"There is always a peculiar solemnity which impresses every thoughtful mind on the birthday of another Year. The year one thousand eight hundred and sixteen, with all its cares, with all its bustle, its pleasures and its pains, has gone, and now mingles with the departed dreams of our midnight slumbers. How many of us imagined while engaged in the din and bustle and uproar of the world, that this era would form an important epoch in the history of man? and yet all these thoughts have now vanished, and scarce left a record on the pages of memory behind!" Gazette, Jan. 14, 1817.