sanctuary of eternal right. The old beamed with the
red lustre of conquest, now darkened by the gloom of oppression; yours
is bright with freedom. The old absorbed the world into its own
centralized glory; yours protects your own nation from being absorbed,
even by itself. The old was awful with unrestricted power; yours is
glorious by having restricted it. At the view of the old, nations
trembled; at the view of yours, humanity hopes. To the old, misfortune
was introduced with fettered hands to kneel at triumphant conquerors'
feet; to yours the triumph of introduction is granted to unfortunate
exiles who are invited to the honour of a seat. And where Kings and
Caesars never will be hailed for their power and wealth, there the
persecuted chief of a downtrodden nation is welcomed as your great
Republic's guest, precisely because he is persecuted, helpless, and
poor. In the old, the terrible _voe victis!_ was the rule; in
yours, protection to the oppressed, malediction to ambitious oppressors,
and consolation to a vanquished just cause. And while from the old a
conquered world was ruled, you in yours provide for the common
federative interests of a territory larger than that old conquered
world. There sat men boasting that their will was sovereign of the
earth; here sit men whose glory is to acknowledge "the laws of nature
and of nature's God," and to do what their sovereign, the People, wills.

Sir, there is history in these contrasts. History of past ages and
history of future centuries may be often recorded in small facts. The
particulars to which the passion of living men clings, as if human
fingers could arrest the wheel of Destiny, these particulars die away;
it is the issue which makes history, and that issue is always coherent
with its causes. There is a necessity of consequences wherever the
necessity of position exists. Principles are the _alpha_: they must
finish with _omega_, and they will. Thus history may be often told
in a few words.

Before the heroic struggle of Greece had yet engaged your country's
sympathy for the fate of freedom, in Europe then so far distant and now
so near, Chateaubriand happened to be in Athens, and he heard from a
_minaret_ raised upon the Propylaeum's ruins a Turkish priest in
the Arabic language announcing the lapse of hours to the Christians of
Minerva's town. What immense history there was in the small fact of a
Turkish Imaum crying out, "Pray, pray! the hour is running fast,