y, except as it celebrates
real and not pretended joys; and I think it just, in this time of gloom
and commercial disaster, of affliction and beggary in these districts,
that on these very accounts I speak of, you should not fail to keep your
literary anniversary. I seem to hear you say that, for all that is come
and gone, yet we will not reduce by one chaplet or one oak-leaf the
braveries of our annual feast. For I must tell you, I was given to
understand in my childhood that the British island, from which my
forefathers came, was no lotus-garden, no paradise of serene sky and
roses and music and merriment all the year round, no, but a cold, foggy,
mournful country, where nothing grew well in the open air, but robust
men and virtuous women and these of a wonderful fiber and endurance;
that their best parts were slowly revealed; their virtues did not come
out until they quarrelled; they did not strike twelve the first time;
good lovers, good haters, and you could know little about them till you
had seen them long, and little good of them till you had seen them in
action; that in prosperity they were moody and dumpish, but in adversity
they were grand.

Is it not true, sir, that the wise ancients did not praise the ship
parting with flying colors from the port, but only that brave sailor
which came back with torn sheets and battered sides, stript of her
banners, but having ridden out the storm? And so, gentlemen, I feel in
regard to this aged England, with the possessions, honors and trophies,
and also with the infirmities of a thousand years gathering around her,
irretrievably committed as she now is to many old customs which can not
be suddenly changed; pressed upon by the transitions of trade, and new
and all incalculable modes, fabrics, arts, machines and competing
populations,--I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well remembering
that she has seen dark days before; indeed with a kind of instinct that
she sees a little better in a cloudy day, and that in storm of battle
and calamity, she has a secret vigor and a pulse like a cannon. I see
her in her old age, not decrepit, but young, and still daring to believe
in her power of endurance and expansion. Seeing this, I say, All hail!
mother of nations, mother of heroes, with strength still equal to the
time; still wise to entertain and swift to execute the policy which the
mind and heart of mankind require in the present hour, and thus only
hospitable to the foreigne