ADDRESS DELIVERED BY COLONEL STANLEY MATTHEWS. According to the Mythology of the Ancient Greeks, Memory was the Mother of the Muses; so that, as Plutarch tells, the completed Sisterhood of Nine was included under the common name of Remembrances. The truth in the fiction is, that History is the parent of Art. And as Nature is the Art whereby God constitutes and governs the World, because it is the Revelation of the Invisible and Eternal, in forms of Sublimity and Beauty, to the mind of man; so Human Art, in all its varied forms-Poetry, Eloquence, Music, Painting, Sculpture, Architecture—is but the Interpreter and Expounder of the Divine Art, and fixes in its express and admirable forms whatsoever that is Divine, which it discovers in Nature or in Man. The Heroic in action and suffering must precede, because it inspires, the Heroic in representation. Man must become conscious of the noble and the good before he can express it; and he can become conscious of it only in his experience. Gods and heroes walked the earth, and wrought their wonders in action and suffering, before Phidias and Praxiteles could embody them. Achilles, first; afterward, Homer. And Art is therefore, if a prophecy, nevertheless, only because it is a Memorial; for it is on the prepared and receptive background of the Past that it paints or carves visions of the glory it foretells. Lord Bacon said: "As statues and pictures are dumb histories, so histories are speaking pictures." The name of GEORGE HENRY THOMAS-Soldier and Patriot-has already been inscribed on that scroll of honorable fame which posterity will reverently guard in the archives of our National History. To-day, Art summoned to its proper work, lifts aloft the dignity and majesty of his person, as the Society of the Army of the Cumberland, by these public acts and solemn ceremonials, dedicates to the people of the United States the form and presence of its beloved commander. Surely this was a noble subject for the modeler's plastic hand! What dignity and power, what firmness and self-possession, what immobility, and yet what quiet graciousness, what gravity and what benignity, were set together in the manly proportions of his physical frame! A presence to inspire respect, but winning confidence and trust! He was large, firm-planted, and paternal, like a sturdy oak, striking its roots deep in the earth, but with outspreading branches offering protection and shelter from fierce heats or fiercer storms. Large and weighty, his movements were easy and quiet; his postures and gestures unobtrusive, so that his port and mien suggested a reserve of strength not called into action. Thus his physical power seemed to be magnified, and yet there was nothing in him ponderous, overwhelming, or boisterous, and he breathed and spoke gently and in soft tones, like a woman or a child. In fine, he was "A combination and a form, indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal The proportions of his physical frame were in harmony with those of the spiritual body which inhabited and animated it. The internal, as well as the external, man was statuesque, massive, monumental. Vigor and endurance were qualities alike of his material and his mental constitution. Strength was the base and pediment on which was grounded and built up the lofty structure of his character, capped and crowned with simplicity-" whole in himself"-a shaft and column of Doric style and beauty "Rich in saving common-sense, And as the greatest only are, 'O good gray head, which all men knew, O iron nerve to true occasion true, O fall'n at length that tower of strength Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew!" There was nothing in him fluctuating, mercurial, or eccentric. He was set, inflexible, undeviating, steering steadily by the stars, upon the arc of a great circle. He was resolute, unyielding, with a fortitude incapable of intimidation or dismay, and yet without pretention, boasting, self-assertion, or noisy demonstration. He was conspicuous for modesty and dignity, and was altogether free from affectation or envy. He did not lack in proper self esteem; but did not think more highly of himself than he ought. Better than any other man could, he took the measure of his own dimensions, and never worried lest he might be overlooked or neglected, not doubting that sooner or later he would gravitate by his own weight and power to his predestined place, over all opposition and contradiction. But he was not coarse, vulgar, and impassive-careless of the good opinion of good men; rather, on the contrary, he was quick in his sensibilities, keen to detect the selfishness of others, and smarted under a sense of injustice, when inflicted upon himself. Yet no personal consideration ever warped his judgment or clouded his sense of duty. He was genial and frank in his communications, yet reticent and self contained as to all that related to himself, neither inviting nor volunteering confidences. As he had nothing to conceal, his whole character was so transparent that he never opened himself to misconstructions. He did not take refuge from suspicions of ignorance in an affectation of the mystery of silence; for he was as a living epistle, known and read of all men. No conspicuous man in our recent history is better known as to his inmost character, more thoroughly understood, or more correctly appreciated; so that there is no reason to believe that the judgment of posterity as to his place in history will be other than a record of contemporary opinion. There lies buried with him, in his grave, no mystery, to pluck the heart out of which will require that he should ever be disturbed in his resting-place. It is not too much to say of GENERAL THOMAS that he was a model soldier. Arms was his chosen profession. The whole period of his life, from youth to his untimely death, was spent in its study and practice. He had no ambition outside of it. His only ambition in it was to attain the rewards it held out to merit. He envied no superior his rank. He was in no haste to rise upon the misfortunes of others. He recognized but one way to glory-the path of duty. He perfected himself by patient painstaking in all its details. He carefully learned the duties of high command by a thorough practical experience of those of every inferior and subordinate responsibility. He became, thus, an adept in the knowledge and use of every arm of the service, and learned as an apprentice to handle and work every part of the great machinery and enginery of war. At the age of twenty, in 1836, he entered the Military Academy. In 1840, having graduated, he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant, and rose, successively, through every intermediate grade, until, on December 15, 1864, the date of |