and intellectual condition of their descendants. They exist in the spirit
which their precepts instilled, and their example implanted.

It was to this spot, during twelve successive years, that the real body of
those just settlers emigrated. In this place, they either fixed permanently
their abode, or took their departure from it, for the coast or the
interior. Whatever honor devolves on this metropolis, from the events
connected with its first settlement, is not solitary or exclusive; it is
shared with Massachusetts; with New England; in some sense, with the whole
United States. For what part of this wide empire, be it sea or shore, lake
or river, mountain or valley, have the descendants of the first settlers of
New England not traversed; what depth of forest not penetrated? what danger
of nature or man not defied? Where is the cultivated field, in redeeming
which from the wilderness, their vigor has not been displayed? Where, amid
unsubdued nature, by the side of the first log-hut of the settler, does the
school-house stand, and the church-spire rise, unless the sons of New
England are there? Where does improvement advance, under the active energy
of willing hearts and ready hands, prostrating the moss-covered monarch of
the wood, and from their ashes, amid their charred roots, bidding the green
sward and the waving harvest to unspring, and the spirit of the fathers of
New England is not seen, hovering and shedding around the benign influences
of sound, social, moral, and religious institutions, stronger and more
enduring than knotted oak or tempered steel? The swelling tide of their
descendants has spread upon our coasts, ascended our rivers, taken
possession of our plains. Already it encircles our lakes. At this hour, the
rushing noise of the advancing wave startles the wild beast in his lair
among the prairies of the West. Soon it shall be seen climbing the Rocky
Mountains, and, as it dashes over their cliffs, shall be hailed by the
dwellers on the Pacific, as the harbinger of the coming blessings of
safety, liberty, and truth.