If we would be truly a State, we must have "_the Fathers_," and the revered "olden time." It is in some such veneration for a common glorious ancestry that a political organization finds its deepest root. Instead of being absurd, it is the most rational, as well as the most conservative of all feelings in which we can indulge. The more we are under its influence, the higher do we rise in the scale of being above the mere animal state, and that individualism which is its chief characteristic. It is a "good and holy thought" thus to regard the dead as still present with us, and past generations as still having an interest in our history--still justly claiming some voice in the administration of that _inheritance_ they have transmitted to us, and in respect to which our influence over the ages to come will be in proportion to our reverential remembrance of those that have preceded. Such a feeling is the opposite of that banefully radical and disorganizing view which regards the state as a mere aggregation of individual local fragments in space, and a succession of separately-flowing drops in time--which looks upon the present majority of the present generation as representing the whole national existence, and which is, of course, not only inconsistent with any true historical life, but with any thing which is really entitled to the name of fundamental or constitutional law. It is the opposite, both in its nature and its effects, of that contemptible cant now so common in both political parties, and which is ever talking of "Young America" as some new development, unconnected with any thing that has ever gone before it. The heroic men of our revolution, they were "Young America;" the gambling managers of modern political caucuses, to whatever party they may belong, or whatever may be their age or standing, are the real and veritable "old fogies." We can not attach too much importance to this idea of _inheritance_, so deeply grounded in the human mind. The _Sancti Patres_ are indispensable to a true historical nationality. Hence the classical name for country--_Patria a patribus_--_The Father-land_. We love it, not simply for its present enjoyments and present associations, but for its past recollections-- Land of the Pilgrims' pride, Land where our fathers died. Without some such thought of transmitted interest continually carrying the past into the present, and both into the future, patriotism is but the cant of the demagogue. Our country is our country, not only in space, but in time--not only territorially, but historically; and it is in this latter aspect it must ever present its most intense and vital interest. Where such an interest is excluded, or unappreciated, there is nothing elevated, nothing heroic, to which the name of patriotism can be given. There is nothing but the most momentary selfishness which can bind our affections to one spot on earth more than to any other.