conquerors, renowned only for the magnitude of their misdeeds, and the stupendous wrongs and miseries they have inflicted on mankind; warriors, who have hired themselves to the trade of blood, not from motives of virtuous patriotism, nor to protect the injured and defenceless, but merely to gain the vaunted glory of being adroit and successful in massacreing their fellow beings! What are the great events that constitute a glorious era? The fall of empires; the desolation of happy countries; splendid cities smoking in their ruins; the proudest works of art tumbled in the dust; the shrieks and groans of whole nations ascending unto heaven! How different the means, how different the results, in the case of WASHINGTON! Let a recent orator, an orator worthy his great theme, set forth in appropriate and adequate words what we would but could not hope to express: 'AMERICA has furnished Europe and the world with the character of WASHINGTON. And if our institutions had done nothing else, they would have deserved the respect of mankind. WASHINGTON--first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen--WASHINGTON is all our own. And the veneration and love entertained for him by the people of the United States are proof that they are worthy of such a countryman. I would cheerfully put the question to-day to the intelligent men of all Europe--I will say to the intelligent of the whole world--what character of the century stands out in the relief of history, must pure, most respectable, most sublime; and I doubt not that, by a suffrage approaching to unanimity, the answer would be WASHINGTON. That monument itself is not an unfit emblem of his character, by its uprightness, its solidity, its durability. His public virtues and public principles were as firm and fixed as the earth on which that structure rests; his personal motives as pure as the serene heavens in which its summit is lost. But, indeed, it is not an adequate emblem. Towering far above this column that our hands have built; beheld, not by the citizens of a single city or a single State, but by all the families of man; ascends the colossal grandeur of the character and life of WASHINGTON. In all its constituent parts; in all its acts; in all its toils: in its universal love and admiration, it is an American production. Born upon our soil; of parents born upon our soil; never having for a single day had a sight of the old world; reared amidst our gigantic scenery; instructed, according to the modes of the time, in the spare but wholesome elementary knowledge which the institutions of the country furnish for all the children of the people; brought up beneath and penetrated by the genial influence of American society; partaking our great destiny of labor; partaking and leading in that acmé of our glory, the War