You are engaged in a high and holy mission.  The redemption of your fatherland from oppression is worthy of your efforts, and may God prosper them; and may you find in this free land such sympathy and aid as will strengthen your heart for the stern trials which await you in your own country.

Kossuth replied:—­

Sir,—­Before I answer you, let me look over this animated ocean, that I may impress upon my memory the look of those who have transformed the wilderness of a primitive forest into an immense city, of which there exists a prediction that, by the year of our Lord 2000, it will be the greatest city in the world.

“The West! the West! the region of the Father of Rivers,” there thou canst see the cradle of a new-born humanity.  So I was told by the learned expounders of descriptive geography, who believe that they know the world, because they have seen it on maps.

The West a cradle!  Why?  A cradle is the sleeping place of a child wrapped in swaddling clothes and crying for the mother’s milk.

People of Cincinnati, are you that child which, awakening in an unwatched moment, liberated his tender hands from the swaddling band, swept away by his left arm the primitive forest planted by the Lord at creation’s dawn, and raised by his right hand this mighty metropolis.  Why, if that be your childhood’s pastime, I am awed by the presentiment of your manhood’s task; for it is written, that it is forbidden to men to approach too near to omnipotence.  And that people here which created this rich city, and changed the native woods of the red man into a flourishing seat of Christian civilization and civilized Christianity—­into a living workshop of science and art, of industry and widely spread commerce; and performed this change, not like the drop, which, by falling incessantly through centuries, digs a gulf where a mountain stood, but performed it suddenly within the turn of the hand, like a magician; that people achieved a prouder work than the giants of old, who dared to pile Ossa upon Pelion; but excuse me, the comparison is bad.

Those giants of old heaped mountain upon mountain, with the impious design to storm the heavens.  You have transformed the wilderness of the West into the dwelling-place of an enlightened, industrious, intelligent Christian community, that it may flourish a living monument of the wonderful bounty of Divine Providence—­a temple of freedom, which glorifies God, and bids oppressed humanity to hope.

And yet, when I look at you, citizens of Cincinnati, I see no race of giants, astonishing by uncommon frame:  I see men as I am wont to see all my life, and I have lived almost long enough to have seen Cincinnati a small hamlet, composed of some modest log-houses, separated by dense woods, where savage beast and savage Indian lurked about the lonely settlers, who, as the legend of Jacob Wetzel and his faithful log tells, had to wrestle for life when they left their poor abode.