text: " And as in daily life we rejoice to trace means directed to an end and proofs of sagacity and instinct even among the lower tribes of animated nature with how much greater delight do we seize the proofs vouchsafed to us in history of that eternal law by which the affairs of the universe are governed? How much more do we rejoice to find that the order to which physical nature owes its existence and perpetuity does not stop at the threshold of national life--that the moral world is not _fatherless_ and that man formed to look before and after is not abandoned to confusion and insecurity? Fertile and comprehensive indeed is the domain of history comprising the whole region of probabilities within its jurisdiction--all the various shapes into which man has been cast--all the different scenes in which he has been called upon to act or suffer; his power and his weakness his folly and his wisdom his virtues in their meridian height his vices in the lowest abyss of their degradation are displayed before us in their struggles vicissitudes and infinitely diversified combinations: an inheritance beyond all price--a vast repository of fruitful and immortal truths