the name of its origin, when her
own sustaining arm should be enfeebled or withdrawn. It was not given to
Rome to see, either at her zenith or in her decline, a child of her own,
distant, indeed, and independent of her control, yet speaking her
language and inheriting her blood, springing forward to a competition
with her own power, and a comparison with her own great renown. She saw
not a vast region of the earth peopled from her stock, full of states
and political communities, improving upon the models of her
institutions, and breathing in fuller measure the spirit which she had
breathed in the best periods of her existence; enjoying and extending
her arts and her literature; rising rapidly from political childhood to
manly strength and independence; her offspring, yet now her equal;
unconnected with the causes which might affect the duration of her own
power and greatness; of common origin, but not linked to a common fate;
giving ample pledge, that her name should not be forgotten, that her
language should not cease to be used among men; that whatsoever she had
done for human knowledge and human happiness should be treasured up and
preserved; that the record of her existence and her achievements should
not be obscured, although, in the inscrutable purposes of Providence, it
might be her destiny to fall from opulence and splendor; although the
time might come, when darkness should settle on all her hills; when
foreign or domestic violence should overturn her altars and her temples;
when ignorance and despotism should fill the places where Laws, and
Arts, and Liberty had flourished; when the feet of barbarism should
trample on the tombs of her consuls, and the walls of her senate-house
and forum echo only to the voice of savage triumph. She saw not this
glorious vision, to inspire and fortify her against the possible decay
or downfall of her power. Happy are they who in our day may behold it,
if they shall contemplate it with the sentiments which it ought to
inspire!

The New England Colonies differ quite as widely from the Asiatic
establishments of the modern European nations, as from the models of the
ancient states. The sole object of those establishments was originally
trade; although we have seen, in one of them, the anomaly of a mere
trading company attaining a political character, disbursing revenues,
and maintaining armies and fortresses, until it has extended its control
over seventy millions of people. Differ