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In this persistent plan of Providence, no one can, I think, mistake the traces of a steady improvement of our race; varied by an endless play of vicissitudes,—of action and reaction, of progress and relapse; but with an advancement upon the whole toward freedom, truth, and happiness. In each great period of the world's history, there seems some dominant principle of action. What may have happened in the mighty East, when the buried halls of Nimroud were filled with living and active men, and the marble pageantry disinterred at Nineveh was a part of the gorgeous business of real life; what was done for humanity in that mysterious region, from which we have borrowed the form of our monument, we shall better know, when the patient toils of modern research shall have more effectually penetrated the secrets of thirty centuries. But in Greece and in Rome, which (with the exception of what pertains to our religion) make up so much of what we call antiquity, it is impossible not to perceive that, with all their struggles toward a purer civilization, the sword and the sceptre,-military power and political control,-governed the world. As these passed from region to region and from hand to hand, they seemed to carry with them the destinies of the human race. The battle of Salamis, the conquests of Alexander, the defeat of Pompey,-the Grecian phalanx and the Roman pike,—settled the fate of mankind.

Founded upon physical force,-partially enlightened by an intellectual culture, which, though exquisitely refined, took but little hold of the general mind, and, what is far more important, was almost wholly destitute of

spiritual vitality, the ancient civilization perished at length by the agency through which it had grown. Force was subdued by force. From the unexplored deserts of northern Europe and Asia, a succession of barbarous tribes was poured down for fifteen hundred years on the degenerate south, till the last remnant of the ancient world fell before the last irruption of Asiatic barbarity, at the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, in the middle of the 15th century.

Here we may place a distinct epoch in the continuous history of our race; the end of the old world and the beginning of the new ;-not sharply defined but gradually commingling, the former fading away as the latter brightens into being. Henceforward, mere physical force ceases so much to control the world; and physical power itself parts with its character of brute violence, and allies itself with arts, with science, with letters, with opinions, and morals. While darkness still brooded over mediaval Europe, a discovery was made by the rude chemistry of the day, (I allude of course to the invention of gunpowder) which entirely changed the nature of military operations, greatly reduced the sphere of physical force, and essentially contributed to put an end to private war, one of the chief scourges of the middle ages. Another great secret disclosed by experimental science, the polarity of the magnet,-eventually effected a revolution in the commerce of the world. The Turkish conquest, though it trampled down the last remnants of learning in its native seats, sent out hundreds of learned men to the west of Europe, and with them the knowledge of

the ancient Grecian literature. The invention of Printing effected a combination of intellectual and mechanical agency, powerful beyond everything the world had yet imagined; and at this most important juncture, Columbus solved the greatest problem of the physical creation, by the discovery of a new world.

From this time forward, a new influence is at work, and new tendencies disclose themselves at home and abroad. By the new and powerful agencies to which we have alluded, a rapid progress of re-organization goes on in Europe. Society is built up from the ruins of the dark ages. The family of states is enlarged, laws and constitutions acquire a recognized power beyond the will of the sovereign; social life ventures out of the walled towns as property becomes secure; and in the more advanced states of Europe, especially in England, the people begin to be a substantial reality in the political system. This was greatly promoted by the struggles for religious freedom. The spirit of the reformation moved upon the face of the waters, and light, and order, and liberty rose from the political and social chaos.

But the settlement and colonization of America,—this mighty extension of the domain of civilization,—this transmission of the culture of the old world to regions. lying in a state of nature, under the happiest auspices for needed reformation and further progress,—was the important work to be achieved in the new order of things. It would require a space greatly beyond the limits of the present occasion, and involve a reference to some of the most perplexing questions of civil polity, to

sketch even the outlines of the history of the measures undertaken to accomplish this end. I will only observe that it was attempted by Spain and Portugal on the one hand; by England, and, to a very limited degree, by Holland and Sweden on the other. The Catholic powers, of Latin origin, occupied the southern continent, Mexico, and Florida. The Protestantism of the Anglo-Saxon states took possession of the North. The former established a vast governmental monopoly of the precious metals and the commerce of the East; by the latter the work was left to private adventure, feebly protected by the state; and, as far as New England is concerned, prompted and cheered by a glowing zeal for religious liberty. France preceded England in the occupation of North America. With one foot at the mouth of the Mississippi, and the other on the gulf of the St. Lawrence, and a line of posts along the lakes, she rendered it doubtful for two centuries to whom North America would belong, or in what proportions it should be divided between the two great schools of European civilization. But England had planted a belt of brave and resolute colonists along the Atlantic coast; no rays of royal favor beamed upon the hardy germ; it grew up unprotected, despised, scarcely heard of in the great world of European politics, till it overshadowed the land. As we look back, by the lights of experience, on the events of our early history, the occupation of the interior of our continent by France seems to have served no other purpose than to bind together the English colonies, in their infancy and youth, by a sense of common danger, and

the principle of repulsion to a foreign nationality. I know not that history affords a more memorable lesson than is contained in the fact, that when England conquered the French colonies in America, she did but exchange them for her own. This result, foretold by Montcalm himself, received its memorable confirmation on the summit of Bunker Hill, when Putnam, and Prescott, and Pomroy, and Gridley, and Stark, veterans of the seven years' war, showed themselves apt pupils of the great school of Anglo-Saxon courage and discipline. The men who, led by a spirit of loyalty alone, had followed the British banner to Martinico and Cuba, to Louisburg and Quebec, whose blood had stirred at the blast of the British trumpet, by the lonely waters of Ontario and the silent banks of the St Lawrence, were not likely to quail, when they struck for the liberties of their country, in the bosom of home; at this grand altar, which rose up in the very heart of New England; in the presence of the anxious thousands of kindred spectators, who looked on from every eminence in the neighborhood. The battery on Copp's Hill did not terrify them; it was planted over the graves of four generations of an indomitable and patriotic ancestry. As General Gage stood upon the summit of that hill on the morning of the 17th, surveying the redoubt through his glass, he pointed to Prescott, who, to encourage his men, was moving about on the top of the glacis, under the fire of the ships of war and the batteries, and he inquired of Col. Willard, one of his council, who stood near him, who it was? Willard replied that it was his brother-in

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