not differ more radically from the splendor of this banquet than did the sentiments with which the Puritans came to these shores differ from the sentiments of the men who gather in this room to-night.  If it had happened to them as it happened to a distinguished company in New England, where an eminent New England divine was called upon to lead in prayer, their feelings would have been as little wounded as those against whom he offered up his petition; or rather, if I were here to-night to denounce their sentiments as to religious toleration, in which they did not believe; their sentiments as to the separation of the Church from the State, in which they did not believe any more than they believed in religious toleration; their sentiments as to Democracy, in which they did not believe any more than they believed in religious toleration—­those of us who are here and who do believe in these things would be as little wounded as the company to which I have referred.  The distinguished divine to whom I have alluded was called upon to offer prayer, some fifty years ago, in a mixed company, when, in accordance with the custom of the times, he included in his petition to the Almighty a large measure of anathema, as “We beseech Thee, O Lord! to overwhelm the tyrant!  We beseech Thee to overwhelm and to pull down the oppressor!  We beseech Thee to overwhelm and pull down the Papist!” And then opening his eyes, and seeing that a Roman Catholic archbishop and his secretary were present, he saw he must change the current of his petitions if he would be courteous to his audience, and said vehemently, “We beseech Thee, O Lord! we beseech Thee—­we beseech Thee—­we beseech Thee to pull down and overwhelm the Hottentot!” Said some one to him when the prayer was over, “My dear brother, why were you so hard upon the Hottentot?” “Well,” said he, “the fact is, when I opened my eyes and looked around, between the paragraphs in the prayer, at the assembled guests, I found that the Hottentots were the only people who had not some friends among the company.” [Laughter.]

Gentlemen of the New England Society, if I were to denounce the views of the Puritans to-night, they would be like the Hottentots. [Laughter.] Nay more, if one of their number were to come into this banqueting hall and sit down at this splendid feast, so unlike what he had been wont to see, and were to expound his views as to constitutional liberty and as to religious toleration, or as to the relations of the Church to the State, I am very much afraid that you and I would be tempted to answer him as an American answered an English traveller in a railway-carriage in Belgium.  Said this Englishman, whom I happened to meet in Brussels, and who recognized me as an American citizen:  “Your countrymen have a very strange conception of the English tongue:  I never heard any people who speak the English language in such an odd way as the Americans do.”  “What do you mean?” I said; “I supposed that in the American States