Excerpt from Historians and Historical Societies: An Address at the Opening of the Fenway Building of the Massachusetts Historical Society, April 13, 1899 The angel of Lord Bathurst, you remember, enhanced the rising glories and commercial grandeur of England, by first unfolding bright and happy scenes of household prosperity and domestic honor; then, presently, pointing out in the larger and grander panorama which gradually opened, a little Speck, scarce visible in the mass of national interest, a small seminal principle rather than a formed body, he went on: Young man, there is America, which at this day [1704] serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners, yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that. Commerce which now attracts the envy of the world. Whatever England has been growing to by a progressive increase of improvement, brought in by varieties of people, by succession of civilized conquests and civilizing settlements in a series of seventeen hundred years, you shall see as much added to her by America in a single life!

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