But, sir, give us these twenty-five years of peace. I do believe, sir, that this coming quarter of a century is to be the most important in our whole history. I do beseech you to let us have these twenty-five years, at least, of peace. Let these fertile wastes be filled up with swarming millions; let this tide of emigration from Europe go on; let the steamer, the canal, the railway, and especially let this great Pacific railway, subdue these mighty distances, and bring this vast extension into a span.
Let us pay back the ingots of California gold with bars of Atlantic iron; let agriculture clothe our vast wastes with waving plenty; let the industrial and mechanic arts erect their peaceful fortresses at the waterfalls; and then, sir, in the train of this growing population, let the printing office, the lecture-room, the village schoolhouse, and the village church, be scattered over the country. And in these twenty-five years we shall exhibit a spectacle of national prosperity such as the world has never seen on so large a scale, and yet within the reach of a sober, practical contemplation.
THE FATHER OF THE REPUBLIC.
O be cold and breathless, to feel not and speak not—this is not the end of existence to the men who have breathed their spirits into the institutions of their country, who have stamped their characters on the pillars of the age, who have poured their heart’s blood into the channels of the public prosperity.
Tell me, ye who tread the sods of yon sacred height, is Warren dead? Can you not still see him—not pale and prostrate, the blood of his gallant heart pouring out of his ghastly wound, but moving resplendent over the field of honor, with the rose of heaven upon his cheek and the fire of liberty in his eye?
Tell me, ye who make your pious pilgrimage to the shades of Vernon, is Washington indeed shut up in that cold and narrow house? That which made these men, and men like these, cannot die.
The hand that traced the charter of independence is, indeed, motionless; the eloquent lips that sustained it are hushed; but the lofty spirits that conceived, resolved and maintained it, and which alone, to such men, make it life to live—these cannot expire.