The wide-spread Republic is the true monument to Washington. Maintain its
Independence. Uphold its Constitution. Preserve its Union. Defend its
Liberty. Let it stand before the world in all its original strength and
beauty, securing peace, order, equality, and freedom to all within its
boundaries, and shedding light, and hope, and joy, upon the pathway of
human liberty throughout the world; and Washington needs no other monument.
Other structures may fitly testify our veneration for him; this, this
alone, can adequately illustrate his services to mankind. Nor does he need
even this. The Republic may perish; the wide arch of our ranged Union may
fall; star by star its glories may expire; stone by stone its columns and
its capitol may moulder and crumble; all other names which adorn its annals
may be forgotten; but as long as human hearts shall anywhere pant, or human
tongues shall anywhere plead, for a true, rational, constitutional liberty,
those hearts shall enshrine the memory, and those tongues prolong the fame,
of George Washington!
R. C. Winthrop.


XLII.

THE PERFECT ORATOR.

Imagine to yourselves a Demosthenes, addressing the most illustrious
assembly in the world, upon a point whereon the fate of the most
illustrious of nations depended. How awful such a meeting! How vast the
subject! Is man possessed of talents adequate to the great occasion?
Adequate! Yes, superior. By the power of his eloquence, the augustness of
the assembly is lost in the dignity of the orator; and the importance of
the subject, for awhile, superseded by the admiration of his talents. With
what strength of argument, with what powers of the fancy, with what