Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 February 1877 — Which Succeeded.? [ARTICLE]

Which Succeeded.?

The death of Cornelius Vanderbilt removes the last of the famous trio of millionaires: Astor, btewart, Vanderbilt. The first was a capitalist, and might have existed in the palmy days of Greece and Rome; the second was a merchant, and had his prototype in the burghers of Amsterdam in the last century; but the third could have existed only in the present age; Watts, Fulton and Stephenson were the creators of his career. The man who began by running a ferryboat between Staten Island and New York at eighteen cents a passenger, and ended by completing and directing the only four-track railroad in the world, is generally counted an exceptionally successful man. He was one of the most remarkable men New York ever produced. He possessed a large brain; his physique was magnificent, a study for the sculptor; his powers of endurance were great; his intuitive knowledge of men was a gift; he combined a grasp of great principles with a comprehension of minute details, a combination rare even in exceptional men; he had the foresight of a prophet with the caution of a man of affairs; and he gave himself to success with a tenacity of purpose which is always the condition of achievement. Such a combination of characteristics would have made him eminent in whatever age his lot had been cast. Had he been an ecclesiastic, be would have been a Gregory or a Hildebrand ; had he been a lung he would have been a Charlemagne or a Napoleon. i His energy and enterprise have conferred Seat material benefits upon the public. e began by substantially founding the ferry between New York and Staten Island, which ought to be her best as it is by nature her most beautiful suburb. He was one of the creators of what has since grown to be the great natural highway between New York and Philadelphia. He was chief among the promoters of steam navigation on the Sound and up the Hudson. He opened an ocean route for the early emigration to California; and the discomforts of that much-abused line were less due to any fault of his than incidental to a crowded traffic on a new highway. He brought the Harlem Railroad up from a seemingly hopeless bankruptcy, and his consolidation and administration of the Hudson River and Central Railroads has conferred on the State a benefit second only to that derived from the Erie Canal. But these public benefits were wholly in the material realm. He . put forth no power to make men wiser or better in character and life. They were incidental, we might almost say accidental. He was abundantly, even exorbitantly, paid for them. True, he gave a church to the “ Strangers ” in New York City, and founded a university in Tennessee; and the good he has thus done will outrun and outlast all his other successes. But if men of moderate means were to give only in the proportion in which he gave, charity would be cold and poverty poonndeed. The Lazarus that sat at the gate ate only the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table.

Within a few days another man has died: not in his own mansion; not surrounded by affectionate friends and all endearmentsinot with half* dozen physicians and nurses numerous; not with his name from day to day mentioned in the papers; not with the thermometer of his life recorded, as in the weather department every change of temperature is recorded. He died in the midst of unutterable horror—for in that terrific plunge made through the broken bridge at Ashtabula it would seem as if all the gorgons had come together; and whatever could be done by heat, by cold, by bruises, by rending, by piercing, whatever could be done by burning and by laceration, was done. There Mr. Bliss died: not a great man; not a great thinker; not a great post; not a great musician; but a man whose whole life was devoted, seriously and earnestly and sweetly, to the work of softening, enriching and ennobling the dispositions of men. His hymns will not last as Watts’ have lasted, nor as Wesley’s ; but they have been adapted to cer-' tain wants in our time, and they have moved the whole generation of schools and churches. His melodies will not last as the music of Mozart or Beethoven, or that of a host of others; and yet they have been a power in this land. And the songs written by Mr. Bliss have been a silent influence as sweet and as gentle as

dew and rain fin summer, and iheyArave nourished ten times tqn thpp T> sabd tender*, roots, stra they haswßteaM f spiritual Joys and .aHcmdkjyiotipns to spring up almost more In number ihan fesS 1 “ ft!! Here was a man unknown; except as a sweet singer in Israel; his life has suddenly ceased. AfeW! papers sn«mt>pnedl him; butheM4 .biographies, no editorial eulogies; he held no such place in the World's estedta aaf Mho MlnA derbllt And vet thMgb-Afe’. V«stronger in the lower range of strength, Mr. Bliss has done the far grander week. He has'sweetened life.' He him opened the door through which tenthousamhonia have seen the.other wqrld. He has made, the heavens transparent. He has quieffened faith. He has nourfehed last. He has caused Joy to bud and to blossom-. He, has made religion to be effulgent. ' He hks brought something Of the vejy wplrit of the heavenly chants down to earth, and made little children understand .the glory of the Savior’s love. To servants, topoor unlettered wpmen, he ha* been as gp* tongue of the Lord. A gentle lambent flame, not visible, has rested on his head, as upon the pentecostal faaM; and the; years that he has lived have been put into the work of deveiopirit, ameliorating ahd sanctifying the disposition of men, ,f The work of the one. was material, of. the other spiritual; the wdrz of ‘the 1 one was for time, of the other fereteknityfthe one built railroads and founded steamship lines, the othe’r helped to fbdnit character and to build mem—GlArtattav Union. ; ,'