At this moment the rivers and seas of the globe are navigated with that marvelous application of steam as a propelling power, which was first effected by Fulton. The harvests of the civilized world are gathered by American reapers; the newspapers which lead the journalism of Europe are printed on American presses; there are railroads in Europe constructed by American engineers and traveled by American locomotives; troops armed with American weapons, and ships of war built in American dockyards. In the factories of Europe there is machinery of American invention or improvement; in their observatories telescopes of American construction, and apparatus of American invention for recording the celestial phenomena. America contests with Europe the introduction into actual use of the electric telegraph, and her mode of operating it is adopted throughout the French empire. American authors in almost every department are found on the shelves of European libraries. It is true no American Homer, Virgil, Dante, Copernicus, Shakspeare, Bacon, Milton, Newton, has risen on the world. These mighty geniuses seem to be exceptions in the history of the human mind. Favorable circumstances do not produce them, nor does the absence of favorable circumstances prevent their appearance. Homer rose in the dawn of Grecian culture; Virgil flourished in the court of Augustus; Dante ushered in the birth of the new European civilization; Copernicus was reared in a Polish cloister; Shakspeare was trained in the green-room of the theater; Milton was formed while the elements of English thought and life were fermenting toward a great political and moral revolution; Newton under the profligacy of the Restoration. Ages may elapse before any country will produce a man like these, as two centuries have passed since the last-mentioned of them was born. But if it is really a matter of reproach to the United States that, in the comparatively short period of their existence as a people, they have not added another name to this illustrious list (which is equally true of all the other nations of the earth), they may proudly boast of one example of life and character, one career of disinterested service, one model, of public virtue, one type of human excellence, of which all the countries and all the ages may be searched in vain for the parallel. I need not--on this day I need not--speak the peerless name. It is stamped on your hearts, it glistens in your eyes, it is written on every page of your history, on the battle-fields of the Revolution, on the monuments of your fathers, on the portals of your capitols. It is heard in every breeze that whispers over the fields of Independent America. And he was all our own. He grew up on the soil of America; he was nurtured at her bosom. She loved and trusted him in his youth; she honored and revered him in his age; and, though she did not wait for death to canonize his name, his precious memory, with each succeeding year, has sunk more deeply into the hearts of his countrymen.