The parallelisms too of history are very instructive. In the confusions and difficulties of our own time it is useful for us to learn that men in other times have had similar problems to solve, and have found their solutions. It is helpful for us to know that our pure and blameless Washington was, in his day, the subject of malignant slander and mischievous cabal. Our own best public men are liable to the grossest misinterpretations of their utterances and of their measures. Unworthy demagogues to-day will present very dangerous evils in a light attractive to the multitude. This has always been so. No man marches to victory over a bed of roses. The roses crown his perseverances, but the thorns lacerate his bleeding feet. But, with these sad recollections, we must keep in sight the immortal hope sung by the poets, reasoned out by the philosophers, and acted out by earth’s saints and heroes, the hope which is justified by the great progress of the ages, the elevation of the natural man into the dignity of the spiritual man. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who saw one of the great Italian festivals in which the poet Dante was especially commemorated, saw also the pressing need of wise counsel and brave action throughout the struggling country, and asks what will become of the new Italy if her young men shall “stand still strewing violets all the time?” We may ask too what will become of our new Republic if the hours of its highest festival continue to be occupied with fustian oratory, gunpowder enthusiasm, and the exercise of every poor and mean trade, the sale of toys, bad food, and worse liquor? Now, I would by no means abridge the childish pleasure of the day, if I could do so. We must allow children the explosion of animal spirits, and they will delight, as some grown-up people will, in much that is irrational. But the day itself is too important to be made one of mere noise and parade. It should be made highly valuable for impressing upon the minds of the young the history of their national liberty, and its cause. Besides our own young people, we have with us the youth of many nations, whose parents have come to our shores, drawn by various hopes of gain and benefit. These children will form an important part of our future body politic, in whose government to-day, their parents are, too, easily able to participate.