HENRY W. GRADY. EDITOR, ORATOR, MAN.

BY J. W. LEE, D. D.

THE glory of the mind is the possession of two eyes, the eye of sense and the eye of reason. Through the one it looks out upon the world of matter and fact. Through the other it beholds the world of idea and relation. Both worlds are real, and through the mind commerce is kept up between them. Along this mental highway material facts make a pilgrimage to the holy land of reason. There they are changed into ideas. Stars are turned into astronomy, atoms into chemistry, rocks into geology, and plants into botany. Over the same royal road ideas pass to the world of sense. There they are changed into facts. Ideas of beauty are turned into painting, and Raphael's transfiguration blesses the world. Ideas, of harmony are turned into music, and Handel's Messiah agitates the thoughts and hopes of men with the melody of the skies. Ideas of form are changed into sculpture, and Michael Angelo's Moses augments the fund of the world's conviction and courage. By changing facts into ideas the mind gives us science. By changing ideas into facts it gives us art. Without science life would be without bread; without art it would be without ideas. Science ministers to the body, art to the spirit. Men who go from things to ideas are practical; those who go from ideas to things are seers. Practical men conserve, but never venture. Seers throw the light of their genius into the dark beyond, disclosing new worlds for men. They are the leaders, they are the vanguard of human progress. Henry W. Grady must be classed with the artists. He looked from the side of the mind that borders the universe of ideas, visions, relations. He was an idealist. He looked through the imagination into the kingdom of light. He saw truth and beauty and love billowing away to infinity. He despised not the world of hard limitation and fact. But he found not his rest in it, nor his inspiration. He slaked his

thirst from the waters which flow under the throne of God. Violets and buttercups which grew on the mountain side, did not waste their fragrance as he passed by, but there they grew, covering with their blue and their beauty, the hills of day for him. Leaves in autumn woods were not ignored by him, but he cultivated the habit of looking toward the clime where the leaves never die. All sights and sounds and seasons in the world of change and death were loved by him. But a window there was in his mind looking into an illimitable realm, where all sights brought gladness, all sounds hope, and all seasons inspiration. That he was by endowment an idealist, and by practice an artist, is proven by his work as an editor, his achievements as an orator, and his life as a man. With the passing years art has made great progress not in the direction of form, or coloring, or symmetry, but toward wider distribution. In the beginning, its ministry was to kings and scholars; its advance has been toward extension, rather than perfection. The pyramid of Gizeh, the most extensive monument ever seen, was reared to perpetuate the memory of a great Egyptian king. A country was drained of revenue and life to regale the pride of one man. The Parthenon ministered to a few great men in Greece. The Cathedrals of the middle ages blest and helped a wider circle. But it was left to the time which is ours, to build chapels and churches, as broad in their aims and ministry as the life of humanity. The early poetry concerned itself about the wars of gods and the contentions of kings. As the sacredness of human life came to be seen, more and more did it tend to catch within the sweep of its rhythm the incidents and traditions and loves of the common people.

It has been the glory of our day to give ideal setting to the "Old Oaken Bucket," and the " Village Blacksmith." Henry Grady had the order of genius that makes the artist. The form in which that genius expressed itself was determined by the time and the section in which he lived. The correlation of the fine arts is nearly as well accepted as the correlation of forces. The persistent force may express itself in heat or light or electricity or magnetism, they are all forms of the same thing, and one may pass to any of the others. Genius it is which expresses itself in art. It may take any one of its forms. Music is genius

in tone. Painting is genius in color. Sculpture is genius in form. Poetry is genius in rhythm. Architecture is genius in sublime combination. Genius of the highest order is capable of expressing itself in any or all these. Michael Angelo was by turns poet, painter, sculptor, and architect. The genius of Henry W. Grady so far arose above the plane of ordinary talent that it was capable of transmutation into any of the fine arts. Had he lived in the thirteenth century he would have been an architect. Had he lived in the sixteenth and in Florence he would have been a painter. Had he lived in the seventh and in England he would have been a poet. Living in the nineteenth, and in the South, he was an editor and an orator. In thought and spirit he lived in the boundless, the radiant, the beautiful. He saw visions. as beautiful as Rubens, and temples as perfect as that of Phidias. But his genius was controlled by his heart. His sympathy for men was so constant and so universal that it denied his genius expression in forms which only touched the few. His love impelled his thought to expression as wide as the needs, as deep as the suffering and as complex as the interests and relations of his fellow-men. A temple embodying his genius would not have given him so much pleasure as a poor man's heart made happy by it. Hence, without, perhaps, thinking so, unconsciously he selected that medium through which to express the ideas of beauty, truth, and goodness which he saw, that had the widest flow.

What instrument permitted him to touch most people? In what way could he get into relation with most human want? What touched man on most sides of his character and stimulated most thought and provoked most endeavor? It was the age of the newspaper. It flew into every man's home and carried a message to every man's thought. Into the newspaper he would breathe his message. Through the newspaper he would tell to men the visions which he saw of hope and help and inspiration. Not for money did he write, not for money did he care, but through writing would he make his life contribution to human weal. The newspaper became his brush and letters became his pigments. Through these he determined to make known what he felt for men and what he wished for men. He had genius to embody; he had pictures to paint. The South was his canvas. Upon this broad section he would embody what he saw. By going to

every man's home with a message, stimulating and beautiful, he would stir his heart and move his will. Thus through men he would embody all over the south the ideas which he saw. He would put them into fields of waving grain. He would put them into cattle upon every hill. He would put them into a home for every family. Around every home he would plant orchards and vineyards. Over every door he would trace vines and flowers. In the centres of population he would put great cities, for distribution and for help. Thus he would paint a picture standing over men and under men and blessing men. A panorama filled with the actual things men need, rather than the representation of these to hang in great museums.

Before he left college he delivered a speech entitled "Castles of Fancy." He painted an island beautiful for situation, embraced by the mild waters of a friendly sea. This was covered with residences handsome and inviting. In these lived families without care and without want. This was the vision he had for his loved South. Through the daily newspaper he sent it, with his love to all our people. They caught the truth. He saw his beloved section rising from the desolation of war to independence and wealth. He found his compensation in watching and recording her progress. No Diana or Venus did he attempt to bring from rough marble, but by loving word, to put the beauty of Venus and the enterprise of Diana into the spirit of every sister, mother, and wife. No sublime conception did he seek to realize in temple or cathedral, but he would see his conception distributed and lifted into a dwelling for every man's family, a school for every man's children, and a church where all the people could worship God. He would see his dreams realized in bridges spanning every river, in mills grinding the people's bread, in factories spinning their clothes, and in railroads transporting their products. He would see them lifted into an asylum for the blind, a shelter for the orphan, and a home where the veteran could spend in peace his declining years. Ideas of harmony he had, but he would see them turned into the whir of the spindle, the ring of the hammer, the splash of the steamer's wheel, and the sound of the flying train. The music of children's laughter was sweeter to him than symphonies of Beethoven. Ideas of poetry he doubtless had, but he would translate them into the

steady march of progress, and into the pulsebeats of the happy plowman.

Let it not be thought that he sought nothing beyond the realization of his genius in the material upbuilding of his section. Because of the condition the South was in after the war this was most pressing and immediate. He would put truth in every mind, the flowers of charity in every heart, honor and fairness in every relation, and the consolations of religion in every spirit. Nor is it to be supposed that he was indifferent to the advancement of other sections of our great country, but the greatest need was in his own. While cherishing nought but love and good-will for all, his aim was to contribute toward bringing the South to a level with other sections of the Union in wealth, as it had always been in character and honor. Did ever man have ambition nobler than to lift his countrymen from want to plenty, from dejection to hope, from misunderstanding to love and charity? Did ever fairer, lovelier vision float before artist's eye from out the sky of the ineffable to be thrown into form sublimer, or poem kinder, or music sweeter? He used beauty to stimulate human courage, to embellish human spirit, to enlarge human thought. His conceptions gathered themselves into clothes for human forms, into bread for children's mouths, into inspiration for human hearts. He was God's almoner. Freely he received, freely he gave. Counted by years his life was not long, but it is my honest conviction that he got more of heaven's wealth into this world, and more of heaven's hope and joy into the hearts of his countrymen than any man of his time. He drove out more of life's shadows by the light of eternity's day, and hushed more of its tumult by the repose of eternity's truth than any man I know.

It is the conceit of those whose habit of mind is to look through the eye of sense that they see more in the actual tangible world than those who are accustomed to look through the eye of reason. There never was a greater mistake. Those who see most in the world of mountain, and sea, and sky, are those who look most through imagination into the world of idea, principle, and relation.

Adams in England, and Leverrier in France, discovered Neptune, not by sweeping the heavens with their telescopes, but by careful cyphering in their studies. "Mr. Turner,"