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ssss1 Address before the Constitutional Convention of the state of New York at its celebration of the seven-hundredth anniversary of Magna Carta, Albany, June 15, 1915.

ssss1 Guesses at Truth, 1st series, 3d ed. (1847), pp. 324-325.

ssss1 W.S. McKechnie, Magna Carta, 2d ed. (1914), p. 159.

ssss1 Edward J. Phelps, Orations and Essays (1901), p. 127.

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Wherever Americans gather, at home or abroad, those who can claim the proud heritage of descent from the Pilgrims on the Mayflower are accustomed annually to join in thanks-giving for all that they owe to their ancestors. The spirit which prompts these celebrations is singularly wholesome, and indeed holy. Among the natural instincts of the heart, common to all races, is a longing for communion with the past, which manifests itself in the worship of ancestors. That this spirit of reverence has been from the earliest ages a most powerful religious and patriotic force is a fact familiar to us in the history of the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans. We readily recall the beautiful ceremonial of pagan Rome on the dies parentales, when violets and roses and wine, oil and milk were offered and aves were chanted to the spirits of their dead.