is sparkling. No one can listen to him without being moved, instructed, and delighted."

To attain his perfection or art Everett was untiring in preparation and practice. At thirty years of age he made his first formal address before the Phi Beta Kappa society at Harvard. His success was instantaneous. The people were more than pleased; they were amazed at the wisdom and learning displayed by the speaker. He spoke on the "Progress of Literature in America." Years later one who heard him on that occasion wrote: "The sympathies of his audience went with him in a rushing stream as he painted in glowing hues the political, social, and literary future of our country. They drank with thirsty ears his rapid generalization and his sparkling rhetoric. As with a skillful and flying hand the orator ran over the chords of national pride and patriotic feeling, every bosom throbbed in unison, and when the fervid declamation of the concluding paragraph was terminated by the simple pathos of the address to Lafayette, who was present at the orator's side, his hearers were left in a state of emotion far too deep for tumultuous applause."

The success of this speech opened the way to a career as an occasional orator, which had not been followed so exclusively by any of his predecessors. It was a splendid and amazing triumph for a man of thirty years, and was the beginning of a long series of patriotic addresses made on similar public occasions. It established his reputation as one of the most accomplished orators of the time. The same year he delivered an oration at Plymouth on the "First Settlement of New England," a masterly oration, worthy of the occasion and full of most beautiful sentiments. The oration in commemoration of "Adams and Jefferson" was delivered in 1826; the one on the Bunker Hill Monument" in 1833; the one on the "Death of Lafayette" in 1834, pronounced in Faneuil

Hall; and a speech on the "Battle of Lexington" in 1835, delivered on the battlefield on the sixtieth anniversary of that memorable conflict. The best known of all his orations was that on the Character of Washington," first delivered in Boston in 1856, but afterwards a hundred and twenty times, in different parts of the country, for the benefit of the Mount Vernon Association. This organization was formed "to purchase Mount Vernon, in order that it might forever belong to the American people as a place of public resort and pilgrimage." His efforts realized for that association $60,000 and thus assured the purchase and maintenance of the home of Washington. The last of his well-known occasional addresses was the oration at the "Dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg" in 1863. The many extracts from these addresses which may be found in our schoolbooks, and which will be declaimed along with those of Patrick Henry, Webster, and Phillips, attest to their worth and the deep impression they have made.

Sears says of his oratory: 'It was the fortune of many distinguished men of the last generation to receive an impulse in life from the classic purity and grace of such English as Everett knew how to construct out of the wealth of his resources. To the most varied culture he added an immense and diversified learning, a retentive memory, so much valued by the Hellenic orators, great facility and felicity of expression, a ready wit, a conciliating humor, a dexterity in turning the sharp corners of discussion, and always a sense of fitness which is both the essence and the safeguard of good style."

Everett is a good example of what men of moderate ability may accomplish by the severest discipline. What though he practiced his periods for smoothness and rhythm, what though now and then he was ornamental in style, what though he indulged in word painting to excess, and studied gesture and

effects of voice even at the age of sixty, what though he lacked emotion and kindling sensibilities and was mechanical and constrained at times in method, yet by his diligence as a student of oratorical expression he became the most sought of the lyceum orators of the time.

One of his critics has declared that Everett's was the "art and mechanism of eloquence, rather than its genius," that his orations were "stand-up essays," and that his eloquent writing did not succeed in Congress as short, spontaneous and pointed speeches do. It is true that he committed his speeches. But this was no drudgery to him, for he could repeat his own written speeches by reading them once or twice over. It is to his credit that he took such pains to bring before waiting audiences such knowledge in so attractive a form. Grant that he was not so great as Clay or Webster in the Senate, or as Phillips or Beecher in the presence of hostile audiences. Everett was not an agitator or an aggressive orator, but give him an academic audience, or a popular audience on a patriotic occasion, and he was supremely effective. He blended the essentials of the great orator in a high degree, but it is no disparagement to him to say that there were forensic, political, and congressional orators who were his peers.

Not only was he great as an orator, but what other man in American history occupied so many important positions and with such ability? Note them in order: instructor of Latin at Harvard, pastor of a church in Boston, professor of Greek at Harvard, editor of North American Review, congressman, three times elected governor of Massachusetts, minister to England, president of Harvard, Secretary of State in the Fillmore administration, senator from Massachusetts, and vice-presidential candidate.

CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON

This speech was first delivered on February 22, 1856. It was received with such enthusiasm that calls came from all parts of the nation for a repetition of it. Interest was heightened by the announcement that Mr. Everett would contribute the entire proceeds of a lecture tour to the commission which proposed to purchase Mount Vernon as a national possession. The speech was delivered one hundred twenty times, and the sum realized was $60,000.

I. CONTRAST WITH NAPOLEON

Mr. Everett traces the history of Washington from his early successes in the frontier wars to his successful career as commander in chief of the Revolutionary forces. Then he compares him with "the great captain of the nineteenth century."

I am to speak to you this evening, my friends, of the character of Washington, on this, the anniversary of his birthday a great and glorious theme, but as difficult as it is interesting and important. To do justice to his character we must sketch the background of the picture of which he forms the most prominent personage. He has been often called, and among others by the first living parliamentary orator of England [Lord Brougham], "the greatest man of our own or of any age"; and this estimate of his character, long since pronounced by his grateful countrymen, seems to me more and more confirmed by the general assent of the more reflecting portion of mankind. And if the first part of the eulogium is found in truth, the second is not less so. Not like Alfred and Charlemagne, bright lights shining in dark ages, Washington lived in an age which, notwithstanding the illustrious names which adorn other periods of history, in many respects stands first in the annals of our race for great names, great events, great reforms, and the general progress of intelligence. The period which has elapsed from about the commencement of the last century down nearly to our time, and of which Washington is the brightest ornament, may be called with propriety the age of wonders, humanly speaking, in the history of mankind.

Compare Washington with the illustrious captain of the last generation in France, that portentous blazing star which began to flame in the eastern sky as our benignant luminary was sinking in the West, amidst the golden clouds of a nation's blessing. I have no wish to trample on the memory of Napoleon the First, whom I regard by no means as the most ambitious of conquerors, the most arbitrary of despots, or the worst of them. The virtues and the feelings, like the talents, the opportunities, and the fortunes of this extraordinary man, are on too colossal a scale to be measured by ordinary standards of morality. The prevalent opinions in this country of his character and career have come to us through a British medium, discolored by a national prejudice and the deadly struggle of a generation; or by natural reaction have been founded on the panegyrics of grateful adherents and admiring subjects, who deem every Frenchman a partner in the glory of their chief. Posterity and impartial history will subdue the lights and relieve the shadows of the picture. They will accord to him a high, perhaps the highest, rank among the great masters of war, placing his name on an equality with the three great captains of antiquity, if not above them; will study his campaigns for lessons of strategy; will point to his code as a noble monument of legislative wisdom; will dwell upon the creative vigor with which he brought order out of the chaos of the Revolution, retrieving the dilapidated finances and restoring the prostrate industry of France; will enumerate the harbors, the canals, the bridges, the public buildings, the Alpine roads, the libraries, the museums, and all the thousand works of industrious peace and productive art; will not withhold their admiration for the giant grasp of his genius and imperial grandeur of his fortunes, nor deny a tribute of human sympathy to his calamitous decline and fall. But the same impartial history will record more than one ineffaceable stain upon his character, and never to the end of time, never on the page of historian, poet, or philosopher, never till a taste for true moral greatness is eaten out of the hearts of men by a mean admiration of success and power, never in the exhortations of their prudent magistrate counseling his fellow citizens