This is the time when high-minded, learned, and professional men should assist to plant and protect the flower of our American policy under our new conditions so that the fruitage of our system may be naturalized in new fields as a correct policy.

Duty, therefore, seems to call the lawyer to the councils of State.  Our Country is his client, her perpetuity will be his retainer, fee, and compensation. [Applause.]

LORD PALMERSTON

(Henry John temple)

ILLUSIONS CREATED BY ART

[Speech of Henry John Temple, Viscount Palmerston, Prime Minister of England 1859-1865, at the annual banquet of the Royal Academy, London, May 2, 1863.  Sir Charles Eastlake, the President of the Royal Academy, said, in introducing Lord Palmerston:  “I now have the honor to propose the health of one who is entitled to the respect and gratitude of the friends of science and art, the promoters of education and the upholders of time-honored institutions.  I have the honor to propose the health of Viscount Palmerston.”]

Mr. President, your royal highnesses, my lords, and gentlemen:—­I need not, I am certain, assure you that nothing can be more gratifying to the feelings of any man than to receive that compliment which you have been pleased to propose and which this distinguished assembly has been kind enough so favorably to entertain in the toast of his health.  It is natural that any man who is engaged in public life should feel the greatest interest in the promotion of the fine arts.  In fact, without a great cultivation of art no nation has ever arrived at any point of eminence.  We have seen great warlike exploits performed by nations in a state, I won’t say of comparative barbarism, but wanting comparative civilization; we have seen nations amassing great wealth, but yet not standing thereby high in the estimation of the rest of the world; but when great warlike achievements, great national prosperity, and a high cultivation of the arts are all combined together, the nation in which those conditions are found may pride itself on holding that eminent position among the nations of the world which I am proud to say belongs to this country. [Loud cheers.]

It is gratifying to have the honor of being invited to these periodical meetings where we find assembled within these rooms a greater amount of cultivation of mind, of natural genius, of everything which constitutes the development of human intellect than perhaps ever has assembled within the same space elsewhere.  And we have besides the gratification of seeing that in addition to those living examples of national genius the walls are covered with proofs that the national genius is capable of the most active and admirable development. [Cheers.] Upon the present occasion, Mr. President, every visitor must have seen with the