The American Union Speaker

by John D. Philbrick

THE TEACHERS OF MANKIND.

There is nothing which the adversaries of improvement are more wont to make themselves merry with than what is termed the "march of intellect;" and here I will confess, that I think, as far as the phrase goes, they are in the right. It is a very absurd, because a very incorrect expression. It is little calculated to describe the operation in question. It does not picture an image at all resembling the proceedings of the true friends of mankind. It much more resembles the progress of the enemy to all improvement. The conqueror moves in a march. He stalks onward with the "pride, pomp, and circumstance of warp,"—banners flying—shouts rending the air—guns thundering—and martial music pealing, to drown the shrieks of the wounded, and the lamentations for the slain.

Not thus the schoolmaster, in his peaceful vocation. He meditates and prepares in secret the plans which are to bless mankind; he slowly gathers round him those who are to further their execution, he quietly, though firmly, advances in his humble path, laboring steadily, but calmly, till he has opened to the light all the recesses of ignorance, and torn up by the roots the weeds of vice. His is a progress not to be compared with anything like a march; but it leads to a far more brilliant triumph, and to laurels more imperishable than the destroyer of his species, the scourge of the world, ever won.

Such men—men deserving the glorious title of Teachers of Mankind—I have found, laboring conscientiously, though, perhaps obscurely, in their blessed vocation, wherever I have gone. I have found them, and shared their fellowship, among the daring, the ambitious, the ardent, the indomitably active French; I have found them among the persevering, resolute, industrious Swiss; I have found them among the laborious, the warmhearted, the enthusiastic Germans; I have found them among the high-minded, but enslaved Italians; and in our own country, God be thanked, their numbers everywhere abound, and are every day increasing.

Their calling is high and holy; their fame is the property of nations; their renown will fill the earth in after-ages, in proportion as it sounds not far off in their own times. Each one of those great teachers of the world, possessing his soul in peace, performs his appointed course; awaits in patience the fulfillment of the premises; and, resting from his labors, bequeathed his memory to the generation whom his works have blessed, and sleeps under the humble but not inglorious epitaph, commemorating it one in whom mankind lost a friend, and no man got rid of an enemy." Lord Brougham.

LXXI.

THE GREATNESS OF WASHINGTON.

Great he was, preëminently great, whether we regard him sustaining alone the whole weight of campaigns all but desperate, or gloriously terminating a just warfare by his resources and his courage; presiding over the jarring elements of his political council, alike deaf to the storms of all extremes, or directing the formation of a new government for a great people, the first time that so vast an experiment had ever been tried by man; or, really, retiring from the supreme power to which his virtue had raised him over the nation he had created, and whose destinies he had guided as long as his aid was required,—retiring with the veneration of all parties, of all nations, of all mankind, in order that the rights of men might be conserved, and that his example never might be appealed to by vulgar tyrants.

This is the consummate glory of Washington; a triumphant warrior where the most sanguine had a right to despair; a successful ruler in all the difficulties of a course wholly untried; but a warrior, whose sword only left its sheath when the first law of our nature commanded it to be drawn; and a ruler who, having tasted of supreme power, gently and ostentatiously desired that the cup might pass from him, nor would suffer more to wet his lips than the most solemn and sacred duty to his To his country and his God required!

To his latest breath did this great patriot maintain the noble character of a captain the patron of peace, and a statesman the friend of justice. Dying, he bequeathed to his heirs the sword which he had worn in the war for liberty, and charged them "never to take it from the scabbard but in self-defence, or in defence of their country and her freedom;" and commanded them that, "when it should thus be drawn, they should never sheathe it, nor ever give it up, but prefer falling with it in their hands to the relinquishment thereof,"—words, the majesty and simple eloquence of which are not surpassed in the oratory of Athens and Rome.