received, in the midst of the very scenes related--a history, too, that
could be read and understood alike by all, the wise and the ignorant,
the learned and the unlearned.--But _those_ histories are gone. They
can be read no more forever. They _were_ a fortress of strength; but
what invading foeman could _never do_, the silent artillery of time
_has done_--the levelling of its walls. They are gone. They _were_ a
forest of giant oaks; but the all-restless hurricane has swept over
them, and left only here and there a lonely trunk, despoiled of its
verdure, shorn of its foliage, unshading and unshaded, to murmur in a
few more gentle breezes, and to combat with its mutilated limbs a few
more ruder storms, then to sink and be no more.

They _were_ pillars of the temple of liberty; and now that they have
crumbled away that temple must fall unless we, their descendants,
supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of
sober reason. Passion has helped us, but can do so no more. It will
in future be our enemy. Reason--cold, calculating, unimpassioned
reason--must furnish all the materials for our future support and
defence. Let those materials be moulded into _general intelligence,
sound morality_, and, in particular, _a reverence for the Constitution
and laws_; and that we improved to the last, that we remained free to
the last, that we revered his name to the last, that during his long
sleep we permitted no hostile foot to pass over or desecrate his
resting-place, shall be that which to learn the last trump shall awaken
our WASHINGTON.

Upon these let the proud fabric of freedom rest, as the rock of its
basis, and, as truly as has been said of the only greater institution,
"_the gates of hell shall not prevail against it_."