with the elements of beauty, proportion, and expression, as to regard
the masterpieces of Raphael and Michel Angelo with coldness or contempt.
We may be assured, Gentlemen, that he who really loves the thing itself,
loves its finest exhibitions. A true friend of his country loves her
friends and benefactors, and thinks it no degradation to commend and
commemorate them. The voluntary outpouring of the public feeling, made
to-day, from the north to the south, and from the east to the west,
proves this sentiment to be both just and natural. In the cities and in
the villages, in the public temples and in the family circles, among all
ages and sexes, gladdened voices to-day bespeak grateful hearts and a
freshened recollection of the virtues of the Father of his Country. And
it will be so, in all time to come, so long as public virtue is itself
an object of regard. The ingenuous youth of America will hold up to
themselves the bright model of Washington's example, and study to be
what they behold; they will contemplate his character till all its
virtues spread out and display themselves to their delighted vision; as
the earliest astronomers, the shepherds on the plains of Babylon, gazed
at the stars till they saw them form into clusters and constellations,
overpowering at length the eyes of the beholders with the united blaze
of a thousand lights.

_A Wonderful Age and Country_

Gentlemen, we are at a point of a century from the birth of Washington;
and what a century it has been! During its course, the human mind has
seemed to proceed with a sort of geometric velocity, accomplishing for
human intelligence and human freedom more than had been done in fives or
tens of centuries preceding. Washington stands at the commencement of a
new era, as well as at the head of the New World. A century from the
birth of Washington has changed the world. The country of Washington has