Among the first colonists from Europe to this part of America, there were some, doubtless, who contemplated the distant consequences of their undertaking, and who saw a great futurity.  But, in general, their hopes were limited to the enjoyment of a safe asylum from tyranny, religious and civil, and to respectable subsistence, by industry and toil.  A thick veil hid our times from their view.  But the progress of America, however slow, could not but at length awaken genius, and attract the attention of mankind.

In the early part of the second century of our history, Bishop Berkeley, who, it will be remembered, had resided for some time in Newport, in Rhode Island, wrote his well-known “Verses on the Prospect of Planting ARTS and LEARNING in AMERICA.”  The last stanza of this little poem seems to have been produced by a high poetical inspiration:—­

    “Westward the course of empire takes its way;
      The four first acts already past,
    A fifth shall close the drama with the day: 
      Time’s noblest offspring is the last.”

This extraordinary prophecy may be considered only as the result of long foresight and uncommon sagacity; of a foresight and sagacity stimulated, nevertheless, by excited feeling and high enthusiasm.  So clear a vision of what America would become was not founded on square miles, or on existing numbers, or on any common laws of statistics.  It was an intuitive glance into futurity; it was a grand conception, strong, ardent, glowing, embracing all time since the creation of the world, and all regions of which that world is composed, and judging of the future by just analogy with the past.  And the inimitable imagery and beauty with which the thought is expressed, joined to the conception itself, render it one of the most striking passages in our language.

On the day of the Declaration of Independence our illustrious fathers performed the first scene in the last great act of this drama; one in real importance infinitely exceeding that for which the great English poet invokes

              “A muse of fire, ... 
    A kingdom for a stage, princes to act,
    And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!”

The Muse inspiring our fathers was the Genius of Liberty, all on fire with a sense of oppression, and a resolution to throw it off; the whole world was the stage, and higher characters than princes trod it; and, instead of monarchs, countries and nations and the age beheld the swelling scene.  How well the characters were cast, and how well each acted his part, and what emotions the whole performance excited, let history, now and hereafter, tell.

At a subsequent period, but before the Declaration of Independence, the Bishop of St. Asaph published a discourse, in which the following remarkable passages are found:—­