Page images
PDF
EPUB

"Religion," said he to the Supreme Court of Massachusetts in his eulogy on Mason-"religion is a necessary and indispensable element in any great human character. There is no living without it. Religion is the tie that connects man with his Maker and holds him to his throne. If that tie be sundered, all broken, he floats away, a worthless atom in the universe, its proper attractions all gone, its destiny thwarted, and its whole future nothing but darkness, desolation, and death." In answer to the blunt question of John Colby, "Are you a Christian?" he replied, "I hope that I am a Christian; I profess to be a Christian. But while I say that, I wish to add - and I say it with shame and confusion of face that I am not such a Christian as I wish to be." Almost the last words of the last night of his life were words of prayer. His tomb bears the inscription, prepared by himself, beginning: "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief."

This was the man whom we commemorate to-day. The living recollection of his majestic presence will soon have passed away; but, so long as English literature shall last, the work that he did will stand embalmed in the works that he left. Time is vindicating his contemporary fame. And when the distant historian shall pass in review the illustrious men of the nation between Washington and Lincoln, what figure among them all will loom up so clear and grand upon the vision of posterity? He was one whom the presidency of these United States could hardly have honored, but who could have honored the presidency.

It is as well that he did not. No title is so great as the name DANIEL WEBSTER.

Fellow Citizens: Mr. Webster was preeminently a New Hampshire man. Born upon its soil, and for the first four and thirty years a constant resident of its territory, he was molded by its influences; and even its physical features seemed stamped upon his soul. The dark, unbroken sweep of its primeval forests well symbolized the vast resources of his capacious intellect; its marvelously varied surface of grove and meadow, hill and dale, was a fit emblem of the many-sidedness of his ways; its June verdure is not brighter than the freshness of his whole nature to the last; its bubbling springs and trickling rills are not more playful than the genial humor of his private life, nor its still lakes more profound than the depth of his affections; its granite cliffs reappear in the massive solidity of his character; its mountain heights in the towering ascendency of his powers; while its rushing rivers, swollen by the melting snows of spring, alone can represent the tide of his eloquence.

"The boundless prairies learned his name,

His words the mountain echoes knew;
The northern breezes swept his fame
From icy lake to warm bayou.

In toil he lived; in peace he died;

When life's full cycle was complete,
Put off his robes of power and pride,

And laid them at his Master's feet.

His rest is by the storm-swept waves
Whom life's wild tempests roughly tried,
Whose heart was like the streaming caves
Of ocean throbbing at his side."

Here let it stand through

Here stands his statue. the generations to come, in this center and heart of the Commonwealth, by the Main Street of her capital and the door of her State House. The quiet flow of daily life, the bustle of business, and the public parade shall pass before him in silent review. The stranger shall pause and gaze on that imperial brow. Children shall here ask and be told his name and fame. The men of New Hampshire shall point with pride to the greatest of their fellow citizens. Legislators and officers of state, as they pass to their work, shall be greeted by the sight of one who wove so strong the bonds of the Union and the Constitution and guarded so well the priceless blessings they enfold. And as long as her fountains shall gush, her lakes shall gleam, her rivers run, and her mountains rise, shall the memory of Webster be fresh in his native state.

THE BATTLE OF BENNINGTON.

AN ORATION AT THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE
BATTLE OF BENNINGTON, AUGUST 16, 1877.

ROM the top of Mount Anthony the eye looks

FROM

out on a panorama of singular extent and beauty. Westward the Adirondacks, dim with the distance of a hundred miles or more, the Helderbergs and the Catskills; southward Greylock, Saddle and Bald; the long Green Mountain wall on the east; and the Killington Peak sixty miles away to the north, outline a vast amphitheater of hill and vale, of fertile fields and graceful forests, dotted with thrifty villages and happy homes. The steam puffs up in sight from half a dozen railway lines, and there are glimpses of the Hoosack and Walloomsac, bordered with manufactories. Nestled invisibly away are churches and schools and banks and printing presses, here a mine and there a college. the day declines, silver streamlets come glinting forth with reflected sunbeams from the broad expanse of rich farming lands, a near fountain spreads its lofty spray upon the air, and at length there settles down over the whole landscape that mellow and dreamy hue which makes it seem of some other world. But this is no dreamland vision. These things all lie on the soil of three sovereign states, and they are the substantial tokens of industry, culture, peace, and prosperity, the ripest fruits of republican liberty.

As

On a bright morning, one hundred years ago to-day, a German officer, on an eminence five miles from here, looked forth admiringly on a part of this same landscape, then “rife," he said, “with pastoral beauty" – "a wide sweep of stately forests interrupted at remote intervals by green meadows and fertile cornfields, with here and there a cottage, a shed, or other primitive edifice," and Bennington was "a cluster of poor cottages in a wild country." Around him was a well-appointed military band glittering with arms, some of them in brass helmets, some in red coats, some in citizens' garb; and dusky forms in war paint hung upon the outskirts. Two miles this side of him, hidden from his sight, lay another band, ill-armed and miscellaneously clad, largely in cloth of tow or linen dyed with butternut or maple, and too deeply absorbed in their daybreak preparations to spend one thought upon the glory of the earth or sky. Between these two bodies of troops, and in good. measure on that day's struggle, hung pending the question whether the pastoral beauty of that time should unfold into all the civic freedom and blessing of this.

The natural theme of our thoughts, therefore, is

THE PLACE OF THE BATTLE OF BENNINGTON IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY.

The early days of August, 1777, were a culminating time of gloom and alarm. For more than a twelvemonth the tide of our prospects had steadily ebbed until the shoals and reefs were plainly in sight. In the

« PreviousContinue »