An address on American literature, delivered before the Philomathean Society of Indiana University, at its annual commencement, September 25th, 1839 / by James Conquest Cross.

  • Cross, James Conquest
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An address on American literature, delivered before the Philomathean Society of Indiana University, at its annual commencement, September 25th, 1839 / by James Conquest Cross. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    10/86
    [ 10] Oi4 regard with a too holy reverence those who are ex- pending their lives in the cause of human improvement and human happiness. To treat them with neglect; to despise or oppress them is treason, not only against the interests of earth, but against the throne of heaven it- self. The memory of the illustrious dead is the fair- est and richest heritage a country can receive. All other glory is delusive and perishable. Unless record- ed in the volumes of literature, the bloodstained laurels of military achievement are obliterated and forgotten; the painted canvass fades and grows dim; the chisselled marble moulders and crumbles into dust; the shattered and glittering fragments of empire decay and arc lost; the pride of power, the arrogance of supremacy, the soarings of ambition are prostrated to the earth by suc- cessive centuries of barbarism, and no token now re- mains to tell the historian the story of their dignity and of their desolation. What are the intelligible memorials of the rise, pro- gress, decline and final overthrow of those vast empires which every thing around us prove once overshadowed and convulsed this continent ? Gigantic ruins which demonstrate that here once flourished arts and arms, perhaps long before the dawn of civilization in Europe; relics of a remote antiquity, which tell us that centu- ries of industry, energy and enterprise; of national valor, sacrifice and supremacy; of national pride, exaction and oppression have revolved in vain, which the written page would have rescued from the fathomless gulph of obliv- ion, and have rendered subsidiary to the progress of mankind in improvement. Countless ages of ignorance, superstition and savage barbarism have rolled over, per- haps the most interesting regions of the earth, which live only in the mutilated marble scattered around the grave where the dead glory of the people must forever slumber. Had they, however, cultivated letters with the zeal with which they evidently prosecuted the arts and studied arms, the glory of their achievements would