"But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add of detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us; that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Few are the opportunities in the history of the world when the time, the place, the occasion, and the words spoken, have combined so poignantly to move the hearts of men. One can imagine the vast concourse standing awestruck and uncovered before the solemn splendour of this noble dedication, every phrase of which will remain for generations a treasured and sacred memory in countless thousands of homes of the great continent in the West. Your loving old G.P. 28 MY DEAR ANTONY, The nineteenth century witnessed the rise of an entirely new style of English prose. The ancient and universal restraints were swept away, the decorous stateliness of all the buried centuries was abandoned, and there arose a band of writers, to whom De Quincey and Ruskin were the leaders, who withdrew all veils from their emotions, threw away all the shackles of reserve, and poured their sobs and ecstasies upon us, in soaring periods of impassioned prose, glittering with decorative alliterations, and adorned with euphonious harmonies of vowel sounds. This flamboyant style seems to have synchronised with the general decline of reserve and ceremony in English life, and with the rise of the modern familiar intimacy that leaves no privacy even to our thoughts. Our grandfathers would have hesitated to have discussed at the dinner-table, even after the ladies had withdrawn, what is now set down for free debate at ladies' clubs, and canvassed in the correct columns of the _Guardian_. This new habit of mind and speech has affected our literature deeply and diversely. In the hands of the really great masters such as Carlyle, Froude, and Ruskin, the intimate revelations of the throbbings of their hearts, and the direct and untrammelled appeal of their inmost souls crying in the market-place, take forcible possession of our affections, and bring them into closer touch with each one of us than was ever possible with the older restrained writers.