HISTORICAL DISCOURSE,

DELIVERED BY REQUEST,

BEFORE THE

CITIZENS OF FARMINGTON, COAN.

NOVEMBER 4, 1840,

IN COMMEMORATION

OF THE

ORIGINAL SETTLEMENT

OF THE

ANCIENT TOWN,

IN 1640.

BY NOAH PORTER, JR.

HARTFORD:

L. SKINNER, PRINTER.

1841.

HISTORICAL DISCOURSE.

our nature.

We have been summoned to this place, not to be dazzled by a splendid but idle pageantry, nor to be excited to a factitious enthusiasm, but to contemplate with reverence the honored past, and to learn from it the lessons of admonitory wisdom. The feeling which has brought us hither is a sacred one. That we instinctively venerate the men and principles of ancient days, is itself most honorable to So amiable is this spirit and so generous and elevating is its influence; that we pardon it even when it is excessive, and give it leave to magnify that which is mean, and to palliate that which plainly deserves reprobation. We even sympathize with the descendant of a long ancestral line, who prides himself that he can trace its origin to some rough warrior of olden time, who received his extended manor from lands subdued by the Norman conqueror, or to some pliant courtier, who largely shared with his royal master, in his robbery of the church.

We, however, ask no such pardon or sympathy, as we honor our sires. They are separated from us by too few generations, to profit greatly by the distance or the dimness of antiquity. Their principles and characters stand out too distinctly to view, to receive any other than a rational homage; and in their austere presence, none other should we dare to give.

One claim they have upon their descendants, which is peculiar. They toiled for us, not as men commonly toil for their posterity, in an incidental and necessary way,