ore
sensitive to discord. Honor to the men of genius who made two
hemispheres thrill to the same electric touch, who at the same time, and
with the same potent spell, are ruling the hearts of men in the
mountains of Scotland, the forests of Canada, the hillsides of New
England, the prairies of Illinois, and the burning plains of India.
Their influence, so far as it extends, is a peaceful and a humanizing
one. When you have instructed two men with the same wisdom, and charmed
them with the same wit, you have established between them a bond of
sympathy, however slight, and made it so much the more difficult to set
them at variance. When I remember the history of England, how much she
has done for law, liberty, virtue and religion--for all that beautifies
and dignifies life--when I realize how much that is most valuable and
characteristic in our own institutions is borrowed from her--when I
recall our obligations to her matchless literature, I feel a throb of
gratitude that "Chatham's language is my mother-tongue," and my heart
warms to the land of my fathers. I embrace with peculiar satisfaction
every consideration that tends to give us an unity of spirit in the bond
of peace--to make us blind to each other's faults, and kind to each
other's virtues. I feel all the force of the fine lines of one whom we
have the honor to receive as a guest this evening:--

"Though ages long have passed
Since our fathers left their home,
Their pilot in the blast,
O'er untravelled seas to roam,
Yet lives the blood of England in our veins.
And shall we not proclaim
That blood of honest fame,
Which no tyranny can tame
By its chains?

"While the manners, while the arts
That mould a nation's soul,
Still cling around our hearts,--
Between, let ocean roll,
Our joint communion breaking with the sun.
Yet still from either beach
The voice of blood shall reach,
More audible than speech--
We are one."

It is now more than sixty-seven years since the rapid growth of our
country was sketched by Mr. Burke, in the course of his speech on
conciliation with America, in a passage whose picturesque beauty has
made it one of the commonplaces of literature, in which he represents
the angel of Lord Bathurst drawing up the curtain of futurity,
unfolding the rising glories of England, and pointing out to him
America, a little speck scarce visible in the mass of the national
interest, yet which was d