the Old World, it pleased Heaven to open this last refuge of humanity. The attempt has begun, and is going on, far from foreign corruption, on the broadest scale, and under the most benignant prospects; and it certainly rests with us to solve the great problem in human society; to settle, and that forever, the momentous question, whether mankind can be trusted with a purely popular system of government.

One might almost think, without extravagance, that the departed wise and good, of all places and times, are looking down from their happy seats to witness what shall now be done by us; that they who lavished their treasures and their blood, of old, who spake and wrote, who labored, fought, and perished, in the one great cause of Freedom and Truth, are now hanging from their orbs on high, over the last solemn experiment of humanity. As I have wandered over the spots once the scene of their labors, and mused among the prostrate columns of their senate houses and forums, I have seemed almost to hear a voice from the tombs of departed ages; from the sepulchres of the nations which died before the sight. They exhort us, they adjure us, to be faithful to our trust. They implore us by the long trials of struggling humanity; by the blessed memory of the departed; by the dear faith which has been plighted, by pure hands, to the holy cause of truth and man; by the awful secrets of the prison houses, where the sons of freedom have been immured; by the noble heads which have been brought to the block; by the wrecks of time, by the 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 appeal which was made by 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 extera

rum 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, for the honor and service of our native land. When we engage in that solemn study, the history of our race; surveying 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, who bestowed his benefactions, as well as blessings, on our country,—

"Westward the course of Empire takes its way;

The four first acts already past,

A fifth shall close the drama with the day;
Time's noblest offspring is the last."

This exclamation is but the embodiment of a vision, which the ancients, from the earliest period, cherished of some favored land beyond the mountains or the seas; a land of equal laws and happy men. The primitive poets placed it in the Islands of the Blest; the Doric bards dimly beheld it in the Hyperborean region; the mystical sage of the Academy found it in his lost Atlantis; and even the stern spirit of Seneca dreamed of the restoration of the golden age in distant worlds, hereafter to be discovered. Can we look back upon these uninspired predictions, and not feel the weight of obligation which they imply? Here must these bright fancies be turned into truth; here must these high visions be realized, in which the seers and sages of the elder world took refuge from the calamities of the days in which they lived.

There are no more continents to be revealed; Atlantis 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 performed, or never, by 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 truth opened for all to read without prejudice; - 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 natural progress to be adorned with becoming refinements; its principles asserted and 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 [1824] will be completed the half century from that most important era in human history-the commencement of our revolu

*"Now looking anxiously round the world for any new race, which may receive the seed (so to speak) of our present history into a kindly yet vigorous soil, and may reproduce it, the same and yet new, for a future period, we know not where such are to be found. Some appear exhausted, others incapable; and yet the surface of the whole globe is known to us. The Roman colonies along the banks of the Rhine and Danube looked out on the country beyond those rivers, as we look up at the stars, and actually see with our eyes a world of which we know nothing. The Romans knew that there was a vast portion of the earth which they did not know; how vast it might be, was a part of its mysteries. But to us, all is explored; imagination can hope for no new Atlantic island to realize the vision of Plato's Critias; no new continent, peopled by youthful races, the destined restorers of our worn-out generations. Every where the search has been made, and the report has been received; we have the full amount of earth's resources before us, and they seem inadequate to supply life for a third period of human history." - Dr Arnold, (Inaugural) Lecture on Modern History. (1840.)

tionary 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 domestic happiness, of wealth, of rank, to plunge in the dust and blood of our inauspicious. struggle!

Happy Enjoy a

Welcome, friend of our fathers, to our shores! are our eyes, that behold those venerable features! 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 Hamilton, are gone; the heroes of Saratoga and Yorktown have fallen before the enemy that conquers all. Above

* General La Fayette was present at the delivery of this Address.

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 in 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 dungeons of Olmütz, 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 your course shall take you, throughout the limits of the continent, the ear that hears you shall bless you, the eye that sees you shall give witness to you, and every tongue exclaim, with heartfelt joy, Welcome! welcome, La Fayette !