ples dedicated to God, may contribute also to produce, in all minds, a pious feeling of dependence and gratitude. We wish, finally, that the last object on the sight of him who leaves his native shore, and the first to gladden his who revisits it, may be something which shall remind him of the liberty and the glory of his country. Let it rise till it meet the sun in its coming; let the earliest light of the morning gild it, and parting day linger and play on its summit. We hold still among us some of those who were active agents in the scenes of 1775, and who are now here from every quarter of New England, to visit once more, and under circumstances so affecting, this renowned theatre of their courage and patriotism. Venerable men! you have come down to us from a former generation. You are now where you stood, fifty years ago this very hour, with your brothers and your neighbors, shoulder to shoulder, in the strife for your country. Behold, how altered! You hear now no roar of hostile cannon, you see no mixed volumes of smoke and flame rising from burning Charlestown. The ground strewed with the dead and the dying; the impetuous charge, the steady and successful repulse; the loud call to repeated assault; the summoning of all that is manly to repeated resistance; a thousand bosoms freely and fearlessly bared in an instant to whatever of terror there may be in war and death;—all these you have witnessed, but you witness them no more. All is peace. The heights of yonder metropolis, its towers and roofs, which you then saw filled with wives and children and countrymer in distress and terror, and looking with unutterable emotions for the issue of the combat, have presented you to-day with the sight of its whole happy population, come out to welcome and greet you with a universal jubilee. All is peace; and God has granted you the sight of your country's happiness ere you slumber in the grave forever. He has allowed you to behold and to partake the reward of your patriotic toils; and he has allowed us, your sons and countrymen, to meet you here, and in the name of the present generation, in the name of your country, in the name of liberty to thank you! May the Father of all mercies smile upon your remaining years, and bless them! And when you shall here have exchanged your embraces; when you shall once more have pressed the hands which have been so often extended to give succor in adversity, or grasped in the exult ODE FOR THE FOURTH OF JULY. 211 ation of victory; then look abroad into this lovely land which your young valor defended, and mark the happiness with which it is filled; yea, look abroad into the whole earth, and see what a name you have contributed to give to your country, and what a praise you have added to freedom, and then rejoice in the sympathy and gratitude which beam upon your last days from the improved condition of mankind. Ex. CXXXIV.-ODE FOR THE FOURTH OF JULY. CHARLES SPRAGUE. To the sages who spoke, to the heroes who bled, Be that story long told, And on Fame's golden tablets their triumphs unrolled, Who on Freedom's green hills Freedom's banner unfurled, And the beacon-fire raised that gave light to the world. They are gone-mighty men! and they sleep in their fame; Keep the theme ever young; Let their deeds through the long line of ages be sung, Who on Freedom's green hills Freedom's banner unfurled, And the beacon-fire raised that gave light to the world. Ex. CXXXV.-PARTING ADDRESS TO LA FAYETTE, SEPTEMBER 7th, 1825.* JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 'GENERAL: The ship is now prepared for your reception, and equipped for sea. From the moment of her departure * We hope that no American student is ignorant of the debt of gratitude the prayers of millions will ascend to Heaven that her pas sage may be prosperous, and your return to the bosom of your family as propitious to your happiness as your visit to the scene of your youthful glory has been to that of the American people. Go, then, our beloved friend; return to the land of brilliant genius, of generous sentiment, of heroic valor; to that beautiful France, the nursing mother of the twelfth Louis and the fourth Henry; the native soil of Bayard and Coligni, of Turenne and Catinat, of Fenelon and D'Auguesseau. In that illustrious catalogue of names which she claims as of her children, and with honest pride holds up to the admiration of other nations, the name of La Fayette has already for centuries been enrolled. And it shall henceforth burnish into brighter fame; for if in after days a Frenchman shall be called to indicate the character of his nation by that of one individual, during the age in which we live, the blood of lofty patriotism shall mantle in his cheek, the fire of conscious virtue shall sparkle in his eye, and he shall pronounce the name of La Fayette. Yet we too, and our children, in life and after death, shall claim you for our own. You are ours by that more than patriotic self-devotion with which you flew to the aid of our fathers at the crisis of our fate. Ours by that long series of years in which you have cherished us in your regard. Ours by that unshaken sentiment of gratitude for your services which is a precious portion of our inheritance. Ours by that tie of love, stronger than death, which has linked your name for the endless ages of time with the name of Washington. At the painful moment of parting from you, we take comfort in the thought that wherever you may be, to the last pulsation of your heart, our country will be ever present to your affections; and a cheering consolation assures owed by our country to the Marquis de La Fayette-a French nobleman who volunteered his assistance in the struggle for freedom, in the days when our prospects looked darkest and most hopeless. He purchased and fitted out a vessel for the American naval service at his own expense, and on arriving in this country was at once appointed Major General, and served as aide to Gen. Washington, with whom he was on terms of the closest intimacy. In 1824-5 he revisited the United States, passing through each of the twenty-four States and all the principal cities, and was everywhere received with heartfelt enthusiasm. As his own immense fortune had been confiscated and lost in the French Revolution, Congress voted him during this visit a grant of $200,000 and a township of land, in recognition of his services in our Revolutionary War, which had been given without pay or reward. REPLY TO PRESIDENT ADAMS. 213 us that we are not called to sorrow most of all that we shall see your face no more. We shall indulge the pleasing anticipation of beholding our friend again. In the mean time, speaking in the name of the whole people of the United States, and at a loss only for language to give utterance to that feeling of attachment with which the heart of the nation beats, as the heart of one man,—I bid you a reluctant and affectionate farewell. Ex. CXXXVI.-REPLY TO PRESIDENT ADAMS. LA FAYETTE. AMIDST all my obligations to the general government, and particularly to you, Sir, its respected Chief Magistrate, I have most thankfully to acknowledge the opportunity given me, at this solemn and painful moment, to present the people of the United States with a parting tribute of profound, inexpressible gratitude. To have been, in the infant and critical days of these States, adopted by them as a favorite son,-to have partici pated in the toils and perils of our unspotted struggle for independence, freedom and equal rights-to have received at every stage of the Revolution and during forty years after that period, from the people of the United States and their representatives at home and abroad, continual marks of their confidence and kindness, has been the pride, the encouragement, the support of a long and eventful life. But how could I find words to acknowledge that series of welcomes, those unbounded and universal displays of public affection, which have marked each step, each hour, of a twelve months' progress through the twenty-four States, and which, while they overwhelm my heart with grateful delight, have most satisfactorily evinced the concurrence of the people in the kind testimonies, in the immense favors bestowed on me by the several branches of their representatives, in every part and at the central seat of the confederacy? Yet gratifications still higher await me. In the wonders of creation and improvement that have met my enchanted eye, in the unparalleled and self-felt happiness of the people, in their rapid prosperity and ensured security, public and private, in a practice of good order, the appendage of true freedom, and a national good sense, the final arbiter of all difficulties, I have had proudly to recognize a result of the republican principles for which we fought, and a glorious demonstration of the superiority over degrading aristocracy or despotism, of popular institutions founded on the plain rights of man, where the local rights of every section are preserved under a constitutional bond of union. The cherishing of that union between the States, as it has been the farewell entreaty of our great paternal Washington, and will ever be the dying prayer of every American patriot, so it has become the sacred pledge of the emancipation of the world, an object in which I am happy to observe that the American people show themselves every day more anxiously interested. In conclusion I can only say, God bless you, Sir, and all who surround us. God bless the American people, each of their States, and the Federal government. Accept this pa triotic farewell of an overflowing heart; such will be its last throb when it ceases to beat. Ex. CXXXVII.-NEW ENGLAND AND THE UNION. S. S. PRENTISS. GLORIOUS New England! thou art still true to thy ancient fame, and worthy of thy ancestral honors. We have assembled in this far distant land to celebrate thy birthday. A thousand fond associations throng upon us, roused by the spirit of the hour. On thy pleasant valleys rest, like sweet dews of morning, the gentle recollections of our early life. Around thy hills and mountains cling, like gathering mists, the mighty memories of the Revolution. And, far away in the horizon of thy past, gleam, like thy own bright northern lights, the awful virtues of thy pilgrim sires! But while we devote this day to the remembrance of our native land, we forget not that in which our happy lot is cast. We exult in the reflection, that though we count by thousands the miles that separate us from our birthplace, still our country is the same. We are no exiles, meeting upon the banks of a foreign river to swell its waters with our homesick tears. Here floats the same banner that rustled |