Gentlemen,--It has been often my lot to stand upon classical ground, where the whispering breeze is fraught with wonderful tales of devoted virtue, bright glory, and heroic deeds. And I have sat upon ruins of ancient greatness, blackened by the age of centuries; and I have seen the living ruins of those ancient times, called men, roaming about the sacred ground, unconscious that the dust which clung to their boots, was the relic of departed demigods--and I rose with a deep sigh. Those demigods were but men, and the degenerate shapes that roamed around me, on the hallowed ground, were also not less than men. The decline and fall of nations impresses the mark of degradation on nature itself. It is sad to think upon--it lops the soaring wings of the mind, and chills the fiery arms of energy. But, however dark be the impression of such ruins of vanished greatness upon the mind of men who themselves have experienced the fragility of human fate, thanks to God, there are bright spots yet on earth, where the recollections of the past, brightened by present prosperity, strengthen the faith in the future of mankind's destiny. Such a spot is this. Gentlemen, should the reverence which this spot commands allow a smile, I might feel inclined to smile at the eager controversy whether it was at Lexington or Concord that the fire of the British was first returned by Americans. Let it be this way or that way,--it will neither increase nor abate the merit of the martyrs who fell here. It is with their blood that the preface of your nation's history is written. Their death was, and always will be, the first bloody revelation of America's destiny; and Lexington, the opening scene of a revolution, of which Governor Boutwell was right to say, that it is destined to change the character of human governments, and the condition of the human race. Should the Republic of America ever lose the consciousness of this destiny, that moment would be just so surely the beginning of America's decline, as the 19th of April, 1775, was the beginning of the Republic of America. Prosperity is not always, gentlemen, a guarantee of the future, if it be not accompanied with a constant resolution to obey the call of the genius of the time. Nay, material prosperity is often the mark of real decline, when it either results in, or is connected with, a moral stagnation in the devoted attachment to principles. Rome was never richer, never mightier, than under Trajan, and still it had already the sting of death in its very heart. To me, whenever I stand upon such sacred ground as this, the spirits of the departed appear like the prophets of future events. The language they speak to my heart is the revelation of Providence.