e great event of the settlement of the
country from which they spring. It would be great presumption in me to
go back to the scene of that settlement, or to attempt to exhibit it in
any colors, after the exhibition made to-day; yet it is an event that in
all time since, and in all time to come, and more in times to come than
in times past, must stand out in great and striking characteristics to
the admiration of the world. The sun's return to his winter solstice, in
1620, is the epoch from which he dates his first acquaintance with the
small people, now one of the happiest, and destined to be one of the
greatest, that his rays fall upon; and his annual visitation, from that
day to this, to our frozen region, has enabled him to see that progress,
_progress_, was the characteristic of that small people. He has seen
them from a handful, that one of his beams coming through a key-hole
might illuminate, spread over a hemisphere which he cannot enlighten
under the slightest eclipse. Nor, though this globe should revolve round
him for tens of hundreds of thousands of years, will he see such another
incipient colonization upon any part of this attendant upon his mighty
orb. What else he may see in those other planets which revolve around
him we cannot tell, at least until we have tried the fifty-foot
telescope which Lord Rosse is preparing for that purpose.

There is not, Gentlemen, and we may as well admit it, in any history of
the past, another epoch from which so many great events have taken a
turn; events which, while important to us, are equally important to the
country from whence we came. The settlement of Plymouth--concurring, I
always wish to be understood, with that of Virginia--was the settlement
of New England by colonies of Old England. Now, Gentlemen, take these
two ideas and run out the thoughts suggested by both. What has been, and
what is to be, Old England? What has been, what is, and what may be, in
the providence of God, _New_ England, with her neighbors and associates?
I would not dwell, Gentlemen, with any particular emphasis upon the
sentiment, which I nevertheless entertain, with respect to the great
diversity in the races of men. I do not know how far in that respect I
might not encroach on those mysteries of Providence which, while I
adore, I may not comprehend; but it does seem to me to be very
remarkable, that we may go back to the time when New England, or those
who founded it, were _subtracted_ from