the boundaries of the Imperial Homestead, she beholds her Power bestriding the World like a Colossus, a foot on either Hemisphere-in one, military posts and colonial possessions hailing her accession and acknowledging her sway, which were without even a name or local habitation in the history of the World as Raleigh wrote it-and in the other, a Company of Adventurers which Elizabeth chartered a few years before her death, to try the experiment of a trade with the East Indies by the newly discovered passage round the Cape of Good Hope, converted from a petty Mercantile Corporation into a vast Military Empire, and holding in her name and expending in her service territorial dominions and revenues equal to those of the most powerful Independent Monarchies.

But where is Virginia? Where is the ancient dominion' upon which her great Exemplar inscribed the substance of that 'maiden meditation' which even now, mayhap, is mingled with the weightier cares of majesty in her own breast? Have all attempts to plant and colonize it proved still unsuccessful? Is it still unreclaimed from original barbarism,-still only the abode of wolves and wild men? And why is it not found on the map of the British possessions-why not comprised in the catalogue of Her Majesty's Colonies? Two centuries and a third ago only, when Elizabeth quitted the throne, it was there, unsettled indeed and with not a civilized soul upon its soil, but opening its boundless territories to the adventure

and enterprise of the British People, and destined to all human appearances to be one day counted among the brightest jewels in the crowns of the British Princes. Why is it not now seen sparkling in that which encircles her brow?

If we might imagine the youthful Victoria, led along by the train of reflections which we have thus suggested, and snatching a moment from the anxious contemplation of Colonies which she is in immediate danger of losing, to search after those which have been lost to her already,—if we might imagine her turning back the page of History to the period of the first Stuart, to discover what became of the Virginia of Elizabeth after her death, how it was finally planted, and how it passed from beneath the sceptre of her successors,-if we might be indulged in a far less natural imagination, and fancy ourselves admitted at this moment to the Royal presence, and, with something more even than the ordinary boldness of Yankee curiosity, peering over the Royal shoulder, as, impatient at the remembrance of losses sustained and still more so at the prospect of like losses impending, she hurries over the leaves on which the fortunes of that Virginia are recorded, and the fortunes of all other Virginias foreshadowed,-what a scene should we find unfolding itself to her view!

She sees, at a glance, a permanent settlement effected there, and James the First, more fortunate than his mother's murderer, inscribing a name not on a mere empty Territory only, but on an or

ganized and inhabited Town.

A page onward, she perceives a second and entirely separate settlement accomplished in a widely distant quarter of the Continent, and the cherished title of NEW ENGLAND is now presented to her view. Around these two original footholds of civilization, she sees a hardy, enterprising and chivalrous people rapidly clustering, while other settlements are simultaneously established along the territory which divides. them. Thousands of miles of coast, with their parallel ranges of interior Country, are soon seen thickly studded over with populous and flourishing plantations. The population of them all, which had run up from 0 to 300,000 by the close of the 17th century, is found advanced to more than two millions by the close of the 18th. And another page displays to her kindling gaze thirteen as noble Colonies as the Sun ever shone upon, with nearly three millions of inhabitants, all acknowledging their allegiance to the British Crown, all contributing their unmatched energies to the support and extension of the British Commerce, and all claiming, as their most valued birthright, the liberties and immunities of the British Constitution. Ah! did the volume but end there! But she perceives, as she proceeds, that in a rash hour those liberties and immunities were denied them. Resistance, War, Independence, in letters of blood now start up bewilderingly to her sight. And where the Virginia of Elizabeth was, two centuries and a third ago, a waste and howling wilderness upon

which civilized man was as yet unable to maintain himself a moment-she next beholds an Independent and United Nation of sixteen millions of Freemen, with a Commerce second only to her own, and with a Country, a Constitution, an entire condition of men and things, which from all previous experience in the growth of Nations, ought to have been the fruit of at least a thousand years, and would have been regarded as the thrifty produce of a Millennium well employed!

Gentlemen of the New England Society and Fellow Citizens of New York, of this wonderful rise and progress of our Country, from the merely nominal and embryo existence which it had acquired at the dawn of the 17th Century, to the mature growth, the substantial prosperity, the independent greatness and National grandeur in which it is now beheld, we this day commemorate a main, original spring. The 22d of December, 1620, was not the mere birthday of a Town or a Colony. Had it depended for its distinction upon events like these, it would have long ago ceased to be memorable. The Town which it saw planted, is indeed still in existence, standing on the very site which the Pilgrims selected, and containing within its limits an honest, industrious and virtuous people, not unworthy of the precious scenes and hallowed associations to whose enjoyment they have succeeded. But possessing, as it did originally, no peculiar advantages either of soil, locality or climate,

and outstripped, as it naturally has been, in wealth, size, population and importance, by thousands of other Towns all over the Continent, it would scarcely suffice to perpetuate beyond its own immediate precincts, the observance, or even the remembrance of a day, of whose doings it constituted the only monument; while the Colony of whose establishment that day was also the commencement, has long since ceased to enjoy any separate political existence. As if to rescue its Founders from the undeserved fortune of being only associated in the memory of posterity with the settlers of individual States, and to insure for them a name and a praise in all quarters of the Country, the Colony of New Plymouth never reached the dignity of Independent Sovereignty to which almost all its sister Colonies were destined, and is now known only as the fraction of a County of a Commonwealth which was founded by other hands.

Yes, the event which occurred two hundred and nineteen years ago yesterday, was of wider import than the confines of New Plymouth. The area of New England, greater than that of Old England, has yet proved far too contracted to comprehend all its influences. They have been coëxtensive with our country. They have pervaded our Continent. They have passed the Isthmus. They have climbed the farthest Andes. They have crossed the Ocean. The seeds of the Mayflower, wafted by the winds of Heaven, or borne in the Eagle's beak, have been