Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Mr. Bennoch having formally announced the order of proceeding, Dr. Bennett made a brief statement, and called upon Earl Granville to ask the Dean's acceptance of the bust.

Earl Granville then said: ‘Mr. Sub-Dean, Ladies and Gentlemen, . . . I am afraid I cannot fulfil the promise made for me of making a speech on this occasion. Not that there are wanting materials for a speech; there are materials of the richest description. There are, first of all, the high character, the refinement, and the personal charm of the late illustrious poet,—if I may say so in the presence of those so near and so dear to him. There are also the characteristics of those works which have secured for him not a greater popularity in the United States themselves than in this island and in all the English-speaking dependencies of the British Empire. There are, besides, very large views with regard to the literature which is common to both the United States and ourselves, and with regard to the separate branches of literature which have sprung up in each country, and which act and react with so much advantage one upon another; and there are, above all, those relations of a moral and intellectual character which become bonds stronger and greater every day between the intellectual and cultivated classes of these two great countries. I am ’