In the midst of a serene period, my friends, at home—one, at least, in which, whatever may be our consciousness of present insecurity—none of us ever entertained a single fear of the safety of our Past—none of us ever fancied that there could arise any doubts in any minds of the virtues of our ancestry, or the value and excellence of their performances—we are suddenly put to the question on this very score, and it is charged against us that we are living upon a spurious reputation—that the ancestors of whom it has been our pride to boast, were, in fact, false to their duties and their country—recreant to their trusts—heedless of their honor—faithless to their brethren—traitors in the cabinet and cowards in the field!

These are, substantially, the allegations made by a Senator in the Senate House; in one of the highest council chambers of the Confederacy;—on an occasion the most momentous;—in the sight and hearing of the whole people; and, with our own accredited representatives upon the floor, in the same presence; bound, as it were, to the rack; & forced to hearken to the shocking history, as it issues, from the lips of a malignant enemy, and is addressed to the senses of a too partial audience.

Well might we be confounded! Of the history so delivered, we had never heard a syllable! We had been living on in a delightful condition of self-complacency—had been making perpetual boast of our ancestry—had flattered ourselves that their names and deeds could take rank—nay, had taken rank—with the most glorious and proud of all the nation:—That they had become the burden of song and story, and were among the most firmly engraven upon the brass and marble of authentic monuments.

So secure were we of all this that we had preserved none of our histories—scarcely cared to read them—never did read them—never gave them to our sons to read—never placed them in our libraries—never asked ourselves where such histories were to be found! So assured were we of certain fame and eminence of our great men, that we never made or procured their biographies;—never built them a single monument;—never sought out their graves in grateful Page 231 →veneration;—in many instances knew not, and know not, to this day, where those graves are to be sought! Nay, so magnanimous was our self-complacency, that we were perfectly satisfied that our Enemies should write our histories, and provide the teachers for our young;—that their infant minds should be trained and tutored by a people who were eagerly busied in the grateful labor of destroying our institutions, and casting a slur of perpetual infamy upon our name. Certainly in all these respects, our Christian patience, if not our self-complacency, has been wonderful indeed: Never, at all events, did any people, show themselves more admirably indifferent to their own memorials.

Well!—what should happen from all this virtuous indifference to Fame;—to the history of our race—to the education of our young—to all those moral safeguards and securities, of which most other nations are so jealous; which rest upon opinion—upon glorious traditions—upon memorials kept alive for the growing generations, by constant repetition, from truthful and from loving lips?

Just what has happened! Just what we might expect to happen.

In the midst of our serenest sky, the bolt has fallen among us! At the moment when we carried our proudest head, we find it suddenly covered in dirt and ashes! Our traditions are ignored as the delusions of vanity—the memory of our ancestors is fouled by the slanderer:—he has flung his filth upon the grave of that mother, whom we have neglected to protect with marble; he has violated and mutilated the sacred shines which we have failed to guard with an adequate and jealous patriotism. All our convictions of the Past, of which we have been so loud in boast, without caring to preserve the record, are mocked as absurd and ridiculous pretensions, entirely without foundation, and, for a brief period, at least, we were made to exhibit, in the eyes of the nation, the spectacle of the silly jackdaw stripped of all his borrowed feathers!

But, had we any reason to anticipate better treatment? Had not the experience of thirty years, brought us to the proper apprehension that some such exhibition was threatened? Were not the signs in our sky sufficiently ominous, during all this period of time? Did you not feel—have you not feared—for a long season, the open hostilities of the very people from whom you hear this slander? Did you not know that all assaults upon the rights and possessions, the inheritance, on the institutions of a people, are always coupled with, or prefaced by, a defamation of their character? Could we, as robbers and man-stealers—living in the daily exercise of a great wrong to humanity, be supposed to have any virtues? How should such a people be brave or patriotic, how pure or faithful—how wise, generous or just? How should a people, as little jealous of their reputation as of their securities, be supposed likely to spring up, in the panoply of armed men, to resent insult or resist aggression? Has not our Past always shown us submissive to the usurpations of this people? Did not the very conditions upon which we were content to enter the confederacy, betray our sense of its value to our very safety? Page 232 →Our sense of innate weakness,—our fears of foreign aggression,—making us only too eager for the Union; and, to secure its blessings, did we not consent to an inadequate representation in the Congress—the negro of the North having full recognition, as an integral of society, while your negro, far more moral and quite as black, being held to be three-fifths of a man only? It was a monstrous mistake and feebleness of policy—even if not that prompted us to this concession?—to yield in so vital a matter a point of the most essential value as assuring us of a due representation in that Legislation, which could only be just to us, in proportion to our numerical weight?—to suffer rival states to pass into an examination of our social elements in order to their condemnation? Pride, policy, patriotism, all, equally requires that we should enter the Confederacy, on equal conditions with the proudest, or not enter it at all! By that one concession, we not only lost representation, but made a fatal moral admission, by which we ourselves have provided in some degree, the sanction for the warfare upon our institutions. Has our vigilance increased, since that period, proportionately with our growing knowledge of our dangers? Have we ever compelled the Confederacy to yield us equal rights—an equal share in the inheritance; adequate results from our acquisitions of territory, or proper securities for what we do possess? When we have fought the battles and won the victories, have we ever been favored with any fair division of the spoils? Never!—and the power which is false & partial in the distribution of its awards, must necessarily despise the weakness, the baseness, the grievances of a section which submits so placidly to every usurpation. How absurd to suppose that a people who yield so readily, in respect to their material wealth and power, will make any proper struggle to maintain their fame, or assert their character, when these shall happen to be assaulted by the slanderer! And when the slanderer is bold enough to confront us with his inventions—when, face to face, he blackens us at once to ourselves and to the world, do you not see that his audacity argues something more than his hostility? Do you not see that, when Hate grows into open evidence, the enemy is prepared to gratify all his passions?—that, having so far presumed upon our imbecility as to spit his scorn and venom into our very faces, he feels sure of his power to destroy! That the time rapidly approaches when he will seek to carry out all his purposes into action; and that, having denounced our institutions, he has prepared to raze them to the ground with violence! He argues for the future from what you have suffered him to gain already in the past. He has gained the religious parties of the country. He has destroyed the ancient party organizations, which, selfishly constituted always, are necessarily conservative in character. He has obtained the mastery in Congress and exults with the sense of a power which can no longer be arrested by mere legislation. He repudiates the federal compact, the Constitution. What remains, but his own will, to put to the test his resources and your courage? There is no check now upon the dominant abolition Party in Congress or in the Northern States, Page 233 →save in its own will, & that will, is now maddened into an exulting confidence in its own strength, which the slanders and insults of Sumner have shown to you, has no sort of respect for yours. Do you flatter yourselves with the notion that Courts and Congresses can do anything for a minority when a majority controls the one and publicly scorns the other? When a person shall take you by the beard & void his saliva into your face, do you doubt that if his mood so prompts him, he will hurl you to the earth and set his foot upon your neck! Do you not see that he has reached the logical conclusion, in his thoughts, that he may do so with impunity!

There is no mystery in this audacity, as there is no doubt in this argument. His courage comes from our submissions; his insolence from our forbearances; his judgment, upon our character, upon our own indifference to honorable fame! Having ceased to write or to read our own histories—having yielded rights and reputations equally to the usurper—having surrendered to him the keeping of our records—delivered our young to his schooling—our archives substantially into his hands, as their best custodian—how ridiculous to dream of his justice and forbearance! What reason to hope that he will not betray his trusts—and destroy or falsify your records! He has done so: Has placed his manufactured chronicles in glaring contrast with ours, by which he has continued to build up an overshadowing reputation, at our expense, and solely in consequence of our supineness and indifference. By little and little—by regular degrees—he has sapped our history of all its cementing truths: and gaining audacity from impunity—confidence in his own inventions, from our failure to disprove & denounce them—fearless now of contradiction as of punishment—he pours out boldly the entire volume of his long accumulating slanders—the gatherings of more than thirty years and we are suddenly made dumb—struck with shame and wonder at the fabricated falsehoods which but few among us are properly prepared to refute!—

For thirty years have I been a witness of this insidious progress of our assailants—have seen the gradual growth of these spurious claims on the part of New England—especially of Massachusetts—in Congress, and out of it—exaggerative of her performances and in disparagement of ours;—claims not only unfounded in themselves, but admirably calculated, if not designed, to disparage and discredit the just rights & reputations of all other sections. The same grasping selfishness that strives to usurp, for the North, all the material benefits of the Union, has been equally busied in the appropriation of all its moral credits. Its pretensions, when not audaciously asserted, were adroitly insinuated, and, in the ignorance of the true history, in which we keep our people, and especially our young, there was hardly a person to be found, or but a few, even among our statesmen, in the whole South, to give them their proper refutation. Thus it was that Mr. Webster, in our own city, could tell us with fearless front, that our plains Page 234 →had been whitened with the bones of New Englanders perishing in battle, in defence of our liberties; and there was no patriot among us sufficiently familiar with the facts, to rise up and gently correct the amiable, but most preposterous assertion. This was alleged as a just motive for the general recognition of that affectionate sympathy, which South Carolina was required to feel for Massachusetts—that loving sister, who has been so moderate in all her claims, so generous in all her sacrifices, so genial in her assertions, so very liberal to all other parishes than her own!

Mr. Webster believed what he said—fully believed it. He had been taught in the same lying histories in which our children are taught. And we had taught him nothing better. He was an American politician; and, like most of his class, was compelled to take his local history at second hand. Would he had been as well informed in American, as in Greek and Roman Literature,—but, like most of his order, he undervalued it. Had he known better, he would have spoken otherwise: for the Head of a really great man, is always honest, however willful his passions, however weak his heart. And, on this subject of our American Politicians, I must be indulged in a few passing remarks. Our people seem to regard the politician as a sort of universal Genius. He is expected to know and to do every thing. He is employed for every thing, and all other classes of the community, are apt to be passed over, making way for him, even when the duties contemplated, & the offices filled, are such as belong especially to the Professions. This is not a matter to occasion surprise. It is the natural result of popular institutions in every country in which the people are untaught. But, the fact is, that our Politicians are rarely better educated than the great body of the people themselves. As a whole, regarding the entire Confederacy, they seldom rise into the rank of an educated class at all. Their acquisitions are wholly superficial. Audacity, which is the result of position in public affairs; the gift of gab, which is as much the fruit of flatulence, as thought;—the habit of dealing in eternal commonplaces—rant and fury signifying nothing;—these, but too commonly contribute the whole capital of the American politician. He is the Demigod of the stump, armed, instead of bolt and thunder, with sesquipedalianism and slang. In due degree as he acquires facility from exercise, and with his success in the popular field, will he abandon that of study. The popular orator is rarely a student in any department, not even in that of the law. His readings seldom extend beyond the columns of the party newspaper, and he gobbles up his law authorities solely from the last volume of Reports. He seldom fulfils the conditions prescribed by Bacon, as essential to the great man—reading for fullness, writing for accuracy, & speech for fluency. If he speaks to the people, he is apt to disparage learning & education all together. He fancies that such terms of disparagement, will be grateful to those to whom education has been denied. I have heard, for example, one of the Governors of Page 235 →a State, that he has denounced learning to the people, as one of the processes by which a people are Enslaved; spoken of Shakespeare as a fool; and assured his audience, that, for his own part, he never permitted such an absurdity as a Grammar or a Spelling book in his House. Yet this man has been spoken of as one of the obvious popular candidates for the Presidency, Vice Presidency, Speakership and Judgeship. Nay, look at Sumner himself, one of the best educated and most accomplished men in the Senate,—so far as a mere scholastic Education can accomplish, a vain & weak man; wanting in good sense in affairs, and at best, but a fluent rhetorician. What gross ignorance of propriety, to say nothing more, was his laboured & deliberate assault on South Carolina—how brutally demagogical,—in what bad taste, and with what total disregard, not merely of the parliamentary, but of the social proprieties! What absurdity to suppose that he could bring wisdom into, or impress his conviction of right and justice upon a circle, a large portion of which he should outrage on the very threshold, by malignant defamation. He should have known as a scholar if not as a Senator, that courtesy and forbearance were the first essentials to a hearing, in any field of council; and, whatever the faults, vices or shortcomings of South Carolina, past or present, she was there as an equal, having a right to respect, especially from those who aimed to address her ears in the language of exhortation & wisdom. And for these only objects, proper counsel, legislative wisdom, harmony, union, justice,—were these Senators assembled. What motive could prompt this wretched man to employ such language as should defeat these objects—prevent wisdom—baffle counsel—disturb harmony—destroy union? What but Demagoguism? His appeal was not to the wisdom of the Senate House—it was to the insane faction—brutal and malignant, by whom he was sustained in political power. He argued thus: “—What I say shall goad the people whom my people hate. I will sting; I will wound; I will fill the wound with venom. I will prove that I can deal in Philippics, like Demosthenes, even though I have to appropriate from Demosthenes. Thus I shall win the admiration of my people, for I shall only represent that malignity which is their very life. Nay, shall I not, where we are now strong enough to destroy, spit our scorn upon the victims, whom we have bound and made ready for the sacrifice!” Here, you have the whole secret of Mr. Sumner’s moral & policy on this occasion; and it declares for that vulgar sort of political education which is the only great essential for political life. And thus it is, that the demagogue trifles with the life of a nation, as ignorantly and recklessly as the child who fires the match above the magazine, never once dreaming of the explosion. And this poor, weak, vain creature, with just enough of smartness and learning to be vain, & just enough of human passion to be malignant, madly goads the passions of a whole people into phrenzy, without cause, without provocation, & fancies that there will be no victim demanded for expiation. How little, with all Page 236 →his reading in Greek and Roman lore, had he learned to estimate that powerful spirit which he audaciously invoked with taunts, and scorn, & falsehood!—Yes, had he studied well, in the history of that fierce democracy—

“Which shook the arsenal, & fulmined over Greece,

From Macedon to Artaxerxes throne,”—

He would have trembled at the thought of provoking to rage & wrath, a power more terrible than that of the lion, in his jungle, goaded by the shouts & stones of the Arab from the rocks! And a more fearful democracy than any that Greece ever knew, is here!—wild with the sense of a hitherto inexperienced liberty;—exulting in the conviction of a power totally unrestrainable by argument;—growing in prosperity beyond all law; and heeding the serenest wisdom,—the most perfect justice,—the most loving sympathy, for its becoming coercion. South Carolina as a State, or people;—as a subject, moral or historical—was in no way involved in the issue before the Senate. She was dragged into it by the head and shoulders;—brought in, like the blind Samson, to make sport for the howling Philistines; and like him, she was to bring down the house about their ears! Is any body simple enough to suppose that the violent scene which followed, was merely a strife between two individuals?—a brawl of persons, simply, involving no other issues & considerations than their single hates and & passions? If such, surely, how is it that it has roused the whole country, North and South, into such a fever of excitement as absolutely forbids thought and mocks all judgment? The individuals concerned are nothing here, to the deep moral issues which they represent. They declare only the gradual progress, from words to blows—from speech to action—of that terrible & unhappy strife of sections, which has now been breeding bad blood among us for more than a quarter of a century. We are only reaching a natural result, from the operation of well known causes. It is the beginning of the war. It is a revolution which is already in progress from the terrible throes of which we are destined to see arise a monstrous phantom, clothed with hissing serpents, breathing the pollution of blood, and speeding on fiery winds and wings, on its mission of Carnage and Havoc. Can you doubt that, had the chastisement of Sumner taken place in the House, rather than the Senate, the fight would have become pell-mell; and a scene of butchery must have followed, in which the Capital, and the Confederacy, would have gone down, in a storm of violence, that would have torn the whole Country with convulsions? Do you not see that opinion, in House and Senate, on this affair, and I may add, throughout the Confederacy, is wholly determined by the sections which each party represents? Suppose, then, these sections, or any great body of their respective peoples, to have been brought together, and confronting each other, and do you doubt, that the language which made Brooks fall upon Sumner, would, in like manner, have brought their congregated storms—and to Page 237 →blows? What less could we expect? Here, but a little while ago, we were all in a lively state of apprehension, lest the contemptuous dismissal of Mr. Crompton would move Great Britain to a declaration of War. And shall such slight show of disrespect, prompt a great nation to War—to a war which would injure all her commerce, millions in money, the lives of thousands, and perhaps her own continued existence as a living Power;—and shall we delude ourselves with the idea that such a war of bitter words and malignant passions, as now divides North and South, can be carried on for 30 years, nor realize its bitter fruits in blows? Shall a whole people be fed, for near half a century upon tiger’s meat, seasoned with vipers’ venom, nor raven like the one, nor sting fatally, like the other! And this is the daily food which Demagoguism serves up to the whole nation; and this Demagoguism is now our only Commissary! It supercedes the calm judgment, the independent mind. It crawls, or leaps, into all the departments. No place is secure. It has the agility of the cat, the impudence of the monkey, and, never scrupling at a somerset, it passes over the heads of the true men, into all the high places of the country. As all places may be made to contribute its agencies for attaining political power, so it eagerly grasps at all in turn. None is too high, none too sacred, or exacting, for its presumption. It will condescend to prescribe for Letters and the arts. It will take charge of morals and education;—will head the charitable society; become a leader in the church; a regent of the University; and the power which it will thus acquire, in these several and widely dissimilar fields, it will readily employ, in political barter, for its own further elevation! Of its training and education for either, you have all a sufficient idea. If Mr. Webster’s knowledge of domestic history was so slight as to lead him to commit the most serious mistakes, in matters which really need but little investigation;—if Mr. Sumner, whose education, in school and college, was even superior to that of Mr. Webster;—should show himself equally prone to follow the same blind guidance;—what must be the deficiency of the ordinary politician! His knowledge, or rather his want of knowledge, it would be difficult to describe. His training generally—ignoring books, and patient study—has been mostly among men; and, unhappily, chiefly among those classes of men, who are apt rather to resent education as an impertinence, reflecting on their own deficiencies, than to welcome it as a power demanded for their protection. At best, he associates with but very few whose standards of education lie sufficiently high, to compel, or to counsel him, in turn, to become a student. He is the last person in the world, to rise to that serene moral prudence which men call wisdom—which is the great necessity of society in times of exigency like the present; and he is just as little capable, in ordinary times, to meet the exigencies of any agreement which not only demands research, but requires, that the Debater shall use, by a natural motion of his mind, from the mere details of the Fact, to the Secret, life-giving principle, or idea, by which all human events must be informed. Shall you wonder where the Page 238 →training is so unexacting, and the education so vulgar, that the public men of the times so generally fail to know even the mere facts in our condition, and show themselves so miserably unequal to all the philosophies which grow out of them! Shall we reproach Webster or Sumner with grievance? Have we any right to do so? Have we, ourselves, ever insisted upon proper standards of wisdom & knowledge among our public men? Do we not elect them through the newest caprices. Are we any wiser ourselves? Would the slanders of Sumner be uttered in 1856, had they been silenced by prompt and able refutation in 1830—for just so long have they been accumulating! No! We may reproach this man for malignity, but not ignorance! We have suffered the slanders which he only repeats at secondhand, to run the circle with the sun—to find their way into a thousand circles, and ten thousand volumes. Nay, we have put these very volumes into the hands of our children, and have summoned from abroad, as their teachers, those persons who have studied in no other books, and who cannot now be taught to yield their faith in them, to our, & to better authorities.

This is our history, my friends. The slanders of Sumner do not touch our Past at all. The shame and discredit are not with our ancestry. They are with us! Had we not been careless of our trusts, heedless of our duties and securities, there had been no reproach upon our Past. The reptile had never dared to crawl upon our altars; to smutch or to befoul them, but that we had abandoned them to the free invasion of any reptile! It is a great mistake, let me tell you, to say or to suppose, that our histories—such as would amply suffice for our defence—have been unwritten. This is a serious wrong done to our historians—the fruit of that gross ignorance of what has been done among us, which is perpetually showing itself in presumptuous assertion: The histories of South Carolina, are as full and satisfactory, comprehensive & complete, as those of any State in the Union. They are more so than most. With Lining, Milligan, and Chalmers, Oldmixon & Glen; Archdale, Lawson, Adair and Bartram; Hewatt and others, as contained in the useful collection of Carroll, Drayton, Moultrie, Ramsay and Mills; Johnson & sundry more, we have an almost perfect library, adequate to all our purposes, whether to teach our own people, or to confound our enemies. It is not the Histories that we lack, but the readers of them. I do not say that these Histories are perfect—are such as we ought to have, and might have. The rarely rise above the rank of chroniclers—are, simply, so many storehouses of fact—raw materials—which more elaborate Historians may shape to symmetry, and resolve into a philosophical narrative at some future day. But such is the character of nearly all of our state and colonial Histories. In fact, though we may boast some few picturesque historians who have written with taste, spirit, and considerable art, we have none, any where, who have ever risen to a full, just, philosophical analysis of the chronicles in which the fact and its proper commentary have been brought together in harmonious relation; all this remains to be done, & can only Page 239 →be done, when a proper sense of the necessity of such works shall become as apparent to communities as to individuals. South Carolina has been rather fortunate in her Historians, speaking of them with regard to the rather low standards of Historical writing, which prevailed in the country until a very recent period. Hewatt’s History is well written; tolerably full, and, barring certain biases of sect and birth, tolerably just and accurate. His mistakes are mostly sectarian & political, and do not rise into perversions. The same merit may be accorded to Ramsay, who was a good writer and full of his subject. The other works are all copious as chronicles, though we need much of our colonial history, which must be drawn from foreign archives. If these books are out of print, they are all, fortunately, extant; may be supplied to any extent, and would be supplied whenever the public desire should demand them;—but, for thirty years, to my knowledge, there has been neither desire nor demand!

And yet, my friends, we, of Carolina, are reputed to be very fond lovers of our country. Hearken to our own assertions, and no people ever cherished a more devout reverence for the homes in which their lot has been cast—the soil which gave them birth, or the virtues by which it has been distinguished. Is this boast true? What are the tests of the true Patriotism?—that sentiment, of the soul, rather than the mind—which Schlegel has so happily styled “the glorious fault” of a people! We must first be sure that it is a legitimate sentiment;—that it is born, not of our own feeble, individual vanity, but of a true veneration—a just sense of what is really great and noble in the deeds of our ancestry;—and this right appreciation of their real virtues—not their mere names, or wealth, or social position—implies, in the first place, that we should know perfectly what they have done! We must preserve the record of their deeds as religiously as we preserve the titles to their estates in character—they constitute our estates in character. We must show ourselves capable of a just valuation of their principles and exhibit a laudable determination to emulate their performances—on all occasions, & in every field, whenever an honorable opportunity shall offer. The same law prevails with the community as with the Individual. What a mockery is that man who boasts of the deeds of a sire, yet does nothing of himself. We naturally doubt his legitimacy. We see, and feel, in the very virtues of the father, a terrible sarcasm upon the incompetence of the son. So with communities. They are required, if they would escape shame, not only to maintain, but to add to the capital of character which they inherit from the Past!

Tried by these Severe, but just & inevitable standards, how, my friends, will our Patriotism endure the test? I fear! I fear!—For, briefly to recapitulate, how very few among us are really familiar with the full histories of our State & people; how few know, or exhibit any desire to know, what are the real facts in their career. How many, even among our statesmen & Politicians,—who ought to know every thing according to their own & the vulgar estimate,—show themselves Page 240 →grossly ignorant of their deeds. We live on,—gluttonously, as it were—in the full enjoyment of the wonderful blessings of civil & religious Liberty which they won for us, through blood & trial, yet we not only know nothing of their fortunes, but are rapidly forgetting their very names. If we hear of them at all, it is in the false & fraudulent narratives of those who are hostile to our Institutions, and vainglorious of their own. Anything besides comes to us only in the mouthing declamatory harangues, at certain periods of self glorification, in which the orator escapes contempt and censure, only because of the deeper cloud that darkens the minds & memories of his audience. I have said that our records, even, in most of the Southern States, are to be sought for in the archives of foreign nations. There are some honorable exceptions. Georgia and Louisiana have both appropriated largely to this object; and these two states are largely in possession of great collections of manuscripts illustrating their colonial periods. It is in resources of this sort that our State remains deficient. Now, my friends, our debt, State and city together, is about ten millions of dollars—to be soon increased. This vast amount has been mostly spent in mere material projects—in rail roads, public buildings and munitions of war. Ten or fifteen thousand dollars would suffice to complete our records and give us an ample history of our State & people;—yet such an appropriation, which would put us in possession of a sufficient chronicle of all our sectional past,—which might enable us forever to silence the cavils of our enemies on this score—would be thought a great waste of money! What, to the mere utilitarian, is fame, and character, & the honorable record of ancestral deeds & glory? Our knowledge of the personal histories of the great and brave men who fought our battles in field & cabinet, even when of our immediate precinct, are mostly traditional. We speak of them only in vague & general phrases which, in process of time, because of our ignorance of details, must lose all their significance. Boasting of our warriors and statesmen, as second to none—and proud as we profess ourselves to be of their deeds and powers, we yet suffer them to pass off from the stage of action, with few or no plaudits and never a trophy! It is a mournful retrospect, that of our losses, during the last twenty years. Calhoun, Harper, McDuffie, Legare, Hayne—but why enumerate? The laborious struggle to raise a monument to Calhoun—a labour now devolved upon our women—having failed in all other hands—is conclusive against the hope of paying tribute to any other names! And the early, as well as the modern period is equally without its memorials. Gadsden, Rutledge, Pinckney, Marion, Moultrie Sumter,—and how many more to whom we owe unextinguishable debts of love and gratitude, all sleep in unhonored & almost unknown graves. Statesmen succeed to statesmen, heroes to heroes, and one set of names soon obliterates all the impressions of the preceding. It is the policy of demagoguism that it should be so. If we duly remember the past, and what great men have been among us—how should we tolerate the present? We can scarcely in the whole South, point to a Page 241 →single monument—to a native—reared by our hands, in proof of our veneration! I know of but two or three any where and they are all dedicated to foreigners—a fact which would seem to argue a singular jealousy of all native eminence or a deficiency of all native worth!

I confess to you, my friends, I have very little faith in the patriotism which exhibits such profound indifference. The omission would seem to show that, when we boast of our fathers, we do so, not because we honour them, but because we thus derive honour for ourselves. It is not to yield them homage, but to assert our own possessions. It is not the tribute of reverence, but the cunning of self-esteem. It is our egotism, not our gratitude that makes us eloquent. They have made for us a noble capital of character, among the nations, upon which we are not unwilling to speculate. It is precisely as if the son should brag of the inheritance left him by the Sire, while he forgets to raise the simplest headstone over the old man’s grave!

Our patriotic boasting, lacking as it does, in an essential knowledge of the subject—lacking in the desire to know,—failing in all the proofs of a real veneration, is liable to the same suspicion.

Had Charles Sumner, my friends, been a wise man—assuming the possibility that wisdom should even be coupled with malignity—he would have addressed his attack to our present, rather than our past! He would have struck at our living, rather than our dead. The one might have been found vulnerable enough; the others are unassailable. They shine apart, superior to the storm, above the cloud, in the serene atmosphere of a calm bright sky, the guiding lights of men and nations! They sit, shrined each, in the atmosphere of a true fame, among the great prophet minds of all humanity, in all the periods of time! Their work was done, we have sufficient proof, well and adequately, according to the necessities of their periods and to the full use of all the materials which had been confided to their keeping. They ranked, while they lived, with the very noblest of European virtues! Intellectually they were unashamed by any comparison with the very ablest of European minds. Confining our survey to South Carolina only, I affirm, without fear of contradiction, that, whether in camp or council, in field or leaguer, in deliberate resolve, or in the fervid storms of action, her contributions to the national capital of greatness, were not only equal to those of any of her sister colonies, & superior to most, but equal to the possessions of a like kind in any of the States of Europe! England had no wiser councilors, nor firmer patriots, no persons better practiced in affairs than the Rutledges, the Gadsdens, the Pinckneys, the Middletons and the Laurenses of that day in Carolina; nor braver, nor more skilful soldiers, than her Moultries, Marions, Sumters, Pickenses and others, whom I need not catalogue. Their deeds are ineradicably on record, secure equally against the dull hoof of the ass, and the slimy trail of the reptile!

Page 242 →Would that our Present were quite as certain as our Past; that we could look around us and be sure of great spirits close at hand, calmly harnessing themselves for those conflicts which shall try men’s souls:—sworn only to their country, and superior to the sleek service of party and selfish obligations: sworn only to the South—knowing no party, but that of their native soil, and having but one article of faith—“I know but the South & the South in danger!” Let us hope & pray that the occasion will find the souls which shall be adequate to the exigencies!—That the Hour will bring the man;—that God has not denied, to our living races, the soul & the strength, the courage & the Genius, which are necessary to our safety and duration. But has not our lachesse given us good reason for apprehension? How is it that we are now conscious, for the first time, of the foul shame and reproach cast upon our altars? The attack of Charles Sumner was an old story, repeated at second hand, from the pages of Lorenzo Sabine, and repeated by a thousand other assailants! Why does it awaken an indignation now? For ten years this book of Sabine has been on record; a book well written, with force, spirit, cunning; with an ingenious and plausible array of partial facts;—the argument, in short, of a subtle advocate, having a selfish & sectional object—a performance very far superior, in every essential of strength, subtlety and eloquence, to the labored & flatulent speech of Sumner. Shall it be said that we knew nothing of this book? Ah! my friends, we should have known! The world requires of every people that degree of curiosity: jealousy, study, and an eager sense of what is due to its safety, that it shall keep pace with events & duly inform itself of all the purposes of human intelligence. This is the condition of civilization, & so of safety. Civilization itself means this, and nothing less than this! Shall the sapper work against our defenses for years, and shall we sing on gaily, even when the towers are toppling about our heads? Shall we dance and drink, like Belshazzar, while Fate writes the doom of fire upon our walls?—That we lack in this quickening curiosity of thought; that we lack in this jealous vigilance of watch; that we drowse & dream, when the imminent danger demands the spur of a zealous energy; is the very search by which the assailant is moved to attempt our destruction! This is the true Secret, which lies at the bottom of all national overthrow! A people first sinks into imbecility, lulled perhaps by a Syren music, while the Serpent turns himself about their throats! If we can only be beguiled to drowse, the rest is easy! You will say, can these dangers be feared, simply as we show ourselves ignorant of a book. No! But because of certain supineness, no matter what the cause, which keeps us heedless & ignorant equally of books and men. Ignorance of books, after the world became possessed by [word illegible] was akin to death. Books now contain all the world’s wisdom of six thousand years. They are the levers which shake empires; which overturn dynasties, & make and unmake republics. Shall we use them for our defense, or leave them solely to our enemies, a people that shows itself heedless of books, and supposes that there are Page 243 →any powers superior, is a people preparing to lay their own right arms upon the block; to lose arms and head,—strength, courage, everything, which is necessary to a nation’s safety. You hear men complain that we lack energy and enterprise. This is our own daily complaint. We say the grass grows about our footsteps and we then complain only with reference to failing arts, and mere material objects. But this lack of enterprise is first due to our intellectual inactivity;—to the fact that we have lost curiosity, zeal, faith, enthusiasm, and that eager impulse to performance, which are needed to set all human wheels in motion. Energy and action are not original motors. They spring from deeper sources in the soul and mind; in the will, the faith, the courage, the intelligence;—from the sympathies, and affections, from the hopes, and aims, and imaginations;—and they are active only in degree, as the mental and moral qualities are in wholesome exercise. Where these are wanting, there is no performance, and but little virtue of any value. All the characteristics perish from their non application to daily necessities; & every idler among us is a public enemy. No matter how justly a people may think or feel; if they lack her penance, faith & feeling are but dry sticks which can never bear bud or blossom. The virtues are so many frauds. The religion is a cheat. It is under like laws, then, no matter what the education, no matter what the amount of popular intelligence, they must fail of wisdom, unless these possessions are applied to the daily uses of the race. The human mind, like a fountain, is commanded to give out, even as it takes in; or, like the fountain, it fails from its own stagnation; so, briefly, energy and enterprise, work, industry, in all the departments, are the only proofs of intellect, patriotism & virtue, as they are the great essentials of continued life & security. When you see a lack of enterprise among a people it signifies first a lack of intelligence & moral. That quickening curiosity which conduct one class of people to Books, the Fine arts, the Sciences, is grounded in the same moral necessities which conduct another class to trade, commerce, and mechanical industry. The mind furnishes the motor, in all the cases, through each individual takes the direction which his peculiar endowment will suggest. When, therefore, you behold a people grown sluggards in the race, you may feel very sure that they are sluggish in intellect—that their virtues are feeble as their will—dead or dying out;—and that they must succumb before any stirring competitor in the great race for power! The world is so constituted as to need the cumulative energies of all its people, commencing together in action—mutually depending—mutually giving and receiving. We can spare none of their agencies—waste none—admit none to escape from duty; for the bounty of God justifies no profligacy of resources, and he gives us no faculties to be laid away in lavender. Where any considerable portion of the people, in any community, show themselves sluggish, indifferent, inactive, unperforming, that people is doomed! The decree is final! “Why cumbereth it the ground? Cut it down and cast it into the fire!”

Page 244 →Either we have men of learning and education among us, or we have not? If we have, why should we get our histories and teachers from strangers? And if our own men can, and do, write our histories, why do we not read them? That they should neither write, nor we read, argues some singular deficiency in our mental resources, or a worse deficiency in our morals! But we boast of the men! We have them! We point proudly to their names, if not to their monuments, and we say—‘they are ours!’ Then, my friends, the failures must be in us—us only! Our select men have done their duty. Where, then, are we?

I have said that this attack of Sumner was an old story, thrice baked meats from the oven of Lorenzo Sabine. But the same style of assault has been a thousand times repeated, in a thousand ways, by the Northern Press. Why did Sabine’s and all other publications fail to arrest our attention and provoke our anger. It will be said, that we knew nothing of Sabine & the rest. There, my friends, is the mischief. We should have known. As a people we read too little; and so as long as the fabricated chronicles were confined to books only, they may have continued in circulation for half a century more, without moving our indignation. It is only when the living voice of the accuser, rolls out from the dome of the Capital, like a midnight tocsin, and compels us to hear, and makes us feel that everybody else must hear, that we become suddenly conscious that our reputation is in danger. It is unhappily only through our bugles of demagoguism, that we hear any thing. That we do not read is due to the same wretched causes which have moved us to loathe work, and shrink from enterprise. This in false notions of society. Here & there, only, do we see some single laborer, buried in his books, and pursuing his secret studies at great self sacrifice, in cell or studio, and we scorn him for his self sacrificing homage to wisdom in the shade. The community taboos himself and his labors. He must be a blockhead to yield up present distinction, worldly gain, and sensual delights, in laborious searches into the abstract & the obscure. And he is generally odious—our very instincts make him so,—since his practice reproaches our own. Our social standards are quite too low to compel study among our governing minds. We lack books. There is hardly a good library in our State,—none adequate to the wants of the student. We do not keep pace with the working mind of Europe or America. We are behind our time. We do not feel that goad of mental necessity, which is the only true spring of noble and honorable enterprise. Had we this, not only should we have known of the steady progress of slanderous opinion against us, but we should have been prepared to set our foot upon it, with triumphant refutation. But secure in our invincible self esteem,—our Chinese Wall—which shuts us in, equally from the Barbarians,—and ourselves, we never troubled ourselves on the subject of our real reputation, or the duties which it entailed upon us.

Meanwhile the book of Sabine was working its way, insidiously, in all other regions in preoccupying the public mind against us, and encouraging the Page 245 →assailants of our institutions, according as they become impressed with our imbecility. At the North, everybody reads: the Carman on his cart; the Hackman on his box; the pavior along the highways, in every moment of interval snatched from labour. And this is one of the great secrets of their restless energies, of their indomitable enterprise, of their reckless progress, which sets all present possessions upon a high cast of the die, fearless of loss, in the terrible intensity of their thirst for new acquisitions. And hearing nothing of our claims from ourselves, they all drank in, as so much law and gospel, the fictions of our enemies; these were grateful, as they promised them an easy conquest over us in that conflict which now certainly impends. When Sumner assailed the honour and performance of Revolutionary Carolina, it was only with such supposed facts as had been already made familiar to all the peoples north of the Hudson. We taught them nothing truer, or better. We left their tuition wholly to our assailants, & they are now so thoroughly drilled in the lying chronicles, that they feel outraged by every attempt to lesson them in the true. Nobody there ever thinks to question the facts in these false histories. We had never tasked ourselves, as a people, for their proper refutation, and the verdict went against us by default; and but for the gross publicity which attends all the proceedings of Congress, we should have continued to stroke our beards, with the complacency of a people, satisfied that, in all the world, there was nobody to take us by the beard. For one, I tell you frankly, I rejoice in the attack of Sumner. It has helped to arouse us; to waken us to indignation; to goad our self esteem into exercise, while working on vanity; to make us feel that we are not secure;—that there is no security for sloth and indifference, while all the world is heaving with the unrighteousness, daily, of new volcanic births. Another source of my satisfaction, is in this: it will prompt such a general re-examination of our history, as will enable us to convict, and burn, the false & rascally volumes in which we too much teach our young; will enable us to sift & expose the fraudulent pretensions to performance, on the part of Sections of our country, the patriotism & achievement of which have been always & equally without foundation. Our own periodicals would have done this; our own writers. But these were allowed to perish. There was never an author in South Carolina, that ever received a dollar from any local publication—never a publication that did not ruin its publisher. We suffered the local intellect, in the fields of art and literature to be every where ignored; to toil without reward in money or recompense in fame. We encountered all its claims with denial; its performances with contempt & sneer: though in all such cases we must have known that a most unselfish patriotism lay at the bottom of every such enterprise. I, myself, have lost more than ten thousand dollars, in frequent efforts to establish and sustain our periodicals, as vehicles for the local intellect! And this intellect was equal to all our mental, & moral, & social necessities, in every department. We might have had as ripe a scholarship, as profound a wisdom, as large & generous Page 246 →a philosophy, and as ideal development in art, equal to any in the world, had we but cherished the gifts of genius and the generous impulses of patriotism, which have been in our possession from the first. Training, only, & time, were needed for the full development of these gifts. But there was no motive to be trained; for there was no appreciation; and the demand, by inevitable laws, must always regulate the supply. And so, failure has been the invariable fortune of all attempts at domestic art or authorship. We had no faith in our genius, an error which began even before the Revolution, making us rather prefer an eccentric adventurer like Lee, or a sluggish intellect like Lincoln, to lead our armies, than any one of the brilliant array of native Partisan warriors, such as were furnished by every Section of the State. This miserable Provincialism is the source of some of our worst mishaps, as of some of our grossest absurdities. It makes us reject and despise the native for the foreign; though the one strives in our battles, & the other openly toils for our destruction. Thus we run after this foreign lecturer, who is passe in his own province, fills his pockets with our money, pampers at our feasts & with our praises, and he goes away to laugh at or defame us. And in degree as we are sycophant to the foreigner, are we insolent to the native. One of our own distinguished citizens who had been himself too much dismayed by this provincialism, suffered himself some years ago to say sneeringly in one of our periodicals, that English literature was good enough for us. He never dreamed of the obvious retort. So, also, was English criticism: & the [Southern] Review itself was, accordingly, an impertinence. I tell you boldly that in this little city, we have had genius in every department, equal to any in this Confederacy, but we have lacked in the self respect to recognize and to assert it. Ours are, in fact, a greatly and variously endowed people, who, with a proper ambition might occupy triumphantly every department. But we lack the proper faith in ourselves. I have heard a Southern artist say that he never allowed himself to read an American book. My answer was—‘You do not, then, expect us to look at an American picture?’ The native merchant & mechanic, in the same manner, will be very likely to suppose, that the Genius of the Nation is deficient in those fields which appeal to the higher tastes of civilization. He will be apt to say that the Fine Arts and General Literature must necessarily be of a superior grade in Europe than America. But what if I were to say, in reply, that such must be the case, also, with commercial and mechanical capacity. That would be held a great impertinence. Yet would it be more so than the first assumption. By what right does either of us suppose, that in our own crafts we are perfect—just what we should be—while, in that of our neighbor, nothing can be done or hoped for. What says right Reason on this subject! The law is, simply this: God leaves his people with an adequate endowment in every department, which is essential to the growth, the development and the securities of the race; and that the same family which produces the mechanic, is equally gifted to produce the great philosopher, warrior and Statesman—the Page 247 →great master, in every province of performance. We must believe in the race,—believe in one another. This is the first and great necessity. And this Faith is one which will produce its own fruits. We endow the Genius when we implore his succor. We create the art, when we crave its benefits. All that we need for this, is the appreciative sympathies which shall always be on the alert to know what each is doing, of a public concern, and to feel laudably interested in his progress. It is only a few years ago, that one of our own painters, a man highly honoured, of exquisite tastes and talents, one indeed, to whom you have recently done much honours—said to me—“Ah. Sir, my friends do not even come to see my pictures. I do not ask them to buy; but they do not care to look. They care nothing whether I paint or not.” And yet this curious anxiety, this appreciative sympathy, are especially necessary for all those who toil for the glorious rewards of Fame! And if society would not interfere to corrupt the genius, he would finally triumph over society. The individual mind, the peculiar endowment especially, must especially beware of the enslaving influences of society. And for the sake of the young who may hear me, I must report one of the most fortunate discoveries of my own life. I discovered, at an early period, that an able bodied white man of 21, six feet high, and of strong abstemiousness, could live & grow fat on 12 bushels & a half per annum. I do not know but that this is the greatest of the discoveries of my life. For what did it teach me. The facility with which life might be maintained, and the capacity for honorable exercise & enterprise be urged to its utmost, within the smallest concession to convention. If it be so easy and so cheap for us to live, why should I sacrifice or surrender, a single impulse of my soul, a single thought of my mind, a single feeling of my heart, to any of the requisitions of society. These are more precious to me than life. They are life. Why should I duck my beaver to pretension; why be a parasite to the great: why forego the direction of mood or mind, even as God seemed to decree that they should work. Individual and mental independence, will make us heedless of the awards of society. The loss is to society itself. If we deny these awards to the man of Genius how shall we possess its fruits? We turn away incredulous, with ill-conceived scorn from the modest worker in arts and letters, as if his successes, which would crown our state with triumphs, would be disparaging to our own individual stature. Ah! my friends, for otherwise was it with the moral of the Athenians. Let us look back some two thousand years. It is the time of Pericles. The Pantheon had been but lately built. It is already the glory of Athens. Art already triumphs, not merely in the fostering care of the State, but in the affections of its people. And Phidias is the great Sculptor of the time. It has been bruited every where that he is about to commence a new achievement. It is, at first, a winged whisper throughout the city, that echoes along the walls, and grows gradually into a deep murmur that makes its way, through porch and hall, into court and chamber. It is said that the great sculptor has been busied secretly, Page 248 →modelling on a new subject, in his little studio, in the narrow lane that runs down west from the Acropolis. It is known that he has just received a huge and beautiful block from the pure white marbles of Pentelicus. There is a report, also, that large supplies of gold and ivory have been sent him from the treasury of the State, and Pericles himself, has seen to the delivery of these costly materials, at the studio of the artist. Nay, that great statesman himself, has been secretly closeted, for hours with the Sculptor, and keen eyes have noted that on these visits, Aspasia did not accompany the statesman: but it was observed that she lingered waiting his return at the porch of her dwelling, and flew eagerly as he came, anxious for his tidings. This said, accordingly, that the work is not yet sufficiently advanced,—the model not sufficiently developed for the conception,—to be submitted to the Eyes of one, to whom the graces themselves defer as an authority. Nay, more;—there is, today, a rumour, that Sophocles, himself, and the young Euripides, have both been called into consultation with Pericles and the sculptor; and it is supposed that some nice aesthetical questions, which are also mythological, are under discussion. What are these questions? What daring thing is Phidias about to attempt. What grand subject hath he chance to idealize; and which of the powerful Gods of Hellas is he about to lift among the constellations of the Pantheon? Will nobody tell us? Such is the cry! The people are in a ferment. They run hither and thither. They forget all external cares. This concerns the state, the individual; the glory of Athens, the honour of their Gods & Greece! They will give worlds to know. Even Ceravucius [?], the millionaire and in some respects the miser, has attempted bribes. One has heard it from another, who has heard it from a third, who got it from fountainhead, that he has offered a thousand drachmas to Cyllenas, one of the favorite workmen of Phidias, who confessed that his integrity was not above the bribe, but added, with tears in his eyes, that he knew nothing; that Phidias alone had been working upon the new subject, which none of the apprentices had been permitted to behold. This swells the mystery. What is the subject which the sculptor will suffer no vulgar eye to see, no ‘prentice hand to touch?—None to know, save Pericles, & the two Dramatic Poets. Some of the chief men of the city, sharing the curiosity of the people, go to Pericles. But he smiles pleasantly as he replies—“My friends, I can now tell you nothing. But it is for all of us to thank the Gods, that they suffer us to live at the same time with a Genius, who can teach us a just conception of the their own divine attributes!”

It is not the city only. The grove & the academy are alive with the inquiry. What is the question which requires Phidias & Pericles, Sophocles & Euripides, to discuss together, and in such privacy; “Can it be any question touching the attributes of the unknown Gods?”

Here the Priesthood take the alarm, and look dubiously towards the studio of the daring Sculptor. They know that he is daring,—for he has the audacity of Page 249 →Genius,—but they also know that he is protected by Pericles, and that, tho’ he may not exactly subscribe to the creed which they teach, yet has a profound veneration of his own—is of a devout religious nature, with all his audacity; and that the people have quite as sound a faith in his virtue as in theirs. For these reasons they dare not touch him. “Yet must he beware!”

Then the discussion turns upon the probable material out of which the chef d’oeuvre is to be wrought. Is it to be of marble? There is that new block from the masses of Pentelicus!—Or, is it to be Chryselephantine—the costly combination of gold & ivory, which it is well known that Phidias affects; though, even in that day, the style & material were subjects of question among the art legitimates as it is still in ours?

No matter what the subject or material, it has thrown all Athens into a delightful fever of curiosity and anticipation. The whole people, as with one heart, feel that they are about to achieve, through one of their own sons, a new triumph over all the nations of the Earth.

Do we, Carolinians, ever rise to such a feeling? Ah! my friends, that question involves the necessity of a close and searching analysis of our social moral, which, with a few clues, I must leave to your own thoughts rather than my solutions. Suffice it that the great secret of Athens, lay in her mental independence! She made her own books—her own arts; had her own histories, and encouraged her own genius, in every department, esteeming the great poet, dramatist & painter, as fully as she did the great Politician, engineer or Banker. She did not, accordingly, have to wait upon opinion from abroad. She made opinion; not only for home, but for all the world! Her people, the very humblest and meanest, were capable. Through her home education, of detecting the slightest trippings,—whether in phrase, grammar or pronunciation of the popular orator and actor: and the hisses of Demos were the fruits of a criterion which never took its cue from the mutual admiration society; a paltry clique, or a bigoted circle of dilettante. They were the masters in all the provinces, and simply because of that earnest, mental enthusiasm,—that loving curiosity of temperament,—which lost itself perpetually in the subject of its study, and found its own genuine nature, most justly developed, by its objective inquiries into the nature of all topics which could, in any way, appeal to the Intellectual Seeker. The foreigner came among the Athenians, not to lord it, but to receive the law;—to learn, not to leer! They were not simply a smart, clever, showy people, easily deviated by trifles, and living in trifles only. They aimed at great, not petty triumphs. They were, in brief, an emulous, performing people—full of vivacity; graceful in play; have a full faith in their own mission; who seldom suffered the egotism of the individual to find its exercise at the cost of the race. They regarded the achievements of their great man, as so many contributions to the capital stock of the community; and never supposed, for a moment, that, in doing him honor, they were to forfeit any of Page 250 →their own personal proportions. Loving the performance, and glorifying in its greatness, they acquired, through mere sympathy, a personal share in the achievement; even as he who bows fervently in prayer, while the Prophet invokes the Deity, must partake of the blessing which his prayer shall win down from heaven! Athens, in its prime, was a city of but ten thousand houses, hardly much larger than ours, and not twice as populous: the whole state contained but two hundred thousand freemen to four hundred thousand slaves—but how large in the space which she occupies in the history of Greek civilization; how large her power even now, over the civilization of the world! The Eye of Greece, she was a soul to the universe! It was her sympathy with greatness, that made her great. That sympathy was the fuel that strengthened Phidias for his work, creating an Olympus for her, in the very market place! And Athens is about to be repaid, a thousandfold, for this loving sympathy with Genius. The work of Phidias is done—the great masterpiece—about to be uncovered—about to be inaugurated in the eyes of the people. Academies and schools are deserted. Shops are shut. Toil is forbidden. The drudge has respite. One of the grand Sabbath days of Society is appointed, when all have holiday; and the rulers of the tribe assemble, the castes, the classes, the orders, the professions; and Pericles marches at the head of the nobles and chief men! There, in that group, you see the two great surviving dramatic Poets: Euripides, the younger, with corrugated brows, great round prominent eyes, massive beard, & flowing waving hair like that of Milton. Equally salient of feature, with greater breadth of brow, prominent, aquiline nose, dilating nostril, well curled & oily beard, somewhat grizzly—darker of complexion, and of more grave contemplative aspects—Sophocles, his senior and superior, stands beside him; and as they walk apart, the lively impulsive people cry aloud their admiration;—for are not these the Poets—inspired—the chosen interpreters of the Gods? Oh! To behold that grand assembly, with the great of Greece all present! Who shall describe it. Yonder, you see is Pericles, that miracle of statesmen! He moves among the priesthood, and is habited like one of them. And there is Aspasia—a noble creature whom the moderns have slandered without knowing—who seems, this day, to unite the charms of Venus with the dignity of Minerva. Look at Alcibiades, at her side, in flowing robes, half borrowed from the Persian, rich & worn so gracefully, whose eager eye, and brave glances, already declare for that versatile genius, which was only cursed in its being born at so late a period, when Demagoguism had begun the overthrow of all the best Gods of Humanity & Greece. And near him stands a boy. Do you note that boy. He is but nine years old, and holding the hand of his Preceptor, Isaeus. That boy is the young Demosthenes. Who, at this moment, dreams of the voluminous thunders which are growing & gathering under that fair open brow of childhood—of those mighty Philippics, which are yet to roll like angry billows, rocking the very throne upon which sits the Macedonian despot, and moulding themselves into assailing armies, in those parted, Page 251 →smiling lips? But no, my friends. I am mistaken. The boy is not Demosthenes. Demosthenes is not yet born. He is not needed for his country so long as Pericles sways the destinies of Athens. But now, if the boy we look upon—warmed by the occasion—shall also grow inspired for achievement—shall feel as he beholds, the wings of a powerful enthusiasm growing as on his shoulders?—the mighty impulse swelling as his heart, stimulating him, with a generous ambition—eager to win their appreciative admiration, which, he sees, follows so fondly the great achievement—and, with the unconscious murmurs on his lips—“Anch ‘io son pittore!” from that moment dedicating himself, his life, mind, soul, to some glorious art—Sculpture, Poetry, the Drama, Eloquence, Statesmanship or War! Oh! my friends, when we deny the tribute of our admiration to the achievement of our contemporaries, we cut off, from our own sons, the most powerful motives to great deeds—we stifle the generous impulses which swell the heart with patriotism, and make ambition one of the noblest virtues of the soul!

But the scene passes. There is a solemn music—itself a discourse of art, that seems specially to appeal to Heaven. This, too, is the work of a master. It is that of the great Timotheus, the musician of Miletus; he who added new strings to the Grecian cithara, and perfected the Lyre of the nation. Hissed, when he first appeared before the Athenians, he has nobly persevered, until he has succeeded to a complete triumph, at once over his art, and over the severest standards of Athenian taste and criticism. Now, they honour him with reverence. He is the protégé of Euripides. It was the dramatic Poet who first perceived the secret resources of his genius; sustained him against hostility, encouraged him to persevere: and who, now, with a satisfaction which he does not seek to conceal, beaming from every feature of his noble face, listens, rapt & wondering, to the glorious harmony, as rising into mightiest diapason, it rolls upward, shaking roof & rafter, as if by swelling billows of the sea! Silence,—and the ears of the great multitude, seem to fancy that they still hear the glorious chorus, as it melts away, and is smothered in the embrace of loving echoes. The hush is broken by the voice of Pericles. Such an oration—chaste, classical, original, and grand.—It is an essay on the Social Religion, as contradistinguished from that of the soul, though warmed by all its living virtues. It is Thought, born of Power suckled at the hearts of Beauty, clothed and attended by the graces, and borne upward, in Eagle flight, on the wings of Poetry and Eloquence. And the souls of that hushed multitude, are borne upwards with the orator: and they are all fitly moved and lifted; fitly won & subdued by sympathy and exultation, for the crowning scene which is to follow! Phidias, now, pale and sad of aspect, but with a rich spiritual luster gleaming from his eyes, emerges from the background. His thin lips quiver with his emotions, which, however keep him dumb. There is a murmur—only a murmur—as he appears, and he utters but a single sentence.—“To the Gods of Greece!”—and his hand waves, and the pulleys work.—the concealing curtains Page 252 →are drawn upwards and outwards,—and Silence, with electric shock, at once paralyzes the multitude. For a moment only! Then, with one choral burst, as of a single voice—but such a voice—a voice of the mountains & the Sea—they hail the new wonder of Athenian art. It is a God that speaks to their senses. It is a God that suddenly fills all their souls. It is the great colossus, in gold & ivory, of the Olympian Jupiter which they behold. Zeus, himself, with all his divine attributes, sits in majesty before him, even as he appears, solemn in council, before the assembled Deities, on the summits of Olympus!—Suddenly, then, Aphasia advances, and while Pericles grasps one hand of the Sculptor, and points upward with the other, she places a massive wreath upon his brows,—saying “Athens, glorying in the triumphs of her sons, this day, by my hands, crowns one of the noblest among them, with the cedar and laurel of Immortality. May the Gods of Hellas confirm, with their decree, this act of commemoration.”—and even as she closed, [word missing] is a danger as [words missing] golden shields, in the sacrum—the Holy of Holies—the chamber [words missing].

Thus, my friends, was the Social Moral of Athens trained to perfection, to a generous ambition; to an eager sense of the Beautiful, & through the Beautiful, to the Grand, the Pure and the Eternal! Thus did the loving sympathy of her people, create the Sculptor, the Poet, the orator and statesman—and these, in turn, have perpetuated the glories of the race, in all the secure trophies of her wondrous arts. There is but one process by which to achieve these results and secure the same trophies. It is the love of a people—which has learned to discriminate justly, and to honor magnanimously the deserving objects—which alone can bring to birth that Genius, which shall maintain their institutions and perpetuate their Fame.