sunlight upon a difficult problem in science we owe some 

 of the most remarkable inventions. The great discov- 

 eries have astonished even the discoverers themselves. 

 Newton, upon whose mind the law of gravitation was 

 suddenly impressed by the most trivial accident; Morton, 

 whose discovery of antesthesia, for which he and he alone 

 is entitled to the gratitude of man in all coming time, 

 could have told a delighted and startled world how even 

 to themselves the rising of the great curtain when the 

 mysteries were revealed, was an event full of surprising 

 joy. The marked incidents in science, in history, in art, 

 in every day life, are the surprises which attract and charm 

 us, and the startling steps which man takes in his advance- 

 ment. The world is full of people, — the history of the 

 world is full of striking events ; but while the steady cur- 

 rent of commonplace flows calmly on, the great surprises 

 attract, and develop, and form, and create, and instruct. 

 The ordinary course of national life has its lesson and its 

 accomplishment ; but it is out of an unusual and unex- 

 pected uprising that the world receives its greatest im- 

 pulse. The nation whose career is anticipated and steady 

 from step to step may be useful and powerful ; it is the 

 nation whose birth is a significant surprise, and whose 

 course is full of new vigor and new experiment, which 

 fills the heart of man with hope and promise, and his 

 mind with progressive thought and design. 



We have been told by one of our acutest thinkers that 

 the American nationalty is a phenomenon, an unexplained 

 curiosity ; to my view sir, it is a surprise, entitled to the 

 same high rank in the history of civil endeavor, that is 

 accorded to great discoveries in the records of science. 

 In its colonial settlement and organization, in the process 

 by which it secured its foothold on this continent, in its 

 preliminary endeavor, in its birth and in its growth and 



