C. Edwards Lester, Life and public services of Charles Sumner: Born Jan. 6, 1811. Died March 11, 1874.

[220] towards the setting sun; let them come and take them. Ourselves the children of the Pilgrims of a former generation, let us not turn from the Pilgrims of the present. Let the home, founded by our emigrant fathers, continue open in its many mansions to the emigrants of to-day.

The history of our country, in its humblest as well as most exalted spheres, testifies to the merits of foreigners. Their strong arms have helped furrow our broad territory with canals, and stretch in every direction the iron rail. They have filled our workshops, navigated our ships, and even tilled our fields. Go where you will, among the hardy sons of toil on land or sea, and there you will find industrious and faithful foreigners bending their muscles to the work. At the bar and in the high places of commerce, you will find them. Enter the retreats of learning, and there you will find them too, shedding upon our country the glory of science. Nor can any reflection be cast upon foreigners, claiming hospitality now, which will not glance at once upon the distinguished living and the illustrious dead—upon the Irish Montgomery, who perished for us at the gates of Quebec—upon Pulaski the Pole, who perished for us at Savannah—upon De Kalb and Steuben, the generous Germans, who aided our weakness by their military experience—upon Paul Jones, the Scotchman, who lent his unsurpassed courage to the infant thunders of our navy—also upon those great European liberators, Kosciusko of Poland, and Lafayette of France, each of whom paid his earliest vows to Liberty in our cause. Nor should this list be confined to military characters, so long as we gratefully cherish the name of Alexander Hamilton, who was born in the West Indies, and the name of Albert Gallatin, who was born in Switzerland, and never, to the close of his octogenarian career, lost the French accent of his boyhood—both of whom rendered civic services which may be commemorated among the victories of peace.

Nor is the experience of our Republic peculiar. Where is the country or power which must not inscribe the names of foreigners on its historic scroll? It was Christopher Columbus, of Genoa, who disclosed to Spain the New World; it was Magellan, of Portugal, sailing in the service of Spain, who first pressed with adventurous keel through those distant Southern straits which now bear his name, and opened the way to the vast Pacific sea; and it was Cabot, the Venetian, who first conducted English enterprise to this North American continent. As in the triumphs of discovery, so, also, in other fields have foreigners excelled, while serving States to which they were bound by no tie of birth. The Dutch Grotius——author of the sublime work, ‘The Laws of Peace ’