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ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE PILGRIMS.

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own sentiments; that you cannot tell how, but that some unknown dread, some indescribable apprehension, some indefinable danger, drove you from your purpose; that the spectres of cimeters, and crowns, and crescents, gleamed before you and alarmed you; and that you suppressed all the noble feelings prompted by religion, by liberty, by national independence, and by humanity! I cannot bring myself to believe, that such will be the feeling of a majority of the committee. But, for myself, though every friend of the cause should desert it, and I be left to stand alone with the gentle man from Massachusetts, I will give to this resolution the poor sanction of my unqualified approbation.

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CVIII-ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE PILGRIMS.

EDWARD EVERETT.

WERE it only an act of rare adventure, were it a trait in foreign or ancient history, we should fix upon the achievements of our fathers as one of the noblest deeds in the annals of the world. Were we attracted to it by no other feeling than that sympathy we feel in all the fortunes of our race, it could lose nothing, it must gain, in the contrast, with whatever history or tradition has preserved to us of the wanderings and the settlements of the tribes of man. A continent, for the first time, effectually explored; a vast ocean, traversed by men, women, and children, voluntarily exiling themselves from the fairest portions of the Old World; and a great nation grown up, in the space of two centuries, on the foundation so perilously laid by this feeble band—point me to the record, or to the tradition of anything that can enter into competition with it! It is the language, not of exaggeration, but of truth and soberness, to say that there is nothing in the accounts of Phoenician, of Grecian, or of Roman colonization, that can stand in the comparison.

Accomplishing all they projected,-what they projected was the least part of what has come to pass. Did they propose to themselves a refuge, beyond the sea, from the religious and the political tyranny of Europe? They achieved not that alone, but they have opened a wide asylum to all the victims of oppression throughout the world. We our

selves have seen the statesmen, the generals, the kings of the elder world flying for protection to our shores. Did they look for a retired spot, inoffensive for its obscurity, and safe in its remoteness, where the little church of Leyden might enjoy freedom of conscience? Behold the mighty regions, over which, in peaceful conquest,-victoria sine clade,—they have borne the banner of the cross! Did they seek, under the common franchise of a trading charter, to prosecute a frugal commerce, in reimbursement of the expenses of their humble establishment? The fleets and navies of their descendants are on the farthest ocean; and the wealth of the Indies is now wafted, with every tide, to the coasts where, with hook and line, they painfully gathered up their frugal earnings. In short, did they, in their brightest and most sanguine moments, contemplate a thrifty, loyal, and prosperous colony, portioned off, like a younger son of the imperial household, to an humble and dutiful distance? Behold the spectacle of an independent and powerful Republic, founded on the shores where some of those are but lately deceased who saw the first-born of the Pilgrims!

And shall we stop here? Is the tale now told? Is the contrast now complete? Are our destinies all fulfilled? Why, friends, we are in the very morning of our days; our numbers are but a unit; our national resources but a pittance; our hopeful achievements in the political, the social, and the intellectual nature, are but the rudiments of what the children of the Pilgrims must yet attain. I dare adventure the prediction, that he who, two centuries hence, shall stand where I stand, and look on our present condition, will sketch a contrast far more astonishing; and will speak of our times as the day of small things, in stronger and juster language than any in which we can depict the poverty and wants of our fathers.

CIX.-DUTY OF LITERARY MEN TO AMERICA.

GRIMKE.

WE cannot honor our country with too deep a reverence; we cannot love her with an affection, too pure and fervent; we cannot serve her with an energy of purpose or a faithful

DUTY OF LITERARY MEN TO AMERICA.

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ness of zeal, too steadfast and ardent. And what is our country? It is not the East, with her hills and her valleys, with her countless sails, and the rocky ramparts of her shores. It is not the North, with her thousand villages, and her harvest-home, with her frontiers of the lake and the ocean. It is not the West, with her forest-sea and her inland isles, with her luxuriant expanses, clothed in the verdant corn, with her beautiful Ohio, and her majestic Missouri. Nor is it yet the South, opulent in the mimic snow of the cotton, in the rich plantations of the rustling cane, and in the golden robes of the rice-field. What are these but the sister families of one greater, better, holier family, our country? I come not here to speak the dialect, or to give the counsels of the patriot statesman: but I come, a patriot scholar, to vindicate the rights, and to plead for the interests of American Literature. And be assured, that we cannot, as patriot scholars, think too highly of that country, or sacrifice too much for her. And let us never forget, let us rather remember with a religious awe, that the union of these States is indispensable to our Literature, as it is to our national independence and our civil liberties, to our prosperity, happiness, and improvement. If, indeed, we desire to behold a Literature like that, which has sculptured with such energy of expression, which has painted so faithfully and vividly, the crimes, the vices, the follies of ancient and modern Europe: if we desire that our land should furnish for the orator and the novelist, for the painter and the poet, age after age, the wild and romantic scenery of war; the glittering march of armies, and the revelry of the camp, the shrieks and blasphemies, and all the horrors of the battle-field; the desolation of the harvest, and the burning cottage; the storm, the sack, and the ruin of cities if we desire to unchain the furious passions of jealousy and selfishness, of hatred, revenge and ambition, those lions, that now sleep harmless in their den: if we desire, that the lake, the river, the ocean, should blush with the blood of brothers; that the winds should waft from the land to the sea, from the sea to the land, the roar and the smoke of battle; that the very mountain tops should become the altars for the sacrifice of brothers: if we desire that these, and such as these-the elements, to an incredible extent, of the Literature of the old world-should be the elements of our Literature, then, but then only, let us hurl from its pedestal the majestic statue of our Union, and scatter its frag

ments over all our land. But, if we covet for our country the noblest, purest, loveliest Literature the world has ever seen, such a Literature as shall honor God, and bless mankind; a Literature, whose smiles might play upon an angel's face, whose tears "would not stain an angel's cheek ;" then let us cling to the union of these States, with a patriot's love, with a scholar's enthusiasm, with a Christian's hope. On her heavenly character, as a holocaust self-sacrificed to God; at the height of her glory, as the ornament of a free, educated, peaceful, Christian people, American Literature will find that the intellectual spirit is her very tree of life, and that Union, her garden of paradise.

CX.-DEATH OF HAMILTON.

ELIPHALET NOTT.

'How are the mighty fallen?" And, regardless as we are of vulgar deaths, shall not the fall of the mighty affect us? A short time since, and he, who is the occasion of our sorrows, was the ornament of his country. He stood on an eminence, and glory covered him. From that eminence he has fallen-suddenly, forever, fallen. His intercourse with the living world has now ended; and those, who would hereafter find him, must seek him in the grave. There, cold and lifeless, is the heart which just now was the seat of friendship. There, dim and sightless, is the eye, whose radiant and enlivening orb beamed with intelligence; and there, closed forever, are those lips, on whose persuasive accents we have so often, and so lately, hung with transport! From the darkness which rests upon his tomb, there proceeds, methinks, a light in which it is clearly seen, that those gaudy objects, which men pursue, are only phantoms. In this light, how dimly shines the splendor of victory; how humble appears the majesty of grandeur! The bubble, which seemed to have so much solidity, has burst; and we see again that all below the sun is vanity.

True, the funeral eulogy has been pronounced; the sad and solemn procession has moved; the badge of mourning has already been decreed, and presently the sculptured marble will lift up its front, proud to perpetuate the name of

INVECTIVE OF HUNGARY.

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HAMILTON, and rehearse to the passing traveller his virtues. Just tributes of respect ! And to the living useful. But to him, mouldering in his narrow and humble habitation, what are they? How vain! how unavailing!

Approach, and behold, while I lift from the sepulchre its covering! Ye admirers of his greatness; ye emulous of his talents and his fame, approach, and behold him now. How pale! How silent! No martial bands admire the adroitness of his movements; no fascinated throng weep, and melt, and tremble at his eloquence! Amazing change! a shroud! a coffin! a narrow, subterraneous cabin! This is all that now remains of Hamilton! And is this all that remains of him? During a life so transitory, what lasting monument, then, can our fondest hopes erect!

CXI-INVECTIVE OF HUNGARY.

A. W. BUEL.

THE spirit of popular freedom in Europe, during the late struggle of Hungary, asked us a solemn question. The Executive was called upon to say yea or nay. Hungary listened with anxious hopes. She was impatient for the response, and the eloquence of truth, of a righteous cause, burst forth in every word she uttered. But it has been all in vain, and now, in tones of eloquent and burning reproof, she thus turns to her Russian invader.

You seek to encompass the earth with your ambition. The world exclaims against you, and reproachfully calls you sovereign of a barbarian horde. Asia speaks out: Your neighborhood has only served to bring upon my borders bloody and protracted wars. Says Persia: For a century you have desolated my remote frontiers and provinces, with the horrors of a cruel warfare. Circassia asks: When will you cease to massacre my people, and grant me that liberty and independence which my victorious arms deserve? England reproves I see you in the swift-coming future advancing to the banks of the Indus, and about to bring war upon my dominions in the East. Turkey adds: You have converted my cities into forts, and for centuries obliged me to watch your threatened descent upon my fair capital. France sends

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