THE YOUNG AMERICAN 351

she should speak for the human race. It is the
country of the Future. From Washington, prover-
bially ‘ the city of magnificent distances,’ through
all its cities, states, and territories, it is a country
of beginnings, of projects, of designs, of expecta»
tions.

Gentlemen, there is a sublime and friendly Des-
tiny by which the human race is guided,—the
race never dying, the individual never spared, —
to results afi°ecting masses and ages. Men are nar~
row and selfish, but the Genius or Destiny is not
narrow, but beneficent. It is not discovered in
their calculated and voluntary activity, but in what
befalls, with or without their design. Only what
is inevitable interests us, and it turns out that love
and good are inevitable, and in the course of
things. That Genius has infused itself into nature.
It indicates itself by a small excess of good, a small
balance in brute facts always favorable to the side
of reason. All the facts in any part of nature
shall be tabulated and the results shall indicate
the same security and benefit; so slight as to be
hardly observable, and yet it is there. The sphere
is flattened at the poles and swelled at the equa-
tor ; a form flowing necessarily from the fluid state,
yet the form, the mathematician assures us, re-
quired to prevent the protuberances of the conti-
nent, or even of lesser mountains cast up at any