Model Speeches for Practise | Page 6

anniversary. I seem to hear you say that, for all that is come and gone,
yet we will not reduce by one chaplet or one oak-leaf the braveries of
our annual feast. For I must tell you, I was given to understand in my
childhood that the British island, from which my forefathers came, was
no lotus-garden, no paradise of serene sky and roses and music and
merriment all the year round, no, but a cold, foggy, mournful country,
where nothing grew well in the open air, but robust men and virtuous
women and these of a wonderful fiber and endurance; that their best
parts were slowly revealed; their virtues did not come out until they
quarrelled; they did not strike twelve the first time; good lovers, good
haters, and you could know little about them till you had seen them
long, and little good of them till you had seen them in action; that in
prosperity they were moody and dumpish, but in adversity they were
grand.
Is it not true, sir, that the wise ancients did not praise the ship parting
with flying colors from the port, but only that brave sailor which came
back with torn sheets and battered sides, stript of her banners, but
having ridden out the storm? And so, gentlemen, I feel in regard to this
aged England, with the possessions, honors and trophies, and also with
the infirmities of a thousand years gathering around her, irretrievably
committed as she now is to many old customs which can not be

suddenly changed; pressed upon by the transitions of trade, and new
and all incalculable modes, fabrics, arts, machines and competing
populations,--I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well remembering
that she has seen dark days before; indeed with a kind of instinct that
she sees a little better in a cloudy day, and that in storm of battle and
calamity, she has a secret vigor and a pulse like a cannon. I see her in
her old age, not decrepit, but young, and still daring to believe in her
power of endurance and expansion. Seeing this, I say, All hail! mother
of nations, mother of heroes, with strength still equal to the time; still
wise to entertain and swift to execute the policy which the mind and
heart of mankind require in the present hour, and thus only hospitable
to the foreigner, and truly a home to the thoughtful and generous who
are born in the soil. So be it! so be it! If it be not so, if the courage of
England goes with the chances of a commercial crisis, I will go back to
the capes of Massachusetts, and my own Indian stream, and say to my
countrymen, the old race are all gone and the elasticity and hope of
mankind must henceforth remain on the Alleghany ranges, or nowhere.

THE AGE OF RESEARCH
BY WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
Mr. Chairman, Your Royal Highness, My Lords and Gentlemen:--I
think no question can be raised as to the just claims of literature to
stand upon the list of toasts at the Royal Academy, and the sentiment is
one to which, upon any one of the numerous occasions of my
attendance at your hospitable board, I have always listened with the
greatest satisfaction until the present day arrived, when I am bound to
say that that satisfaction is extremely qualified by the arrangement less
felicitous, I think, than any which preceded it that refers to me the duty
of returning thanks for Literature. However, obedience is the principle
upon which we must proceed, and I have at least the qualification for
discharging the duty you have been pleased to place in my hands--that
no one has a deeper or more profound sense of the vital importance of
the active and constant cultivation of letters as an essential condition of
real progress and of the happiness of mankind, and here every one at

once perceives that that sisterhood of which the poet spoke, whom you
have quoted, is a real sisterhood, for literature and art are alike the
votaries of beauty. Of these votaries I may thankfully say that as
regards art I trace around me no signs of decay, and none in that
estimation in which the Academy is held, unless to be sure, in the
circumstance of your poverty of choice of one to reply to this toast.
During the present century the artists of this country have gallantly and
nobly endeavored to maintain and to elevate their standard, and have
not perhaps in that great task always received that assistance which
could be desired from the public taste which prevails around them. But
no one can examine even superficially the works which adorn these
walls without perceiving that British art retains all its