In 1825, Mr. Webster was called to interpret the feelings of New-England, on another great festival and anniversary. Fifty years from the day, when the grave drama of the American Revolution was opened with such picturesque solemnity, as a magnificent show on Bunker's Hill, witnessed by the whole neighbouring city and country, clustering by thousands on their steeples, the roofs of their houses, and the hill-tops, and waiting with unspeakable anxiety the results of the scene that was passing before their eyes,--fifty years from that day, it was determined to lay, with no less solemnity, the corner stone of a monument worthy to commemorate its importance. An immense multitude was assembled. They stood on that consecrated spot, with only the heavens over their heads, and beneath their feet the bones of their fathers; amidst the visible remains of the very redoubt thrown up by Prescott, and defended by him to the very last desperate extremity;[8] and with the names of Warren, Putnam, Stark, and Brooks, and the other leaders or victims of that great day frequent and familiar on their lips. In the midst of such a scene and with such recollections, starting like the spirits of the dead from the very sods of that hill-side, it may well be imagined, that words like the following, addressed to a vast audience,--composed in no small degree of the survivors of the battle, their children, and their grandchildren,--produced an effect, which only the hand of death can efface. "We know, indeed, that the record of illustrious actions is most safely deposited in the universal remembrance of mankind. We know, that if we could cause this structure to ascend, not only till it reached the skies, but till it pierced them, its broad surfaces could still contain but part of that, which, in an age of knowledge, hath already been spread over the earth, and which history charges itself with making known to all future times. We know, that no inscription on entablatures less broad than the earth itself, can carry information of the events we commemorate, where it has not already gone; and that no structure, which shall not outlive the duration of letters and knowledge among men, can prolong the memorial. But our object is, by this edifice, to show our own deep sense of the value and importance of the achievements of our ancestors; and, by presenting this work of gratitude to the eye, to keep alive similar sentiments, and to foster a constant regard for the principles of the Revolution. Human beings are composed not of reason only, but of imagination also, and sentiment; and that is neither wasted nor misapplied which is appropriated to the purpose of giving right direction to sentiments, and opening proper springs of feeling in the heart. Let it not be supposed that our object is to perpetuate national hostility, or even to cherish a mere military spirit. It is