flower blooms, after its ages of preparation, the plant seems to have no
meaning, proportion, or comeliness; only when those golden petals have
unfolded upon the summit of their stately eminence do we comprehend the
symmetry and significance that had so long waited to avouch themselves.

This Lily of the Ages, native to American soil, may fittingly stand as
the symbol of the great Western Republic which, after so many thousand
years of spiritual vicissitude and political experiment, rises heavenward
out of the wilderness of time, and reveals its golden promise to those who
have lost their way in the dark forest of error and oppression. It was
long withheld, but it came at last, and about it center the best hopes of
mankind. These United States--this America of ours, as we love to call it
--is unlike any other nation that has preceded or is contemporary with it.
It is the conscious incarnation of a sublime idea--the conception of civil
and religious liberty. It is a spirit first, and a body afterward; thus
following the true law of immortal growth. It is the visible consummation
of human history, and commands the fealty of all noble minds in every
corner of the earth, as well as within its own boundaries. There are
Americans in all countries; but America is their home.

The seed is hidden in the soil; the germ is shut within the darkness of
the womb; the preparation for all birth is obscure. For more than a
century after the discovery of Columbus, no one divined the true
significance and destiny of the nation-that-was-to-be. Years passed before
it was understood even that the coast of the New World was anything more
than the western boundaries of the Asiatic continent; Columbus never
wavered from this conviction; the Cabots fancied that our Atlantic shores
were those of China; and though Balboa, in 1513, waded waist-deep into the
Pacific off Darien, and claimed it for Spain, yet the massive immensity of
America was not suspected. There was not space for it on the globe as then