posterity for ever. Like another of the sacred connections in private life, it is a marriage which no human authority can dis solve or divorce the parties from. And if I may be allowed to refer to some examples in private life, let me say to the North and to the South, what husband and wife say to each other: We have mutual faults; neither of us is perfect; nothing in the form of humanity is perfect; let us, then, be kind to each other-forbearing, forgiving each other's faults—and, above all, let us live in happiness and peace together. Mr. President, I have said, what I solemnly believe, that dissolution of the Union and war are identical and inevitable; and they are convertible terms; and such a war as it would be, following a dissolution of the Union! Sir, we may search the pages of history, and none so ferocious, so bloody, so implacable, so exterminating—not even the wars of Greece, including those of the Commoners of England and the Revolution of France-none, none of them all would rage with such violence, or be characterized with such bloodshed and enormities, as would the war which must succeed, if that event ever happens, the dissolution of the Union. And what would be its termination? Standing armies and navies, to an extent stretching the revenues of each portion of the dissevered members, would take place. An exterminating war would follow-not, sir, a war of two or three years' duration, but a war of interminable duration—and exterminating wars would ensue, until, after the struggles and exhaustion of both parties, some Philip or Alexander, some Cæsar or Napoleon, would rise and cut the Gordian knot, and solve the problem of the capacity of man for self-government, and crush the liberties of both the severed portions of this common empire. Can you doubt it? Look at all history-consult her pages, ancient or modernlook at human nature; look at the contest in which you would be engaged in the supposition of war following in the dissolution of the Union, such as I have suggested; and I ask you if it is possible for you to doubt that the final disposition of the whole would be some despot treading down the liberties of the peoplethe final result would be the extinction of this last and glorious light which is leading mankind who are gazing upon it, in the hope and anxious expectation that the liberty which prevails here will sooner or later be diffused throughout the whole of the civilized world? Sir, can you lightly contemplate these consequences? Can you yield yourself to the tyranny of passion, amid dangers which I have depicted in colors far too tame of what the result would be if that direful event to which I have referred should ever occur? Sir, I implore gentlemen, I adjure them, whether from the South or the North, by all that they hold dear in this world -by all their love of liberty-by all their veneration for their ancestors-by all their regard for posterity-by all their gratitude to Him who has bestowed on them such unnumbered and countless blessings-by all the duties which they owe to mankind, and by all the duties which they owe to themselves, to pause, solemnly to pause, at the edge of the precipice, before the fearful and dangerous leap be taken into the yawning abyss below, from which none who ever take it shall return in safety. Finally, Mr. President, and in conclusion, I implore, as the best blessing which Heaven can bestow upon me upon earth, that if the direful event of the dissolution of this Union is to happen, I shall not survive to behold the sad and heart-rending spectacle. EVERETT. EDWARD EVERETT was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, April 11, 1794. From earliest youth circumstances seemed to favor, and even court, his advancement. Furnished with the best education his own country afforded, he was privileged to quaff yet higher culture at the great universities of Germany and France. Foreign travel, also, lent its charms of nature and treasures of art, its instruction and its marvel; and the acquaintance of such master-spirits as Scott, Byron, Jeffrey, Campbell, Mackintosh, and Davy, yielded its exhilarating influence to enrich, and polish, and inspire the young and susceptible student. With such generous preparation, rivaled only by the capacity and genius of the man, Everett entered on that public career which was to be so long, so varied, so honorable, so beneficial, and so brilliant. In that almost Briarean-handed career we find embraced the stations of minister at the Brattle Street Church, Boston; professor of Greek at Harvard; editor of the North American Review; representative in the National Congress for ten successive years, from Middlesex; Governor of Massachusetts, for four years; Minister to England; President of Harvard College; Secretary of State, and United States Senator. Through all these blooming fields of varied honors Everett bore aloft one chosen flower of rare and dazzling worth-the flower of Oratory. His orations and speeches constitute the most voluminous, scholarly, and rhetorical productions of the sort to be found in American literature. They are one hundred and eighty-six in number, and are extraordinary in the variety of subjects they treat of, in the familiarity they evince with those subjects, in the lucid statement, the exquisite polish and electric vigor of diction.. the nationality and patriotism of tone, and the rare poetic flavor and picturesqueness in which they abound. "We hesitate not to declare that Edward Everett's Orations are as pure in style, as able in statement, and as authentic as expressions of popular history, feeling, and opinion, in a finished and elegant shape, as were those of Demosthenes and Cicero in their day. . . . If a highlycultivated foreigner were to ask us to point him to any single work which would justly inform him of the spirit of our institutions and history, and at the same time afford an adequate idea of our present degree of culture, we should confidently designate these Orations. "The great battles of the Revolution, the sufferings and principles of the early colonists, the characters of our leading statesmen, the progress of arts, sciences, and education among us—all those great interests which are characteristic to the philosopher of a nation's life-are here expounded, now by important facts, now by eloquent illustration, and again in the form of impressive and graceful comments. History, essays, descriptive sketches, biographical data, picturesque detail, and general principles, are all blent together with a tact, a distinctness, a felicity of expression, and a unity of style unexampled in this species of writing."* "In all that Mr. Everett does, there is a singular completeness in the execution as well as the conception. . . . He leaves no thought ill comprehended, no sentence badly expressed. . . . His style combines purity and great richness of phrase, with that numerous rhythm which belongs to the higher forms of prose eloquence. The delicate perception by which the artist shades and tints his pictures, until the eye rests upon them with a conscious but unspeakable and inexplicable delight, is analogous to that well-trained sense of the beauties and proprieties and harmonies of speech, which guides a writer like Mr. Everett in the choice of his words, the combination of his clauses, and * Sketch of American Literature, by H. T. Tuckerman. the moulding of his periods into forms that dwell in the inind of the hearer for ever. "The fine contrasts between simplicity of expression in narrative or unimpassioned passages, and the more elevated and embellished manner into which the harmoniouslyattuned spirit naturally rises in moments of inspiration, form one of the highest charms of a finished literary style. This charm everywhere casts its spell over the writings of Mr. Everett. "Mr. Everett's fame as a scholar runs back 'even to his boyish days.' It was, however, the first Phi Beta Kappa Oration, delivered at Cambridge in 1824, that placed him before the public as one of the greatest and most accomplished orators who had ever appeared in America. The subject of this oration was The Circumstances Favorable to the Progress of Literature in America. About forty years after, Everett, now venerable in years, veteran in distinguished services, rich in public honors, and crowned with trophies from almost two hundred fields of oratory, passed, as it were, from the very rostrum, to rest. And be it said, as his highest praise, that his life, both public and private, comported with his faultless and noble eloquence."* THE PILGRIM FATHERS. AN EXTRACT FROM A SPEECH DELIVERED ON THE 1ST OF I NEED not say to this company, assembled on the shore of the haven for which so many noble hearts on that terrible voyage throbbed with sickening expectancy-that quiet haven where the Mayflower furled her tattered sails—that a greater, a nobler work was never performed by man. Truly, the opus magnum— the great work of humanity. You bid me speak of that portion of it which devolved on the Pilgrims. Would to Heaven I could find words to do justice even to my own poor conceptions, and still more that I could find conceptions not far below the august reality! A mighty work of improvement, in which (not to speak of what has been done in *North American Review, October, 1850. |