F 73 
 .37 
 .E42 
 Copy 1 
 
 \ 
 
 THE FUNCTIONS OF A (JITY. 
 
 AN 
 
 ORATION 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 CIIY AUTHORITIES OF BOSTON, 
 
 FOURTH OF JULY, 18(38. 
 
 BY ^ 
 
 samiteiXeliot. ll.d. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 ALFRED MUDGE & SOX, CITY PRINTERS, 34 SCHOOL STREET. 
 
 1868. 
 
THE FUNCTIONS OF A CITY. 
 
 AN 
 
 ORATION 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 CITY AUTHORITIES OF BOSTON, 
 
 FOURTH OF JULY, 186 8. 
 
 BY SAMUEL ELIOT, LL.D. 
 
 / 
 
 BOSTON: 
 ALFRED MUDGE & SOX, CITY PRINTERS, 3i SCHOOL STREET. 
 
 1868. 
 
 / k^ 
 
ORATION. 
 
 BOSTON, OLD A>^D NEW. 
 
 The Boston that hailed the early birthdays of the 
 nation has almost passed away. A few of its historic 
 buildings keep their, places, but with changed aspects 
 and generally changed associations. Thi-ee or four 
 of its churches remain, but in localities so altered as 
 to alter them, and even to forebode their removal. Its 
 mansions have completely vanished. Their stately 
 fronts, their fair proportions of height and breadth, 
 their wide halls, easy stau's, massive wainscots and 
 graceful alcoves, the trees before them, the vines climb- 
 ing their porches, the flowers blooming beneath their 
 windows, the terraces and gardens surrounding them, 
 linger only in remembrance. Remembrance itself but 
 faintly recalls the streets like those of present villages, 
 the open spaces then styled greens, the pastures where 
 cattle browsed, the fields unoccupied except in the 
 playtime of children, the shores that met the water 
 
 'with lips it did not shrink from kissing. The very 
 1* 
 
b JULY 4, 18G8. 
 
 hills which gave the place its first name, instead of 
 having proved everlasting, have sunk beneath the 
 spade, their loftiness brought literally to the dust. 
 Even the sea washing our peninsula, no more 
 
 " Unchangeable save to its wild waves' play," 
 
 finds its azure brow wrinkled with walls and marked 
 by lines of building where fluttered, years ago, a gar- 
 land of snowy sails. 
 
 Another Boston has arisen on the old foundations 
 and the new. Once a single neighborhood, it is now 
 a group of neighborhoods ; once a society of personal 
 acquaintances, now a population of indistinct connec- 
 tions, where men cannot inquire into one another's 
 aff"airs with the same success as of yore ; a scene for- 
 merly of limited, latterly of expanded action, of customs 
 shaped according to a broader rule, of enterprises laid 
 out upon a larger scale, of relations more complex, 
 systems more varied, standards more aspiring ; no 
 longer a town but a city, with all the present, all the 
 future prospects of which a city is the centre. Imag- 
 ine a citizen of the Kevolution, or of the War of 1812, 
 returning hither to find his birthplace buried beneath 
 a warehouse, his church swallowed up in an abyss of 
 traffic, an avenue where he skated, and a long vista of 
 reef-stone facades where he bathed. Follow him on 
 
ORATION. 1 
 
 the round of our institutions, especially those where 
 foreign tongues prevail over the native, and pieces of 
 the Old World appear to have fallen on the New. He 
 might find cause to think Boston as unlike its former 
 self as some of its statues to their originals. Then 
 hear him warned, as we are, that the city is declining, 
 and that unless its capitalists provide it with half a 
 dozen new railroads to the interior, and its harbor 
 commissioners give it a new channel to the sea, its 
 doom is sealed. Ah, he might exclaim, it needs the 
 opening of a vein or two to reduce its symptoms of 
 plethora. Signs of decay they cannot be ; these sights 
 and sounds, these throngs, these labors, these excite- 
 ments are not the hectic of decline. Would he not be 
 rights Does not the handwriting upon our walls 
 promise better things than the overthrow of the city, 
 or the transfer of its prosperity to its neighbors ] 
 
 Not content with her own expansion, Boston has 
 lately taken unto herself her sister Roxbury. Not a 
 marriage exactly, but a joining of hands, an endowing 
 each other with their worldly goods (to say nothing of 
 their debts), it has made of twain one city. Common 
 memories, common associations and common interests 
 prepared the connection ; now that it is consummated, 
 they foreshow its happiness. Brought to-day before 
 the national altar, and blending in the national festival 
 
•8 JULY 4, 1868. 
 
 for the first time, let the union of the sisters and of 
 the sisters' sons be confii-med in these hours of patriotic 
 commemoration. 
 
 AGE OF GREAT CITIES. 
 
 In becoming a city, Boston shares in a characteristic 
 movement of the period. Our age has been called the 
 Age of Great Cities, and there is as good reason for 
 this name as for any other which it bears. For the 
 cities of the time are not only greater, taken together, 
 than those of former times, but more numerous, more 
 widely spread, and above all, more active in the work 
 which in all ages falls chiefly to them. 
 
 This work is civilization, a term that cannot be ex- 
 plained but by going back to its Latin root, where we 
 find the citizen, and with him, the city. Men scatter, 
 in order to discover ; they concentrate, in order to civ- 
 ilize. When the city brings them together, mingling 
 their numbers and their interests, it sets them across 
 the dividing line between barbarism and civilization. 
 It carries them farther and farther into the civilized 
 region by augmenting their resources and enabling 
 them to meet the multiplying demands of their new 
 situation. Civilization is a costly process, especially in 
 the modern era. To all the expenses it involved in the 
 
ORATION. y 
 
 days of old, to all the operations of government, all 
 the luxuries of society, all the splendors of the arts 
 and sciences, are added in our day the claims of public 
 education, the exhaustless purposes of charity and 
 faith. Every reform of this generation, every hope of 
 soothing the afflicted or recovering the lost, every eifort 
 to make sunshine in a shady. place, is expensive, often 
 lavishly expensive, though not a dollar be wasted, 
 but dollar upon dollar be saved in the end. No civil- 
 izing agency can do much without a fund to draw 
 upon. Philosophy used to shake her head, insisting 
 that nothing was surer to ruin a people than their 
 becoming rich. But she confesses now-a-days that 
 poverty is a greater drawback than wealth upon social 
 advancement. What Burke said of public virtue is 
 equally true of civilization, that " being of a nature 
 magnificent and splendid, instituted for great things 
 and conversant about great concerns, it requires abun- 
 dant scope and room, and cannot spread and grow under 
 confinement, and in circumstances straitened, narrow 
 and sordid." It was the love, not the use of money 
 which the Apostle pronounced the root of all evil ; the 
 use that implies no love for it in itself is the root of 
 much good. If the history of civilized nations teaches 
 any lesson, if travel among the uncivilized brings back 
 any testimony, it is the necessity of wealth to civiliza- 
 
10 JULY 4, 1868. 
 
 tion. For this there must be concentration, for this 
 the solitary must be set in families, families in com- 
 munities, and communities in cities. 
 
 The Age of Great Cities therefore, signifies the Age 
 of Great Civilization, It is a title which the cities 
 may be proud to give, and the age to wear, a title not 
 merely of grandeur or power, but of liberality and 
 tenderness, including all sorts and conditions of 
 humanit}% its sufferings as well as its triumphs, and its 
 " still, sad music" as well as its loudest hallelujahs. 
 
 FUNCTIONS OF A CITY. 
 
 If Boston is to be among the great cities of civiliza- 
 tion, she must do more than annex her suburbs or fill 
 in her water lots, more than build her blocks or rea,r 
 her monuments, more, much more, than swell the 
 volume of her taxes ; for neither territory nor popula- 
 tion, neither architecture nor any other art, not even 
 that of the assessor, establishes the greatness of a city. 
 To this, internal growth is indispensable, the powers 
 increasing with the frame, the mind and the heart ex- 
 panding with the body, the immaterial elements corre- 
 sponding with the material. A city is no inorganic 
 mass growing by simple accretion, but an organism of 
 various and mysterious forces developing from within. 
 
ORATION. 11 
 
 Its functions determine its rank, just as the classifica- 
 tion of any living being is determined. They consti- 
 tute its character, its history. If great, they render it 
 great, and it ascends with as little effort as the dawn to 
 a place among the cities of civilization. 
 
 FUNCTIONS NOT OF A CITY. 
 
 There are some, indeed, many things which a city 
 cannot do. It has no direct share in the labors of 
 which the country is the natural field. It cultivates 
 no land, produces no food, not even the water which 
 it needs. It has no mines to open, no fabrics, com- 
 pared with those of the great manufacturing centres, 
 to call its own. It does not act upon nature, except 
 to obliterate it, or upon most of the products of 
 nature until they have been worked up elsewhere. 
 For what it receives from abroad, it offers in return 
 the values produced by its citizens as artisans, mer- 
 chants, or members of the different professions, using 
 these words in their broadest sense. Neither does 
 nature act upon the city, or upon the people within 
 its borders, for here they are beyond her reach, beyond 
 her skyey or earthy influence, save in their public 
 gardens, and even there, the builders are apt to 
 crowd upon the gardeners. 
 
12 JULY 4, 1868. 
 
 Furthermore, there are many things which, though 
 they may be done in a city, may not be done by a city, 
 but by its citizens. Municipal energy has one sphere, 
 individual energy another, and much the wider, em- 
 bracing aifairs of every kind and powers of every 
 degree. So far from substituting the city for its citi- 
 zens in their undertakings, they should be substituted 
 for it in any of its undertakings which they can 
 safely assume. The newspapers of a few days or 
 weeks ago published a letter from one of the best 
 friends our country has in Europe, saying how much 
 he was impressed by the difference between the town 
 or commune in France which manages its citizens, 
 and the town in the United States which its citizens 
 manage. It is the difference between centralization 
 and self-government, between the system which makes 
 a man a puppet, and that which makes him a free 
 agent, between that which fits him more and more 
 for subjection, and that which fits him more and more 
 for liberty. Paris has been called the Bostonian's 
 paradise, but never the Bostonian's city. Nor would 
 he ever choose it as the scene of his civil existence ; 
 for this, he wants opportunities of action which the 
 French capital, with all its magnificence, cannot 
 supply. 
 
ORATION. 13 
 
 POLITICAL FUNCTIONS. 
 
 The functions of a city are, in the first place, 
 
 political. The earliest city, whether that named 
 
 Enoch or another, was the earliest political lever to 
 
 move the world. Throughout the ancient generations, 
 
 the weapons with which they plucked bright honor 
 
 were their cities, within whose walls their power 
 
 centred, and in whose names their fame extended 
 
 over the earth. As the chief means of defence to 
 
 their inhabitants, they gradually became the means 
 
 of such freedom as was then possible, sometimes the 
 
 mere negation of despotism, sometimes the positive 
 
 assertion of nascent liberties. All that was freest in 
 
 the politics of antiquity, all that gave them general 
 
 animation, sprang directly or indirectly from the city. 
 
 The times were so unripe for any broader principle, 
 
 for anything like modern nationality, that every 
 
 attempt at such appears to have failed the moment 
 
 it was made. Only a local organization like a 
 
 municipality could establish itself in a period when 
 
 democracy was fierce and absolutism yet fiercer, when 
 
 fire and the sword were the portion of states, and 
 
 the clouds under which men contended seldom turned 
 
 forth a silver lining. It was an imperfect liberty, 
 
14 JULY 4, 1868. 
 
 not merely in being municipal, without any national 
 admixture, but also in being the monopoly of a 
 ruling class, or in other words, the liberty of the 
 ruler. Its hour soon came, and it fell, but not in 
 lifeless ruin. Out of its crumbled foundations, later 
 ages derived much of the material for their own 
 institutions, and when the time arrived for the city 
 to be restored, the free towns of the Continent and 
 the boroughs of England appeared, not like their 
 forerunners, in the grasp of a dominant order, but 
 open to the middle or burgher classes, plebeian rather 
 than patrician, the cradles of the Commons. English 
 history has no more stirring narrative than that which 
 tells how, when the crown was on an imbecile head, 
 and most of the higher offices were in strangers' 
 hands, when the Charter was habitually violated, and 
 the rights of the nation were incessantly invaded, 
 until the public distresses culminated in civil war, 
 then, close upon the first victory of the national 
 party, their leader, Simon de Montfort, summoned 
 the boroughs to send their representatives to the 
 Parliament of 1265. There municipal freedom and 
 national at last met together, and there, as they 
 clasped hands, began that movement which, more 
 than any other earthly influence, has controlled the 
 
ORATION. 
 
 15 
 
 modern states, and given to some of them the pos- 
 session, to all of them the hope of liberty. 
 
 Of the many subsequent blows struck for freedom 
 by the Commonalty of England, none was more 
 effective than their colonization of these American 
 shores. Here, where every good seed from the Old 
 World was destined to spring up and bear a hundred- 
 fold, the city, or as it used to be termed, the town, 
 grew into larger life. No longer the heritage of a 
 single class, upper or loAver, it became that of the 
 whole community, around whose private and public 
 resorts it spread in overhanging clusters of freedom. 
 It was at once a refuge and an inspiration to our 
 ancestors. It confirmed their habits of law and 
 order ; it strengthened them in their colonial as well 
 as theu* municipal relations, and prepared them for 
 the day when the tempest lowered from beyond the 
 sea. The town here was always free, enacting its 
 own ordinances, choosing its own magistrates, and 
 administering its own affairs. It felt the heavy hand 
 of the mother country, not as the town, but as a part 
 of the colony, on which alone the immediate oj)pres- 
 sions of crown or parliament descended. The for- 
 eigner who has best divined our institutions, Alexis 
 de Tocqueville, said, years ago, that the sovereignty 
 
16 JULY 4, 1868. 
 
 of the people in the town Avas " not only an ancient, 
 but a primitive state " in America. 
 
 So, when the tempest came, and the air was thick 
 with revolution, the towns of the threatened colonies 
 stood fii-m. Boston unhesitatingly placed herself at 
 their head. Her Town House, — let us be thankful 
 that its shell, if nothing more, is spared, — was " the 
 first scene," as John Adams declared, " of the first act 
 of opposition to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain," 
 when James Otis, " a flame of fire," blazed out in burn- 
 ing argument against Writs of Assistance, and " breathed 
 into the nation the breath of life." " Then and there," 
 exclaimed Adams, " the child Independence was 
 born." It was to Boston that British troops were first 
 despatched, a century ago this very year, to crush the in- 
 fant Liberty. It was here, below the same building in 
 which the birth occurred, that the first baptismal blood 
 was shed in the massacre of March. It was here, in the 
 waters of the Bay, that the tea which symbolized par- 
 liamentary taxation was poured out on a December 
 night in one deep di-aught for freedom. It was here that 
 the Port Bill, following Xerxes' example, would have 
 scourged the very waves for sharing in the rebellion of 
 the people. And here, at the breaking of the day, the 
 morning stars of Lexington and, nearer yet, of Bunker 
 Hill, shone in the horizon, until the sunrise fell on Dor 
 
ORATION. 17 
 
 Chester Heights, where he whom the nation gave to 
 deliver the town, achieved his first great victory. All 
 through these years of trial, all through the years that 
 came after, Boston never faltered : 
 
 " Thy spirit, Independence, let me share. 
 Lord of the liou heart and eagle eye ! 
 Thy steps I follow with my bosom bare, 
 Kor heed the storm that howls along the sky." 
 
 As Boston followed then, so she did again in the 
 yet more terrible storm, when the telegraph brought 
 from Washington a demand for fifteen hundred men ; 
 when the first to respond, three Marblehead companies, 
 marched from the railway to Faneuil Hall in rain and 
 sleet which the welcome-shouting crowds seemed to 
 mistake for sunshine ; when Boston troops were arm- 
 ing, Boston men giving, Boston women working, Bos- 
 ton children sympathizing; when the flag streamed 
 from every staff and above almost every door, its 
 sacred hues crowning the city with a halo of undying 
 patriotism ; when our heroic Governor had no need to 
 speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward, 
 for forward, of their own accord, they plunged into the 
 red sea of war, so that he could write back to Wash- 
 ington on the self- same day of the call for aid, " I find 
 the amplest proof of a warm devotion to the country's 
 cause on every hand to-day," words that might serve 
 
 2* 
 
18 JULY 4, 1868. 
 
 for a national watchword as long as the nation lasts ; 
 then Boston, in common with Massachusetts, gave full 
 proof of her fidelity, not only to her own liberty, but 
 to the liberty of the Union. 
 
 The political functions of a city are never confined 
 to its own limits. It belongs to the nation, and if true 
 to its duties, nay if true to its instincts, it must minister 
 to the national well-being. Montaigne said he was a 
 Frenchman only by virtue of Paris. We are not 
 Americans only by virtue of Boston, and yet the better 
 Bostonians we are, the better Americans we shall be. 
 Charles Kiver does not more surely tend to Massachu- 
 setts Bay, or the Bay to the ocean, than the city built 
 by these waters tends to the nation. If, like the child 
 who held the shell to his ear, we have ever listened to 
 the city and its voices, we have heard 
 
 " Murmurings whereby the monitor expressed 
 Mysterious union with its native sea," 
 
 that sea, the Indivisible Republic. Our local institu- 
 tions have often been charged with weakening the cen- 
 tral government. But wherever they have not been 
 tampered with, they have written out a record over 
 which they and the Union may well rejoice together. 
 
ORATION. 19 
 
 EDUCATIONAL FUNCTIONS. 
 
 The educational functions of a city are at once a 
 cause and an effect of the political. A cause, since 
 education is necessary to liberty ; and an effect, since 
 liberty is necessary to education or to general 
 education. Free communities, above all others, 
 need free schools, where the young can be pre- 
 pared for the liberties into which they are to 
 enter. On the other hand, free schools need free com- 
 munities from which they will receive the requisite 
 support almost without the asking. Elsewhere they 
 have an artificial, here a natural life, in keeping with 
 the life around it, set in a kindly soil, fed by the air 
 and moisture of congenial skies. From schools abroad, 
 ours may borrow a theory here, a practice there ; from 
 some, thoroughness ; from others, refinement ; from all, 
 whateve r superior traits may distinguish them. But 
 from none, from no educational institutions in the 
 world, have ours anything to borrow with regard to the 
 public spirit which maintains them. In this, ours 
 easily take the lead. Such a connection as exists 
 between them and the homes around them, such a 
 harmony in the purposes of the teacher, the child and 
 the parent, such a unity of educational and social 
 
20 JULY4,18G8. 
 
 interests, is unknown under exclusive institutions. 
 The free country and the free school are like mother 
 and daughter to each other. 
 
 Born of the common will and nurtured by the com- 
 mon affection, our schools remain a part of the com 
 munity rather than of the Government. To them, as 
 to any other constituency, the city lends a helping 
 hand, founding them where they are needed, and 
 administering them as their circumstances require. 
 One asks for organization ; another already organized, 
 for a new building, or, if preferring bread to stone, for 
 a new course of instruction ; whatever their demands, 
 reasonable and at times unreasonable, they are almost 
 sure to be gratified. Two centuries and a half of such 
 care, honorable alike to the city that has given and to 
 the schools that have received it, are nearly past, and 
 it is as unwearied as ever. 
 
 This relation between the city and its schools renders 
 their improvement practicable at any time. To reform 
 is not to upheave, but to establish them, provided only 
 that the reformation is wisely executed. Perhaps the 
 great principles of education are not so mutable as they 
 are sometimes regarded; easily shaken, they do not 
 appear to be -easily overthrown or even displaced. But 
 with respect ito many of their applications, an opinion 
 is generally forming, if not formed, that these should 
 
ORATION. 21 
 
 be changed. Teacher and pupil alike desire it ; vigor 
 of body or of mind, in both, depends upon it ; the cul- 
 ture of the school and of the community is to be de- 
 termined by it; why should it be delayed? Educa- 
 tional reform is not like a certain mountain that refuses 
 to be pierced, despite the profusions of legislatures and 
 the profits of contractors. It is a comparatively gentle 
 slope which our chariot wheels may surmount with- 
 out much difficulty, if they do not tarry too long. 
 " While you are considering," said Dr. Johnson, 
 " which of two things you should teach your child first, 
 another boy has learned them both." "We may yet be 
 deliberating what improvement to begin with, when 
 others have already eff'ected it, and many another after 
 it. Each obstacle, if not removed, increases ; each 
 evil that might be checked, but is not, becomes more 
 and more portentous. The longer our faces are set in 
 a wrong direction, the longer it will take to turn them 
 in the right one. At the coronation of George III., 
 the Lord Steward had trained his horse to back down 
 the hall after the presentation of a cup to the king, 
 but the steed backed up the hall, and brought the 
 steward with his back to his sovereign. It is a pity to 
 train our children to walk backwards, a pity to teach 
 them anything which they will have to unlearn here- 
 after. 
 
22 JULY i, 1868. 
 
 It seems as if the system which has done so much 
 might do yet more. It lies somewhat too motionless 
 upon the waters ; the mast creaks, the .sails flap, and 
 the helm appears to be in an uncertain grasp. Bell 
 after bell strikes, and the watch is called. Let it be 
 the beginning of a new effort to set the ship upon her 
 course, and to carry her, with her precious freight of 
 children, to shores as yet unknown in education. 
 
 For the majority of our childi-en, their mere pre- 
 sence, persuasive in freshness and promise, the anxie- 
 ties of parents, the sympathies of friends, are powerful 
 means to bring about all desirable reforms. But for 
 others whose aspect has no charm, whose prospects 
 excite no enthusiasm, whose parents and friends are 
 often their worst enemies, for these, children of the 
 streets rather than of the schools, many a voice must 
 be uplifted, before they are cared for as they should be. 
 Boston never did a better deed than in providing in- 
 struction for her newsboys and others like them. She 
 has but to follow up that step, and either to open new, 
 or adapt existing schools to all her children, in order 
 that they may be snatched from the dangers which 
 waylay them. Should any, thus enabled to choose the 
 good, prefer the evil, still let them be treated as child- 
 ish, not as hardened offenders. You knock truancy on 
 the head by sending the truant to the reformatory ; but 
 
OEATION. 23 
 
 you also run the risk of stunning his better nature for- 
 ever. No reformatory, however faithfully administered, 
 can put off the likeness of a prison or put on the like- 
 ness of a home ; yet nothing but a home can enable 
 this spirit, parched by years of desolation, to bear blos- 
 soms of childhood. The more of a vagrant he is, the 
 more he needs domestic dews. Offspring of misery or 
 sin, brought by the stream to the foot of our Palatine, 
 the wolf will be his only nurse until the shepherd 
 carries him to the woman's arms. Instead of being 
 shut up with those who have perhaps fallen lower than 
 he has done, he should find tlie discipline he needs in 
 mingling with others unlike himself and learning the 
 sweet lessons of love. 
 
 The principle of attraction, as wonderworking in 
 education as in any other cause, has yet to expand in 
 our schools. Make them more winning, and this 
 makes them more commanding. Give them gentle- 
 ness and this gives them strength. Whatever increases 
 their power of attracting, increases also their power of 
 teaching and governing' their pupils. " I may be drawn 
 by a thread," said a Ehode Island representative in a 
 long-forgotten Congressional skirmish, " but I never 
 can be driven by the club of Hercules." The less of 
 the club and the more of the thread in the management 
 of our schools, the deeper they will be set in the affec- 
 
24 JULY4,1868. 
 
 tions of their children ; the deeper, too, iu the affec- 
 tions of all who hold their children dear. Were 
 there no other reason than the beauty introduced by 
 it, the musical instruction now forming a part of our 
 system would deserve to be cherished. But it has 
 other recommendations, as a means of discipline, as 
 a development of human faculties, and as an illustra- 
 tion of Divine harmonies. A city ought to be the 
 home of all the arts. They owed their first great 
 triumphs to the cities of antiquity, their next to the 
 mediaeval cities ; why should they not owe their latest 
 to the cities of the modern age ? And where, if they 
 are taught among us, can the first lessons in some 
 of them be more fittingly given than in our schools ? 
 Great artists would not be multiplied ; but troops of 
 contented pupils would be. They could not but be 
 thankful for anything to tone down the sharp out- 
 lines of their training, to soften the perspective of 
 their studies, and throw a tender glow about the 
 far-off summits. Their intellectual atmosphere would 
 be both lovelier and healthier with a little haze. 
 
 Boston has a model of her own to guide her upward 
 steps in education. An institution founded but the 
 other day, yet rising as if its foundations had been 
 laid with the city's, has placed itself at the head of 
 
ORATION. 25 
 
 our educational institutions, and lifted them at once 
 to a higher level. 
 
 "N"o workman steel, no ponderous axes rung; 
 Like some tall palm the noiseless fabric sprung." 
 
 But not, as the poet's next line begins, " Majestic 
 silence." Rather, majestic speech, the speech of ages 
 before the Temple, of times remoter and nearer, of 
 the very time in which we live. " I have sat before 
 that picture," said a monk pointing to a Last Supper 
 in his convent, " year after year, and w^hen I see the 
 changes among us and the unchanged figures there, 
 I think that we, not they, must be the shadows." 
 So in comparison with the speech of books, the tongue 
 of man, however loud, seems silence. They speak 
 with the authority of the past, he with the uncertainty 
 of the present ; they speak of things abiding, he 
 of things passing away. Would the city fulfil her 
 office as an educator, would she ascend, and lead her 
 children with her, to a higher culture than has yet 
 been reached, she has but to turn to her Public 
 Library. It stands fresh from the hands of the ben- 
 efactors who have endowed it and the still greater 
 benefactors who have administered it, yet already 
 the centre of our educational system, the source of 
 light and heat to every school and every scholar 
 
 3 
 
26 JULY 4, 1868. 
 
 around it, with no cloud between them and its inspi- 
 ration. 
 
 CHARITABLE FUNCTIONS. 
 
 The charitable functions of a city partly mingle with 
 and partly transcend its educational. It ministers in 
 teaching, it ministers also in relieving its dependent 
 classes. Many of the ancient cities were represented on 
 their coins as women with crowns and flowing robes, and 
 many a modern city wears a crown of mercy upon her 
 head, a robe of charity about her form, while at her feet, 
 in place of the captive or the victim, a suff"erer waits for 
 bread, if he is hungry ; for care, if sick ; for shelter, if 
 an outcast. Fairest among the features of the present 
 civilization is its sympathy. Instead of exposing the 
 foundling, it opens an asylum ; instead of tramp- 
 ling down the weak in body or mind, it gathers them 
 in hospitals ; instead of hurrying the convict to hope- 
 less imprisonment or yet more hopeless death, it 
 watches over his reformation ; instead of letting want 
 and despair run their course, it seeks to close their 
 sources and prevent them from overtaking their prey. 
 In all these labors, the city, as the handmaid of civili- 
 zation, bears her part. Much as she leaves to her 
 citizens, there remains much which no power but hers 
 can accomplish. Sufl"erers from fault or suff"erers from 
 
ORATION. 27 
 
 misfortune, the suffering classes require a hand to 
 control as well as to succor them. Not the charity 
 alone, but the authority of the city is wanted in dealing 
 with the sinned against and the sinning, the man with- 
 out manhood, the woman without womanhood, the child 
 without childhood, the long, long tiles of degradation 
 that straggle through the streets, starting at every 
 sound, fleeing from every shadow, panting for rest 
 though they ask it not, thii'sting for compassion though 
 they accept it not, a multitude of which, however 
 shameful, no city doing her best to save them, need 
 be ashamed. Persevere, long-seeking, long-baffled 
 mother, relieve thy children, relieve the stranger 
 within thy gate, and the ear that hears thee shall 
 bless thee, the eye that sees thee shall bear witness to 
 thee in thy work of charity. 
 
 RELIGIOUS FUNCTIONS. 
 
 The religious functions of a city, above all others, 
 are necessary to its completeness. With no establish- 
 ment, no observances, no doctrines of its own to main- 
 tain as a system, it has a spirit to keep up, a 
 determination to be just to man, a desire to be faithful 
 to God, which is, in the truest sense, a religious spirit. 
 Without it, the existence of a city is a disgrace, and its 
 
28 JULY4,1868. 
 
 magnitude a calamity. The poet, struck by the cor- 
 ruptions of London, a century ago, asserts, 
 
 " God made the country and man made the town." 
 
 He was as wide of the mark as if he had said that God 
 made the country, and man the garden. Men hxy out 
 their streets and put up their buildings ; they cannot 
 create the site or the material, much less themselves 
 the builders, in whom, rather than in earth or stone, 
 the town consists. If our city means anything by the 
 motto she borrows from King Solomon, it is that the 
 Divine Hand led the fathers and still directs the sons. 
 She confesses, therefore, that she is not her own, but 
 His who has fashioned her from the beginning until 
 now. Plutarch speaks of Sparta as seeming " not to 
 be a policy or commonweal, but rather a certain holy 
 place, and order of religion." What Sparta seemed, let 
 Boston be. As Eve appeared to him for whom she 
 was created, so let this city of ours appear to those for 
 whom she has been created, 
 
 " heaven in her eye, 
 In every gesture dignity and love." 
 
 Faith in the unseen can alone fill out the seen. The 
 religious functions of a city can alone perfect its other 
 functions ; political, educational or charitable, their 
 
ORATION. 29 
 
 highest motive, their noblest performance centres in 
 religion, and that religion, Christianity. 
 
 TRUTH AND LIBERTY. 
 
 All hnman institutions derive their strength from a 
 source beyond themselves. Liberty itself avails only 
 so far as it is nourished by truth. 
 
 " He is the freeman whom the truth makes free." 
 
 That is the free state which the truth brings into the 
 world, and guides in infancy and maturity. Like the 
 thrice repeated action which the great master of ancient 
 eloquence declared essential to his art, truth first, truth 
 last, truth always, not thrice but perpetually repeated, 
 is the essence of liberty. It is the soul of the body 
 politic, the life of the city and the nation. 
 
 Just at this moment, it seems to be in peril among us. 
 "Warlike struggles over, warlike virtues no more in 
 demand, something too much like reaction is setting in. 
 Our statesmanship wavers ; our general and local ad- 
 ministrations drift shoreward ; corruption surges on this 
 side, wickedness on that, and the currents drive in upon 
 the breakers. Party usurps the place of country ; irre- 
 sponsible bodies, like the caucus and the ring, substitute 
 themselves for constituted authorities ; combinations 
 treated as overpowering, but which one hour of general 
 
30 JULY 4, 1868. 
 
 uprising would rend asunder, crowd hard upon individ- 
 ual independence. Was it for this we gave our treas- 
 ure, our labor, our blood, for this that our dear heroes 
 died ? Are those years of sacrifice already forgotten, 
 that these years of conspiracy and spoil are come so 
 soon ] It is no hour for flattery. It is no day for idle 
 exultation. One word, one thought of truth, one decla- 
 ration in her behalf keeps this anniversary of another 
 declaration better than a thousand careless huzzas. 
 
 Neither our war, nor its greatest victory, the act of 
 emancipation, neither reconstruction nor suffrage, neither 
 old institutions nor new, can bear fruit in a half-hearted 
 freedom. ' No longer partial, but total, independence is 
 to spread like light throughout the nation. Emerging 
 from its old eclipse, the slave restored to freedom, and 
 the freeman to consistent principle, it is to suffer no 
 new eclipse. / The republic is to be a reality at last. It 
 is to prove worthy of the toils endured for it, the 
 wounds and deaths encountered, the tears fallen and 
 still falling, the shadows never to be chased away in 
 this world. The least that can be done by those who 
 have not suffered, is to abstain from marring the work 
 ot those who have suffered. They ought to do more, 
 infinitely more, and suffer, if need be, in their turn, that 
 not a single pang may have been felt, not a single loss 
 sustained in vain. 
 
ORATION. 31 
 
 Would that the lines from yonder City Hall to the 
 church towers which call out our defences against con- 
 flagration, were paralleled by lines to sound a yet louder 
 alarm against the fires that smoulder beneath our insti- 
 tutions. Peal upon peal, in the full stir of day or the 
 silent watches of night, would ring out an irresisti- 
 ble summons. Call us, call the city, call the nation, to 
 manliness, honor, devotion to pure ends by pure means, 
 call us to the victories of peace, yet more renowned 
 than those of war, and where her white plume leads, 
 there let us follow, to achieve the truth, the stainless 
 and deathless truth of American Liberty. 
 
, ^ 
 
 LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 
 
 014 077 939 8 %