to return to it whenever we see any good reason to believe that our legislators and public functionaries can be persuaded to do their duty and dethrone as unscrupulous and tyrannical a despotism as ever oppressed and insulted an intelligent and spirited people.

ART. V.—1. Defence of Christianity; By EDWARD EVERETT. Boston, 1814.

2. Speeches and Addresses; By EDWARD EVERETT. 3 vols., Boston, 1836-1850-1859.

3. Congressional Debates, 1826-7-1832-3.

4. Congressional Globe, 1833-1835.

5. Diplomatic Correspondence, 1841-1845.

6. Executive Documents, 1826-1835-182-3.

7. North American Review, 1820-1865.

8. Speech in Faneuil Hall; By EDWARD EVERETT, 9th January, 1865. Boston, 1865.

THE veteran orator stood in Faneuil Hall, at the mid hour of a winter's day, surrounded by an expectant audience, proud of him and warm with enthusiasm for the cause which had brought him and them to that parliament of the people. That last appearance of Edward Everett was an appropriate culmination of a long life of honor and usefulness. Boston's chosen orator pleaded for charity to suffering Savannah, beneath the arches of the old cradle of the Union. As he ascended the platform, a tribute of applause, such as no other speaker could command, greeted him. The occasion was well suited to his peculiar powers. It did not require logical demonstration, or comprehensive wisdom, but a hearty, patriotic strain of invocation. A more glorious cause he could not advocate. He stood there, stretching forth his hand over the dark river of blood, to grasp the extended hand of the returning loyalists of the Empire State of the South. He never went so direct to the heart of his audience and to the marrow of his subject. For an hour he electrified and enraptured. If any man in that hall had before doubted the orator's power over an audience, he laid his doubts aside when Everett paused.

That entire audience, to a man, were ready to rush to the relief of suffering Savannah.

This was his last speech, and it was worthy the orator, the time and the occasion. The old man eloquent' stood the last of a noble race of New England orators, a collossal figure surrounded by the ruins of time and the havoc of decay. He was a splendid specimen of what American civilization in its best influences can do. He had risen from humble origin to fame and glory. He spoke to a listening world. He represented all America in the literary council of the nation. He was as well and honorably known in France, in Germany, in Italy, as in his own country. Without station. or official power, a plain citizen, in the simple attitude of a patriot scholar, he occupied in the lists of genuine heraldry, a higher place than any monarch of the globe. In less than a week from that crowning effort he terminated his mortal career. The heart of the American people stood still at the sad intelligence. The executive of the nation announced his death as a national calamity, and proclaimed the nation's regret at the loss of its most eminent citizen.

His life and his labors are possessions of which the American people may well boast. His moral, intellectual, and political character was not only the treasure of Massachusetts, but of the whole nation. Both the public and the private life of Mr. Everett was crowded with useful and honorable deeds. He was, from early to latest life, a great student, an elaborate writer, and a public orator, always busy and always devoting himself to the public good. The labors of the closet must have been immense; but the contemporary labors of the platform, the senate house, and the official station were stupendous. It was truly marvellous that a man of such scholarly habits and recluse tastes should have united such public activity and preserved himself so well to the ripe age of three score and ten. It will be conceded by all that no stain ever sullied the character of the illustrious deceased; no base act, no mean act, no perverse act, has ever been charged upon him. He was honest, honorable, truthful, and magnanimous. His want of strict originality, of comprehensive mental view, of vigorous, logical grasp of a subject, and deficiency of imagination, were compensated for, and made comparatively dispensable, by acquirements equalled by no scholar of this country, and an industry assiduous, untiring, and life-long. What general learning Everett did not possess, it may safely

be assumed, was not worth having. In scientific specialties others were, doubtless, his superiors; but in the extent, accuracy, and depth of his miscellaneous learning, Mr. Everett was certainly the first scholar of our country.

But the peculiar merit of this eminent man was, that educated in the most select schools, he devoted his learning not only to the schools, but spread it bounteously to the world. Little acquainted with men in their everyday garb, he still preserved his sympathy with the masses of the people. Holding station nearly all his life, he never was an office-seeker, or a panderer to official greatness. An academician, he sought fame, influence, and applause with the body of his fellow-countrymen. This was a memorable exhibition of the true democracy of scholarship. He is the best illustration on our records of a republican scholar. The wealth of eulogy which has been lavished upon him attests a due sense of the nation's bereavement. We lament the loss of an accomplished scholar, a useful citizen, and the most conspicuous literary ornament of the Republic. Edward Everett occupied a peculiar position in American letters. But in a European aspect there was no citizen of this country, at the time of his death, who held a more truly representative position. Irving, in letters, Prescott and Cooper in history, had passed away; Webster, Calhoun, and Clay in statesmanship were no more. Everett had survived them all, and stood almost alone of the greater age of this country, and blended the public man and the scholar in a rarer combination than any of these.

To any review of Edward Everett making the most distant claims to completeness, these topics are essential: his natural faculties and his acquired learning; the character, extent, and value of his labors. This involves a criticism of his character as a scholar, a thinker, an orator, a statesman, a diplomatist, a philanthropist, and a man. will present him in the chronological order of his career as a clergyman, a professor, a reviewer, an author, a legislator, a premier, a minister plenipotentiary, a president of Harvard College, and, lastly, as a public orator.

This

Graduating with the highest honors of Harvard, he settled as a clergyman. He early attained the reputation of a brilliant pulpit orator and a religious author of high repute. He next became a professor of Greek Literature at Harvard College. His political and secular oratorical career commenced about the same time, in 1824-the latter by the

delivery of the oration before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Cambridge, and the former by his unsolicited election as a representative to Congress from the Middlesex District. His career as a public orator was actively continued down to within less than a week of his decease, and will be well attested in the three royal octavo volumes of speeches and addresses already published, and the remaining materials scattered through the newspapers in sufficient abundance to make a fourth, and, perhaps, a fifth, of far greater value than either of the others. His labors as a writer, in contradistinction from his spoken performances, will furnish matter for many volumes of miscellaneous writings. It is on some accourts to be regretted that he did not devote himself to the completion of some more elaborate work, which could be esteemed as his greatest achievement. But the period of human life is not sufficient for all things. Such was doubtless his own desire, as he had devoted much time, for many years, to a treatise on the law of nations. He was, also, under engagement to deliver at the Cambridge Law School a course of lectures upon international law. It is not unlikely that these lectures would subsequently have formed a systematic treatise on the law of nations, published in the form of lectures, after the manner of the Commentaries of Sir William Blackstone.

American universities and literary societies vied with each other how most to honor America's greatest scholar; and both Cambridge and Oxford bestowed upon him the title of D. C. L. He was President of Harvard University from 1845 to 1849. From 1835 to 1839 he was governor of the commonwealth of Massachusetts. In 1841, he went to the Court of St. James as American Minister. He subsequently succeeded Mr. Webster as senator, and also as Secretary of State.

The youth and early manhood of Everett were ripe in useful toils. If his old age did not fully meet the high standard raised for him by others, in the magnificence of his labors and the unity of his efforts, it more than kept pace in the multiplicity of the works and the sustained vigor of the aspiration. He was as active to the last, as aspiring; as fresh and progressive as at the first. He was the best scholar at Cambridge when he graduated; he early achieved fame for his lectures upon Greek Literature. His career as a clergyman was short but brilliant. It is probable that he more conspicuous as a pulpit orator than as

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pastor. He early abandoned the pulpit for foreign travel, and the more congenial labors of Eliot Professor of Greek Literature in Harvard University. His lectures on the "History of Greek Literature" and on" Ancient Art" early stimulated in New England a love for the noblest literature of antiquity; and their repetition in the neighboring metropolis, before popular audiences, inspired a similar spirit among the people.

It is an unchallenged truth that Everett carried elegant miscellaneous culture to the highest extent, permitted by the most untiring industry, aided by the amplest means, inspired by a true ambition, and crowned with a successful life. His education was not limited to the schools of America. European Universities were laid under contribution. Germany and England were the scenes of his studies. History, science, art, eloquence, and statesmanship were the high pursuits of his whole life. He was a complete English scholar. He was also a ripe classical scholar, and was thoroughly familiar with the leading modern languages.

He was without property himself; but a wealthy marriage made him pecuniarily independent. He was, therefore, never compelled to labor for bread. This afforded him the leisure and the means to indulge his taste for books, for art, and for elegant culture in all its branches; and he devoted himself to a public and oratorical life with a remarkable singleness of purpose. He was thus enabled to summon to his aid all the appliances of wealth, all the aids of culture, and all the spurs of promotion open to an American scholar. He collected a most valuable library. This was his home. It was, indeed, a sumptuous palace of literary treasures. A great library has its advantages and its disadvantages; Mr. Everett improved the former and avoided the latter. His books bear indications of careful reading. It was not a library for show, but for use. He did not merely draw from it: he had mastered it, and made its wealth his own. He held a literary correspondence with Mr. Macaulay and Mr. Hallam during their lives. He had, early in life, shared the hospitalities of Scott, at Abbottsford; he had seen Jeffrey and Moore and Byron in their prime. He had early visited Greece; he had been in France in its stirring and in its peaceful times. With England, Englishmen, and English society, he was as familiar as with his own countrymen and with American society. In our own country he had the advantage of intimate association with all scholarly men, and