An Oration Delivered Before the Irving Lyceum, at the Smithsonian Institution, on the Evening of July 3, 1855 (Classic Reprint), Hartley Edward

There are certain starting points in history, when the mind forsaking its old channels, turns into new directions and aims at new ends. There are eras in the worlds progress of great achievements and heroic courage, eras of high thought and stainless patriotism, which shape the destinies of the future, and assume grander proportions as time rolls on. If we could lift the curtain that veils the future, and see the glories so faintly shadowed forth in our times, we pould trace the heavenly rays which illu mine its dim seen aisles, to some era, when the mind, casting aside the dross of centuries, expanded its Wings for a loftier flight. High among these stands the era of American Independence. At first, it only marked the birth of a new nation, convulsed by the incoherence of its parts, by the conflicting powers of the state and general governments, palsied witha in and without, and it was not until the adaption of the federal constitu tion that America developed those elements of moral grandeur, on which our present prosperity and the hopes of the future are founded. She then stood before the world, the solution of the enigma which has puzzled the statesmen of all ages, whether the masses could govern themselves. Ins significant at first, she began to agitate the world with her spirit, she be came a refuge from Oppression, the home of liberty, the guiding star of the future.

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