An Oration Delivered Before the New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1846

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J. Munroe and Company, 1847 - 64 páginas

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Página 18 - WILD was the day ; the wintry sea Moaned sadly on New England's strand, When first the thoughtful and the free, Our fathers, trod the desert land. They little thought how pure a light, With years, should gather round that day ; How love should keep their memories bright, How wide a realm their sons should sway. Green are their bays ; but...
Página 42 - The civil liberties of New England are part of the inheritance of their fathers ; and shall we give that inheritance away ? Is it objected that we shall be exposed to great sufferings? Better suffer than sin. It is better to trust the God of our fathers than to put confidence in princes. If we suffer because "we dare not comply with the wills of men against the will of God, we suffer in a good cause, and shall be accounted martyrs in the next generation and at the great day.
Página 39 - ... heavenly frame. The exaltation of character produced by such virtue is as truly as beautifully described by the poet, whose own genius was translated, by the contemplation of God, into the divinest nature : — "Love Virtue, she alone is free, She can teach you how to climb Higher than the sphery clime, Or, if Virtue feeble were, Heaven itself would stoop to her." This elevation of the habitual promptings of the ordinary actions and familiar duties of daily life into the sphere of piety and faith,...
Página 30 - ... of their descendants wherever scattered. The power of character, growing out of this free development of the turn of mind of every individual, and the feeling connected with it, that each one may and must choose his own course, open his own path, and determine his own condition, has made New England impregnable, and covered her comparatively stubborn and sterile soil with abundance. This is the secret magic by which her sons command success and wealth wherever they wander. The States included...
Página 20 - ... we are commemorating. The 22d of December is becoming honored and consecrated by public observances, at the principal centres of population in all parts of the Union; and it needs no greater insight of the future than all eyes possess, to behold before many years have passed, the sons of New England gathering, as you are gathered here, on the return of this day, in cities whose foundations remain to be laid, and in capitals of States whose stars are yet to rise into the crowded galaxy of our...
Página 59 - ... policy. It was expressed in their charters. It supplied a perpetual stimulus to their resolution, and made that resolution absolutely unconquerable, to expel the French from the western wilderness behind them, and is seen to have exalted the patriotic enthusiasm of such men as John Adams and Josiah • Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Página 3 - ... became successively member of the Massachusetts House, President of the State Senate, and, for one term, member of Congress. He was for a time editor of the "Unitarian Church Review," and among his published writings are several biographies and an important study of the Salem witchcraft. ORATION Mr. President, and Gentlemen of the New England Society in the City of New York. THE topics that claim our consideration, on this anniversary, are so obvious, and so inseparable from the occasion and...
Página 31 - ... error of policy — no injustice of government can permanently or essentially check the career of progress in wealth and civilization, along which the energies of individual ingenuity, enterprise, intelligence, and industry have from the beginning impelled them. When this force of individual character, this consciousness of inherent power, is once brought into exercise, and becomes habitual, entering into the frame of the mind, then is man clothed with his true strength. Obstacle, peril and suffering,...
Página 30 - ... business. It is true, that, misled by the spirit still disastrously prevalent, they soon began to employ the enginery of State and Church to work out Utopian schemes of reform — by legislation and discipline, encroaching upon private rights, and invading personal freedom at every point where the slighest evil was supposed to lurk. But these attempts to subdue the individual character into conformity with standards set up by authority, were ultimately found to be vain and fruitless. The circumstances...
Página 31 - One of the most accomplished of the Latin classics declares the effect which trial and difficulty exert in bringing out this mighty force of character, "Adversa magnos probent" — all history and observation demonstrate it. The mind, thrown upon its own resources, and summoning them resolutely to the effort, rises with every emergency, and confronts and surmounts all that can be brought against it. Such was the discipline of the early New England character. Cold, hunger, disease, desolation, grappled...

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