our institutions thus far, I
mean the powerful influence which the interesting scenes of the
Revolution had upon the _passions_ of the people as distinguished from
their judgment. By this influence, the jealousy, envy, and avarice
incident to our nature, and so common to a state of peace, prosperity,
and conscious strength, were for the time in a great measure smothered
and rendered inactive, while the deep-rooted principles of _hate_, and
the powerful motive of _revenge_, instead of being turned against each
other, were directed exclusively against the British nation. And thus,
from the force of circumstances, the basest principles of our nature
were either made to lie dormant, or to become the active agents in the
advancement of the noblest of causes--that of establishing and
maintaining civil and religious liberty.

But this state of feeling _must fade, is fading, has faded_, with the
circumstances that produced it.

I do not mean to say that the scenes of the Revolution _are now_ or
_ever will be_ entirely forgotten, but that, like everything else, they
must fade upon the memory of the world, and grow more and more dim by
the lapse of time. In history, we hope, they will be read of, and
recounted, so long as the Bible shall be read; but even granting that
they will, their influence _cannot_ be what it heretofore has been.
Even then they _cannot_ be so universally known nor so vividly felt as
they were by the generation just gone to rest. At the close of that
struggle, nearly every adult male had been a participator in some of
its scenes. The consequence was that of those scenes, in the form of a
husband, a father, a son, or a brother, a _living history_ was to be
found in every family--a history bearing the indubitable testimonies of
its own authenticity, in the limbs mangled, in the scars of wounds
received, in the midst of the very scenes related--a history, too, that
could be read and understood alike by all, the wise and the ignorant,
the learned and the unlearned.--But _those_ histories are gone. They
can be read no more forever. They _were_ a fortress of strength; but
what invading foeman could _never do_, the silent artillery of time
_has done_--the levelling of its walls. They are gone. They _were_ a
forest of giant oaks; but the all-restless hurricane has swept over
them, and left only here and there a lonely trunk, despoiled of its
verdure, shorn of its foliage, unshading and unshaded, to murmur