wealth, not in fortifications, or armies, or navies, not in the sulphurous blaze of battle, — not in Golgothas, though covered by monuments that kiss the clouds; for all these are creatures and representatives of those qualities in our nature which are unlike anything in God's nature. Nor is it in triumphs of the intellect alone, in literature, learning, science, or art. The polished Greeks, our masters in the delights of art, and the commanding Romans, overawing the earth with their power, were little more than splendid savages. And the age of Louis the Fourteenth, of France, spanning so long a period of ordinary worldly magnificence, thronged by marshals bending under military laurels, enlivened by the unsurpassed comedy of Molière, dignified by the tragic genius of Corneille, illumined by the splendors of Bossuet, is degraded by immoralities that cannot be mentioned without a blush, by a heartlessness in comparison with which the ice of Nova Zembla is warm, and by a succession of deeds of injustice not to be washed out by the tears of all the recording angels of Heaven.

The True Greatness of a Nation cannot be in triumphs of the intellect alone. Literature and art may enlarge the sphere of its influence; they may adorn it; but in their nature they are but accessaries. The True Grandeur of Humanity is in moral elevation, sustained, enlightened, and decorated by the intellect of man. The surest tokens of this grandeur in a nation are that Christian Beneficence which diffuses the greatest happiness among all, and that passionless, godlike Justice which controls the relations of the nation to other nations, and to all the people committed to its charge.

But War crushes with bloody heel all beneficence, all happiness, all justice, all that is godlike in man, — suspending every commandment of the Decalogue, setting at naught every principle of the Gospel, and silencing all law, human as well as divine, except only that impious code of its own, the Laws of War. If in its dismal annals there is any cheerful passage, be assured it is not inspired by a martial Fury. Let it not be forgotten, let it be ever borne in mind, as you ponder this theme, that the virtues which shed their charm over its horrors are all borrowed of Peace, that they are emanations from the Spirit of Love, which is so strong in the heart of man that it survives the rudest assault. The flowers of gentleness, kindliness, fidelity, humanity, which flourish unregarded in the rich meadows of Peace, receive unwonted admiration when we discern them in War,-like violets shedding their perfume on the perilous edge of the precipice, beyond the smiling borders of civilization. God be praised for all the examples of magnanimous virtue which he has vouchsafed to mankind! God be praised, that the Roman Emperor, about to start on a distant expedition of War, encompassed by squadrons of cavalry, and by golden eagles swaying in the wind, stooped from his saddle to hear the prayer of a humble widow, demanding justice for the death of her son! God be praised, that Sidney, on the field of battle, gave with dying hand the cup of cold water to the dying soldier! That single act of

1 According to the legends of the Catholic Church, this most admired instance of justice opened to Trajan, although a heathen, the gates of salvation. Dante found the scene and the "visible speech" of the widow and Emperor storied on the walls of Purgatory, and has transmitted them in a passage which commends itself hardly less than any in the divine poem. See Purgatorio, Canto X.

self-forgetful sacrifice has consecrated the deadly field of Zutphen, far, oh, far beyond its battle; it has consecrated thy name, gallant Sidney, beyond any feat of thy sword, beyond any triumph of thy pen! But there are lowly suppliants in other places than the camp; there are hands outstretched elsewhere than on fields of blood. Everywhere is opportunity for deeds of like charity. Know well that these are not the product of War. They do not spring from enmity, hatred, and strife, but from those benign sentiments whose natural and ripened fruit of joy and blessing are found only in Peace. If at any time they appear in the soldier, it is less because than notwithstanding he is the hireling of battle. me not be told, then, of the virtues of War. the acts of generosity and sacrifice sometimes blossoming on its fields be invoked in its defence. From such a giant root of bitterness no true good can spring. The poisonous tree, in Oriental imagery, though watered by nectar and covered with roses, produces only the fruit of death.

Let

Let not

Casting our eyes over the history of nations, with horror we discern the succession of murderous slaughters by which their progress is marked. Even as the hunter follows the wild beast to his lair by the drops of blood on the ground, so we follow Man, faint, weary, staggering with wounds, through the Black Forest of the Past, which he has reddened with his gore. Oh, let it not be in the future ages as in those we now contemplate! Let the grandeur of man be discerned, not in bloody victory or ravenous conquest, but in the blessings he has secured, in the good he has accomplished, in the triumphs of Justice and Beneficence, in the establishment of Perpetual Peace!

As ocean washes every shore, and with all-embracing arms clasps every land, while on its heaving bosom it bears the products of various climes, so Peace surrounds, protects, and upholds all other blessings. Without it, commerce is vain, the ardor of industry is restrained, justice is arrested, happiness is blasted, virtue sickens and dies.

Peace, too, has its own peculiar victories, in comparison with which Marathon and Bannockburn and Bunker Hill, fields sacred in the history of human freedom, lose their lustre. Our own Washington rises to a truly heavenly stature, not when we follow him through the ice of the Delaware to the capture of Trenton, not when we behold him victorious over Cornwallis at Yorktown, but when we regard him, in noble deference to Justice, refusing the kingly crown which a faithless soldiery proffered, and at a later day upholding the peaceful neutrality of the country, while he met unmoved the clamor of the people wickedly crying for War. What glory of battle in England's annals will not fade by the side of that great act of justice, when her Parliament, at a cost of one hundred million dollars, gave freedom to eight hundred thousand slaves? And when the day shall come (may these eyes be gladdened by its beams!) that shall witness an act of larger justice still, the peaceful emancipation of three million fellow-men "guilty of a skin not colored as our own," now, in this land of jubilant freedom, bound in gloomy bondage, then will there be a victory by the side of which that of Bunker Hill will be as the farthing candle held. up to the sun. That victory will need no monument of stone. It will be written on the grateful hearts of countless multitudes that shall proclaim it to the

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latest generation. It will be one of the famed landmarks of civilization, or, better still, a link in the golden chain by which Humanity connects itself with the throne of God.

As man is higher than the beasts of the field, as the angels are higher than man, as Christ is higher than Mars, as he that ruleth his spirit is higher than he that taketh a city, so are the victories of Peace higher than

the victories of War.

Far be from us, fellow-citizens, on this festival, the pride of national victory, and the illusion of national freedom, in which we are too prone to indulge! None of you make rude boast of individual prosperity or prowess. And here I end as I began. Our country cannot do what an individual cannot do. Therefore it

must not vaunt or be puffed up. Rather bend to unperformed duties. Independence is not all. We have but half done, when we have made ourselves free. The scornful taunt wrung from bitter experience of the great Revolution in France must not be levelled at us: "They wish to be free, but know not how to be just." 1 Nor is priceless Freedom an end in itself, but rather the means of Justice and Beneficence, where alone is enduring concord, with that attendant happiness which is the final end and aim of Nations, as of every human heart. It is not enough to be free. There must be Peace which cannot fail, and other nations must share the great possession. To this end must we labor, bearing ever in mind two special objects, complements of each other first, the Arbitrament of War must end; and,

:

1 "Ils veulent être libres, et ne savent pas être justes," was the famous exclamation of Sieyès.