it is granted without a murmur
to the guest whom we receive to-night. It has been said by a Roman poet
that Nature, designing to distinguish the human race from the inferior
animals by that faculty of social progress which makes each combine with
each for the aid and defence of all, gave to men _mollissima
corda_,--hearts the most accessible to sympathy with their fellow kind;
and hence tears,--and permit me to add, and hence laughter,--became the
special and the noblest attributes of humanity. Therefore it is humanity
itself which obeys an irresistible instinct when it renders homage to
one who refines it by tears that never enfeeble, and by a laughter that
never degrades.

You know that we are about to intrust our honored countryman to the
hospitality of those kindred shores in which his writings are as much
"household words" as they are in the homes of England. And if I may
presume to speak as a politician, I should say that no time could be
more happily chosen for his visit; because our American kinsfolk have
conceived, rightly or wrongfully, that they have some cause of complaint
against ourselves, and out of all England we could not have selected an
envoy more calculated to allay irritation and to propitiate good-will.

In the matter of good-will there is a distinction between us English and
the Americans which may for a time operate to our disadvantage; for we
English insist upon claiming all Americans as belonging to our race, and
springing from the same ancestry as ourselves, and hence the idea of any
actual hostility between them and us shocks our sense of relationship;
and yet in reality a large and very active proportion of the American
people derives its origin from other races besides the Anglo-Saxon.
German and Dutch and Celtic forefathers combine to form the giant family
of the United States; but there is one cause forever at work to cement
all these varieties of origin, and to compel the American people, as a
whole, to be proud as we are of their affinity with the English race.
What is that cause? What is that agency? Is it not that of one language
in common between the two nations? It is in the same mother tongue that
their poets must sing, that their philosophers must reason, that their
orators must argue upon truth or contend for power.

I see before me a distinguished guest, distinguished for the manner in
which he has brought together all that is most modern in sentiment with
all that is most sch