institutions provide for the children of the people; growing up beneath and penetrated by the genuine influences of American society; living from infancy to manhood and age amidst our expanding, but not luxurious civilization; partaking in our great destiny 5 of labor, our long contest with unreclaimed nature and uncivilized man, our agony of glory, the war of Independence, our great victory of peace, the formation of the Union, and the establishment of the Constitution; he is all, all our own! Washington is ours. I That crowded and glorious life,

"Where multitudes of virtues passed along, Each pressing foremost, in the mighty throng Ambitious to be seen, then making room For greater multitudes that were to come,' that life was the life of an American citizen.

15

I claim him for America. In all the perils, in every darkened moment of the state, in the midst of the reproaches of enemies and the misgivings of friends, I turn to that transcendant name for courage 20 and for consolation. To him who denies or doubts whether our fervid liberty can be combined with law, with order, with the security of property, with the pursuits and advancement of happiness; to him who denies that our forms of government are capable of 25

producing exultation of soul and the passion of true glory; to him who denies that we have contributed anything to the stock of great lessons and great examples; to all these I reply by pointing to 5 Washington!

And now, friends and fellow-citizens, it is time to bring this discourse to a close.

We have indulged in gratifying recollections of 10 the past, in the prosperity and pleasures of the present, and in high hopes for the future. But let us remember that we have duties and obligations to perform, corresponding to the blessings which we enjoy. Let us remember the trust, the sacred trust, attaching to 15 the rich inheritance which we have received from our fathers. Let us feel our personal responsibility, to the full extent of our power and influence, for the preservation of the principles of civil and religious liberty. And let us remember that it is only religion, 20 and morals, and knowledge, that can make men respectable and happy under any form of government. Let us hold fast the great truth, that communities are responsible, as well as individuals; that no government is respectable which is not just; 25 that without unspotted purity of public faith, with

out sacred public principle, fidelity, and honor, no mere forms of government, no machinery of laws, can give dignity to political society. In our day and generation let us seek to raise and improve the moral sentiment, so that we may look, not for a de- 5 graded, but for an elevated and improved future. And when both we and our children shall have been consigned to the house appointed for all living, may love of country and pride of country glow with equal fervor among those to whom our names and our 11 blood shall have descended! And then, when honored and decrepit age shall lean against the base of this monument, and troops of ingenuous youth shall be gathered round it, and when the one shall speak to the other of its objects, the purposes of its con- 15 struction, and the great and glorious events with which it is connected, there shall rise from every youthful breast the ejaculation, "Thank God, I

NOTES

FAREWELL ADDRESS

14. arrived. Observe the balanced independent constructions leading to the principal statement. This formal introductory sentence, though quite in accord with the stately rhetoric of Washington's time, follows classical models more closely than is now customary. The usage of our own time is illustrated in the opening sentences of the two Bunker Hill orations. 2: 12. election. In 1792.

2:15. foreign nations. France declared herself a republic in 1792. The wise course of Washington kept the country in a neutral position during the period of the French revolution known as "The Reign of Terror." This period has been generally considered to extend from January 21, 1793, the date of the execution of Louis XVI, to July 28, 1794, when Robespierre and other sanguinary leaders were guillotined on the spot where their victims had been killed. The atrocities committed during this period and its sudden end fully justified the policy of Washington.

2: 16. persons. Washington even went so far as to send to Madison a number of topics and to ask him to consider them and express them in "plain and modest terms"; but Madison begged Washington to abandon his idea of retiring. Jefferson