Eighteen hundred years of this Christian culture in these European kingdoms, a great theme never lost sight of, a mighty idea, an adorable history to which the hearts of men invariably cling, yet are genuine results rare as grains of gold in the river’s sandy bed!  Where is the genuine democracy to which the rights of all men are holy? where the child-like wisdom learning all through life more and more of the will of God? where the aversion to falsehood, in all its myriad disguises of cant, vanity, covetousness, so clear to be read in all the history of Jesus of Nazareth?  Modern Europe is the sequel to that history, and see this hollow England, with its monstrous wealth and cruel poverty, its conventional life, and low, practical aims! see this poor France, so full of talent, so adroit, yet so shallow and glossy still, which could not escape from a false position with all its baptism of blood! see that lost Poland, and this Italy bound down by treacherous hands in all the force of genius! see Russia with its brutal Czar and innumerable slaves! see Austria and its royalty that represents nothing, and its people, who, as people, are and have nothing!  If we consider the amount of truth that has really been spoken out in the world, and the love that has beat in private hearts,—­how genius has decked each spring-time with such splendid flowers, conveying each one enough of instruction in its life of harmonious energy, and how continually, unquenchably, the spark of faith has striven to burst into flame and light up the universe,—­the public failure seems amazing, seems monstrous.

Still Europe toils and struggles with her idea, and, at this moment, all things bode and declare a new outbreak of the fire, to destroy old palaces of crime!  May it fertilize also many vineyards!  Here at this moment a successor of St. Peter, after the lapse of near two thousand years, is called “Utopian” by a part of this Europe, because he strives to get some food to the mouths of the leaner of his flock.  A wonderful state of things, and which leaves as the best argument against despair, that men do not, cannot despair amid such dark experiences.  And thou, my Country! wilt thou not be more true? does no greater success await thee?  All things have so conspired to teach, to aid!  A new world, a new chance, with oceans to wall in the new thought against interference from the old!—­treasures of all kinds, gold, silver, corn, marble, to provide for every physical need!  A noble, constant, starlike soul, an Italian, led the way to thy shores, and, in the first days, the strong, the pure, those too brave, too sincere, for the life of the Old World, hastened to people them.  A generous struggle then shook off what was foreign, and gave the nation a glorious start for a worthy goal.  Men rocked the cradle of its hopes, great, firm, disinterested, men, who saw, who wrote, as the basis of all that was to be done, a statement of the rights, the inborn rights of men, which, if fully interpreted and acted upon, leaves nothing to be desired.