Some one has said in derision that the old men of the South, sitting down amid their ruins, reminded him “of the Spanish hidalgos sitting in the porches of the Alhambra, and looking out to sea for the return of the lost Armada.” There is pathos but no derision in this picture to me. These men were our fathers. Their lives were stainless. Their hands were daintily cast, and the civilization they builded in tender and engaging grace hath not been equaled. The scenes amid which they moved, as princes among men, have vanished forever. A grosser and material day has come, in which their gentle hands could garner but scantily, and their guileless hearts fend but feebly. Let them sit, therefore, in the dismantled porches of their homes, into which dishonor hath never entered, to which discourtesy is a stranger—and gaze out to the sea, beyond the horizon of which their armada has drifted forever. And though the sea shall not render back for them the Arguses that went down in their ship, let us build for them in the land they love so well a stately and enduring temple—its pillars founded in justice, its arches springing to the skies, its treasuries filled with substance; liberty walking in its corridors; art adorning its walls; religion filling its aisles with incense,—and here let them rest in honorable peace and tranquillity until God shall call them hence to “a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” There are other things I wish to say to you to-day, my countrymen, but my voice forbids. I thank you for your courteous and patient attention. And I pray to God—who hath led us through sorrow and travail—that on this day of universal thanksgiving, when every Christian heart in this audience is uplifted in praise, that He will open the gates of His glory and bend down above us in mercy and love! And that these people who have given themselves unto Him, and who wear His faith in their hearts, that He will lead them even as little children are led—that He will deepen their wisdom with the ambition of His words—that He will turn them from error with the touch of His almighty hand—that he will crown all their triumphs with the light of His approving smile, and into the heart of their troubles, whether of people or state, that He will pour the healing of His mercy and His grace. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ AGAINST CENTRALIZATION. ------- ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE SOCIETIES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, JUNE 25, 1889.