FISHER AMES Fisher Ames was born in Massachusetts in 1758. He graduated from Harvard in 1774, and embarked on the practice of law, with which he combined the pursuit of politics. In 1788 he was prominent in the Massachusetts convention of ratification, pleading the cause of the Constitution with great ability. He was the first representative of his district under the new form of government, and served during the administration of Washington, being noted as one of the foremost orators of the day. After the close of his congressional career he took no active part in politics, although he frequently wrote timely articles for the journals. He died in 1808, the last years of his life having been spent in retirement. Ames was epigrammatic in his style, having a faculty of so grouping his words as to cause them to linger in the memory. He revelled in pictorial diction, and the effect of his sentences was striking in the extreme. Yet he was not sequent in his arrangement or argument, thereby often producing a confusion in the minds of his hearers; this defect was doubtless due to the fact that he rarely wrote his speeches, contenting himself with familiarizing himself with his theme and then trusting to the inspiration of the moment. The best life of Ames is that by Kirkland. His collected works were published in two volumes by his son in 1854. The famous eulogy delivered by Mr. Ames on Washington was prepared at the request of the Legislature of Massachusetts, and pronounced on February 8, 1800. It is a specimen of a species of oratory greatly in vogue at that time. The language is well and apparently carefully chosen, yet is often so involved as to make its meaning difficult to grasp, or so roughly joined as to convey a wrong impression of its true meaning. The figures are often bold and striking, but are mingled in inextricable confusion. Yet there is much of true eloquence in the speech, and although the orator wandered from his subject to indulge in a diatribe against the policy of France toward this country, the purely eulogistic parts are impressive and the effect in general admirable. IT is natural that the gratitude of mankind should be drawn to their benefactors. A number of these have successively arisen who were no less distinguished for the elevation of their virtues than the lustre of their talents. Of those, however, who were born, and who acted through life as if they were born, not for themselves, but for their country and the whole human race, how few, alas! are recorded in the long annals of ages, and how wide the intervals of time and space that divide them. In all this dreary length of way, they appear like five or six lighthouses on as many thousand miles of coast; they gleam upon the surrounding darkness with an inextinguishble splendor, like stars seen through a mist; but they are seen, like stars, to cheer, to guide, and to save. Washington is now added to that small number. Already he attracts curiosity, like a newly discovered star, whose benignant light will travel on to the world's and time's farthest bounds. Already his name is hung up by history as conspicuously as if it sparkled in one of the constellations of the sky. By commemorating his death, we are called this day to yield the homage that is due to virtue; to confess the common debt of mankind as well as our own; and to pronounce for posterity, now dumb, that eulogium which they will delight to echo ten ages hence, when we are dumb. In I consider myself not merely in the midst of the citizens of this town, or even of the State. idea, I gather round me the nation. In the vast and venerable congregation of the patriots of all countries and of all enlightened men, I would, if I could, raise my voice, and speak to mankind in a strain worthy of my audience and as elevated as my subject. But how shall I express emotions that are condemned to be mute because they are unutterable? I felt, and I was witness, on the day when the news of his death reached us, to the throes of that grief that saddened every countenance and wrung drops of agony from the |