No one there gathered can ever
forget that afternoon of glorious sunlight or the noble pageant. The
great mountains, which had so frequently been the bulwark of liberty
and a place of refuge for our fathers, were all aglow with beauty, as
if, like Horeb's bush, they too would open their lips in praise and
thanksgiving. One of the closing sentences of Senator Evarts' address
is unsurpassed in modern or ancient eloquence: "These rolling years
have shown growth, forever growth, and strength, increasing strength,
and wealth and numbers ever expanding, while intelligence, freedom,
art, culture and religion have pervaded and ennobled all this material
greatness. Wide, however, as is our land and vast our population
to-day, these are not the limits to the name, the fame, the power of
the life and character of Washington. If it could be imagined that
this nation, rent by disastrous feuds, broken in its unity, should
ever present the miserable spectacle of the undefiled garments of his
fame parted among his countrymen, while for the seamless vesture
of his virtue they cast lots--if this unutterable shame, if this
immeasurable crime, should overtake this land and this people, be sure
that no spot in the wide world is inhospitable to his glory, and
no people in it but rejoices in the influence of his power and his
virtue.
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