He was striving to stay
the determination of the Ministry to declare war upon the American
colonies. He wished his hearers to appreciate the progress that
America had made within living memory. He called imagination to his
aid. He spoke of a statesman then living in the late evening of an
honorable life. He pictured that statesman in the promise of his early
dawn, saluted by the angel of his auspicious youth, and given the power
to see into the future, so far as to the hour when Burke was speaking.
"What," said Burke, "if while he was gazing with admiration on the then
commercial grandeur of England the genius should point out to him a
little speck, scarce visible in the mass of the nation's interest, and
should tell him, 'Young man, there is America, which at this day serves
for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and
uncouth manners, yet before you taste of death will show itself equal
to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world.
Whatever England has been growing to by a progressive increase of
improvement, brought in by varieties of people, by succession of
civilizing conquests and civilizing settlements in a series of
seventeen hundred years, you shall see as much added to her by America
in the course of a single life!' If this state of his country had been
foretold to him, would it not require all the sanguine credulity of
youth and all the fervid glow of enthusiasm to make him believe it?
Fortunate man, he has lived to see it." If the genius of prophecy
could have stood by Burke's shoulder then, and illuminated his noble
soul with the knowledge that is the common possession of mankind
to-day, would it not have required all the sanguine credulity, all the
divine enthusiasm of genius to make him believe it?

[Sidenote: 1732-99--The death of Washington]

The war that gave the world a new nation and a republic greater than
Rome added one of the greatest names, and perhaps the noblest name, to
the roll-call of the great captains of the earth. No soldier of all
those that the eyes of Dante discerned in the first circle, not even
"Caesar, all armored with gerfalcon eyes," adorns the annals of
antiquity more than George Washington illuminates the {189} last
quarter of the eighteenth century. His splendid strength, his sweet
austerity, his proud patience are hardly to be rivalled in the previous
history of humanity, and have perhaps only been rivalled since his day