George F. Hoar: “The Northwest had been the gift of Freedom to the Republic on her birthday.”

The language Statius uses is more simple than mine; but this is substantially the picture he gives: and I know of nothing that so impresses on the imagination the thunder of the power of the Roman Empire as this creation in the wilderness…

We bring you a more costly and precious gift than any jewel or diadem, though it came from an Emperor's treasury.

We bring you the heart's love of Boston where you were born, and Worcester where you took the early vows you have kept so well; of Massachusetts who knows she has no worthier son, and of the great and free country to whom you have taught…

It is not too much to say that most of the main roads in England are Roman; but the very continuity of their use has caused this to be overlooked.