eloquent ruins of nations, they conjure us not to quench the light which is rising on the world. Greece cries to us, by the convulsed lips of her poisoned, dying Demosthenes; and Rome pleads with us, in the mute persuasion of her mangled Tully. They address us each and all in the glorious language of Milton, to one, who might have canonized his memory in the hearts of the friends of liberty, but who did most shamefully betray the cause: 'Reverere tantam de te expectationem, spem patriæ de te unicam. Reverere vultus et vulnera tot fortium virorum, quotquot pro libertate tam strenue decertârunt, manes etiam eorum qui in ipso certamine occubuerunt. Reverere exterarum quoque civitatum existimationem de te atque sermones; quantas res de libertate nostrâ tam fortiter partâ, de nostrâ republicâ tam gloriose exortâ sibi polliceantur; quæ si tam cito quasi aborta evanuerit, profecto nihil æque dedecorosum huic genti atque periculosum fuerit.'* Yes, my friends, such is the exhortation which calls on us to exert our powers, to employ our time, and consecrate our labors in the cause of our native land. When we engage in that solemn study, the history of our race; when we survey the progress of man, from his cradle in the East to these limits of his wandering; when we behold him forever flying westward from civil and religious thraldom, over mountains and seas, seeking rest and finding none, but still pursuing the flying bow of promise, to the glittering hills which it spans in Hesperian climes, we cannot but exclaim with Bishop Berkeley, the generous prelate of England, who bestowed his benefactions, as well as blessings, on our country; Westward the Star of Empire takes its way; The four first acts already past, The fifth shall close the drama with the day; In that high romance, if romance it be, in which the great minds of antiquity sketched the fortunes of the ages to come, they pictured to themselves a favored region beyond the ocean; a land of equal laws and happy men. The primitive poets beheld it in the islands of the blest; the Doric bards fancied it in the Hyper * Milton's Defensio Secunda. borean regions; the sage of the academy placed it in the lost Atlantis; and even the sterner spirit of Seneca could discern a fairer abode of humanity, in distant regions then unknown. We look back upon these uninspired productions, and almost recoil from the obligation they imply. By us must these fair visions be realized, by us must be fulfilled these high visions, which burst in trying hours upon the longing hearts of the champions of truth. Atlantis There are no more continents or worlds to be revealed; hath arisen from the ocean, the farthest Thule is reached, there are no more retreats beyond the sea, no more discoveries, no more hopes. Here then a mighty work is to be fulfilled, or never, by the race of mortals. The man, who looks with tenderness on the sufferings of good men in other times; the descendant of the pilgrims, who cherishes the memory of his fathers; the patriot, who feels an honest glow at the majesty of the system of which he is a member; the scholar, who beholds with rapture the long sealed book of unprejudiced truth opened for all to read; these are they, by whom these auspices are to be accomplished. Yes, brethren, it is by the intellect of the country, that the mighty mass is to be inspired; that its parts are to communicate and sympathize with each other, its bright progress to be adorned with becoming refinements, its strong sense uttered, its character reflected, its feelings interpreted to its own children, to other regions, and to after ages. Meantime, the years are rapidly passing away and gathering importance in their course. With the present year, will be completed the half century from that most important era in human history, the commencement of our revolutionary war. The jubilee of our national existence is at hand. The space of time, that has elapsed since that momentous date, has laid down in the dust, which the blood of many of them had already hallowed, most of the great men to whom, under Providence, we owe our national existence and privileges. A few still survive among us, to reap the rich fruits of their labors and sufferings; and ONE has yielded himself to the united voice of a people, and returned in his age, to receive the gratitude of the nation, to whom he devoted his youth. It is recorded on the pages of American history, that when this friend of our country applied to our commissioners at Paris, in 1776, for a passage in the first ship they should despatch to America, they were obliged to answer him, (so low and abject was then our dear native land,) that they possessed not the means nor the credit sufficient for providing a single vessel, in all the ports of France. Then,' exclaimed the youthful hero, 'I will provide my own;' and it is a literal fact, that when all America was too poor to offer him so much as a passage to her shores, he left, in his tender youth, the bosom of home, of happiness, of wealth, of rank, to plunge in the dust and blood of our inauspicious struggle ! Welcome, friend of our fathers, to our shores! Happy are our eyes that behold those venerable features. Enjoy a triumph, such as never conqueror nor monarch enjoyed, the assurance that throughout America, there is not a bosom, which does not beat with joy and gratitude at the sound of your name. You have already met and saluted, or will soon meet, the few that remain, of the ardent patriots, prudent counsellors, and brave warriors, with whom you were associated in achieving our liberty. But you have looked round in vain for the faces of many, who would have lived years of pleasure on a day like this, with their old companion in arms and brother in peril. Lincoln, and Greene, and Knox, and and Hamilton, are gone; the heroes of Saratoga and Yorktown have fallen, before the only foe they could not meet. Above all, the first of heroes and of men, the friend of your youth, the more than friend of his country, rests in the bosom of the soil he redeemed. On the banks of his Potomac, he lies in glory and peace. You will revisit the hospitable shades of Mount Vernon, but him whom you venerated as we did, you will not meet at its door. His voice of consolation, which reached you in the Austrian dungeons, cannot now break its silence, to bid you welcome to his own roof. But the grateful children of America will bid you welcome, in his name. Welcome, thrice welcome to our shores; and whithersoever throughout the limits of the continent your course shall take you, the ear that hears you shall bless you, eye that sees you shall bear witness to you, and every tongue exclaim, with heartfelt joy, welcome, welcome La Fayette! the ORATION DELIVERED AT PLYMOUTH, DECEMBER 22, 1824. AMIDST all the proud and grateful feelings, which the return of this anniversary must inspire, in the bosom of every child of NewEngland, a deep solicitude oppresses me, lest I should fail in doing justice to the men, to the day, and to the events, which we are met to commemorate. This solicitude, I would hope, is no mere personal feeling. I should be unworthy to address you, on this occasion, could I, from the selfish desire of winning your applause, devote any of the moments of this consecrated day to any cold speculations, however ingenious or original. Gladly would I give utterance to the most familiar commonplaces, could I be so happy in doing it, as to excite or strengthen the feelings, which belong to the time and the place. Gladly would I repeat to you those sentiments, which a hundred times have been uttered and welcomed on this anniversary; sentiments, whose truth does not change in the change of circumstances; whose power does not wear out with time. It is not by pompous epithets or lively antithesis, that the exploits of the pilgrims are to be set forth by their children. We can only do this worthily, by repeating the plain tale of their sufferings, by dwelling on the circumstances under which their memorable enterprise was executed, and by cherishing and breathing that spirit, which led them across the ocean, and guided them to the spot where we stand. We need no voice of artificial rhetoric to celebrate their names. The bleak and deathlike desolation of nature proclaims, with touching eloquence, the fortitude and patience of the meek adventurers. On the bare and wintry fields around us, their exploits are written in characters, which will last, and tell their tale to posterity, when brass and marble have crumbled into dust. The occasion which has called us together is certainly one, to which no parallel exists in the history of the world. Other countries, and our own also, have their national festivals. They commemorate the birth-days of their illustrious children; they celebrate the foundation of important institutions: momentous events, victories, reformations, revolutions awaken, on their anniversaries, the grateful and patriotic feelings of posterity. But we commemorate the birth-day of all New-England; the foundation, not of one institution, but of all the institutions, the settlements, the establishments, the communities, the societies, the improvements, comprehended within our broad and happy borders. Were it only as an act of rare adventure; were it a trait in foreign, or ancient history; we should fix upon the achievement of our fathers, as one of the noblest deeds, in the annals of the world. Were we attracted to it, by no other principle than that sympathy we feel, in all the fortunes of our race, it could lose nothing,—it must gain,-in the contrast, with whatever history or tradition has preserved to us of the wanderings and settlements of the tribes of man. A continent for the first time, effectually explored; a vast ocean traversed by men, women, and children, voluntarily exiling themselves from the fairest portions of the old world; and a great nation grown up, in the space of two centuries, on the foundations so perilously laid, by this pious band: -point me to the record, to the tradition, nay to the fiction of anything, that can enter into competition with it. It is the language not of exaggeration, but of truth and soberness to say, that there is nothing in the accounts of Phenician, of Grecian, or of Roman Colonization, that can stand in the comparison. What new importance then, does not the achievement acquire for us, when we consider that it was the deed of our fathers; that this grand undertaking was accomplished on the spot where we dwell; that the mighty region they explored is our native land; that the unrivalled enterprise they displayed, is not merely a fact proposed to our admiration, but is the source of our being; that their cruel hardships are the spring of our prosperity; that their |