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EDWARD EVERETT

ADAMS AND JEFFERSON

[Eulogy by Edward Everett, statesman, orator (born in Dorchester, Mass., April 11, 1794; died in Boston, January 15, 1865), delivered at Charlestown, Mass., August 1, 1826, in commemoration of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who died on the fourth of July preceding.]

FRIENDS AND FELLOW CITIZENS:-We are assembled beneath the canopy of the weeping heavens, under the influence of feelings in which the whole family of Americans unites with us. We meet to pay a tribute of respect to the revered memory of those to whom the whole country looks up as to its benefactors; to whom it ascribes the merit of unnumbered public services, and especially of the inestimable service of having led in the councils of the Revolution.

It is natural that these feelings, which pervade the whole American people, should rise into peculiar strength and earnestness in your hearts. In meditating upon these great men, your minds are unavoidably carried back to those scenes of suffering and of sacrifice into which, at the opening of their arduous and honored career, this town and its citizens were so deeply plunged. You cannot but remember that your fathers offered their bosoms to the sword, and their dwellings to the flames, from the same spirit which animated the venerable patriarchs whom we now deplore. The cause they espoused was the same which strewed your streets with ashes, and drenched your hilltops with blood. And while Providence, in the astonishing circumstances of their departure, seems to have appointed that the Revolutionary age of America should

be closed up by a scene as illustriously affecting as its commencement was disastrous and terrific, you have justly felt it your duty-it has been the prompt dictate of your feelings-to pay, within these hallowed precincts, a welldeserved tribute to the great and good men to whose counsels, under God, it is in no small degree owing that your dwellings have risen from their ashes, and that the sacred dust of those who fell rests in the bosom of a free and happy land.

It was the custom of the primitive Romans to preserve in the halls of their houses the images of all the illustrious men whom their families had produced. These images are supposed to have consisted of a mask exactly representing the countenance of each deceased individual, accompanied with habiliments of like fashion with those worn in his time, and with the armor, badges, and insignia of his offices and exploits; all so disposed around the sides of the hall as to present, in the attitude of living men, the long succession of the departed; and thus to set before the Roman citizen, whenever he entered or left his house, the venerable array of his ancestors revived in this imposing similitude. Whenever, by a death in the family, another distinguished member of it was gathered to his fathers, a strange and awful procession was formed. The ancestral masks, including that of the newly deceased, were fitted upon the servants of the family, selected of the size and appearance of those whom they were intended to represent, and drawn up in solemn array to follow the funeral train of the living mourners, first to the market-place, where the public eulogium was pronounced, and then to the tomb. As he thus moved along, with all the great fathers of his name quickening, as it were, from their urns, to enkindle his emulation, the virtuous Roman renewed his vows of respect to their memory, and his resolution to imitate their fortitude, frugality, and patriotism.

Fellow citizens, the great heads of the American family are fast passing away; of the last, of the most honored, two are now no more. We are assembled, not to gaze with awe on the artificial and theatric images of their features, but to contemplate their venerated characters, to call to mind their invaluable services, and to lay up the image of

their virtues in our hearts. The two men who stood in a relation in which no others now stand to the whole Union, have fallen. The men whom Providence marked out among the first of the favored instruments to lead this chosen people into the holy land of liberty, have discharged their high office, and are no more. The men whose ardent minds prompted them to take up their country's cause, when there was nothing else to prompt and everything to deter them; the men who afterwards, when the ranks were filled with the brave and resolute, were yet in the front of those brave and resolute ranks; the men who were called to the helm when the wisest and most sagacious were needed to steer the newly-launched vessel through the broken waves of the unknown sea; the men, who in their country's happier days, were found most worthy to preside over the Union they had so powerfully contributed to rear into greatness-these men are now

no more.

They have not left us singly and in the sad but accustomed succession appointed by the order of nature; but having lived, acted, and counseled, and risked all, and triumphed and enjoyed together, they have gone together to their great reward. In the morning of life-without previous concert, but with a kindred spirit-they plunged together into a conflict which put to hazard all which makes life precious. When the storm of war and revolution raged, they stood side by side, on such perilous ground that, had the American cause failed, though all else had been forgiven, they were of the few whom an incensed empire's vengeance would have pursued to the ends of the earth. When they had served through their long career of duty, forgetting the little that had divided them, and cherishing the great communion of service, and peril, and success, which had united them, they walked in honorable friendship the declining pathway of age; and now they have sunk down together in peace. Time, and their country's service, a like fortune and a like reward, united them; and the last great scene confirmed the union. They were useful, honored, prosperous, and lovely in their lives, and in their deaths they were not divided.

Happiest at the last, they were permitted almost to choose the hour of their departure; to die on that day on

which those who loved them best could have wished they might die. It is related as a singular happiness of Plato that he died in a good old age at a banquet amidst flowers and perfumes and festal songs, upon his birthday. Our Adams and Jefferson died on the birthday of the nation; the day which their own deed had immortalized, which their own prophetic spirit had marked out as the great festival of the land; amidst the triumphal anthems of a whole grateful people, throughout a country that hailed them as among the first and boldest of her champions in the times that tried men's souls.

Our jubilee, like that of old, is turned into sorrow. Among the ruins of Rome there is a shattered arch, erected by the Emperor Vespasian, when his son Titus returned from the destruction of Jerusalem. On its broken panels and falling frieze are still to be seen, represented as borne aloft in the triumphal procession of Titus, the well-known spoils of the second temple-the sacred vessels of the holy place, the candlestick with seven branches, and in front of all, the silver trumpets of the jubilee, in the hands of captive priests, proclaiming not now the liberty, but the humiliation and the sorrows, of Judah. From this mournful spectacle, it is said, the pious and heart-stricken Hebrew, even to the present day, turns aside in sorrow. He will not enter Rome through the gate of the arch of Titus, but winds his way through the by-paths of the Palatine, over the broken columns of the palace of the Cæsars, that he may not behold these sad memorials.

The jubilee of America is turned into mourning. Its joy is mingled with sadness; its silver trumpet breathes a mingled strain. Henceforward, while America exists. among the nations of the earth, the first emotion on the fourth of July will be of joy and triumph in the great event which immortalizes the day; the second will be one of chastened and tender recollection of the venerable men who departed on the morning of the jubilee. This mingled emotion of triumph and sadness has sealed the beauty and sublimity of our great anniversary. In the simple commemoration of a victorious political achievement there seems not enough to occupy our purest and best feelings. The fourth of July was before a day of tri

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