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 higher, purer, nobler. We consecrate our work to the spirit of national independence, and we wish that the light of peace may rest upon it forever. We rear a memorial of our conviction of that unmeasured benefit which has been conferred on our own land, and of the happy influences which have been produced by the same events on the general interests of mankind.

We come, as Americans, to mark a spot which must forever be dear to us and our posterity. We wish that whosoever, in all coming time, shall turn his eye hither, may behold that the place is not undistinguished, where the first great battle of the Revolution was fought. We wish that this structure may proclaim the magnitude and importance of that event to every class and every age. We wish that infancy may learn the purpose of its erection from maternal lips, and that weary and withered age may behold it, and be solaced by the recollections which it suggests. We wish that the laborer may look up here and be proud in the midst of his toil. We

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wish that, in those days of disaster which, as they come on all nations, must be expected to come on us also, desponding patriotism may turn its eyes hitherward, and be assured that the foundations of our national power still stand strong. We wish that this column rising towards heaven, among the pointed spires of so many temples dedicated to God, may contribute also to produce, in all minds, a pious feeling of dependence and gratitude. We wish, finally, that the last object to the sight of him who leaves his native shore, and the first to gladden him who revisits it, may be something which shall remind him of the liberty and glory of his country. Let it rise! Let it rise till it meet the sun in his coming! Let the earliest light of the morning gild it, and parting day linger and play on its summit!

DEDICATION OF BUNKER HILL MONUMENT.

DANIEL WEBSTER.

THE Bunker Hill Monument is finished. Here it stands! Fortunate in the high natural eminence on which it is placed, higher, infinitely higher in its objects and purposes, it rises over the land and over the sea, and, visible at their homes to thousands of the people of Massachusetts, it stands a memorial of the last, and a monitor to the present and to all succeeding generations.

It

I have spoken of the loftiness of its purpose. has a purpose, and that purpose gives it its character; that purpose enrobes it with dignity and moral grandeur. That well-known purpose it is which causes us to look up at it with a feeling of awe. is itself the orator of this occasion. It is not from

It

my lips, it could not be from any human lips, that that strain of eloquence is this day to flow most competent to move and excite you. The powerful speaker stands motionless before us. It is a plain shaft. It bears no inscriptions fronting to the rising sun, from which the future antiquary shall wipe the dust. Nor does the rising sun cause tones of music to issue from its summit. But, at the rising of the sun, and at the setting of the sun, in the blaze of noonday, or beneath the milder influence of lunar light, it looks, it speaks, it acts, to the full comprehension of every American mind, and the awakening of glowing enthusiasm in every American heart. Its silent but awful utterance; its deep pathos, as it brings to our contemplation the 17th of June, 1775, and the consequences which have resulted to us, to our country, and to the world, from the events of that day, and which we know must continue to rain influence on the destinies of mankind to the end of time; the elevation with which it raises us high above the ordinary feelings of life, surpass all that the study of the closet or even the inspiration of genius can produce. To-day it speaks to us. Its future auditors will be the successive generations of men, as they rise up before it, and gather round it. Its speech will be of patriotism and courage, of civil and religious liberty, of free government, of the moral improvement and elevation of mankind, and of the immortal memory of those who, with heroic devotion, have sacrificed their lives for their country.

Woe betide the man who brings to this day's worship feelings less than wholly American! Woe betide the man who can stand here with the fires of local resentments burning, or the purpose of fomenting local jealousies and the stripes of local interests festering and rankling in his heart! Union,

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established in justice, in patriotism, and the most plain and obvious interest; Union, founded on the same love of liberty, cemented by blood shed in the same common cause, Union has been the source of all our glory and greatness thus far, and is the ground of all our highest hopes. This column stands for Union.

PENN'S MONUMENT.

R. J. BURDETTE.

BORN in stormy times, William Penn walked amid troubled waters all his days. In an age of bitter persecution and unbridled wickedness, he never wronged his conscience. A favored member of a court where statesmanship was intrigue and trickery, where the highest morality was corruption, he never stained his hands with a bribe. Living under a government at war with the people, and educated in a school that taught the doctrine of passive obedience, his lifelong dream was of popular government, of a state where the people ruled.

In his early manhood, at the bidding of conscience, against the advice of his dearest friends, in opposition to stern paternal commands, against every dictate of worldly wisdom and human prudence, in spite of all the dazzling temptations of ambition so alluring to the heart of a young man, he turned away from the broad fair highway to wealth, position, and distinction, that the hands of a king opened before him, and, casting his lot with the sect weakest and most unpopular in England, through paths that were tangled with trouble, and lined with pitiless thorns of persecution, he walked into honor and fame, and the reverence of the world,

such as royalty could not promise, and could not give him.

In the land where he planted his model State, today, no descendant bears his name. In the religious society for which he suffered banishment from home, persecution, and the prison, to-day, no child of his blood and name walks in Christian fellowship, nor stands covered in worship. His name has faded out of the living meetings of the Friends, out of the land that crowns his memory with sincerest reverence. Even the uncertain stone that would mark his grave stands doubtingly among the kindred ashes that hallow the ground where he sleeps.

But his monument, grander than storied column of granite, or noble shapes of bronze, is set in the glittering brilliants of mighty States between the seas. His noblest epitaph is written in the State that bears his honored name. The little town he planned to be his capital has become a city, larger in area than any European capital he knew. Beyond his fondest dreams has grown the State he planted in the wilderness by "deeds of peace." Out of the gloomy mines, that slept in rayless mystery beneath its mountains while he lived, the measureless wealth of his model State sparkles and glows on millions of hearthstones. From its forests of derricks and miles of creeping pipe lines, the world is lighted from the State of Penn with a radiance to which the sons of the founder's sons were blind. Roaring blast and smoky forge and ringing hammer are tearing and breaking the wealth of princes from his mines, that the founder never knew.

Clasping the continent from sea to sea, stretches a chain of States as free as his own. From sunrise to sunset reaches a land where the will of the people is the supreme law, a land that never felt the