As certain vegetable products are the natural growth of particular
soils, at particular times, so some men spring almost necessarily out
of certain forms of civilization, and stand as the representatives of
the times and countries in which they live.
Pericles, able, accomplished, magnificent, was the representative man
of Athens in the time of her highest civilization and prosperity.
Richard I. was the representative man of England in the days of
chivalry, and Charles II. in the days of gallantry. These men could
scarcely have lived in any other age or clime. So Washington could
scarcely have had his existence in any other time or country. He could
no more have been an Italian of the middle ages, than Machiavelli
could have been an American, or Cæsar Borgia an Englishman: no more
than the Parthenon could have been a Gothic cathedral, or Westminster
Abbey a Grecian temple. He was at once the offspring and the type
of American civilization at his time. He was our great forest-bred
cavalier, with all the high honor of his ancestral stock of De
Wessingtons, with all the hardy firmness of a pioneer, and with
all the kindly courtesy of his native State. Among the Adamses and
Hancocks, the Lees and Henrys, the Sumpters and Rutledges of that
day, he stood forth prominently as the representative man, and as
the exemplar of our Revolution, just as that triplex monstrosity of
Danton, Marat, and Robespierre, was the exemplar of the French.
He was a man of firm adherence to principle. We fought for principle
in the revolutionary struggle. He was a man of signal moderation. Such
was the spirit of our contest. He had great self-control. Unlike other
revolutions, ours advanced not one step beyond the point proposed.
Having reached that, it subsided as easily, as gracefully, and as
quietly as though the voice of Omnipotence itself had spoken to the
great deep of our society, saying: "_Peace, be still._"
Could he have lived in ancient days, the strains of immortal verse
would have told his deeds, and fond adherents would have numbered him
among the gods.
Those days are past; but we have yet hearts to admire, and pens
to record, and tongues to praise his private virtues and his
public worth. And when century after century shall have rolled by,
bearing its fruits into the bosom of the past; even when men shall
look back to this time, through the haze and mist of a remote and
far-off antiquity, if this shall still be a land of freemen, this
day shall still be fondly cherished as the anniversary of the birth
of Washington; increased reverence shall attend his character, and
thickening honors shall cluster around his name.
Upon this representative and similitude of the great and honored
dead, which we this day put forth before the world, the winds shall
blow, the rains shall fall, and the storms shall beat, but it shall
stand unhurt amid them all. So shall it be with the fame of him whose
image it is. The breath of unfriendly criticism may blow upon it; the
storms that betoken moral or social change may break upon it; but it
shall stand firmly fixed in the hearts and memories of every true and
honest and liberty-loving man who inhabits our land or cherishes our
institutions.
The inhabitants of this city, as they behold this statue, day after
day, will look upon it as the Palladium of their privileges, and
the silent guardian of their prosperity. And the thousands and tens
of thousands, that from every nation, kingdom, and tongue, yearly
go forth to gaze upon and admire the wonders of the earth, when
they shall come up to this "Mecca of the mind," shall pause with
reverential awe, as they gaze upon this similitude of the mighty
Washington.
Year after year shall that dumb image tell its eloquent story of
patriotism, devotion, and self-sacrifice; year after year shall it
teach its holy lesson of duty and of faith; with generation after
generation shall it plead for institutions founded in wisdom, and a
country bought with blood. To the clouds and storms that gather over
and break upon it, it will tell of the clouds and storms through which
its great antitype did pass, in his devoted course on earth; and when
the great luminary of the heavens, descending with his golden shower
of beams like imperial Jove, shall wrap it in its warm embrace, it
shall tell the sun that He who gave him his beams and bade him shine,
has decreed that one day the darkness of eternal night shall settle on
his face; but then the spirit of the mighty Washington, basking in an
eternal sunlight above, shall still
"A darkening universe defy,
To quench his immortality,
Or shake his trust in God."