"A Hungarian poet, on a visit to England, enjoyed the intimacy of Hakluyt, and, through him introduced to the society of such men as Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Philip Sidney, was initiated into the hopes and projects of the nobler England of the day. He has celebrated these in a poem addressed to Sir Humphrey Gilbert. The return of the Golden Age promised in ancient prophecy is, he believes, impossible in Europe, sunk below the iron one. He sees it, in vision, revive upon the soil of the New World, under the auspices of men who, true colonizers, renounce home and country, and dare the vast, vague dangers of sea and wilderness, not for gain or for glory, but 'for the peace and welfare of mankind.' "'Oh, were it mine to join the chosen band, Predestined planters of the promised land, My happy part for after-time to trace The earliest annals of a new-born race! There Earth, with Man at amity once more, To willing toil shall yield her willing store. There Law with Equity shall know no strife; Justice and Mercy no divided life. Not there to birth shall merit bend; not there Riches o'ermaster freedom. Tyrant care Shall lay no burden on man's opening years, Nor bow his whitening head with timeless fears; But--every season in its order blest-- Youth shall enjoy its hope, and age its rest!' "Our poet was in earnest. He did not write the annals of the country that his hero did not found; but he shared his grave under the waves of the Atlantic. Their hope outlived them. Visions like theirs are not for you and me, Westlake. They are for young men,--for the men who never grow old. We may admit that such have their place in the world. Man must strive for something greatly beyond what he can attain, to effect anything. He cannot strive for what he has not faith in. Those men who live in aspirations that transcend this sphere believe that all human hearts can be tuned to the same pitch with theirs. We know better, but let us not for that contemn their efforts. I am no visionary. I have no inward evidence of things not seen; but I am capable of believing what is proved. I believe in work,--that none is lost, but that, whether for good or ill, every exertion of power and patience tells. I believe in race, and I believe in progress for a race with which belief in progress is a tradition, and which inherits, besides, the strength, the courage, and the persistence which make faith prophetic. "Your institutions, Westlake, are to yield the ground to other forms. They are contrary to the inborn principles of the race that leads on this continent. We at the North, who tolerate them, tolerate them because we know they are ephemeral. It is a consciousness of their transitoriness that enables you yourselves to put up with them."