“The quality of Mersey is not strained.”
From Liverpool they went to London, stopping at two or three interesting places by the way. At London he visited both Houses of Parliament, heard debates on the great reform bill which passed at that time; saw Gladstone, Disraeli, Bright, and other great Englishmen, and after a week of sight-seeing and studying here, visited other parts of England, and then went to Scotland. Mr. Blaine and Mr. Morrill, were with them in Scotland. There the General visited the home of Burns and re-read “Tam O’Shanter.”
Leaving Scotland at Leith, they crossed the North Sea to Rotterdam, went to Brussels and Cologne, and thence up the Rhine to Mayence.
Thence by various stages, reveling in old world glories, he reached Italy—Florence and Rome. Here a year of life was crowded into a week, while Garfield lived amid the wrecks of antiquity and the decayed remnants of that dead empire whose splendid history can not be forgotten till “the last syllable of recorded time.”
On October first they proceeded, by a circuitous route, to make their way to Paris, where they met several American friends, among them the artist, Miss Ransom. After a short stay there, and a few excursions to other places, they finally started for home, and by November 6th they were once more standing on American soil.
General Garfield’s health was by this means thoroughly restored, and he had realized in some degree one of the sincerest wishes of his life,—a more familiar acquaintance with some places across the sea than books could give.
On May 30, 1868, occurred the first general observance of that beautiful national custom, the annual decoration of the soldiers’ graves. On that day, the President and his Cabinet, with a large number of Congressmen and other distinguished persons, and about fifteen thousand people, met on Arlington Heights to pay their respects to the Nation’s dead, and listen to an address. The orator of the day was Garfield.
No more touching and sincere expression of patriotic sentiments was ever uttered than he spoke there that day. Indeed, his reverence for the time and place was deeper than his words could tell. To this he referred in the beginning, saying:
“If silence is ever golden, it must be here, beside the graves of fifteen thousand men, whose lives were more significant than speech, and whose death was a poem the music of which can never be sung. With words we make promises, plight faith, praise virtue. Promises may not be kept; plighted faith may be broken; and vaunted virtue may be only the cunning mask of vice. We do not know one promise these men made, one pledge they gave, one word they spoke; but we do know they summed up and perfected, by one supreme act, the highest virtues of men and citizens. For love of country they accepted death; and thus resolved all doubts, and made immortal their patriotism and their virtue.
“For the noblest man that lives there still remains a conflict. He must still withstand the assaults of time and fortune; must still be assailed with temptations before which lofty natures have fallen. But with these, the conflict ended, the victory was won, when death stamped on them the great seal of heroic character, and closed a record which years can never blot.”