illegible characters, to puzzle the future antiquary to decide whether they were of Scandinavian or of Carthaginian, of Runic or of Punic origin, and to prove only this distinctly-that their authors were not destined to be the settlers, or even the discoverers, in any true sense of that term, of the Country upon which they had thus prematurely stumbled-when I reflect upon the momentous changes in the institutions of society and in the instruments of human power, which were crowded within the period which was ultimately signalized by this discovery and this settlement-the press, by its magic enginery, breaking down every barrier and annihilating every monopoly in the paths of knowledge, and proclaiming all men equal in the arts of peace-gunpowder, by its tremendous properties, undermining the moated castles and rending asunder the plaited mail of the lordly Chieftains, and making all men equal on the field of battle-the Bible, rescued from its unknown tongues, its unauthorized interpretations and its unworthy perversions, opened at length in its original simplicity and purity to the world, and proving that all men were born equal in the eye of God-when I see learning reviving from its lethargy of centuries, religion reässerting its native majesty, and liberty -liberty itself-thus armed and thus attended, starting up anew to its long suspended career, and exclaiming, as it were, in the confidence of its new instruments and its new auxiliaries-' Give me now a place to stand upon-a place free from the interference of established power, a place free from

the embarrassment of ancient abuses, a place free from the paralyzing influence of a jealous and overbearing prerogative-give me but a place to stand upon and I will move the world'—I cannot consider it, I cannot call it, a mere fortunate coincidence, that then, at that very instant, the veil of waters was lifted up, that place revealed, and the world moved!

When I reflect, too, on the Nation under whose reluctant auspices this revelation was finally vouchsafed to the longing vision of the intrepid Admiral— how deeply it was already plunged in the grossest superstitions and sensualities, how darkly it was already shadowed by the impending horrors of its Dread Tribunal, and how soon it was to lose the transient lustre which might be reflected upon it from the virtues of an Isabella, or the genius of a Charles V., and to sink into a long and rayless night of ignorance and oppression-when I look back upon its sister kingdom of the Peninsula, also, which shared with it in reaping the teeming first fruits of the new found world, and find them matching each other not more nearly in the boldness of their maritime enterprise, than in the sternness of their religious bigotry and in the degradation of their approaching doom-and when I remember how both of these kingdoms, from any Colonies of whose planting there could have been so poor a hope of any early or permanent advancement to the cause of human freedom, were attracted and absorbed by the mineral and vegetable treasures of the tropical islands

and territories and by the gorgeous empires which spirits of congenial grossness and sensuality had already established there-while this precise portion of America, these noble harbors, these glorious hills, these exhaustless valleys and matchless lakes, presenting a combination of climate and of soil, of land course and water course, marked and quoted as it were, by Nature herself, for the abode of a great, united and prosperous Republic-the rockbound region of New England not excepted from the category, which, though it can boast of nothing nearer akin to gold or diamonds than the sparkling mica of its granite or the glittering crystals of its ice, was yet framed to produce a wealth richer than gold, and whose price is above rubies—the intelligent and virtuous industry of a free people—when I remember, I say, how this exact portion of the new world was held back for more than a century after its discovery, and reserved for the occupation and settlement of the only Nation under the sun able to furnish the founders of such a Republic and the progenitors of such a People-the very Nation in which the reforms and inventions of the day had wrought incomparably the most important results, and human improvement and human liberty made incalculably the largest advance-I cannot regard it, I cannot speak of it, as a mere lucky accident, that this Atlantic seaboard was settled by colonies of the Anglo-Saxon race!

And when, lastly, I reflect on the circumstances under which this settlement was in the end effected,

on that part of the coast, more especially, which exerted a paramount influence on the early destinies of the Continent, and gave the first unequivocal assurance that virtue and industry and freedom were here to find a refuge and here to found themselves an empire-when I behold a feeble company of exiles, quitting the strange land to which persecution had forced them to flee, entering with so many sighs and sobs and partings and prayers on a voyage so full of perils at the best, but rendered a hundred fold more perilous by the unusual severities of the season and the absolute unseaworthiness of their ship, arriving in the depth of winter on a coast to which even their pilot was a perfect stranger, and where 'they had no friends to welcome them, no inns to entertain them, no houses, much less towns, to repair unto for succor,' but where,-instead of friends, shelter or refreshment,-famine, exposure, the wolf, the savage, disease and death seemed waiting for them and yet accomplishing an end which Royalty and patronage, the love of dominion and of gold, individual adventure and corporate enterprise had so long essayed in vain, and founding a Colony which was to defy alike the machinations and the menaces of Tyranny, in all periods of its history-it needs not, it needs not, that I should find the coral pathway of the sea laid bare, and its waves a wall upon the right hand and the left, and the crazed chariot wheels of the oppressor floating in fragments upon its closing floods, to feel, to realize, that higher than

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human was the Power which presided over the Exodus of the Pilgrim Fathers!

Was it not something more than the ignorance or the self-will of an earthly and visible Pilot, which, instead of conducting them to the spot which they had deliberately selected-the very spot on which we are now assembled-the banks of your own beautiful Hudson, of which they had heard so much during their sojourn in Holland, but which were then swarming with a host of horrible savages— guided them to a coast, which though bleaker and far less hospitable in its outward aspect, had yet by an extraordinary epidemic, but a short time previous, been almost completely cleared of its barbarous tenants? Was it not something more, also, than mere mortal error or human mistake, which, instead of bringing them within the limits prescribed in the patent they had procured in England, directed them to a shore on which they were to land upon their own responsibility and under their own authority, and thus compelled them to an Act, which has rendered Cape Cod more memorable than Runnamede, and the Cabin of the Mayflower than the proudest Hall of ancient Charter or modern Constitution-the execution of the first written original Contract of Democratic Self-Government which is found in the annals of the World?

But the Pilgrims, I have said, had a power within them also. If God was not seen among them in the fire of a Horeb, or the earthquake of a Sinai, or the wind cleaving asunder the waves of the sea