there can be found an eminent man in tins country who is not haunted by the gloomy spectre of past thraldom, and -who -would not give thousands of pounds if the whole matter could be blotted out forever, as history and as a remembrance, and become a blank!
Ye must get rid of all this—get rid of it for the generations to come; and the great means thereto is cultivation. And -what a word of depth, of power, of vast import, of broad significance, of profoundest meaning, and of far-touching influence, is this!—a word which enters into the training of little children, the formation of men's characters, the development of women's virtue and moral beauty, the determining the power of laws, and the founding of states and empires!
And if the word has such deep and mighty import, so, likewise, the work which it implies and places before us; a work which requires all sorts of instruments and all kinds of agencies. For to cultivate men and manhood is no easy task, and can be done by no simple, trivial means, nor yet by any special order or peculiar class in the state. Men look here to the preacher, the missionary, the school teacher, to cultivate and train up the future manhood of the country; and great, I know, is the responsibility which rests upon them. But the cultivation of the manhood of a nation comes from all sources in the commonwealth, and flows in upon the souls of its citizens from all its streams of influence:—from the Executive, the prime representative of authority, repressing passion, giving its wonted authority to cool, calm reason, illustrating
