of
your time.

PARKER PILLSBURY was next introduced and said: The resolutions
just read refer to the comparative longevity of nations and of
individual men, and of their respective performance, while
existence lasts.

Among nations have arisen Franklins and Washingtons, Humboldts
and Howards; but what individual nation of any period has been
the Plato or Pythagoras, the Howard or the Humboldt of all the
rest? or has achieved proportionally, so long a life? or expired
at last in sunsets of serenity and glory, and been embalmed and
enshrined in the tears and gratitude of mankind? It is often said
that the life of a nation is as the life of an individual; with
beginning, progress, decay, and dissolution. But the resemblance
holds only in part. Consciousness comes to an individual, and
self-respect; and from that hour growth and greatness (it may be)
begin. But with nations it is not so. The world has not made the
same demand of nations as of individuals, and so nothing is
expected of them. Nations, hitherto, were badly brought up. In
the light of a thousand years hence, the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries will be "darker ages" than the eighth and
ninth are to-day. Accepting three-score and ten as the common
life of an individual, a degree at least of honorable manhood is
often achieved, both in personal virtues, and in noble
performance.

The canticles of the Almanac used to run:

At ten, a child; at twenty, wild;
At thirty, strong, if ever;
At forty, wise; at fifty, rich;
At sixty, good, or never.

But at what age has any nation of any period or place become
wise, rich, or even strong; to say nothing of good?

The Roman Catholic Church is older than any civilized government
on the globe. Lord Macaulay says:

It is the only institution left standing which carries the
mind back to the time when the smoke of sacrifice rose from
the Pantheon, and when tigers and camel leopards bounded in
the Flavian Amphitheatre. The proudest royal houses are but
of yesterday, compared with the line of the supreme
Pontiffs, traced back in unbroken series, from the Pope who
crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century, to the Pope who
crowned Pepin in the eighth; and fa