Capitolo 3
You address him because I am President of the Massachusetts Historical
Society, the most venerable organization of the kind in America, perhaps
in the world. This way, to-night, although we will necessarily have to touch
on themes of the day, and you fear that excite the liveliest they interest and
the most greater part of active discussion, we want so in them,--not you look to as
statesmen or as partisans, neither from the commercial or religious side,
but only from the historical point of view. We will judge of the
it foresees in his/her relationships to the past. And, there is unquestionably,
the great satisfaction to be deduced by to do this way; I strive him/it mere it seems to
once to take us in another atmosphere,--one atmosphere as foreigner to
hypocritical slang as it is to what is vulgarly known as "making electoral propaganda
candy." This evening we pass away from the noisy one and heated tumult of
partisan politics, with his/her appeals to prejudice, passion, and material
affairs, in the coolness of an academic and calm discussion. It is as going
out of some turbulent caucus or debate of exciting custody-room, and finding
itself suddenly compared by the cold clear light of December,
you land on the moon, while shining among the silence of innumerable stars.
Addressing himself/herself/itself, therefore to the available subject, the question to
once it suggests itself,--that year in the recent durations has been in a great way
more notable and impressive, when it looked to from the purely
historical point of view, that this year of which we am now observing
the closing? The first Passover of the Israelis ended more a play
what him the duration of four centuries, for "the to sojourn some children of
Israel that dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years; and to
the end of the four hundred and thirty years all the innkeepers of the God
gone out of the earth of Egypt." Then the Passover that we now celebrate
he/she almost precisely commemorates the closing of another play of world of the
same length and one of deeper, as unsurpassed meaning