Page:Address on the opening of the Free Public Library of Ballarat East, on Friday, 1st. January, 1869.djvu/23

 17 from which we have come? True indeed it is that in contrast with other parts of the earth the darkness of unillumined human intellect may have brooded over this fair continent for an unusually long time, still history consists not of years or centuries, of Olympiads or Lustrums, but of events. That of our connexion with this land is not without its special interest.

The history of other peoples has its eras of tedious infancy, insecure youth, wanton manhood, and helpless old age. In certain periods, when the evil passions of mankind have been predominant, history has been,—alas, too often!—stained with long accounts of desolating wars, undertaken either to enslave other nations, to tread out the embers of freedom, to gratify a lust for power, or to feed the appetite of bigotry, intolerance, or pride. Fortunately for us the pages of ours are as yet unsullied by such records. But when the kindlier elements of a divine nature have been in the ascendant these have produced results which are perennial, imperishable, nay, reproductive, expanding into a growth which adapts itself to all ages, to every clime, to every new association of the human family.

Thus we may apply the ever memorable words of Pericles in his funeral oration over his Athenian fellow-countrymen.

"Of illustrious men," says he, "the whole earth I sepulchre, and not only does the inscription upon columns in their own country testify to this, but of their greatness is found a monument in every land, an unwritten memorial in every heart."