Excerpt from Oration Delivered Before the City Council and Citizens of Boston: On the One Hundred and Seventeenth Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence; July 4, 1893 Republic sprang full-grown and perfect from the front of Jove by a creative fiat; the millennium had come all at once; there had been no before, and there would be no serious hereafter to reckon with. It is true, our national tone of confidence and glorification was pitched a little high and shrill, as if we had some misgiving, a lurking distrust that all was not well; and it was not until the gigantic struggle with slavery had been successfully met that the key was lowered and we adopted the soberer tone that goes with mature life and with the conscious ness of the dangers that beset the path of nations and of our ability under God to over come them. 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.