profound in thought; the introduction, purporting to be a synopsis of the causes which led to the late Civil War, being one of the most remarkable constitutional arguments that ever emanated from a statesman's pen.
His death was a fitting close of his well-spent and glorious life. A few days' disease having admonished him that death was inevitable, he calmly prepared to meet it as he had met other overpowering foes. His worldly goods being few, demanded but little of his time; to a noble, loving, devoted wife; to children whom he so dearly loved, he had no other inheritance to bestow but his own proud name, the souvenir of his virtues, the example of his patriotism. This done, he turned his thoughts to that higher kingdom, to which all aspire who have performed on earth their duty to God and man. A dutiful, obedient child of the Holy Catholic Church, he received at the hands of her worthy ministers all the sacraments with which she tenderly speeds the soul to the eternal abode. And it was, surrounded by a desolate family, and his hand clasped in the hands of a fatherly priest, that he gave up to his Maker that great and noble soul which never knew any other fear than that of doing wrong.
To-day, in the narrow confines of an humble grave, on the green banks of a little tranquil brook, to which Bienville's brother gave his own name, in the retired and calm retreat of the Mobile Catholic graveyard, the remains of one so much loved by his country, so much feared by her enemies, now gently rests with nothing more than a simple monument to mark his last place of repose.
When Attila's soldiers were incising their eyes with their swords that they might weep over him with men's blood and not with women's tears; when Napoleon's soldiers were hiding his grave, "Sur un rocher batta par la vague plaintive"; when
"Kings in dusky darkness hid
Have left a nameless pyramid,"
the memory of Raphael Semmes will find in the pages of history and in the hearts of his countrymen "a monument more durable than iron or marble ever raised on the summit of the highest mountain."
