It is one of the difficulties of those who undertake to make public
speeches, that sometimes they are embarrassed about the heads of their
discourses; and so I am somewhat troubled at finding the inferior
position of the American eagle, inasmuch as he has but one head, while
the Russian eagle has two. I suppose that the explanation of this
ornithological difference arises from the necessity of the Russian
eagle having one head to watch over his large possessions in Asia, and
the other head to look after his small property in Europe. I feel a
good deal of confidence in speaking of the American eagle in contrast.
I can see that if the American eagle has but one head, it embodies
therein the national sentiment now prevailing, of one country and one
people. It is very true that our brethren of the South--for I still
call them our brethren--have been under the impression that ours was
a double-headed eagle, with a Northern and a Southern head, with this
distinction over the Russian; that the Southern was the larger and
more important head of the two, and we are now engaged in the somewhat
expensive and troublesome task of correcting that mistake in natural
history. There is a good deal that is appropriate, and sometimes
something that is suggestive, in these national symbols. The lion, for
instance, is a very hungry beast, and the large portion of the globe
which he has got into his possession shows the appropriateness of the
selection of the symbol. The cock, as we know, is a very boisterous
and demonstrative bird, who never does anything that he does not
make a noise about. And certainly the Gallic neighbor of the English
lion has never been distinguished for his modesty whenever he has
accomplished any thing in arts or in arms. The eagle is a high-soaring
bird, and I had better bring before you what an English poet says of
him:
He clasps the crag with hooked hands,
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed in an azure world he stands;
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls,
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
If the illustration had been carried further we might be content with
this English authority that the eagle, as typical of Russia and of
the United States, is to be armed with that thunderbolt which the
Greeks thought to be the prerogative of Jupiter. The American eagle
has been distinguished for the quickness of his flight; and I do not
think that our bitterest enemies can ever bring against us the charge
of slowness. There are some points of resemblance between the United
States and Russia. Russia, like us, is made up of many nationalities:
and we have had recently the most satisfactory evidence that the
Russian eagle is soaring in the same quarter as we are--soaring beyond
the crowing of the cock or the roaring of the lion.
In conclusion, the eagle was an old symbol. The Egyptians had it; the
Persians had it; the Romans, after trying four or five other animals,
took it, in the time, I think, of Marius. Therefore, as it is one of
the oldest illustrations of national importance, I indulge in the
sentiment that, as the eagle now represents the nations of Russia and
the United States, it may at least be one among the latest.--_Judge
Daly, of New York._