Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 9.djvu/155

BRYANT you. The Washingtons, the Franklins, the Han- cocks of Hungary, driven out by a far worse tyranny than was ever endured here, are wan- derers in foreign lands. Some of them have sought a refuge in our country — one sits with his company our guest to-night — and we must measure the duty we owe them by the same standard which we would have had history apply, if our ancestors had met with a fate like theirs. I have compared the exiled Hungarians to the great men of our own history. Difficulty, my brethren, is the nurse of greatness — a harsh nurse, who roughly rocks her foster-children into strength and athletic proportion. The mind grappling with great aims and wrestling with mighty ingredients, grows, by certain necessity, to their stature. Scarce anything so convinces me of the capacity of the human intellect for indefinite expansion in the different stages of its being, as this power of enlarging itself to the compass of surrounding emergencies. These men have been trained to greatness by a quicker and surer method than a peaceful country and a tranquil period can know. But it is not merely or principally for their personal qualities that we honor them ; we honor them for the cause in which they failed so glori- ously. Great issues hang upon that cause, and great interests of mankind are crushed by its downfall. I was on the continent of Europe when the treason of Gorgey laid Hungary bound IX— 10 145