It sends to Asia the riches of commerce, and the Gospel with healing on its wings. It sends to Africa the banner spangled with stars, to awe the tyrant and protect the slave. It sends to all benighted quarters of the globe, the mild but divine radiance of an irresistible example. It invites the oppressed of all nations and degrees, from dethroned monarchs and banished princes, to fugitive peasants and destitute laborers, to come and rest within these borders.

May the sciences and refinements which embellish and enlighten, the charities that endear, and the loyalty that ennobles, forever flourish here on the broad foundations of peace, liberty, and intelligence. And among increasing millions of educated, moral, and contented people, may the disciples of Penn, Franklin, and Washington, meet together in frequent and grateful concourse, to render thanksgivings to the Almighty for the blessings we enjoy by his dispensation.

SONNET TO WILLIAM TELL.

CHAINS may subdue the feeble spirit, but thee,
TELL, of the iron heart! they could not tame;
For thou wast of the mountains; they proclaim
The everlasting creed of Liberty.

That creed is written on the untrampled snow,

Thundered by torrents which no power can hold,
Save that of God, when he sends forth his cold,
And breathed by winds that through the free heaven blow.
Thou, while thy prison walls were dark around,

Didst meditate the lesson Nature taught,
And to thy brief captivity was brought

A vision of thy Switzerland unbound.

The bitter cup they mingled, strengthened thee
For the great work to set thy country free.

ADDRESS

Delivered in the City of Washington, on the 22d of Feb. 1832, the Centennial Birth-day of GEORGE WASHINGTON; by DANIEL WEBSTER.

I RISE, gentlemen, to propose to you, the name of that great man, in commemoration of whose birth, and in honor of whose character and services, we have here assembled.

I am sure that I express a sentiment common to every one present when I say, that there is something more than ordinarily solemn and affecting in this occasion.

We are met to testify our regard for him, whose name is intimately blended with whatever belongs most essentially to the prosperity, the liberty, the free institutions, and the renown of our country. That name was of power to rally a nation, in the hour of thick-thronging public disasters and calamities; that name shone, amid the storm of war, a beacon light, to cheer and guide the country's friends; its flame, too, like a meteor, to repel her foes. That name, in the days of peace, was a loadstone, attracting to itself a whole people's confidence, a whole people's love, and the whole world's respect; that name, descending with all time, spread over the whole earth, and uttered in all the languages belonging to the tribes and races of men, will for ever be pronounced with affectionate gratitude by every one in whose breast there shall arise an aspiration for human rights and human liberty.

We perform this grateful duty, gentlemen, at the expiration of a hundred years from his birth, near the place so cherished and beloved by him, where his dust now reposes, and in the capital which bears his own immortal name.

All experience evinces, that human sentiments are strongly affected by associations. The recurrence of anniversaries, or of longer periods of time, naturally freshens the recollection, and deepens the impression of events with which they are historically connected. Renowned places, also, have a power to awaken feeling, which all acknowledge. No American can pass by the fields of Bunker Hill, Monmouth, or Camden, as if they were ordinary spots on the earth's surface. ever visits them, feels the sentiment of love of country kindling anew, as if the spirit that belonged to the transactions which have rendered these places distinguished still hovered around, with power to move and excite all who in future time may approach them.

Who

But neither of these sources of emotion equals the power with which great moral examples affect the mind. When sublime virtues cease to be abstractions, when they become embodied in human character, and exemplified in human conduct, we should be false to our own nature, if we did not indulge in the spontaneous effusions of our gratitude and our admiration. A true lover of the virtue of patriotism delights to contemplate its purest models; and that love of country

may be well suspected which affects to soar so high into the regions of sentiment as to be lost and absorbed in the abstract feeling, and becomes too elevated, or too refined, to glow either with power in the commendation or the love of individual benefactors. All this is immaterial. It is as if one should be so enthusiastic a lover of poetry as to care nothing for Homer or Milton; so passionately attached to eloquence as to be indifferent to Tully and Chatham; or such a devotee to the arts, in such an ecstacy with the elements of beauty, proportion, and expression, as to regard the master pieces of Raphael and Michael Angelo with coldness or contempt. We may be assured, gentlemen, that he who really loves the thing itself, loves its finest exhibitions. A true friend of his country loves her friends and benefactors, and thinks it no degradation to commend and commemorate them. The voluntary outpouring of the public feeling made to-day, from the north to the south, and from the east to the west, proves this sentiment to be both just and natural. In the cities and in the villages, in the public temples and in the family circles, among all ages and sexes, gladdened voices to-day, bespeak grateful hearts, and a freshened recollection of the virtues of the Father of his country. And it will be so, in all time to come, so long as public virtue is itself an object of regard. The ingenuous youth of America will hold up to themselves the bright model of Washington's example, and study to be what they behold; they will contemplate his character till all its virtues spread out and display themselves to their delighted vision, as the earliest astronomers, the shepherds on the plains of Babylon, gazed at the stars till they saw them form into clusters and constellations, overpowering at length the eyes of the beholders with the united blaze of a thousand lights.

Gentlemen, we are at the point of a century from the birth of Washington, and what a century it has been! During its course, the human mind has seemed to proceed with a sort of geometric velocity, accomplishing more than had been done in fives or tens of centuries preceding. Washington stands at the commencement of a new era, as well as at the head of the new world. A century from the birth of Washington has changed the world. The country of Washington has been the theatre on which a great part of that change has been wrought; and Washington himself a principal agent by

which it has been accomplished. His age and his country are equally full of wonders; and of both he is the chief.

If the prediction of the poet, uttered a few years before his birth be true; if, indeed, it were designed by Providence that the proudest exhibition of human character and human affairs shall be made on this theatre of the western world; if it be true that

"The four first acts already past,

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

how could this imposing, swelling, final scene be appropriately opened; how could its intense interest be adequately sustained, but by the introduction of just such a character as our Washington?

Washington had attained his manhood when that spark of liberty was struck out in his own country, which has since kindled into a flame, and shot its beams over the earth. In the flow of a century from his birth, the world has changed in science, in arts, in the extent of commerce, in the improvement of navigation, and in all that relates to the civilization of man. But it is the spirit of human freedom, the new elevation of individual man, in his moral, social, and political character, leading the whole long train of other improvements, which has most remarkably distinguished the era. Society, in this century, has not made its progress, like Chinese skill, by a greater acuteness of ingenuity in trifles; it has not merely lashed itself to an increased speed round the old circles of thought and action; but it has assumed a new character, it has raised itself from beneath governments to a participation in governments; it has mixed moral and political objects with the daily pursuits of individual men, and with a freedom and strength, before altogether unknown, it has applied to these objects the whole power of the human understanding. It has been the era, in short, when the social principle has triumphed over the feudal principle; when society has maintained its rights against military power, and established, in foundations never hereafter to be shaken, its competency to govern itself.

new.

ADDRESS CONTINUED.

Ir was the extraordinary fortune of Washington, that, having been intrusted in revolutionary times with the supreme military command, and having fulfilled that trust with equal renown for wisdom and for valor, he should be placed at the head of the first government in which an attempt was to be made, on a large scale, to rear the fabric of social order on the basis of a written constitution, and of a pure representative principle. A government was to be established, without a throne, without an aristocracy, without castes, orders, or privileges; and this government, instead of being a democracy, existing and acting within the walls of a single city, was to be extended over a vast country, of different climates, interests and habits, and of various sects and sentiments of the Christian religion. The experiment certainly was entirely A popular government of this extent, it was evident, could be framed only by carrying into full effect, the principle of representation, or of delegated power; and the world was to see whether society could, by the strength of this principle, maintain its own peace and good government, carry forward its own great interests, and conduct itself to political renown and glory. By the benignity of Providence, this experiment, so full of interest to us and to our posterity for ever, so full of interest to the world, in its present generation, and in all its generations to come, was suffered to commence under the guidance of Washington. Destined for this high career, he was fitted for it by wisdom, by virtue, by patriotism, by discretion, by whatever can inspire confidence in man toward man. In entering on the untried scenes, early disappointment, and the premature extinction of all hope of success, would have been certain, had it not been that there did exist throughout the country, in a most extraordinary degree, an unwavering trust in him whose hand held the helm of affairs.

I remarked, gentlemen, that the whole world was and is interested in the result of this experiment. And is it not so? Do we deceive ourselves, or is it true, that at this moment the career which this government is running, is among the most attractive objects to the civilized world? Do we deceive ourselves, or is it true, that at this moment, that love of liberty and that understanding of its true principles, which