In 1647 the Colony of Massachusetts Bay passed the law requiring every town of one hundred families to set up a grammar school which should prepare youth for the university.
If Mr. Webster by his handling of the Dartmouth College Case founded a new school of constitutional law, by the Plymouth Oration he founded a new school of oratory. This field of occasional oratory was a new and peculiar one for him. He had never before spoken upon a great historical subject demanding not only wealth of imagination, but the peculiar quality of mind and heart which unites dignity and depth of thought with ease and grace of manner. But he was equal to the task. The simplicity and beauty of the thought, the grand and inspiring manner of presentation, gave evidence of commanding genius, and gave Mr. Webster a place in the front rank of orators and stylists.
"I never saw him," says Mr. Ticknor, "when he seemed to me to be more conscious of his own powers, or to have a more true and natural enjoyment from their possession."
John Adams, who had heard Pitt and Fox, Burke and Sheridan, says: "It is the effort of a great mind, richly stored with every species of information. If there be an American who can read it without tears, I am not that American. Mr. Burke is no longer entitled to the praise--the most consummate orator of modern times. What can I say of what regards myself? To my humble name 'Exegisti monumentum ære perennius.' The oration ought to be read at the end of every century."
"It is doubtful," says Edward Everett, "whether any extra-professional literary effort by a public man has attained equal celebrity."
Cf. Curtis's Life of Webster, Ch. IX.; Lodge's Webster, Ch. IV.; De Tocqueville's Democracy in America, Vol. I.; Whipple's American Literature, "Webster as a Master of English Style"; Bancroft's History of the United States, Vol. I., Chs. XII., XIII., XIV.; Burke's Orations on the American War, edited by A. J. George; Fiske's Beginnings of New England.
The Bunker Hill Monument
June, 1825.
As early as 1776, the Massachusetts Lodge of Masons, over which General Warren had presided, asked the Government of Massachusetts for permission to take up his remains, which were buried on the hill the day after the battle, and bury them with the usual solemnities. The request was granted on condition that the government of the colony should be permitted to erect a monument to his memory.
The ceremonies of burial were performed, but no steps were taken to build the monument. General Warren was, at the time of his death, Grand Master of the Masonic Lodges of America, and as nothing had been done toward erecting a memorial, King Solomon's Lodge of Charlestown voted to erect a monument. The land was purchased, and a monument dedicated by the Lodge Dec. 2, 1794. It was a wooden pillar of Tuscan order, eighteen feet high, raised on a pedestal ten feet in height. The pillar was surmounted by a gilt urn. An appropriate inscription was placed on the south side of the pedestal.