s dust now reposes, and in the capital which bears his own
immortal name.

All experience evinces that human sentiments are strongly influenced by
association. The recurrence of anniversaries, or of longer periods of
time, naturally freshens the recollection, and deepens the impression,
of events with which they are historically connected. Renowned places,
also, have a power to awaken feeling, which all acknowledge. No American
can pass by the fields of Bunker Hill, Monmouth, and Camden, as if they
were ordinary spots on the earth's surface. Whoever visits them feels
the sentiment of love of country kindling anew, as if the spirit that
belonged to the transactions which have rendered these places
distinguished still hovered round, with power to move and excite all who
in future time may approach them.

_Washington's Great Moral Example to the Youth of America_

But neither of these sources of emotion equals the power with which
great moral examples affect the mind. When sublime virtues cease to be
abstractions, when they become embodied in human character, and
exemplified in human conduct, we should be false to our own nature if we
did not indulge in the spontaneous effusions of our gratitude and our
admiration. A true lover of the virtue of patriotism delights to
contemplate its purest models; and that love of country may be well
suspected which affects to soar so high into the regions of sentiment as
to be lost and absorbed in the abstract feeling, and becomes too
elevated or too refined to glow with fervor in the commendation or the
love of individual benefactors. All this is unnatural. It is as if one
should be so enthusiastic a lover of poetry as to care nothing for Homer
or Milton; so passionately attached to eloquence as to be indifferent to
Tully[21] and Chatham; or such a devotee to the art, in such an ecstasy
with the elements of beauty, proportion, and expression, as to regard
the masterpieces of Raphael and Michel Angelo with coldness or contempt.
We may be assured, Gentlemen, that he who really loves the thing itself,
loves its finest exhibitions. A true friend of his country loves her
friends and benefactors, and thinks it no degradation to commend and
commemorate them. The voluntary outpouring of the public feeling, made
to-day, from the north to the south, and from the east to the west,
proves this sentiment to be both just and natural. In the cities and in
the villages, in the public temples and in th