And, as his imagination kindles at the
retrospect, he is transported back to the interesting moment; he counts
the fearful odds of the contending hosts; his interest for the result
overwhelms him; he trembles, as if it were still uncertain, and seems to
doubt whether he may consider Socrates and Plato, Demosthenes,
Sophocles, and Phidias, as secure, yet, to himself and to the world.
"If we conquer," said the Athenian commander on the approach of that
decisive day, "if we conquer, we shall make Athens the greatest city of
Greece."[6] A prophecy how well fulfilled! "If God prosper us," might
have been the more appropriate language of our fathers, when they landed
upon this Rock, "if God prosper us, we shall here begin a work which
shall last for ages; we shall plant here a new society, in the
principles of the fullest liberty and the purest religion; we shall
subdue this wilderness which is before us; we shall fill this region of
the great continent, which stretches almost from pole to pole, with
civilization and Christianity; the temples of the true God shall rise,
where now ascends the smoke of idolatrous sacrifice; fields and gardens,
the flowers of summer, and the waving and golden harvest of autumn,
shall spread over a thousand hills, and stretch along a thousand
valleys, never yet, since the creation, reclaimed to the use of
civilized man. We shall whiten this coast with the canvas of a
prosperous commerce; we shall stud the long and winding shore with a
hundred cities.
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