evailed in Vermont, and Allen's
companions and comrades could be found in every village.
He was old enough to feel in his boyish soul something of
the thrill of our great naval victories, and of the victory at
New Orleans in our last war with England, and, perhaps, to
understand something of the significance of the treaty of
peace of 1815. He knew many of the fathers of the country
as we knew him. In his lifetime the country grew from seventeen
hundred thousand to thirty-six hundred thousand square miles,
from seventeen States to forty-five States, from four million
people to seventy-five million. To the America into which
he was born seventeen new Americas had been added before he
died.

A great and healthful and beneficent power departed from our
country's life. If he had not lived, the history of the country
would have been different in some very important particulars;
and it is not unlikely that his death changed the result in
some matters of great pith and moment, which are to affect
profoundly the history of the country in the future. The
longer I live, the more carefully I study the former times
or observe my own time, the more I am impressed with the sensitiveness
of every people, however great or however free, to an individual
touch, to the influence of a personal force. There is no
such thing as a blind fate; no such thing as an overwhelming
and pitiless destiny. The Providence that governs this world
leaves nations as He leaves men, to work out their own destiny,
their own fate, in freedom, as they obey or disobey His will.

Man is his own star; and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man
Commands all life, all influence, all fate;
Nothing to him falls early or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill;
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.

It is wonderful what things this man accomplished alone,
what things he helped others to accomplish, what things were
accomplished by the political organization of which he was
a leader, which he bore a very large part in accomplishing.

Mr. Morrill's public life was coincident with the advent
of the Republican Party to National power. His first important
vote in the House of Representatives helped to elect Mr. Banks
to the office of Speaker, the first National victory of a
party organized to prevent the extension of slavery. From
that moment, for nearly half a century, Vermont spoke through
him in our National Counci