Various

“ The influence of thy empire will pervade the world with invisible and electric force. Yet, vivifying and benignant capital,—emporium of trade and industry, seat of learning and best-applied labor, pivotal point in history, supreme and superb city of all lands,—I behold thy majesty from afar, and salute thee reverently as the consummation of all that the best human energies can accomplish for the elevation and happiness of our race. ”

“ Lexington and Concord were, therefore, the exponents of that daring which made the occupation and resistance of Breed's Hill possible. The fancied invincibility of British discipline went down before the rifles of farmers; but the quickening sentiment, which gave nerve to the arm, steadiness to the heart, and force to the blow, was one of those historic expressions of human will and faith, which, under deep sense of wrong incurred and rights imperilled, overmasters discipline, and has the method of an inspired madness. The moral force of the energizing passion became overwhelming and supreme. ”

“ The pale, stern men behind the slight defence, obedient to a strong will, answer not to the quick volley, and nothing to the audible commands of the advancing columns,—waiting, still.
No painter can make the scene more clear than the recital of sober deposition, and the record left by survivors of either side. History has no contradictions to confuse the realities of that momentous tragedy.
The British left wing is near the redoubt. It has only to mount a fresh earthbank, hardly six feet high, and its clods and sands can almost be counted,—it is so near, so easy—sure. ”

“ Our New England town-house, therefore, is a symbol of institutions, partly original with our fathers, partly a priceless inheritance from Old England the land of our fathers, and nearly in the whole, if not quite, a regermination and new growth of old race instincts and practices on a new soil.
The New England town is not an institution of all the States, but its principle has invaded the majority. ”

“ No battle during the American Rebellion of 1861-65 was so really decisive as was the first battle of Bull's Run. As that Federal failure enforced the issue which freed four millions of people from slavery, and had its sequence and culmination, through great struggle, in a perpetuated Union, so did the battle of Bunker Hill open wide the breach between Great Britain and the Colonies, and render American Independence inevitable. ”

“ General Arthur at once began to organize regiments,—uniform, arm, and equip them,—and send them to the defence of the capital. His capacity for leadership and organization was soon manifest. There was no lack of men or of money, but it needed organizing powers like his to mould them into disciplined form, to grasp the new issues with a master-hand, and to infuse earnestness and obedience into the citizens, suddenly transformed into soldiers. ”

“ We cannot tell our king, the nation, what the people were and what they are, what they have and what they want, until they tell us. Our cahier must wait the pleasure of the people." Meanwhile, the regent, irreverently called Uncle Sam, who rules the land while his master is away in Utopia, reads the cahiers of the nobles, laughs in his sleeve at that of the clergy, and forgets all about that of the third estate. ”

“ Certainly no one will dispute that an historian of contemporary events would find very difficult even the attempt to make his work pleasant to his contemporaries. It is the endeavor to do this which has vitiated all the histories so far written of the late Civil War. The same principle made Thiers's French Revolution an almost worthless book as a history. To come down to lesser things, the same principle underlying and pervading all American local histories has done more toward making them worthless than any other single defect. ”

“ The wisdom of our fathers, foreseeing even the most dire possibilities, made sure that the Government should never be imperiled because of the uncertainty of human life. Men may die, but the fabrics of our free institutions remain unshaken. No higher or more assuring proof could exist of the strength and permanence of popular government than the fact that, though the chosen of the people be struck down, his constitutional successor is peacefully installed without shock or strain except the sorrow which mourns the bereavement. ”

“ However unpleasant it may be to look at the black side of such a city's history, yet the study must be profitable if by it we Americans, proud of our tolerance and our humanity, jealous of aught past or present that may blot our escutcheon, wondering at and scornfully pitying nations that could have had Lord George Gordon riots and blood-thirsty land-leagues, a reign of terror and a commune,—if we may learn not to be quite so arrogant in our righteousness, quite so boastful in our Pharisaism ”

“ President Arthur soon showed his appreciation of the responsibilities of his new office. Knowing principles rather than persons, he subordinated individual preferences and prejudices to a well-defined public policy. While he was, as he always had been, a Republican, he had no sympathy for blind devotion to party; he had "no friends to reward, no enemies to punish;"—and he has been governed by those principles of liberty and equality which he inherited. His messages to Congress have been universally commended, and even unfriendly critics have pronounced them careful and well-matured documents. ”

“ With the exception of the Atlantic seaboard, our country has been developed in an age pre-eminent for records and statistics; and there is scarcely a town or city in the land that has not its records and its public documents, its newspaper files and its Fourth-of-July orations,—all replete with information waiting for the historian. Nearly every State has its Historical Society, and Pioneer Associations are as plenty in our glorious West as was the fever and ague with which their members were baptized. ”

“ The State of Massachusetts, from the day that the people created the General Court the body it still is, by electing deputies from the towns,—representatives we now call them,—to sit instead of the whole body of freemen, with the governor [pg 289] and council, for the performance of all acts of legislation for the common good, is the outgrowth of and exists only by virtue of the towns. The towns created it, compose it, send up to it its heart-and-life blood. This it is which makes the New England town unique, attracting the attention and interest of intelligent foreigners who visit our shores. ”

“ All the noble aspirations of my lamented predecessor which found expression in his life, the measures devised and suggested during his brief administration to correct abuses and enforce economy, to advance prosperity and promote the general welfare, to insure domestic security and maintain friendly and honorable relations with the nations of the earth, will be garnered in the hearts of the people, and it will be my earnest endeavor to profit, and to see that the Nation shall profit, by his example and experience. ”

“ Perhaps we ought to be more lenient in the case of this history of Pittsfield, in consideration of the fact that this was a public work, and, therefore, more caution had to be exercised than we would otherwise have expected. Of course no employee would like to displease even a single member of the corporation that employed him. Possibly the same argument might be raised in defence of any historian, in that the public is virtually his employer. Here, however, reasoning by analogy fails, for the public is a very large body, and will seldom take up the cudgel in defence of any single individual. ”

“ In the name of truth and justice we ask, "Why should the writing of history be made satisfactory, pleasant, to those who aid in the making of it?" We want the truth about the near, as well as the far, past. Let us do unto our descendants as we would that our ancestors had done by us, and tell them the truth about ourselves. ”

“ He has taken a conservative view of the management of the public debt, approving all the important suggestions of the secretary of the treasury, and recognizing the proper protection of American industry. He is in favor of the great interests of labor, and opposed to such tinkering with the tariff as will make vain the toil of the industrious farmer, paralyze the arm of the sturdy mechanic, strike down the hand of the hardy laborer, stop the spindle, hush the loom, extinguish the furnace-fires, and degrade all independent toilers to the level of the poor in other lands. ”

“ A lifetime, when it is past, is but as a moment. A moment, sometimes, is as a lifetime. Onset and repulse. Three hundred lifetimes ended in twenty minutes.
Putnam hastened to Bunker Hill to gather scattering parties in the rear and urge coming reinforcements across the isthmus, where the fire from British frigates swept with fearful energy, but nothing could bring them in time. The men who had toiled all night, and had just proved their valor, were again to be tested. ”

“ Nowhere is this lack shown more forcibly than in this book in the treatment of the subject of riots and mob violence. It may not be generally known, especially among the younger portion of the community, that no American and but few European cities have such an unenviable and disgraceful record on this head as Baltimore. The accounts of its riots remind one too forcibly of the worst days of the French Revolution, and all of them read more like the incidents so plentiful in the sensational stories of the day, than like the cold, dispassionate record of history. ”

“ The grand finale, however, brings back some of the old set of critics, together with a host of new ones, who describe in glowing language the setting of the act, the costumes, the music, etc., and tell minutely how young Miss Prosperity blushingly yet boldly promises to be forever true to the gallant hero, now known under his rightful name of Mr. Metropolis. Ac-cording to the critic, this grand drama always ends happily for all concerned; the acting is always perfect,—the best ever seen on the stage; the scenery has seldom been equaled, never excelled. ”

“ If the golden opportunities of autobiography are lost, the American historian of the future will have to be satisfied, as must be satisfied the New England historian of to-day, with the meagre, lifeless information given by records, and the hyperbolical, untrustworthy knowledge to be obtained from local tradition and gossip. ”

“ Call to mind what Macaulay said, nearly half a century ago, in chapter iii of his History of England: "Great as has been the change in the rural life of England since the Revolution (1688) , the change which has come to pass in the cities is still more amazing. At present, a sixth part of the kingdom is crowded into provincial towns of more than thirty thousand inhabitants. In the reign of Charles II, no provincial town in the kingdom contained thirty thousand inhabitants, and only four provincial towns contained so many as ten thousand inhabitants." ”

“ And this, mind you, is the record of a city famed far more for monuments, pleasure-grounds, and beautiful women, than for lawlessness and sans-culottism, a city proud of its families and its culture, a city one of the oldest and richest in the land. ”

“ We need go no farther to find the first reason why American histories are so meagre and dull. They are not pictures from life. The fact is, that the historian might as well try to write a valuable and interesting history from the materials which our older cities possess, as a painter might try to paint the battle of Crecy from the details given by Froissart. ”

“ It means not merely a broad basis for the general government in the people, that the people are the reason and remote source of governing power, but that they are themselves the governors. Every man who enters a New England town-house and casts his vote knows that that expression of his will is a force which reaches, or may reach, the Legislature of his State, the governor in his chair, the National Congress, and the President in the White House at Washington. ”

“ He feels an interest therefore, and a responsibility which the voter in no other land in the world feels, and the town-house is an education to him in the art of self-government which no other country affords, and because of it the town is an institution teaching how to maintain government, local, state, and general, and so bases that government in self-interest and beneficial experience, that it is a pledge of security and perpetuity as regards socialism, communism, and as it would seem every other revolutionary influence from within. ”

“ Boston is almost the only city in the land that has been the subject of a full, accurate, and interesting history. The History of New York, by Martha J. Lamb, is not so full as might have been wished, but is otherwise unexceptionable. New York is fortunate in having the most graphic and humorous history of its early days that any city in the world ever had, but nobody except Diedrich Knickerbocker himself ever claimed a great amount of accuracy and truthfulness for his unrivaled work. ”

“ The President has a remarkable insight into men, promptly estimating character with an accuracy that makes it a difficult matter to deceive him, or to win his favor either for visionary schemes, corrupt attacks upon the treasury, or incompetent place-hunters. He has shown that he has been guided by a wise experience of the past, and a sagacious foresight of the future, exhibiting sacrifices of individual friendship to a sense of public duty. ”

“ Great have been these results—how great we shall know by-and-by. Many a soul has thus been born by the sea, in the grove, on the village green, at the place where streets meet in the busy city. How can we reach the masses? ”