Patrimony

“ Your heritage of the great nature—the far-seeing—the trusting spirit—harboring no evil and construing all things to righteousness—going out into the world and finding among all the dust and dross, even of centuries, only the pure gold—the eye that sees into a man's soul, searching out the true and lovely qualities there and transmuting all the rest into pure metal—my own soul's alchemist—your heritage is the secret of power. ”

“ No, if I yet endure, yet live, yet hope,—it is only because I would not die till I have redeemed the noble heritage I have lost—the heritage I took unstained from thee and my dead father—a proud conscience and an honest name. ”

“ Our sole heritage was our strong arms and our good cheer,—no, excuse me, another heritage of more worth than gold or genius have we brought from our old homesteads,—our share of Northern fidelity, strength, and virtue; and the talent confided to us we have used in all branches of industry, science, fine arts, in the service of the community, the state, and the Union, in peace and in war, and we perform our share in the great national work, the result of which is a new and powerful commonwealth, the foundation of which lies in the individual worth and right of man. ”

“ We love our country because we honour our ancestors; because it is endeared to us not only by early habit, but by attachments to the spots hallowed by their piety, their heroism, their genius, or their public spirit. We honour it as the scene of noble deeds, the nurse of sages, bards, and heroes. The very aspect and features of this blest asylum of liberty, science, and religion, warm our hearts, and animate our imaginations. Enthusiasm kindles at the thoughts of what we have been, and what we are. It is the last retreat, the citadel, in which all that is worth living for is concentrated. ”

“ If noble, how he may stamp his feeling and his ideas on the action of the age, and long after death will reappear—a glorious resurrection this—in the intelligence, the literature, the philanthropy; in the temperance, and purity, and piety of the place! How many towns in America thus keep the soul of some good minister, some farmer or mechanic, lawyer or doctor—oftenest of all, of some good religious woman, long after her tomb has become undistinguishable in the common soil of graves? ”

“ On you, and such as you, depends the fate of the most precious heritage ever won by the valor, preserved by the prudence, or consecrated by the virtue of an illustrious ancestry—illustrious, not because of factitious titles, but nature's nobles, wise, good, generous, and brave! ”

“ Each has contributed its contingent to the magnificent whole to be handed down to a posterity which should cherish and adorn the heirloom of illustrious ancestors, and send it down the line of the future with added wealth and beauty. With such an anchorage to moor a family name and estate to, there is no wonder that both should attach their being, life, and treasures to it with a proud ambition of perpetuity. ”

“ We honour you. And though no sculptured marble transmit your fame, a nobler monument shall be yours—the happy hearts of [Pg 18] unborn millions shall be the shrine in which your names will be treasured. In your high example—in your noble disinterestedness—in your entire subordination of every thought, and act, and scheme, and interest, to the heaven-born purpose of human regeneration and human elevation, we hear the language of encouragement. ”

“ Every monument we rear, every tablet we place, every statue we erect, every old fort or bastian, every Revolutionary relic or Revolutionary soldier's grave we honor, is a tribute to those to whom we owe the imperishable gifts of liberty, of independence, of the right to worship God in our own way. Every fountain or stone recording the trail of the pioneer, the priest, the trader, the soldier, or the devotion of the Revolutionary heroine, is a breath of incense wafted back to the immortals, an inspiration for "tangible immortality" for ourselves, and those who come after us. ”

“ Golden harps and crowns, and hidden manna and white robes and thrones, and all the other representations, are but symbols of the blessedness of union with Him, or consequences of it. Immortal life and growth in perfection, both of mind and heart, and the cessation of all that disturbs, and our investiture with glory and honour, flung around our poor natures like a royal robe over a naked body, are all but the many-sided brightnesses that pour out from Him, and bathe in their rainbowed light those who are with Him. ”

“ Your heritage is in a goodly land. Its fields are wide; its skies are bright; and its people free. Choose you out its men of mark—the great and good—as patterns for yourselves. Ask of their experience, if in its silent teachings you may not find reason—nay more—encouragement, to hope for a good name too—a place among them. ”

“ Perhaps you will not now any more think it strange that in beginning your natural history studies in this place, I mean to teach you heraldry, but not anatomy. For, as you learn to read the shields, and remember the stories, of the great houses of England, and find how all the arts that glorified them were founded on the passions that inspired, you will learn assuredly, that the utmost secret of national power is in living with honour, and the utmost secrets of human art are in gentleness and truth. ”

“ These virtues, indeed, are not seen charactered in breathing bronze, or in living marble. Our ancestors have left no Corinthian temples on our hills, no Gothic cathedrals on our plains, no proud pyramid, no storied obelisk, in our cities. But mind is there. Sagacious enterprise is there. An active, vigorous, intelligent, moral population throng our cities, and predominate in our fields;—men, patient of labor, submissive to law, respectful to authority, regardful of right, faithful to liberty. These are the monuments of our ancestors. ”

“ The whole is depicted and for the time preserved in bronze and granite; and as generations of the future stand before this consecrated record, it will extort thoughts of the pioneer—his pleasures and his sufferings—with venerated admiration for those whose lives marked out the pathway of our civilization.
Every nation, every country, and every town has historic trees. They are not without influence on the destiny of individuals, societies, and nations. They are objects of reverence—works of time—homes of generations—and the manifest wisdom of creation. ”

“ And the monuments you erect to their memory, and the religious reverence with which you cherish the memory, are indeed well deserved tributes of gratitude.
But allow me to say, there is a tribute which those blessed spirits are still more eager to claim from you as the happy inheritance of the fruits they have raised for you; it is, the tribute of always remaining true to their principle; devoted to the destiny of your country, which destiny is to become the corner-stone of LIBERTY on earth. Empires can be only maintained by the same virtue by which they have been founded. ”

“ Consecrated by piety, and hallowed by affection, the choicest productions of the pencil and the chisel have been preserved by the liberality of individuals and the munificence of princes, while the palaces of sovereigns, the edifices of social life, the temples of religion, the watch-towers of war, the obelisks of fame, and the mausolea of domestic grief, stand under the azure cupola of heaven, to attest by their living beauty, or their ruined grandeur, the genius and liberality which gave them birth. ”

“ And if in the historical novel there is devotion to locality and a feeling for the history that breathes through the soil, all this comes out large and most complete where geography and tradition, love of place and pride in its heritage of story, combine in patriotism. Patriotism that so often rings false is in this true, in that it becomes the consciousness of belonging to a place and a tradition. ”

“ With all nations the monuments which attest their pride have preceded the monuments which testify to their true glory; the first, sterile, so to speak, in their existence, fix the attention by the beauty of their form, by the elegance and grandeur of their proportions; the second, created for the wealth or happiness of nations, attract our notice to the utility or wisdom of their establishment. ”

“ As for nobility in particular persons; it is a reverend thing, to see an ancient castle or building, not in decay; or to see a fair timber tree, sound and perfect. How much more, to behold an ancient noble family, which has stood against the waves and weathers of time! ”

“ The like idea seems to obtain, moreover, in the decorations of the hall, in which History is artfully blended with Religion and Chivalry; implying, if my republican comprehension can rightly interpret this writing on the wall, that to be a true patrician, one must have historical antecedents, and should represent some great fact in the annals of one’s country; and that such antecedents, to be made honourable to an individual, must be sustained by personal worth, and by that refined and sublimated virtue which is called honour. ”

“ But royal robes I shall have on,
More glorious than the glist'ring sun;
My crown not diamonds, pearls, and gold,
But such as angels' heads enfold.
The city where I hope to dwell,
There's none on earth can parallel. ”

“ Oh! what is all the pomp of gold and jewels With which the kings of earth adorn themselves! He is alone surrounded by the Godhead; His mansion is in truth an heavenly kingdom, For not of earthly moulding are these forms! ”

“ To us rulers look, and learn justice, while they tremble; to us the nations look, and learn to hope, while they rejoice. Our heritage is all the love and heroism of liberty in the past; and all the great of the Old World are our teachers. ”

“ Perhaps in some future age, when, as he hath prophesied, this ancient nation shall arrive at a degree of prosperity and greatness far beyond any thing it has hitherto attained, the people of the future imagining that this monument has been erected over the mortal remains of some heroic spirit of the early ages, shall throng in crowds to confer on it the homage of their reverence; and the fame, though in error, will do him justice, and posterity, though ignorant, will rightly apply their admiration. ”

“ The innumerable details, the crowded succession of towns, cities, cathedrals, castles, and great and decorated estates, the number and power of the trades and guilds, the military strength and splendor, the multitudes of rich and of remarkable people, the servants and equipages, — all these catching the eye, and never allowing it to pause, hide all boundaries, by the impression of magnificence and endless wealth. ”

“ We see it when some noble house, an illustrious symbol of heroic honour, the ark of high traditions, finds its reductio ad absurdum in some hare-brained turf-lord, who defiles its memories as he sells its pictures. ”

“ By all the memories of your fathers, who founded this Republic and delivered to you the precious heritage, by all the sentiments of gratitude for the good you have enjoyed beneath its protecting care, are you summoned to its defence. ”

“ The history of our species unfolds the splendid catalogue of man's achievements: many monuments, reared by his patriotism and piety, and elaborated by his tasteful ingenuity, that have resisted the corrosions of time, and the spoliations of conquest, remain in our possession: and we still preserve those intellectual treasures that embalm the poetry, the eloquence, and the wisdom of the enlightened nations of antiquity. ”

“ That heritage is deeply rooted in the hearts and the history of our people. Our Founding Fathers pledged to each other their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor in the Declaration of Independence. ”

“ In a country of this pomp of natural glory, tempered with melancholy memory of departed pride, what are we to wish for, what are we naturally to expect, in the character of her most humble edifices; those which are most connected with present life, least with the past? ”

“ The richness of each land in that one feast.{96}
More jewelries than one could name or know,
Set in a thousand trinkets or in crowns
Each one a sovereignty, in glittering row
Numbered the suppliant lands and all her thrones.
And fairest handmaidens in gracious rank,
Their captive arms enchained with links of gold,
Knelt and poured forth the purple wine she drank,
Or served her there in postures manifold. ”

“ There are events, the monuments of which, surviving every other memorial of human existence, eternize the nation to whose history they belong, after all other vestiges of its glory have disappeared from the globe. ”

“ And when the will of Heaven, and the common destinies of our nature, shall have swept away the present generation, you will have left your great name and example as an imperishable monument, exciting others to like deeds of glory, and serving at once to adorn, defend, and perpetuate the existence of this country amongst the ruling nations of the earth. ”

“ The country that you loved, that you redeemed and disenthralled, will be your splendid and ever growing monument, and the blessings of a grateful people will be the grand inscription, which shall grow longer as that monument rises higher among the nations of the earth. Wherever the peach shall blush beneath the kisses of the Southern sun, wherever the affluent grape shall don the royal purple of Southern sovereignty, a votive offering from the one and a rich libation from the other, the grateful husbandman will tender unto you. ”

“ And, as I say, one is not a Bourbon for nothing. You come into a heritage, eight hundred years old, of likes and dislikes, of genius and incapacity, of an astounding cleverness, and a preposterous foolishness without compare in the history of dynasties. ”