LAYING OF THE CORNER-STONE OF THE NA-needed. A small pittance from each of the favored children TIONAL MONUMENT TO THE FOREFATHERS.

of our country will complete it in a few years. Is there We are happy in being able to announce to the public these commemorative stones? I am not willing to entersuch a child anywhere who will not contribute to rear that the corner-stone of the National Monument to the tain such a thought. Think of the Fathers but for one Forefathers has been laid. This event took place at Ply-moment, any hesitating one, and you cannot help aiding mouth on the 2d of August, 1859, the celebration being in the work. Never doubt the accomplishment of what intended to commemorate the two hundred and thirty- we to-day begin, any more than the Fathers doubted of ninth anniversary of the embarkation of the Pilgrims at final success. Let every one give and the work is done. Delft-Haven. In order to have been strictly correct in It cannot be done without your aid. No miracle will be point of date, the ceremony should have been performed worked to finish this structure. It is for you, who have on the 1st of August; but as that day fell this year on Monday, a very inconvenient day for persons residing at a reverence enough for the Fathers, to be willing to show that distance from Plymouth to be present, it was deferred for reverence by acts. Some say the best monument to the one day. Pilgrims is the hearts of their children. Such a monument is apt to crumble. There needs something to look upon tiful symmetry to impress on those hearts the story of -some of the granite of the earth moulded into beauthe past-the heroism of former times.

A large concourse of people, estimated at ten thousand, in addition to the inhabitants of the town, assembled from every portion of the country to witness the ceremonies, and take part in them. At first an address was delivered by the President of the Pilgrim Society, Richard Warren, Esq., of New York, of which the following is substan-quences; no event in human story, save that which oc tially the eloquent conclusion:

"We are now about to lay the corner-stone of a structure, grander than any of the kind the world has ever witnessed, and which is intended to mark the events of the landing of 1620, in the Nation's History,- that decisive event, which, in reality, began this our great and happy country. Let it rise speedily, that, as from distant ocean the toil-worn mariner approaching home shall look hither, and view it reaching toward the clouds, he may also see inscribed on it a motive for action-an aid to every worthy

purpose.

"No victory has ever been so pregnant in its consecurred at Bethlehem, has produced so vast a revolution in the destinies of the human race, as the emigration of the Pilgrims of the May-Flower. It is worthy then of a nation's self-denial, were it necessary, to erect a memorial! of gratitude, which shall embody in its design the leading characteristics of the Pilgrim mind.”

Mr. Warren ended by presenting to the audience his Excellency N. P. Banks, Governor of the Commonwealth, from whose powerful and impressive address the limits of this work only permit the following quotation, as peculiarly adapted to the present purpose:

"Many have found fault with the magnitude of the under"What a harvest reap we in our day from the seeds of taking. Some have derided it, and pronounced it unsuit- Christian civilization sown by the Pilgrims in darkness able for the events it is designed to commemorate. Others and danger, but also in hope and in faith! Appreciate we would have it erected in a city. No! Here where we the full flood of almost Divine favors which daily refresh stand is the spot for it. From hence, cast your eyes across our million of souls? Measure we the prosperity that lifts yonder waters. In a clear day, Cape Cod is visible. There, us above our deserts as above other States? Confess we at Provincetown, the Pilgrims first cast anchor, and to the full capacity of acknowledgment by whose wisdom, within the arms of that Cape they found shelter. There whose valor, whose great faith we have reached these Pisis Clark's Island, named for the mate of the May-gah heights? Or believe we that our genius, our industry, Flower. There the Pilgrims worshipped on their first our enterprise, has created that which surrounds us, Sabbath, in a temple not made with hands, that States, more than continents or empires, have other origin than the slow growth of centuries?

The waves around were roaring,
The chilly winds were blowing.

"No fairer scene than that which meets our view attests the triumphs of any pioneers in the work of civilization. In whatever direction we move, towns and cities rise to

Perhaps an Indian was watching without, as if compre-meet us. The Connecticut, the Merrimac, and the rivers hending that they, too, were speaking to the Great Spirit, whom he himself ignorantly worshipped. After this holy service they returned to their small vessel, their only refuge for the night. In peace they rested, watched over by their God. In front of that island the May-Flower anchored. On the left you see Duxbury, the home of Elder Brewster, and Captain's Hill, the residence of Myles Standish. On our right rises the burial hill,- beneath whose sods rest BRADFORD and the son of ROBERT CUSHMAN. Monuments have been erected there to their names by grateful descendants. Beyond lies Watson's Hill, on which the first treaty was made between the white man and the Indian!

"Nearly in front of where we stand is Marshfield, the home of the WINSLOWS, and in later days of DANIEL WEBSTER. And not far off, on our left, is Jones' river, in Kingston, where ELDER CUSHMAN lived. As these places meet our view, how does the past come back to us. As we stand on Monument Hill let that past nerve us all with new strength for our life work.

that skirt the southern coast of the Commonwealth, boast as proud monuments of industrial success as the enterprise of man has ever created. The valley of the Charles, in which sleep thirty or forty villages, towns and cities, crowned on the one hand by the metropolis of New England, and on the other by the highlands of the interior, presents, from every commanding eminence, a scene uniting as many of the beauties of Art and Nature combined as any upon which the eye of man ever rested. These are monuments of the prowess of the settlers of New England, and the prosperity and happiness of their descendants. Not unto us, but unto them be the honors paid. No monumental shaft, no tongue of poetry or eloquence can offer to them a more appropriate or elaborate eulogy than that spoken for them in their works.

"The monument can be built if the People say it shall be. Whenever they have fully determined to do anything it has been done, say it in regard to this, Sons of the Pil-tress, citadel, or temple-no pyramid, arsenal, or obelisk grims, Daughters of the Pilgrims! Say it with faith that it can be, and bring your energies to bear upon it, and all doubt will be removed. The cost, large as it appears, is nothing in reality, to the capability of those who are asked to do it.

"Six years ago, a noble merchant of New York, princely in work and in gift, wrote that he would be one of fifty to subscribe $1,000 for a monument.' Not all of the forty-nine others have come, but some have done so. Where are the others to respond? Would that I had the ability as I have the desire, to be not merely one such man, but all combined. The merchant paid his money, not waiting for others. Such large amounts are not, however,

"Nevertheless, it is for us a pleasure and a duty to connect the events of the Present and the Past by some marked and visible sign, to make apparent to careless and indifferent beholders the relation which the inestimable privileges of our time bear to the heroism and devotion of the Forefathers. Never did monument rise to commemorate nobler deeds or greater heroism than theirs. No for-no triumphal arch or marble statue bears testimony to holier virtues that yet live in Greek or Roman fame than the innumerable and imperishable evidences of great purposes and powers which make illustrious the fame of the New England fathers. The monument, then, that we plant to-day is for us as for them. It is for our instruction -to remind our children, and our children's children, so long as the seed of woman shall bruise the serpent's head, that our life is their life-that out of their trials and sorrow we pluck prosperity and happiness from their oppression springs our freedom. It is for this we plant, here and now, in the very heart of the earth, the headstone of the corner. It is for this we bid the monumental pile

son, Clay-esteemed and venerated of our countrymen, esteemed and venerated also as Freemasons-have lasting monuments been reared whose commencement and completion have been thus signalized. But it is not to eminent characters who were of us alone, that our ceremonials of honor are confined; we recognize and respect exalted worth in whomsoever it exists or has existed, and are always ready as a society to manifest our appreciation of it. Important events, like that we are now commemment of general society, and conferred great benefits on the intellectual, moral and religious well-being of man, may be celebrated with greater propriety by Masons with all the distinction which their ceremonies can bestow.

England. It was here on this spot, then the border of a wilderness nearly as vast as the continent, where they landed on the 21st of Dec. 1620. Here, therefore, it is appropriate that a National Monument to their memory should be erected; a work which, we are happy to see, has been commenced under the most flattering prospects of success. To the Pilgrim Society belongs the honor of initiating this grateful and patriotic enterprise; and under its auspices it will be, we doubt not, triumphantly accomplished. In compliance with your courteous in-orating, which have promoted the progress and improvevitation to the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts to lay this corner-stone, that body will now discharge that agreeable duty according to the ancient usages of the Craft. It is not known, sir, that any of the passengers of the May Flower were Freemasons; certainly no record of the fact has been discovered. But since it is authenticated that our institution was in a flourishing condition in England in 1620, it is not improbable that some members of a society which, from the earliest times, has been tolerant as regards modes of religious worship, should have united with the members of the Church of the Pilgrims and fled with them from the persecutions inflicted on the Dissenters by the Established Church.

That there are no accounts extant of private or subordinate Lodges in the earlier days of the colonies, is not to be taken as evidence that none existed in them. In the constitution of the Lodge previous to the past century, it was not necessary that its existence and proceedings should have official or durable record; it received no warrant or charter from the General Assembly -the Grand Lodge of that time; nor were its meetings confined to any particular time or place; it is not to be wondered at, that under those circumstances, and after a lapse of two centuries, all traces of it should be obliterated. Thus it is apparent that a Lodge might have existed even in the May Flower, and been composed of Pilgrims, without the knowledge of their associates or posterity. The principles of Freemasonry are in no way incompatible with the professions of the Forefathers in moral or religious belief, but, on the contrary, are such as would have been approved and vindicated by them.

It will not be out of place for me to mention here a coincidence derived from the history of our society and that of the first settlers:-and I allude to the fact that two of the Grand Masters of England were also members of the "Council established at Plymouth" by the Great Patent which passed the seals on the third of November, 1620, and became the foundation of all subsequent grants of territory in New England. They were William, the third Earl of Pembroke, and Thomas, Earl of Arundel; the former was Chancellor of the University of Oxford and Lord Chamberlain of the King's household, the latter Earl Marshal of the realm. Pembroke, who was senior Grand Warden under the Grand Mastership of Inigo Jones, his friend, and a celebrated architect, succeeded him as Grand Master in 1618, and continued to preside over the Fraternity until the time of his death in 1630. Arundel was elected to the office in 1633, and filled it for a space of two years.

This occasion naturally carries our thoughts back to the times of the forefathers, and suggests the recital of their trials and sufferings, and triumphant struggle for religious freedom; but this duty I leave for others to perform. Though that instructive tale has been often told with power and beauty by the historian, orator and poet, until it has become familiar to all, still it is not a work out-told; its recitation never falls upon listless ears, or fails to move the sympathies and arouse the patriotic feelings of an American audience.

The Pilgrim Monument will be one of the most imposing and beautiful monumental works in the world. The design, so creditable to the taste and genius of the artist, prefigures a structure of vast, yet harmonious proportions. While it will mark the place of the first settlement of New England, it will, also, by inscriptions, devices and sculpture, signalize the leading events in the lives of the forefathers, and by appropriate figures symbolize their cherished principles. May it endure for ages, and decay only when our descendants shall cease to appreciate their rich inheritance of civil and religious liberty."

After the ceremonies of laying the corner-stone, the procession formed again and marched to a spacious tent, where dinner had been provided for 2800 persons. Among the invited guests were Governor Banks and his staff, Governor Turner of Rhode Island, and Col. Crandall of his staff, Governor Buckingham of Connecticut, Governor Chase of Ohio, Hon. Edward Kent, formerly Governor of Maine, Hon. John P. Hale of New Hampshire, Hon. Henry Wilson, Hon. Anson Burlingame, Hon. T. D. Eliot of New Bedford, Hon. Robert B. Hall of Plymouth, Hon. Oliver Warner, Secretary of the Commonwealth, Hon. Stephen H. Phillips, AttorneyGeneral, Hon. Charles A. Phelps, Hon. Charles Hale, Rev. Lyman Beecher, D. D., Rev. Samuel Osgood, D. D., of Springfield, Rev. Richard S. Storrs, D. D., of Braintree, Hon. Francis P. Blair, Hon. William M. Evarts, President of the New England Society of New York, Hon. Josiah Quincy, Jr., Hon. John T. Heard, Hon. B. F. Hallett, Hon. Charles Hudson, Hon. Charles R. Train, Hon. Ira M. Barton of Worcester, Hon. John W. Proctor of Danvers, Rev. John Waddington of Plymouth, England, George Folsom, Esq. of the New York Historical SociIt is worthy of remembrance that though the Ply-ety, George Sumner, Esq., Dr. N. B. Shurtleff, Hammatt mouth Company possessed the privileges of a monopoly, it having exclusive right by its patent to all the lands in New England, the members of the Council were lenient in their measures affecting the colonists. Towards the Pilgrims, especially, they showed much liberality. The latter, compelled by treachery to settle on this spot instead of that farther south, which they had selected be- It was half-past four before the speaking could begin. fore their departure from Europe, found themselves The first regular toast was "Our Country," followed by without privileges within the territorial limits of the "The President," in response to which a letter from Mr. Plymouth Company. The Council did not, however, Buchanan was read. The next toast was 46 Massachulook upon them as trespassers; but, through the influ-setts," to which Governor Banks responded with spirit. ence of one of its number, caused a patent to be issued Governor Chase answered for Ohio, Governor Buckin their favor. This generous act of the government of ingham for Connecticut, Governor Turner for Rhode the company indicates that its counsels were controlled Island, Hon. John P. Hale for New Hampshire, and by sentiments of humanity-by sentiments of broth- William M. Evarts, Esq., President of the New England erly-love, such as it might be supposed would influence Society of New York, for that State. the action of those members of it, at least, who were Masons.

On former occasions the Fraternity have been called upon to consecrate, by their rites, statues and other memorials erected in honor of the distinguished dead. To the illustrious Washington, to Franklin, Warren, Jack

Billings, Esq., and others.

The Divine blessing was invoked by Rev. Edward Hall of Plymouth, and the President invited the guests to proceed at once with the "least interesting exercises of the day,” which they did with much laughter as well as energy.

Governor Kent answered for Maine; Hon. Charles
A. Phelps, President of the Senate, made an eloquent
speech; and other addresses were made by Rev. John
Waddington of England, Charles Hale, Speaker of the
House of Representatives, and Hon. Moses Kimball.
A letter was read from Mr. Everett, stating his willing-