Excerpt from Discourse: Delivered Before the New England Society in the City of New-York, December 22, 1851 The origin of our country lies in the Open daylight of history. We cannot go back to that morning twilight of tradition, from Which poetry draws so many of its themes and so much of its inspiration. Such forms as Arthur and the Cid, in Whom the real and the fanciful meet and blend, like the mountain and the cloud upon the distant horizon, have no place upon our soil. The simple dig mity of men like Carver, and Brewster, and Winthrop, can borrow no attractions from the hues of romance. Ifwe lose something, so far as imagination is concerned, by the nearness and distinctness of the settlement of the country, we gain much upon the side of truth, in the moral dignity which was stamped upon the enterprise, in the exalted motives Which led to it, and in those high qualities of mind and character by which its success was confirmed. If our early history does not furnish those picturesque contrasts, those wild struggles, those lawless manners, and those genial traits of homely nature, Which, lying in the idealizing light of distance, become the sources from which poetry draws its ever new materials, it is a sufficient compensation to a manly Spirit, to be able to say that the institutions of New England were founded in religious faith; that their progress was assured by the animating principle of civil liberty that they were con secrated by a deep-seated respect for law, and enforced by lives of spotless purity. Other nations can trace back the beginnings of their social and civil state to earlier periods, through a longer successmn of generations; but who can find them lying in higher sources than religion, liberty, and law? About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.