And there is another good, perhaps larger than this, which we have won, a good which contains and justifies this moral, national independence: We have been baptized at last into the family of great nations, by that red baptism which, from the first, has been the required initiation into that august brotherhood. It seems to be the invariable law, of earthly life at least, that humanity can advance only by the road of suffering. It is so with individuals. There is no spiritual growth without pain. Prosperity alone never makes a grand character. Purple and fine linen never clothe the hero. There are powers and gifts in the soul of man that only come to life and action in some day of bitterness. There are wells in the heart, whose crystal waters lie in darkness till some earthquake shakes the man's nature to its centre, bursts the fountain open, and lets the cooling waters out to refresh a parched land. There are seeds of noblest fruits that lie latent in the soul, till some storm of sorrow shakes down tears to moisten, and some burning sun of scorching pain sends heat to warm them into a harvest of blessings. By trouble met and patiently mastered, by suffering endured and conquered, by trials tested and overcome, so only does a man's soul grow to manliness. Now a nation is made up of single men. The law holds for the mass as for the individuals. It took a thousand years of toil, and war, and suffering, to make the Europe that we have. It took a thousand years of wrestle for the very life itself, to build Rome before. To be sure, we inherited all that this past of agony had bought the world. For us Rome had lived, fought, toiled, and fallen. For us Celt, Saxon, Norman had wrought and striven. We started with the accumulated capital of a hundred generations. It was perhaps natural to suppose we might escape the hard necessity of our fathers. We might surely profit by their dear-bought experience. The wrecks, strewn along the shores, would be effectual warnings to our gallant vessel on the dangerous seas where they had sailed. In peace, plenty, and prosperity, we might be carried to the highest reach of national greatness.