But it is more than time, fellow citizens, that I commit the memory of this great and good man to your unprompted contemplation. On his arrival among you, ten years ago, when your civil fathers, your military, your children, your whole population poured itself out, as one throng, to salute him,-when your cannons proclaimed his advent with joyous salvos,—and your acclamations were responded from steeple to steeple, by the voice of festal bells, with what delight did you not listen to his cordial and affectionate words; I beg of you all, beloved citizens of Boston, to accept the respectful and warm thanks of a heart which has for nearly half a century been devoted to your illustrious city!' That noble heart, to which, if any object on earth was dear, that object was the country of his early choice,-of his adoption, and his more than regal triumph,-that noble heart will beat no more for your welfare. Cold and motionless, it is already mingling with the dust. While he lived, you thronged with delight to his presence, -you gazed with admiration on his placid features and venerable form, not wholly unshaken by the rude storms of his career; and now that he is departed, you have assembled in this cradle of the liberties for which, with your fathers, he risked his life, to pay the last honors to his memory. You have thrown open these consecrated portals to admit the lengthened train, which has come to discharge the last public offices of respect to his name. You have hung these venerable arches, for the second time since their erection, with the sable badges of sorrow. You have thus associated the memory of Lafayette in those distinguished honors, which but a few years since you paid to your Adams and Jefferson; and, could your wishes and mine have prevailed, my lips would this day have been mute, and the same illustrious voice which gave utterance to your filial emotions over their honored graves, would have spoken also, for you, over him who shared their earthly labors, -enjoyed their friendship,—and has now gone to share their last repose, and their imperishable remembrance.

There is not, throughout the world, a friend of liberty, who has not dropped his head, when he has heard that Lafayette is no more. Poland, Italy, Greece, Spain, Ireland, the South American republics, -every country where man is struggling to recover his birthright,— has lost a benefactor, a patron, in Lafayette. But you, young men,

at whose command I speak, for you a bright and particular lodestar is henceforward fixed in the front of heaven. What young man that reflects on the history of Lafayette,—that sees him in the morning of his days the associate of sages,-the friend of Washington, but will start with new vigor on the path of duty and renown?

And what was it, fellow citizens, which gave to our Lafayette his spotless fame? The love of liberty. What has consecrated his memory in hearts of good men? The love of liberty. What nerved his youthful arm with strength, and inspired him in the morning of his days, with sagacity and counsel? The living love of liberty. To what did he sacrifice power, and rank, and country, and freedom itself? To the horror of licentiousness;—to the sanctity of plighted faith ;-to the love of liberty protected by law. Thus the great principle of your revolutionary fathers, of your pilgrim sires, the great principle of the age, was the rule of his life: The love of liberty protected by law.

You have now assembled within these celebrated walls, to perform the last duties of respect and love, on the birth day of your benefactor, beneath that roof which has resounded of old with the master voices of American renown. The spirit of the departed is

in high communion with the spirit of the place ;-the temple worthy of the new name which we now behold inscribed on its walls. Listen, Americans, to the lesson which seems borne to us on the very air we breathe, while we perform these dutiful rites! Ye winds, that wafted the Pilgrims to the land of promise, fan, in their children's hearts, the love of freedom;Blood, which our fathers shed, cry from the ground;-Echoing arches of this renowned hall, whisper back the voices of other days;-Glorious Washington, break the long silence of that votive canvass ;-Speak, speak, marble lips, teach us THE LOVE OF LIBERTY PROTECTED BY LAW!

ORATION

DELIVERED AT LEXINGTON, on the 19th (20th) of April, 1835,

BY REQUEST OF THE CITIZENS OF THAT PLACE.

FELLOW CITIZENS,

Ar the close of sixty years, we commemorate the eventful scenes of the opening Revolution. We have come together, to celebrate the affecting incidents, which have placed the name of this beautiful village on the first page of the history of our independence. The citizens of a free, prosperous, and powerful republic, we come to pay the last honors to the memory of those who offered themselves up, on this spot, the first costly sacrifice in the cause of American liberty. In the day of our peace and safety, in the enjoyment of the richest abundance of public and private blessings, we have met together to summon up, in grateful recollection, the images of that night of trial, of fearful anticipation, of high and stern resolve,—and of that morning of blood, which, to the end of time, will render the name of Lexington sacred to the heart of the American freeman.

Sixty years have passed away :-two full returns of the period assigned by the common consent of mankind to one of our transitory generations. I behold around me a few,-alas! how few,of those who heard the dismal voice of the alarm bell, on the 19th of April, 1775, and the sharp angry hiss of the death vollies from the hostile lines. Venerable men! we gaze upon you with respectful emotion. You have reached an age allotted to the smallest portionof our race, and your gray hairs, under any circumstances,

would be entitled to our homage. As the survivors of the militia of Lexington, who, on the 19th of April, 1775, were enrolled in defence of the rights of America, and obeyed the alarm which called you to protect them, we regard you as objects at once of admiration and gratitude. But when we reflect that you, a small and venerable remnant of those who first took the field in the dawn of the Revolution which wrought out the liberty of the country, have been spared, not merely to see that Revolution brought to a triumphant close, but to witness the growth of that country to its present palmy height of prosperity and power, we feel that you are marked out by a peculiar Providence, above all the rest of your fellow citizens. But where, oh, where are your brave associates? Seven of them, who, full of life, and vigor, and patriotic daring, stood side by side with you, sixty years ago, on this ever memorable spot, are gathered,-what is mortal of them,-in that mournful receptacle. Others laid down their lives for their country, in the hard fought and honorable fields of the revolutionary war. The greater part have stolen away, one by one, and in silence, and lie beneath the scattered hillocks of yonder grave-yard. Twelve only survive,-ten alone are present,-to unite with us in the touching rites of this honored anniversary. May the happy contrast in your own existence on the great day we commemorate, and on this its sixtieth return, and in the position and fortunes of our beloved and common country, prove an ample compensation for your anxieties and perils, and fill the close of your days with peace and joy.*

Fellow citizens of Lexington, you are discharging your duty;— a filial, pious duty. The blood which wet these sods on the day you celebrate, must not sink uncommemorated into the soil. It is your birth-right; your heritage; the proudest you possess. Its sacred memory must be transmitted by your citizens, from father to son, to the end of time. We come to join you in this solemn

See, in note A, the roll of Capt. Parker's company of Lexington militia. The following are the names of the survivors, four of whom were seated on the platform from which this address was spoken :--Dr Joseph Fiske, Messrs Daniel Mason, Benjamin Locke, William Munroe, Jonathan Harrington, Ebenezer Simonds, Jonathan Loring, John Hosmer, Isaac Durant, Josiah Reed. Mr Solomon Brown and Ebenezer Parker were absent.

act of commemoration. Partakers of the blessings, for which your fathers laid down their lives, we come to join you in these last affecting obsequies. And when all now present shall be passing,

passed, from the stage; when sixty years hence we, who have reached the meridian of life, shall have been gathered to our fathers, and a few only of these little children shall survive, changed into what we now behold in the gray heads and venerable forms before us, let us hope that it may at least be said of us, that we felt the value of the principles to which the day is consecrated, and the cost at which they were maintained.

We perform a duty which is sanctioned by reason and justice. It is the spontaneous impulse of the heart, to award the tribute of praise and admiration to those who have put every thing to risk, and sacrificed every thing in a great public cause,-who have submitted to the last dread test of patriotism, and laid down their lives for their country. In the present case, it is doubly warranted, by the best feelings of our nature. We do not come to weave fresh laurels for the hero's wreath, to flatter canonized pride, to extol the renowned, or to add new incense to the adulation, which is ever offered up at the shrine of the conqueror :-but to give the humble man his due, to rescue modest and untitled valor from oblivion ;— to record the names of those, whom neither the ambition of power, the hope of promotion, nor the temptation of gain,—but a plain, instinctive sense of patriotic duty,-called to the field.

Nor is it our purpose to rekindle the angry passions, although we would fain revive the generous enthusiasm of the day we celebrate. The boiling veins, the burning nerves, the almost maddened brain, which alone could have encountered the terrors of that day, have withered into dust, as still and cold as that with which they have mingled. There is no hostile feeling in that sacred repository. No cry for revenge bursts from its peaceful enclosure. Sacred relics! Ye have not come up, from your resting-place in yonder grave-yard, on an errand of wrath or hatred. Ye have but moved a little nearer to the field of your glory; to plead that your final resting-place may be on the spot where you fell; to claim the protection of the sods which you once moistened with your blood. It is a reasonable request. There is not an American who hears me, I am sure, who would profane the touching harmony of the scene,