name? I answer, the liberties of our land, boug invaluable blood, are to be defended, and tran their purity, to other times-and he deserves a g membrance who contributes any thing, by pri or public service, to such a result. Every office any young American as the reward of service r the country; and there is not one in the gift of that may not be contemplated as possibly within of any aspirant for a grateful remembrance. It the glories of our system, that the path to the hig is to be kept open to any one who may confer su nefit on his country, to show that it may be a s compense for public services. And no human t tell what youth now before me may yet enter on office, or in what humble cottage beyond the mou infant may now be sleeping that is yet to attain i "At the very time of the Congress of Aix la which settled the peace of Europe, in 1747, (I use of the historian of the United States,) the woods nia sheltered the youthful George Washington, th widow. Born by the side of the Potomac, beneat of a Westmoreland farmer, almost from infancy l been the lot of an orphan. No academy had him to its shades, no college crowned him with its to read, to write, to cipher-these had been his d knowledge. And now, at sixteen years of age, i an honest maintenance, encountering intolerable t ed onward by being able to write to a schoolb 'Dear Richard, a doubloon is my constant gain e and sometimes six pistoles,' himself his own coo no spit but a forked stick; no plate but a large chip ing over spurs of the Alleghenies and along the 5 , straw, or fodder, and often camping in the forests, ere the place nearest the fire was a happy luxury-this pling surveyor in the woods, with no companion but his ettered associates, and no implements of science but his pass and his chain, contrasted strangely with the aprance of the Congress at Aix la Chapelle. And yet God selected, not Kaunitz, nor Newcastle, not a monarch of house of Hapsburg nor of Hanover, but the Virginia oling, to give an impulse to human affairs, and, as far as nts can depend on an individual, had placed the rights the destinies of countless millions in the keeping of the ow's son.' 99* very great department of science and literature also is in this land; and here as elsewhere, also, there is no al path to a name that shall live. Heaven, too, never ferred on any people a land, or so crowned its early his- with events fitted to nurture all that is great in the an soul, as here.-The whole field of poetry is open. ece had its Hesiod and Homer; Rome its Horace and gil; Italy has had its Petrarch and Dante; and we, in mon with our father-land, our Spenser, and Milton, and per; but who, in our own land, is to stand forth, and he rich materials of our early history, rear a name that all be more enduring than brass?" Je are, as a people, young. We have been much ridid across the waters. Our science and learning have spoken of with contempt. About five-and-twenty rs ago, it was asked, in a periodical that aimed to give to the reading world, "Who reads an American book? * Bancroft, iii. 467, 468. quently reprinted in Great Britain than any wo logy which the three kingdoms have produced. I speak of Prescott, and Bancroft, and Irving, ar and Pickering, and Duponceau, and Bowditch, nar in history, or eloquence, or letters, and destined to history is read, or eloquence and learning hono this day, many of the most popular and wide-diffi in England are American; and there are not a men in this land, who, by their writings, are givin tion to tens of thousands in the land where M Shakspeare lived. No young man ever could have desired a wid make his influence felt for good than the God of P has opened before him now in this land. If he w fluence may be felt for purposes of good on the of the globe. Perhaps in humbler spheres, but st to secure an honourable remembrance, he may his name with that of Wilberforce or Howard; show that he is not unworthy to live in the land lin; he may show that he has greatness enough to ate the value of the liberties defended by Washin may so live, that the pure, the good, the fair will strew flowers on his grave, and that the world wil lingly let his memory die. Here shall yet be reali Berkeley saw in almost prophetic vision, when, foreigner, he looked with generous and noble feelin western world. It was all fresh and new. Its hills to heaven; its rivers rolled with a majestic volume across the ocean; it was just the place, reserved b when corruption and decay were enstamped on al world, for poetry, and song, and liberty, and sci Where nature guides and virtue rules; Where men shall not impose for truth and sense The pedantry of courts and schools: There shall be sung another golden age,― Not such as Europe breeds in her decay; Westward the course of empire takes its way, A fifth shall close the drama with the day, THE END. |