lessons of wisdom which they have transmitted to us. While their precepts are before us, their example should not be forgotten. Their characters should be traced on the walls of the house of God, and written on monuments of stone.

How full of interest is the thought, that many, very many, of you who are present this day, will live in health and vigor until the next Jubilee shall come, and a century shall have been completed since the birth day of our nation; and not a few of those now in active life, and well acquainted with the history of the past fifty years, not from books alone, but from living chronicles, may also see that day. The youth of this age have caught the spirit of their fathers, and will carry a double portion of it to transmit to the next. The first builders of this grand political fabric are gone, or gathering themselves in their beds to die; those who now support the great work of freedom will soon follow them; and you, young men, must be prepared to take the burden upon yourselves. Butbe not impatient for the task; rather be anxious to qualify yourself for it when it comes. When in the course of nature and Providence you must take the places of your fathers, bring to your high destinies lessons of wisdom drawn from those gone before you. Your advantages are of a much higher grade than those your ancestors enjoyed. They found the way through the forest by the blazed trees and the faint trails of those who had pioneered the way, and sometimes were obliged to go on when there was no track of civilization to be seen. Public high-ways are now prepared for you to travel, and mile-stones are placed all along the road, to guide and cheer you on the journey. In the morning of life, all is pleasant and peaceful; but as you advance, you will find that it is the fate of man, to act, to suffer, and to mourn; but knowledge, virtue, philosophy and religion, will teach you how to sustain yourselves in every part you have to perform in life. Be true to yourselves, and your country will be safe. The youths of Rome, once a year, left the sacred groves of Egeria, to visit the tomb of Numa, the founder of the reli

gious rites, the civil institutions, and literary taste of the country. On that hallowed ground, they caught the inspiration of virtue and the love of learning, and returned with a fonder relish for the fountains of knowledge and a quickened devotion to the god of wisdom. Go, ye young men of my country, oftener than once a year, to visit the tombs of your fathers. No man ever was great who did not live much among the dead. To gather true lessons of experience, we must travel back through every age of time to the birth of creation, and contemplate the progress of each succeeding generation. The youthful soldier braces his nerves and warms his soul by thinking on those who fell in the cause of liberty, from the battle of Marathon to that which closed the last scene of the great drama of our Revolution. The youthful speaker kindles his genius at the perpetual lamps which are burning in the tombs of the orators of antiquity; and the young statesman draws his maxims of wisdom and prudence from the codes and commentaries of the master spirits of former ages. We are no longer the new men of the new world. We have a noble inheritance in the fame of our ancesters. To value this possession justly, we must imitate their virtues, by raising the standard of information and purifying the currents of freedom. Some Plutarch, we trust, will soon arise in our country gifted with all the requisites of the biographer, who will weave in one bright wreath of glory, the great men we have mourned as they rested from their labors.

On the page sparkling with gems of rare merit, set by such a hand, shall appear other worthies than those we are this day called to commemorate. On the ample page, by such a hand, the Cato of that age, the elder Adams, shall be found shining in the adamantine firmness of his stern virtues. There shall be minutely traced the effects of a religious character upon the turbulent waves of popular commotion, and the tones of liberty, so appalling to an oppressor's ear, shall be preserved in thought to be thundered in the ears of tyrants to the end of time. There too, shall be seen the quick and intelligent eyc

of Paine, flashing with the fires of an indignant spirit, as when he put his hand to the Declaration of Independence, and swore, on his country's altar, to die in defence, or live to enjoy the blessings of freedom. High up the escutcheon, and boldly on the emblazonment, shall polished Hancock stand,wearing the triple wreath of honor-for his services as a statesman-for his munificent donations to public institutions-and for his constant exertions as a patron of literature and the arts, united to a fostering care of genius and merit of every description. There also the youthful President of the Continental Congress, full of heroism, adorned with the charms of literature and the graces of eloquence-fierce to his enemies as the chafed lion, but to those engaged in the same cause with him, 'sweet as summer,' shall stand forth, radiant in imperishable glory, and be hailed in every coming age as the first great martyr of liberty. The value of the sacrifice shall not be forgotten when the bust shall crumble and the column fall, and those gods of the earth who trusted to 'pyrimidic pride' for immortality, shall be remembered no more. By his side shall stand, crowned with unfa, ding laurels, the hero of Bunker Hill, who raised the first redoubt of liberty, and laid each sod with an invocation to the spirits of the brave provincials sleeping in their beds of glory on our frontiers.* This little mound was watered by the blood of the brave, and from it sprang such deathless flowers to bind the warrior's brow, as grow on Grecian plains and Helvetian hills.

Not only in prose, but in verse shall they be celebrated; for some future Homer shall arise and erect in epic glory, and by the magic of numbers, another Pantheon of mind, and place in his proper niche each worthy of the Revolution, from aged

*Colonel Prescott, during the night previous to the battle of Bunker Hill, while erecting the redoubt, frequently reminded his officers and men of the reputation the provincials had won at Lake George and Ticonderoga, at which places he had been with sev eral of them, and earnestly entreated them not to tarnish that fame so nobly acquired.

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Nestor to fierce Ajax, and all accomplished Hector. There by the sublimity, the fire, the sweetness, the elegance, and the truth of his poetry, shall those who reasoned and those who fought, find eternal fame in the faithfulness of his delineations. From these youths of the schools, now with us, may the biographer and the poet come-they have caught the spirit of this, and will breathe it to another age.

The light shining on one ancient grave, will reach to another, until their commingled radiance will form a pillar of fire to guide posterity through every night of danger that may come upon our nation. If darkness should gather around and shroud us, the brave defenders of their country will be enabled by its blaze to whet their swords on the tombs of Washington and Greene, and the statesmen to read their duty in the epitaphs of Adams and Jefferson.

EULOGY,

PRONOUNCED AT BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS.

August 2, 1826.

BY DANIEL WEBSTER.

THIS is an unaccustomed spectacle. For the first time, Fellow-Citizens, badges of mourning shroud the columns and overhang the arches of this hall. These walls, which were consecrated, so long ago, to the cause of American liberty, which witnessed her infant struggles, and rung with the shouts of earliest victories, proclaim, now, that distinguished friends and champions of that great cause have fallen. It is right that it should be thus. The tears which flow, and the honors that are paid, when the Founders of the republic die, give hope that the republic itself may be immortal. It is fit, that by public assembly and solemn observance, by anthem and by eulogy, we commemorate the services of national benefactors, extol their virtues, and render thanks to God for eminent blessings, early given and long continued, to our favored country.

ADAMS and JEFFERSON are no more; and we are assembled, Fellow-Citizens, the aged, the middle aged and the young, by the spontaneous impulse of all, under the authority of the municipal government, with the presence of the Chief Magistrate of the Commonwealth, and others its of ficial representatives, the university, and the learned societies, to bear our part, in those manifestations of respect and. gratitude, which universally pervade the land. Adams and Jefferson are no more. On our fiftieth anniversary, the great day of National Jubilee, in the very hour of public re