morning of his days with sagacity and counsel? The living love of liberty. To what did he sacrifice power, and rank, and country, and freedom itself? To the horror of licentiousness, to the sanctity of plighted faith, to the love of liberty protected by law. Thus the great principle of your Revolutionary fathers, of your Pilgrim sires, — the great principle of the age, was the rule of his life: The love of liberty protected by law.

You have now assembled within these celebrated walls to perform the last duties of respect and love, on the birth-day of your benefactor, beneath that roof which has resounded of old with the master voices of American renown. The spirit of the departed is in high communion with that spirit of the place; the temple, worthy of the new name which we now behold inscribed on its walls. Listen, Americans, to the lessons which seem borne to us on the very air we breathe, while we perform these dutiful rites! Ye winds, that wafted the Pilgrims to the land of promise, fan in their children's hearts the love of freedom! Blood which our fathers shed, cry from the ground! Echoing arches of this renowned hall, whisper back the voices of other days! Glorious Washington, break the long silence of that votive canvas! — speak, speak, marble lips! - teach us THE LOVE OF LIBERTY PROTECTED

BY LAW!

NEW ENGLAND AND THE UNION.-S. S. Prentiss.

GLORIOUS New England! thou art still true to thy ancient fame, and worthy of thy ancestral honors. On thy pleasant valleys rest, like sweet dews of morning, the gentle recollections of our early life; around thy hills and mountains cling, like gathering mists, the mighty memories of the Revolution; and far away in the horizon of thy past gleam, like thy own bright northern lights, the awful virtues of our Pilgrim sires! But, while we devote this day to the remembrance of our native land, we forget not that in which our happy lot is cast. We exult in the reflection that, though we count by thousands the miles which separate us from our birth-place, still our country is the same. We are no exiles meeting upon the banks of a foreign river, to swell its waters

with our homesick tears. Here floats the same banner which rustled above our boyish heads, except that its mighty folds are wider, and its glittering stars increased in number.

The sons of New England are found in every state of the broad republic. In the east, the south, and the unbounded west, their blood mingles freely with every kindred current. We have but changed our chamber in the paternal mansion; in all its rooms we are at home, and all who inhabit it are our brothers. To us the Union has but one domestic hearth; its household gods are all the same. Upon us, then, peculiarly devolves the duty of feeding the fires upon that kindly hearth, of guarding with pious care those sacred household gods.

We cannot do with less than the whole Union; to us it admits of no division. In the veins of our children flows northern and

southern blood: how shall it be separated? - who shall put asunder the best affections of the heart, the noblest instincts of our nature? We love the land of our adoption; so do we that of our birth. Let us ever be true to both, and always exert ourselves in maintaining the unity of our country, the integrity of the republic.

Accursed, then, be the hand put forth to loosen the golden cord of union! thrice accursed the traitorous lips which shall propose its severance!

IN MEMORY OF WASHINGTON.-R. C. Winthrop.

BUT, fellow-citizens, while we thus commend the character and example of Washington to others, let us not forget to imitate it ourselves. I have spoken of the precise period which we have reached in our own history, as well as in that of the world at large, as giving something of peculiar interest to the proceedings in which we are engaged. I may not, I will not, disturb the harmony of the scene before me, by the slightest allusion of a party character. The circumstances of the occasion forbid it; the associations of the day forbid it; the character of him in whose honor we are assembled forbids it; my own feelings revolt from it. But I may say, I must say, and every one within the sound of my voice will sus

tain me in saying, that there has been no moment since Washington himself was among us when it was more important than at this moment that the two great leading principles of his policy should be remembered and cherished.

Those principles were, first, the most complete, cordial, and indissoluble Union of the States; and, second, the most entire separation and disentanglement of our own country from all other countries. Perfect union among ourselves, perfect neutrality towards others, and peace, peace, domestic peace and foreign peace, as the result, — this was the chosen and consummate policy of the Father of his Country.

But, above all, and before all, in the heart of Washington, was the Union of the States; and no opportunity was ever omitted by him to impress upon his fellow-citizens the profound sense which he entertained of its vital importance at once to their prosperity and their liberty.

In that incomparable address in which he bade farewell to his countrymen at the close of his presidential service, he touched upon many other topics with the earnestness of a sincere conviction. He called upon them, in solemn terms, to "cherish public credit; to "observe good faith and justice towards all nations," avoiding both "inveterate antipathies and passionate attachments" towards any; to mitigate and assuage the unquenchable fire of party spirit, lest, instead of warming, it should consume; to abstain from characterizing parties by geographical distinctions;"" to promote institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge;" to respect and uphold "religion and morality, those great pillars of human happiness, those firmest props of the duties of men and of citizens.”

But what can exceed, what can equal, the accumulated intensity of thought and of expression with which he calls upon them to cling to the Union of the States. "It is of infinite moment," says he, in language which we ought never to be weary of hearing or of repeating, "that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the pal

ladium of your political safety and prosperity, watching for its pres ervation with jealous anxiety, discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned, and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts." The Union - the Union in any event was thus the sentiment of Washington. The Union the Union in any event — let it

be our sentiment this day!

Yes, to-day, fellow-citizens, at the very moment when the extension of our boundaries and the multiplication of our territories are producing, directly and indirectly, among the different members of our political system, so many marked and mourned centrifugal tendencies, let us seize this occasion to renew to each other our vows of allegiance and devotion to the American Union, and let us recognize in our common title to the name and the fame of Washington, and in our common veneration for his example and his advice, the all-sufficient centripetal power which shall hold the thick-clustering stars of our confederacy in one glorious constellation forever! Let the column which we are about to construct be at once a pledge and an emblem of perpetual union! Let the foundations be laid, let the superstructure be built up and cemented, let each stone be raised and riveted, in a spirit of national brotherhood! And may the earliest ray of the rising sun till that sun shall set to rise no more draw forth from it daily, as from the fabled statue of antiquity, a strain of national harmony, which shall strike a responsive chord in every heart throughout the republic!

Proceed, then, fellow-citizens, with the work for which you have assembled! Lay the corner-stone of a monument which shall adequately bespeak the gratitude of the whole American people to the illustrious Father of his Country! Build it to the skies; you cannot outreach the loftiness of his principles! Found upon the massive and eternal rock; you cannot make it more enduring than his fame! Construct it of the peerless Parian marble; you cannot make it purer than his life! Exhaust upon it

it

the rules and principles of ancient and of modern art; you cannot make it more proportionate than his character!

But let not your homage to his memory end here. Think not to transfer to a tablet or a column the tribute which is due from yourselves. Just honor to Washington can only be rendered by observing his precepts and imitating his example. Similitudine decoremus. He has built his own monument. We, and those who come after us in successive generations, are its appointed, its privileged guardians. This wide-spread republic is the true monument to Washington. Maintain its independence. Uphold its constitution. Preserve its union. Defend its liberty. Let it stand before the world in all its original strength and beauty, securing peace, order, equality and freedom, to all within its boundaries, and shedding light and hope and joy upon the pathway of human liberty throughout the world, and Washington needs no other monument. Other structures may fitly testify our veneration for him this, this alone, can adequately illustrate his services to mankind.

Nor does he need even this. The republic may perish; the wide arch of our ranged Union may fall; star by star its glories may expire; stone after stone its columns and its capitol may moulder and crumble; all other names which adorn its annals may be forgotten; but, as long as human hearts shall anywhere pant, or human tongues shall anywhere plead, for a true, rational, constitutional liberty, those hearts shall enshrine the memory, and those tongues shall prolong the fame, of GEORGE WASHINGTON!

SORROW FOR THE DEAD. W. Irving.

SORROW for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal, every other affliction to forget; but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open, this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude. Where is the mother that would willingly forget the infant that perished like a blossom from her arms, though every recollection is a pang?