"To conquest and slaughter let Europe aspire;
Whelm nations in blood, and wrap cities in fire;
Thy heroes the rights of mankind shall defend,
And triumph pursue them, and glory attend!"
With this picture the artist closes the commemoration of our naval achievements in the four great periods of our history, the War of the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War, and the Spanish-American War of 1898, to which the last six pictures of the series are devoted, as the preceding six illustrate the dawn of our history
from the first landing of the white man to the settlement of the Pilgrim Fathers—preceding all of which is the mysterious and unfathomable past symbolized by the trackless "Ocean," the first of these paintings.
From the time that Eirek the Red sailed to the bleak shores of Greenland down to the brilliant exploit of Admiral Dewey in the Philippine Islands, how true it is, in view of each and every one of the events immortalized in this unequalled series of paintings, that, in the words of Bishop Berkeley,
"Westward the course of empire takes its way!"
