They have long outlived the troubles and dangers of the Revolution; they have outlived the evils arising from the want of a united and efficient government; they have outlived the menace of imminent dangers to the public liberty; they have outlived nearly all their contemporaries;—­but they have not outlived, they cannot outlive, the affectionate gratitude of their country.  Heaven has not allotted to this generation an opportunity of rendering high services, and manifesting strong personal devotion, such as they rendered and manifested, and in such a cause as that which roused the patriotic fires of their youthful breasts, and nerved the strength of their arms.  But we may praise what we cannot equal, and celebrate actions which we were not born to perform. Pulchrum est benefacere reipublica, etiam bene dicere haud absurdum est.

The Bunker Hill Monument is finished.  Here it stands.  Fortunate in the high natural eminence on which it is placed, higher, infinitely higher in its objects and purpose, it rises over the land and over the sea; and, visible, at their homes, to three hundred thousand of the people of Massachusetts, it stands a memorial of the last, and a monitor to the present, and to all succeeding generations.  I have spoken of the loftiness of its purpose.  If it had been without any other design than the creation of a work of art, the granite of which it is composed would have slept in its native bed.  It has a purpose, and that purpose gives it its character.  That purpose enrobes it with dignity and moral grandeur.  That well-known purpose it is which causes us to look up to it with a feeling of awe.  It is itself the orator of this occasion.  It is not from my lips, it could not be from any human lips, that that strain of eloquence is this day to flow most competent to move and excite the vast multitudes around me.  The powerful speaker stands motionless before us.  It is a plain shaft.  It bears no inscriptions, fronting to the rising sun, from which the future antiquary shall wipe the dust.  Nor does the rising sun cause tones of music to issue from its summit.  But at the rising of the sun, and at the setting of the sun; in the blaze of noonday, and beneath the milder effulgence of lunar light; it looks, it speaks, it acts, to the full comprehension of every American mind, and the awakening of glowing enthusiasm in every American heart.  Its silent, but awful utterance; its deep pathos, as it brings to our contemplation the 17th of June, 1775, and the consequences which have resulted to us, to our country, and to the world, from the events of that day, and which we know must continue to rain influence on the destinies of mankind to the end of time; the elevation with which it raises us high above the ordinary feelings of life,—­surpass all that the study of the closet, or even the inspiration of genius, can produce.  To-day it speaks to us.  Its future auditories will be the successive generations of men, as they rise up before it and gather around it.  Its speech will be of patriotism and courage; of civil and religious liberty; of free government; of the moral improvement and elevation of mankind; and of the immortal memory of those who, with heroic devotion, have sacrificed their lives for their country.[4]