The American Union SpeakerPhilbrick, John D. (John Dudley)
General
The American Union Speaker
Philbrick, John D. (John Dudley)
Recitations
He sat down. There was a deathlike stillness throughout the room for some
moments; every one seemed to be slowly recovering himself and coming
gradually back to his ordinary range of thought and feeling.
C. A. Goodrich.
IX.
THE FOUNDERS OF BOSTON.
On this occasion, it is proper to speak of the founders of Our city, and of
their glory. Now in its true acceptation, the term glory expresses the
splendor which emanates from virtue, in the act of producing general and
permanent good. Right conceptions, then, of the glory of our ancestors, are
to be obtained only by analyzing their virtues. These virtues, indeed, are
not seen charactered in breathing bronze, or in living marble. Our
ancestors have left no Corinthian temples on our hills, no Gothic
cathedrals on our plains, no proud pyramid, no storied obelisk, in our
cities. But mind is there. Sagacious enterprise is there. An active,
vigorous, intelligent, moral population throng our cities, and predominate
in our fields;--men, patient of labor, submissive to law, respectful to
authority, regardful of right, faithful to liberty. These are the monuments
of our ancestors. They stand immutable and immortal, in the social, moral,
and intellectual condition of their descendants. They exist in the spirit
which their precepts instilled, and their example implanted.
It was to this spot, during twelve successive years, that the real body of
those just settlers emigrated. In this place, they either fixed permanently
their abode, or took their departure from it, for the coast or the
interior. Whatever honor devolves on this metropolis, from the events
connected with its first settlement, is not solitary or exclusive; it is
shared with Massachusetts; with New England; in some sense, with the whole
United States. For what part of this wide empire, be it sea or shore, lake
or river, mountain or valley, have the descendants of the first settlers of
New England not traversed; what depth of forest not penetrated? what danger
of nature or man not defied? Where is the cultivated field, in redeeming
which from the wilderness, their vigor has not been displayed? Where, amid
unsubdued nature, by the side of the first log-hut of the settler, does the
school-house stand, and the church-spire rise, unless the sons of New
England are there? Where does improvement advance, under the active energy
of willing hearts and ready hands, prostrating the moss-covered monarch of
the wood, and from their ashes, amid their charred roots, bidding the green
sward and the waving harvest to unspring, and the spirit of the fathers of
New England is not seen, hovering and shedding around the benign influences
of sound, social, moral, and religious institutions, stronger and more
enduring than knotted oak or tempered steel? The swelling tide of their
descendants has spread upon our coasts, ascended our rivers, taken
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