response to the toast proposed at the banquet, "The Orator of the
Day, eloquent in his tribute to the virtues of the Pilgrims;
faithful, in his life, to the lessons they taught."]

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--The Puritans were Protestants, but they
were not protestants against everybody and everything, right or wrong.
They did not protest indiscriminately against everything they found in
England. On the other hand, we have abundant indications in the works of
genius and art which they left behind them that they had a reverence for
all that is good and true; while they protested against everything that
was false and vicious. They had a reverence for the good taste and the
literature, science, eloquence, and poetry of England, and so I trust it
is with their successors in this once bleak and inhospitable, but now
rich and prosperous land. They could appreciate poetry, as well as good
sense and good taste, and so I call to your recollection the language of
a poet who had not loomed up at the time of the Puritans as he has
since. It was addressed to his steed, after an ill-starred journey to
Islingtontown. The poet said:--

"'Twas for your pleasure you came here,
You shall go back for mine."

Being a candid and frank man, as one ought to be who addresses the
descendants of the Puritans, I may say that it was not at all for your
pleasure that I came here. Though I may go back to gratify you, yet I
came here for my own purposes. The time has passed away when I could
make a distant journey from a mild climate to a cold though fair region,
without inconvenience; but there was one wish, I might almost say there
was only one wish of my heart that I was anxious should be gratified. I
had been favored with many occasions to see the seats of empire in this
western world, and had never omitted occasions to see where the seats of
empire were planted, and how they prospered. I had visited the capital
of my own and of many other American States. I had regarded with
admiration the capital of this great Republic, in whose destinies, in
common with you all, I feel an interest which can never die. I had seen
the capitals of the British Empire, and of many foreign empires, and had
endeavored to study for myself the principles which have prevailed in
the foundation of states and empires. With that view I had beheld a city
standing where a migration from the Netherlands planted an empire on the
bay of New York, at Manhattan, or