course for nearly ten generations. It is more than 300 years since its approach was visible from our planet. When last it came it startled an Emperor on his throne, and while the superstition of his age taught him to perceive in its presence a herald and a doom, his pride saw in its flaming course and fiery train the announcement that his own light was about to be extinguished. In common with the lowest of his subjects, he read omens of destruction in the baleful heavens, and prepared himself for a fate which alike awaits the mightiest and the meanest. Thanks to the present condition of scientific knowledge, we read the heavens with a far clearer perception. We see in the predicted return of the rushing, blazing, comet through the sky, the march of a heavenly messenger along its appointed way and around its predestined orbit. For 300 years he has traveled amid the regions of infinite space. "Lone, wandering, but not lost," he has left behind him shining suns, blazing stars and gleaming constellations, now nearer the eternal throne, and again on the confines of the universe-he returns with visage radiant and benign; he returns with unimpeded march and unobstructed way; he returns, the majestic, swift electric telegraph of the Almighty, bearing upon his flaming front the tidings that throughout the universe there is still peace and order; that amid the immeasurable dominions of the Great King, His rule is still perfect; that suns and stars and systems tread their endless circle and obey the eternal law. Are not these thoughts rays of immortality which cast a bright halo around the fame of Baker? He had errors —what mortal has not?-he was conscious of them, and repented of them in sackcloth and ashes. But who can think of the early career of this foreign-born boy, deprived by Almighty dispensation of a father's care when a child of tender years; of his noble struggles against poverty; of his wonderful acquirements while working with his own hands; of his extraordinary attainments under the most depressing circumstances on a western frontier; of his great virtues in the domestic relations of life; of his gentle and charitable heart; of his patriotic soul devoted to his whole country, full of fiery zeal in the cause of liberty, yet untainted by the poison of fanaticism which corrupts the heart and clouds the mind; above all, of his steady, unfaltering devotion to his country, in peace and in war; of his patriotic life and glorious death -who can think of these, and refuse to say with the friend now attempting with tremulous diffidence to weave a modest garland around his brow, in doing these fair rites of tenderness Adieu, and take thy praise with thee to Heaven! A few weeks after his election to the United States Senate, in 1860, Gen. Baker, while en route to Washington, addressed a very large mass meeting in San Francisco. convened under the auspices of the Republican State Central Committee. His speech on this occasion was regarded by very many of his admirers as the greatest effort of his life, although delivered without preparation. It was reported in full, and extensively circulated as a campaign document. Near the close of the speech occurred this impassioned tribute to Freedom : "Here, then, long years ago, I took my stand by Freedom, and where in youth my feet were planted, there my manhood and my age shall march. And, for one, I am not ashamed of Freedom. I know her power; I rejoice in her majesty; I walk beneath her banner; I glory in her strength. I have seen her again and again struck down on a hundred chosen fields of battle. I have seen her friends fly from her. I have seen her foes gather around her. I have seen them bind her to the stake. I have seen them give her ashes to the winds, regathering them again, that they might scatter them yet more widely. But when they turned to exult, I have seen her again meet them, face to face, clad in complete steel, and brandishing in her strong right hand a flaming sword, red with insufferable light. And, therefore, I take courage. The people gather around her once more. The Genius of America will at last lead her sons to Freedom." We honor him especially for the self-immolating spirit which led him, like Curtius, to plunge in the gulf in the hope of saving his country. He was not impelled by any dream of wild ambition. Not being born in the Atlantic States, he could not be President. He had attained the highest station, in his opinion, on earth; a station, as he said, "more exalted than that of a Roman Senator, Consul, Proconsul or Emperor." He had obtained the position of the first debater in the Senate. His friend with whom he had played in childhood, “his own familiar friend" with whom he had taken sweet counsel, had become President of the United States. That friend still loved him and rejoiced at his success. He could have passed an easy and luxurious life on the primrose path of Senatorial dignity and influence. But his country was in danger-he took no thought of him self. He "loved the name of honor more than he feared death." I honor his memory especially that notwithstanding his life-long zeal in the cause of liberty, he was true to "the Constitution and all its compromises," as he proclaimed again and again in his public addresses. He was animated by no sectional hostility, but regarded our Union "as less a work of human prudence than of Providential interposition." In the spirit of a disciple of Washington, as a friend of Webster and Clay, he said: "Let the laws be maintained and the Union preserved, at whatever cost. By whatever constitutional process, through whatever of darkness or danger there may be, let us proceed in the broad luminous path of duty, till danger's troubled night be passed and the star of peace returns." At the Union Mass Meeting in New York City, May 20th, 1861, Gen. Baker thus concluded a speech of great eloquence and power: And if, from the far Pacific, a voice feebler than the feeblest murmur upon its shore may be heard to give you courage and hope in the contest, that voice is yours to-day. And if a man whose hair is gray, who is well nigh worn out in the battle and toil of life, may pledge himself on such an occasion, and in such an audience, let me say, as my last word, that when amid sheeted fire and flame, I saw and led the hosts of New York as they charged in contest upon a foreign soil for the honor of your flag; so again, if Providence shall will it, this feeble hand shall draw a sword never yet dishonored-not to fight for distant honor in a foreign land, but to fight for country, for home, for law, for government, for constitution, for right, for freedom, for humanity, and in the hope that the banner of my country may advance, and wheresoever that banner waves, there glory may pursue and freedom be established. It would be unjust to his memory and to his countrymen to whom his memory will ever be dear, to omit to speak of his funeral oration over the dead body of a Senator from California, who died "tangled in the meshes of the code of honor." I have read no effort of that character, called out by such an event, so admirable, so touching, so worthy the sweet eloquence of Baker. That one effort should crown him with immortality. Baker was a brave man. He has proved it often. He had, as an honorable colleague said in the House of Rep He resentatives" in the battles of his country carved the evidence of his devotion to his government," and gave there proof of his courage. He proved it on the bloody field of Cerro Gordo, when he was praised by the greatest of living soldiers for his fine behavior and success. has proved it by his death. Yet he knew that dueling was a sin. He knew it deserved reprobation and was unhallowed by any or all of the illustrious names who had yielded to its requirements under the tyranny of a barbarous public opinion. He gave his unqualified condemnation to a code which offers "to personal vindictiveness a life due only to a country, a family and to God." Broderick had many good qualities that excited Baker's admiration. Both were self-made men; both had risen from poverty to the highest position. Let Baker's denunciation of this unchristian, barbarous code be remembered to his undying honor: It To-day I renew my protest; to-day I utter yours. The code of honor is a delusion and a snare. It palters the hope of a true courage and binds it at the feet of crafty and cruel skill. surrounds its victim with the pomp and grace of the procession, but leaves him bleeding on the altar. It substitutes cold and deliberate preparation for courageous and manly impulse, and arms the one to disarm the other. It may prevent fraud between practiced duelists-who should be forever without its pale-but it makes the mere "trick of the weapon" superior to the noblest cause and the truest courage. Its picture of equality is a lie. It is equal in all the form, it is unjust in all the substance. The habitue of arms, the early training, the frontier life, the bloody war, the sectional custom, the life of leisure, all these are advantages which no negotiations can neutralize and no courage can overcome. There was a moral courage and sublimity in it that has a fadeless lustre, reflected by his glorious death. Not far from each other Where Ocean tells its rushing waves graves these two distinguished men will repose in Lone Mountain cemetery until the trump of the Archangel shall sound and "summon this mortal to put on immortality." Let their monuments arise to meet the eye of the oceanwórn exile as he comes near this haven of rest. Let |