"It is not easy for me to express to you the admiration with which I have listened to the very beautiful and appropriate speech with which his Excellency, the Governor-General of Canada, has just delighted us. You know, sir, that the truest and highest art is to conceal art; and I could not but be reminded of that maxim, when I heard that gentleman, after beginning with disabling himself, and cautioning us at the onset that he was slow of speech, proceed to make one of the happiest, most appropriate and eloquent speeches ever uttered. If I were travelling with his lordship in his native mountains of Gael, I should say to him, in the language of the natives of those regions, sma sheen—very well, my lord. But in plain English, sir, that which has fallen from his lordship has given me indeed new cause to rejoice that 'Chatham's language is my mother tongue.' (Great cheering.)
"We have, Sir, in this part of the country long been convinced of the importance of this system of communication; although it may be doubted whether the most sagacious and sanguine have even yet fully comprehended its manifold influences. We have, however, felt them on the sea board and in the interior. We have felt them in the growth of our manufactures, in the extension of our commerce, in the growing demand for the products of agriculture, in the increase of our population. We have felt them prodigiously in transportation and travel. The inhabitant of the country has felt them in the ease with which he resorts to the city markets, whether as a seller or a purchaser. The inhabitant of the city has felt them in the facility with which he can get to a sister city, or to the country; with which he can get back to his native village;—to see the old folks, aye, Sir, and some of the young folks—with which he can get a mouthful of pure mountain air—or run down in dog days to Gloucester or Phillips' beach, or Plymouth, or Cohassett, or New Bedford.
"I say, Sir, we have felt the benefit of our railway system in these and a hundred other forms, in which, penetrating far beyond material interests, it intertwines itself with all the concerns and relations of life and society; but I have never had its benefits brought home to me so sensibly as on the present occasion. Think, Sir, how it has annihilated time and space, in reference to this festival, and how greatly to our advantage and delight!
"When Dr. Franklin, in 1754, projected a plan of union for these colonies, with Philadelphia as the metropolis, he gave as a reason for this part of the plan, that Philadelphia was situated about half way between the extremes, and could be conveniently reached even from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in eighteen days! I believe the President of the United States, who has honoured us with his company at this joyous festival, was not more than twenty-four hours actually on the road from Washington to Boston; two to Baltimore, seven more to Philadelphia, five more to New York, and ten more to Boston.
"And then Canada, sir, once remote, inaccessible region—but now brought to our very door. If a journey had been contemplated in that direction in Dr. Franklin's time, it would have been with such feelings as a man would have now-a-days, who was going to start for the mouth of Copper Mine River, and the shores of the Arctic Sea. But no, sir; such a thing was never thought of—never dreamed of. A horrible wilderness, rivers and lakes unspanned by human art, pathless swamps, dismal forests that it made the flesh creep to enter, threaded by nothing more practicable than the Indian's trail, echoing with no sound more inviting than the yell of the wolf and the warwhoop of the savage; these it was that filled the space between us and Canada. The inhabitants of the British Colonies never entered Canada in those days but as provincial troops or Indian captives; and lucky he that got back with his scalp on. (Laughter.) This state of things existed less than one hundred years ago; there are men living in Massachusetts who were born before the last party of hostile Indians made an incursion to the banks of the Connecticut river.
"As lately as when I had the honour to be the Governor of the Commonwealth, I signed the pension warrant of a man who lost his arm in the year 1757, in a conflict with the Indians and French in one of the border wars, in those dreary Canadian forests. His Honour the Mayor will recollect it, for he countersigned the warrant as Secretary of State. Now, Sir, by the magic power of these modern works of art, the forest is thrown open—the rivers and lakes are bridged—the valleys rise, the mountains bow their everlasting heads; and the Governor-General of Canada takes his breakfast in Montreal, and his dinner in Boston;—reading a newspaper leisurely by the way which was printed a fortnight ago in London. [Great Applause.] In the excavations made in the construction of the Vermont railroads, the skeletons of fossil whales and paloeozoic elephants have been brought to light. I believe, Sir, if a live spermaciti whale had been seen spouting in Lake Champlain, or a native elephant had walked leisurely into Burlington from the neighbouring woods, of a summer's morning, it would not be thought more wonderful than our fathers would have regarded Lord Elgin's journey to us this week, could it have been foretold to them a century ago, with all the circumstances of despatch, convenience and safety. [Applause.]
"I recollect that seven or eight years ago there was a project to carry a railroad into the lake country in England—into the heart of Westmoreland and Cumberland. Mr. Wordsworth, the lately deceased poet, a resident in the centre of this region, opposed the project. He thought that the retirement and seclusion of this delightful region would be disturbed by the panting of the locomotive, and the cry of the steam whistle. If I am not mistaken, he published one or two sonnets in deprecation of the enterprise. Mr. Wordsworth was a kind-hearted man, as well as a most distinguished poet, but he was entirely mistaken, as it seems to me, in this matter. The quiet of a few spots may be disturbed; but a hundred quiet spots are rendered accessible. The bustle of the station house may take the place of the Druidical silence of some shady dell; but, Gracious Heavens! sir, how many of those verdant cathedral arches, entwined by the hand of God in our pathless woods, are opened to the grateful worship of man by these means of communication. (Cheers).
"How little of rural beauty you lose, even in a country of comparatively narrow dimensions like England—how less than little in a country so vast as this—by works of this description. You lose a little strip along the line of the road, which partially changes its character; while, as the compensation, you bring all this rural beauty—
"The warbling woodland, the resounding shore, The pomp of groves, the garniture of fields,"