I have said that I deemed it a great thing for a nation, in all the periods of its fortunes, to be able to look back to a race of founders, and a principle of institution, in which, it might seem to see the realized idea of true heroism. That felicity, that pride, that help, is ours. Our past--both its great eras, that of settlement, and that of independence--should announce, should compel, should spontaneously evolve as from a germ, a wise, moral, and glorious future. These heroic men and women should not look down on a dwindled posterity. It should seem to be almost of course, too easy to be glorious, that they who keep the graves, bear the name, and boast the blood, of men in whom the loftiest sense of duty blended itself with the fiercest spirit of liberty, should add to their freedom, justice: justice to all men, to all nations; justice, that venerable virtue, without which freedom, valor, and power, are but vulgar things. And yet is the past nothing, even our past, but as you, quickened by its examples, instructed by its experiences, warned by its voices, assisted by its accumulated instrumentality, shall reproduce it in the life of to-day. Its once busy existence, various sensations, fiery trials, dear-bought triumphs; its dynasty of heroes, all its pulses of joy and anguish, and hope and fear, and love and praise, are with the years beyond the flood. "The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures." Yet, gazing on these, long and intently, and often, we may pass into the likeness of the departed,--may emulate their labors, and partake of their immortality. * * * * * =_William H. Seward,[24] 1801-1872._= "Oration on Lafayette," July 16th, 1834. =_94._= HIS MILITARY SERVICES IN AMERICA.