remains of his oratory, it is striking to
remark how, even in that most sober and massive understanding and
nature, you see gathered and expressed the characteristic sentiments and
the passing time of our America. It is the strong old oak which ascends
before you; yet our soil, our heaven, are attested in it as perfectly as
if it were a flower that could grow in no other climate and in no other
hour of the year or day. Let me instance in one thing only. It is a
peculiarity of some schools of eloquence that they embody and utter,
not merely the individual genius and character of the speaker, but a
national consciousness--a national era, a mood, a hope, a dread, a
despair--in which you listen to the spoken history of the time. There is
an eloquence of an expiring nation, such as seems to sadden the glorious
speech of Demosthenes; such as breathes grand and gloomy from visions of
the prophets of the last days of Israel and Judah; such as gave a spell
to the expression of Grattan and of Kossuth--the sweetest, most
mournful, most awful of the words which man may utter, or which man may
hear--the eloquence of a perishing nation.

There is another eloquence, in which the national consciousness of a
young or renewed and vast strength, of trust in a dazzling certain and
limitless future, an inward glorying in victories yet to be won, sounds
out as by voice of clarion, challenging to contest for the highest prize
of earth; such as that in which the leader of Israel in its first days
holds up to the new nation the Land of Promise; such as that which in
the well-imagined speeches scattered by Livy over the history of the
"majestic series of victories" speaks the Roman consciousness of growing
aggrandizement which should subject the world; such as that through
which, at the tribunes of her revolution, in the bulletins of her rising
soldiers, France told to the world her dream of glory.

And of this kind somewhat is ours--cheerful, hopeful, trusting, as
befits youth and spring; the eloquence of a state beginning to ascend to
the first class of power, eminence, and consideration, and conscious of
itself. It is to no purpose that they tell you it is in bad taste; that
it partakes of arrogance and vanity; that a true national good breeding
would not know, or seem to know, whether the nation is old or young;
whether the tides of being are in their flow or ebb; whether these
coursers of the sun are sinking slowly to rest, wearied with a j