nations shall be healed. Millions shall spring from our loins, and trace back with lineal love their blood to ours. Centuries hereafter, in great cities, the capitals of mighty states, from the tribes of a common Israel, shall come together the good, the eminent, the beautiful, to remember our dark day of small things; yea, generations shall call us blessed!"

Without a sigh, calmly, with triumph, they sent the Mayflower away, and went back, these stern, strong men, all, all, to their imperial labors.

I have said that I deemed it a great thing for a nation, in all the periods of its fortunes, to be able to look back to a race of founders and a principle of institution in which it might seem to see the realized idea of true heroism. That felicity, that pride, that help, is ours. Our past — both its great eras, that of settlement and that of independence — should announce, should compel, should spontaneously evolve as from a germ, a wise, moral, and glorious future. These heroic men and women should not look down on a dwindled posterity. It should seem to be almost of course too easy to be glorious, that they who keep the graves, bear the name, and boast the blood, of men in whom the loftiest sense of duty blended itself with the fiercest spirit of liberty, should add to their freedom, justice; justice to all men, to all nations; justice, that venerable virtue, without which freedom, valor, and power are but vulgar things.

And yet is the past nothing, even our past, but as you, quickened by its examples, instructed by its experience, warned by its voices, assisted by its accumulated instrumentality, shall reproduce it in the life of to-day. Its once busy existence, various sensations, fiery trials, dear-bought triumphs; its dynasty of heroes, all its pulses of joy and anguish, and hope and fear, and love and praise, are with the years beyond the flood. "The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures.” Yet, gazing on these, long and intently and often, we may pass into the likeness of the departed, may emulate their labors, and partake of their immortality.

EDWARD EVERETT

Edward Everett (1794-1865), the academic orator, was the most scholarly of America's great orators, the product of the best culture of New England. His preparation for col

lege was made in the Boston schools and Phillips Academy at Exeter. He entered Harvard at the age of thirteen, the youngest of his class, and was graduated in four years with the highest honors. He early became an accomplished reader of the classics, and on his graduation was made tutor of Latin in Harvard College. During his tutorship he began the study of theology, and two years later entered the ministry and accepted a call to a church in Boston. For the next two years large assemblies gathered to hear the

popular and eloquent young clergyman. But the charm of his scholarship rather than his message attracted the people. He did not remain long in the ministry. Harvard College called him to the professorship of Greek literature, and gave him opportunity, before entering upon his duties, to study and travel abroad. Such an offer to a man of his scholarly tastes was most attractive. He accepted the position and

spent four years and a half in study and travel, two years at Göttingen and short periods at several other European universities, notably Oxford and Cambridge. Much of his time was spent in and about Athens in the study of art, literature, and archæology. He became an accomplished linguist and met many of the most distinguished statesmen, scholars, and authors. During the six years of his active work as professor of Greek at Harvard he gave many popular lectures on Greek literature and art. These lectures not only showed immense resources of learning and culture, but gave evidence of marked ability as a public speaker, and showed the great ease with which he could command his knowledge of language and idiom.

His general education and wide knowledge of affairs did not stop here. He became the editor and founder of the North American Review, and began a profound study of public questions, constitutional law, and diplomacy. The constant editorial work of one whose ability as a student writer was traditional at Harvard gave him intimate knowledge of men and legislation, and developed that singular felicity and power of expression which were called into use in his many public addresses.

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Not only was Everett a general student of art, literature, theology, and diplomacy, but he was a special student of oratory. Although his native ability as an orator was not to be compared with that of Webster, Clay, or Phillips, yet he set out with the high resolve to succeed as a public speaker occasional orator, in the phrase of to-day. No American of distinction ever worked harder to attain success. Like a famous German who felt himself handicapped in his fight for distinction, Everett "resolved to make as much as possible out of the stuff"; and, like Demosthenes, whose oratory Everett used as his model, he "left nothing to chance which

work could accomplish," for his orations and polished periods did indeed "smell of the lamp."

Physically Everett's presence was satisfying to the eye. He had a fine, well-proportioned, erect figure, a noble face, a large mouth, a firm chin, and large beaming eyes. His voice, naturally sweet and clear, became, by persistent training, full, rich, varied, wide of compass and emotional. Its whisper penetrated, and its full volume was powerful, swelling, and melodious. His gestures and attitudes, though studied and at times mechanical, were graceful and appropriate. It was a custom with him to introduce in his public addresses certain physical objects to enforce his thought. For instance, he would have a flag placed on the lectern, that during certain patriotic passages he might seize it and wave it before the audience. Once in speaking of the flash of thought under the sea he produced a piece of the Atlantic cable. In the course of an agricultural address in New England, when speaking of a product richer than the gold of California, he held up before the audience an ear of yellow corn. These studied effects were so graceful, and to all intents so spontaneous that public taste was not offended by them, though in the light of the present such effects border on the tricky or the theatrical.

The strength of Everett's oratory lies in its symmetry and finish. He resembled the Greeks in the severity of his rhetoric. As literature his orations approached "nearer the Hellenic standard in form and body" than any other collection of American speeches. A collection of his occasional orations are worthy the best of the Greeks. All his orations were written with the most painstaking care. He was so conscientious in this as to be thought almost finical in taste and refinement. His sentences were polished and rhythmical, his periods were wrought out and burnished. His polished

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cadences, his balanced sentences, and his well-poised antitheses made his style the highest triumph of rhetoric.

And yet Everett was no mere rhetorician. His addresses covered a wide range of subjects. There were anniversary addresses, literary addresses, eulogies, political and congressional speeches, which show wide knowledge and felicitous treatment. The commonest topics receive illumination from his speeches. "His good sense," says Sears, "kept him from sacrificing anything to mere expression; his large knowledge delivered him from bondage to the symphonies of speech on every occasion. He knew when magnificent declamation was in place, and also when plain and practical discourse was equally imperative. The sense of fitness never deserted him. His great masterpieces of eloquence are of immeasurable worth in the history of that art which he so assiduously cultivated. It constitutes a special department of public speech and approximates closely to the ideal of oratory as an art." His speeches show what culture and knowledge may become in the hands of an eloquent man, when there is harmony between the speaker, his theme, and his audience. He appeals to the intellect more than to the emotions. The chief criticism made upon his oratory is that he lacked fire, that because he spoke from memory his speeches lacked abandon and spontaneity, for one who would reach the pinnacle of eloquence. One of his critics says that "he too generally approached the deliberate style of the writer, losing in doing so the rapidity, the warmth, the compelling power of the orator. His surpassingly great merit is his knowledge of history, his grasp of fact, and his ability to present it in its harmonies." Yet it must be confessed that as reading matter, as literature, most of our great orators suffer in comparison with Everett. "His style," says Harsha, "is elaborated with the greatest care and perfection. His sensibilities are very refined, his imagination