I know not if any whom I now have the honor of addressing have thought to recall the great in rank and power filling the gaze of the world as the Mayflower with her company fared forth on their adventurous voyage.  The foolish James was yet on the English throne, glorying that he had “peppered the Puritans.”  The morose Louis XIII, through whom Richelieu ruled, was King of France.  The imbecile Philip III swayed Spain and the Indies.  The persecuting Ferdinand the Second, tormentor of Protestants, was Emperor of Germany.  Paul V, of the House of Borghese, was Pope of Rome.  In the same princely company and all contemporaries were Christian IV, King of Denmark, and his son Christian, Prince of Norway; Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden; Sigismund the Third, King of Poland; Frederick, King of Bohemia, with his wife, the unhappy Elizabeth of England, progenitor of the house of Hanover; George William, Margrave of Brandenburg, and ancestor of the Prussian house that has given an emperor to Germany; Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria; Maurice, landgrave of Hesse; Christian, Duke of Brunswick and Lunenburg; John Frederick, Duke of Wuertemberg and Teck; John, Count of Nassau; Henry, Duke of Lorraine; Isabella, Infanta of Spain and ruler of the Low Countries; Maurice, fourth Prince of Orange; Charles Emanuel, Duke of Savoy and ancestor of the King of United Italy; Cosmo de’ Medici, third Grand Duke of Florence; Antonio Priuli, ninety-third Doge of Venice, just after the terrible tragedy commemorated on the English stage as “Venice Preserved”; Bethlehem Gabor, Prince of Unitarian Transylvania, and elected King of Hungary, with the countenance of an African; and the Sultan Mustapha, of Constantinople, twentieth ruler of the Turks.

Such at that time were the crowned sovereigns of Europe, whose names were mentioned always with awe, and whose countenances are handed down by art, so that at this day they are visible to the curious as if they walked these streets.  Mark now the contrast.  There was no artist for our forefathers, nor are their countenances now known to men; but more than any powerful contemporaries at whose tread the earth trembled is their memory sacred. [Applause.] Pope, emperor, king, sultan, grand-duke, duke, doge, margrave, landgrave, count—­what are they all by the side of the humble company that landed on Plymouth Rock?  Theirs, indeed, were the ensigns of worldly power, but our Pilgrims had in themselves that inborn virtue which was more than all else besides, and their landing was an epoch.

Who in the imposing troop of worldly grandeur is now remembered but with indifference or contempt?  If I except Gustavus Adolphus, it is because he revealed a superior character.  Confront the Mayflower and the Pilgrims with the potentates who occupied such space in the world.  The former are ascending into the firmament, there to shine forever, while the latter have been long dropping into the darkness of oblivion, to be brought forth only to point a moral or illustrate the fame of contemporaries whom they regarded not. [Applause.] Do I err in supposing this an illustration of the supremacy which belongs to the triumphs of the moral nature?  At first impeded or postponed, they at last prevail.  Theirs is a brightness which, breaking through all clouds, will shine forth with ever-increasing splendor.