ons and great examples;--to all these I
reply by pointing to Washington!

And now, friends and fellow-citizens, it is time to bring this discourse
to a close.

We have indulged in gratifying recollections of the past, in the
prosperity and pleasures of the present, and in high hopes for the
future. But let us remember that we have duties and obligations to
perform, corresponding to the blessings which we enjoy. Let us remember
the trust, the sacred trust, attaching to the rich inheritance which we
have received from our fathers. Let us feel our personal responsibility,
to the full extent of our power and influence, for the preservation of
the principles of civil and religious liberty. And let us remember that
it is only religion, and morals, and knowledge, that can make men
respectable and happy, under any form of government. Let us hold fast
the great truth, that communities are responsible, as well as
individuals; that no government is respectable, which is not just; that
without unspotted purity of public faith, without sacred public
principle, fidelity, and honor, no mere forms of government, no
machinery of laws, can give dignity to political society. In our day
and generation let us seek to raise and improve the moral sentiment, so
that we may look, not for a degraded, but for an elevated and improved
future. And when both we and our children shall have been consigned to
the house appointed for all living, may love of country and pride of
country glow with equal fervor among those to whom our names and our
blood shall have descended! And then, when honored and decrepit age
shall lean against the base of this monument, and troops of ingenuous
youth shall be gathered round it, and when the one shall speak to the
other of its objects, the purposes of its construction, and the great
and glorious events with which it is connected, there shall rise from
every youthful breast the ejaculation, "Thank God, I--I also--AM AN
AMERICAN!"

* * * * *

NOTE.

Page 139.

The following description of the Bunker Hill Monument and Square is from
Mr. Frothingham's History of the Siege of Boston, pp. 355, 356.

"Monument Square is four hundred and seventeen feet from north to
south, and four hundred feet from east to west, and contains nearly
six acres. It embraces the whole site of the redoubt, and a part of
the site of the breastwork. According to the most accurate plan of