Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1891-08-21

ensign. 1t is not on this spot alone that
these memories are revived. The sons of
Vermont are not all here. The multitude
that surrounds us is but handful. In all
the cities and hamlets of the Western
plain, on savanna, and prairie, and river,
and hillsides, in fields innumerable, gold
EN- with the harvest, wherever on this CON
tinent there is work to be done or enter
prise to be carried forward, there they are,
and there will this day and its ceremonies
be remembered, and its inspiration felt.
The public spirit and the persistent eff
forts of all these years have found their re-
ward in the structure that stands before
us. Committing it now to the care of the
state with whose existence we trust it will
be coeval, our concern with it terminates,
and our duty is discharged. Its stately
proportions rise away from us into the up
per air. Our monument no longer. Not
for us nor for our time is it henceforth
raised on high Long before it shall cease
to be reckoned as young, we and our chill
dren will have disappeared from the scene.
1t is our messenger to posterity. Here 1t
shall wait for them while the successive
generations shall he born and die Here it
shall wait for them, through the evenings
and the mornings that shall be all the days
that are to come. Crowned with the SHOWS
of countless winters; beautiful in the sun
light and the shadows of unnumbered sum-
mers; companion of the mountains which
look down upon it, whose strength it typi-
iies, whose history it declares.
The earth is studded with monuments.
From the earliest period of recorded time,
mankind has strven for a language more
durable than words, in which human mem
cries might be perpetuated. They have
found it chiefly in the symbolism of mOnu-
mental architecture. But for the employ
ment of that language there must he SEN
timents to be transmitted, worthy of its
grandeur. In those lie the appeal to futur-
ity, not in the medium of expression,
however powerful or impressive. And
therefore it is, that the most imposing
and venerable of such structures known to
the world only stand silently over the
grave of the dead past. They have no
history to relate, no lessons to teach. Sol
itary relics of a race that is extinct, civil
ization that has persisted institutions that
have disappeared. cities and temples that
have returned to the dust. to research and
to Imagination they are equally dumb.
The desolaton of the desert surrounds
them. We regard them with wonder but
without instruction.
Not such the destiny of the memorial
we dedicate here. Its grand silence shall be
perpetually eloquent; its teaching shall new
er cease. II shall carry forward the history of
those early days: of that which made Ben
ningtun heroic. and all that Bennington
brought to pass. 1t shall tell the story not on
y of Stark, Warner Chittenden and Ly-
monds, the Aliens and the Fays and the
| ROhinSOns, and their cOmpeers, but Of that
| multitude of their humber associates, less
conspicuous, but just as devoted, who lived
and who died for Vermont, whose names
are only written in the memory of God.
The child shall learn from these stones the
| first instincts of patriotism. The wayfarer
to whose ear our English tongue conveys
no sense, shall not fail of their meaning.
And all the jewellers upon the soil, as the
years 90 on, shall be reminded and admon-
ished, what manner of man an American
ought to be-
One final thought still presses upon us.
| We have recalled the past: what shall be
the future? The gift of prophecy is mer-
cifully withheld from man. Hope, kind
lier than prophecy, stands in the place OF
| it, the just and reasonable hope instructed
by what has gone before. The emotions
of this day raise us far above the jargon
and turmoil of the poor quarrels of the
| hour, whose outcome we are wont To await
| with so much solicitude, and which seem Ia
our impatient vision to oppose us to Obsta-
cles so dangerous. We look down upon
them and We see how temporary and
| ephemeral they are. We perceive that We
need not on their account despair of the re-
| public, which patriotism and devotion have
more than once brought out Respondent
from darker days than We shall ever know.
Gazing forward, in the light of the after
| glow of the dying century, We are able to
discern with the eye of faith and of hope,
what this sentinel pile shall look out upon
in the days that are before il.
1t will look out upon Vermont, on whose
valleys and hillsides the seed time and
harvest shall never fail. A land to which
its people shall still cling with an affection
not felt for the surface of the physical
EARTH by any but those who are born
among the hills; hallowed to them as to us
by its noble traditions; sacred for the dead
who rest in its bosom. The beautiful
name which the mountains have given il
will abide upon the land forever. Yer
mont, always Vermont!
And it will behold a society, where the
great principles of civil and religious liber-
ty on which it is founded, shall be slowly
but certainly working themselves out, to
their final maturity. A prosperity, NOR,
and more widely diffused among men. An
advancing civilization. not without the vi,
cissitudes, the blemishes, the mistakes tn,
SORROWS, through which humanitys patti
must always lie, but in which the gain
shall still surpass the loss, and the better
surmount the worse; enlightened, from
generation to generation, by an increasing
intelligence, a broader knowledge, higher
morality, alleviated and Illuminated, as il
was in the beginning, by the ineNhaustiblt
blessing of our fathers God.