A Discourse Pronounced at the Request of the Essex Historical Society, on the 18th of September, 1828: In Commemoration of the First Settlement of Salem, in the State of Massachusetts (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from A Discourse Pronounced at the Request of the Essex Historical Society, on the 18th of September, 1828: In Commemoration of the First Settlement of Salem, in the State of Massachusetts

There are certain epochs in the history of nations, which always attract to themselves a last ing interest. They constitute steps in the progress or decline Of empire, at which we involuntarily pause to look back upon the past, or to spell out the for tunes of the future. They become associated with our inmost feelings and profoundest reflections. Our imaginations embody the time, the place, and the circumstances. We drop the intermediate distances of space and years, which divide us from them. We breathe the very air and spirit of the age itself. We gather up the fragments of broken facts, as history or tradition has scattered them around us. We arrange them with a fond solicitude and having dressed them out in all the pride and pomp Of fair array, our hearts kindle at the contemplation; and we exult or mourn, glow with confidence, or how with humiliation, as they pass before us, and we realize their connexion with ourselves, the glory of our country, or the fate of the world.

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