Stephens, Nehemiah Porter, and James
Harvey, who bore arms for their country either at Concord and Lexington,
on the 19th of April, or on Bunker Hill, all now far advanced in age,
have come here to-day, to look once more on the field where their valor
was proved, and to receive a hearty outpouring of our respect.

They have long outlived the troubles and dangers of the Revolution; they
have outlived the evils arising from the want of a united and efficient
government; they have outlived the menace of imminent dangers to the
public liberty; they have outlived nearly all their contemporaries;--but
they have not outlived, they cannot outlive, the affectionate gratitude
of their country. Heaven has not allotted to this generation an
opportunity of rendering high services, and manifesting strong personal
devotion, such as they rendered and manifested, and in such a cause as
that which roused the patriotic fires of their youthful breasts, and
nerved the strength of their arms. But we may praise what we cannot
equal, and celebrate actions which we were not born to perform.
_Pulchrum est benefacere reipublica, etiam bene dicere haud absurdum
est._

The Bunker Hill Monument is finished. Here it stands. Fortunate in the
high natural eminence on which it is placed, higher, infinitely higher
in its objects and purpose, it rises over the land and over the sea;
and, visible, at their homes, to three hundred thousand of the people of
Massachusetts, it stands a memorial of the last, and a monitor to the
present, and to all succeeding generations. I have spoken of the
loftiness of its purpose. If it had been without any other design than
the creation of a work of art, the granite of which it is composed would
have slept in its native bed. It has a purpose, and that purpose gives
it its character. That purpose enrobes it with dignity and moral
grandeur. That well-known purpose it is which causes us to look up to it
with a feeling of awe. It is itself the orator of this occasion. It is
not from my lips, it could not be from any human lips, that that strain
of eloquence is this day to flow most competent to move and excite the
vast multitudes around me. The powerful speaker stands motionless before
us. It is a plain shaft. It bears no inscriptions, fronting to the
rising sun, from which the future antiquary shall wipe the dust. Nor
does the rising sun cause tones of music to issue from its summit. But
at the rising of the sun, and at the