nd need not perish, or be replaced; but
if once well done, will stand more strongly than the unbalanced
rocks--more prevalently than the crumbling hills. The art which is
associated with all civic pride and sacred principle; with which men
record their power--satisfy their enthusiasm--make sure their
defence--define and make dear their habitation. And in six thousand years
of building, what have we done? Of the greater part of all that skill and
strength, _no_ vestige is left, but fallen stones, that encumber the
fields and impede the streams. But, from this waste of disorder, and of
time, and of rage, what _is_ left to us? Constructive and progressive
creatures that we are, with ruling brains, and forming hands, capable of
fellowship, and thirsting for fame, can we not contend, in comfort, with
the insects of the forest, or, in achievement, with the worm of the sea?
The white surf rages in vain against the ramparts built by poor atoms of
scarcely nascent life; but only ridges of formless ruin mark the places
where once dwelt our noblest multitudes. The ant and the moth have cells
for each of their young, but our little ones lie in festering heaps, in
homes that consume them like graves; and night by night, from the corners
of our streets, rises up the cry of the homeless: "I was a stranger, and
ye took me not in."

Must it be always thus? Is our life forever to be without profit--without
possession? Shall the strength of its generations be as barren as death;
or cast away their labor, as the wild fig tree casts her untimely figs? Is
it all a dream then--the desire of the eyes and the pride of life--or, if
it be, might we not live in nobler dream than this? The poets and
prophets, the wise men, and the scribes, though they have told us nothing
about a life to come, have told us much about the life that is now. They
have had--they also--their dreams, and we have laughed at them. They have
dreamed of mercy, and of justice; they have dreamed of peace and
good-will; they have dreamed of labor undisappointed, and of rest
undisturbed; they have dreamed of fulness in harvest, and overflowing in
store; they have dreamed of wisdom in council, and of providence in law;
of gladness of parents, and strength of children, and glory of gray hairs.
And at these visions of theirs we have mocked, and held them for idle and
vain, unreal and unaccomplishable. What have we accomplished with our
realities? Is this what has come of our worldly