8.  And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids pinched in a corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers and benefactors, pious aspirants to be noble clay under the Almighty effort, let us advance on Chaos and the Dark.

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Adams and Jefferson.

1.  Adams and Jefferson, I have said, are no more.  As human beings, indeed, they are no more.  They are no more, as in 1776, bold and fearless advocates of independence; no more, as on subsequent periods, the head of the government; no more, as we have recently seen them, aged and venerable objects of admiration and regard.  They are no more.  They are dead.

2.  But how little is there of the great and good which can die?  To their country they yet live, and live forever.  They live in all that perpetuates the remembrance of men on earth; in the recorded proofs of their own great actions, in the offspring of their intellect, in the deep engraved lines of public gratitude, and in the respect and homage of mankind.  They live in their example; and they live, emphatically, and will live, in the influence which their lives and efforts, their principles and opinions, now exercise, and will continue to exercise, on the affairs of men, not only in their own country, but throughout the civilized world.

3.  A superior and commanding human intellect, a truly great man,—­ when heaven vouchsafes so rare a gift,—­is not a temporary flame, burning bright for awhile, and then expiring, giving place to returning darkness.  It is rather a spark of fervent heat, as well as radiant light, with power to enkindle the common mass of human mind; so that, when it glimmers in its own decay, and finally goes out in death, no night follows; but it leaves the world all light, all on fire, from the potent contact of its own spirit.

4.  Bacon died; but the human understanding, roused by the torch of his miraculous mind to a perception of the true philosophy and the just mode of inquiring after truth, has kept on its course successfully and gloriously.  Newton died; yet the courses of the spheres are still known, and they yet move on, in the orbits which he saw and described for them, in the infinity of space.

5.  No two men now live—­perhaps it may be doubted whether any two men have ever lived in one age,—­who, more than those we now commemorate, have impressed their own sentiments, in regard to politics and government, on mankind; infused their own opinions more deeply into the opinions of others; or given a more lasting direction to the current of human thought.  Their work doth not perish with them.  The tree which they assisted to plant will flourish, although they water it and protect it no longer; for it has struck its roots deep; it has sent them to the very center; no storm, not of force to burst the orb, can overturn it; its branches spread wide; they stretch their protecting arms broader and broader, and its top is destined to reach the heavens.