umph, exultation, and national pride; but the angel of death has mingled in the glorious pageant to teach us we are men. Had our venerated fathers left us on any other day, it would have been henceforward a day of mournful recollection. But now, the whole nation feels, as with one heart, that since it must sooner or later have been bereaved of its revered fathers, it could not have wished that any other had been the day of their decease. Our anniversary festival was before triumphant; it is now triumphant and sacred. It before called out the young and ardent to join in the public rejoicing; it now also speaks, in a touching voice, to the retired, to the gray-headed, to the mild and peaceful spirits, to the whole family of sober freemen. It is henceforward, what the dying Adams pronounced it, "a great and a good day." It is full of greatness, and full of goodness. It is absolute and complete. The death of the men who declared our independencetheir death on the day of the jubilee-was all that was wanting to the fourth of July. To die on that day, and to die together, was all that was wanting to Jefferson and Adams.

Think not, fellow citizens, that, in the mere formal discharge of my duty this day, I would overrate the melancholy interest of the great occasion; I do anything but intentionally overrate it. I labor only for words to do justice to your feelings and mine. I can say nothing which does not sound as cold and inadequate to myself as to you. The theme is too great and too surprising, the men are too great and good, to be spoken of in this cursory manner. There is too much in the contemplation of their united characters, their services, the day and coincidence of their death, to be properly described, or to be fully felt at once. I dare not come here and dismiss, in a few summary paragraphs, the characters of men who have filled such a space in the history of their age. It would be a disrespectful familiarity with men of their lofty spirits, their rich endowments, their long and honorable lives, to endeavor thus to weigh and estimate them. I leave that arduous task to the genius of kindred elevation by whom to-morrow it will be discharged. [Daniel Webster, whose eulogy on Adams and Jefferson was delivered on the following day in Faneuil Hall, Boston.] I feel the

mournful contrast in the fortunes even of the first and best of men, that, after a life in the highest walks of usefulness; after conferring benefits, not merely on a neighborhood, a city, or even a State, but on a whole continent, and a posterity of kindred men; after having stood in the first estimation for talents, services, and influence, among millions of fellow citizens-a day must come, which closes all up; pronounces a brief blessing on their memory; gives an hour to the actions of a crowded life; describes in a sentence what it took years to bring to pass, and what is destined for years and ages to operate on posterity; passes forgetfully over many traits of character, many counsels and measures, which it cost, perhaps, years of discipline and effort to mature; utters a funeral prayer; chants a mournful anthem; and then dismisses all into the dark chambers of death and forgetfulness.

But no, fellow citizens, we dismiss them not to the chambers of forgetfulness and death. What we admired, and prized, and venerated in them, can never be forgotten. I had almost said that they are now beginning to live; to live that life of unimpaired influence, of unclouded fame, of unmingled happiness, for which their talents and services were destined. They were of the select few, the least portion of whose life dwells in their physical existence; whose hearts have watched, while their senses have slept; whose souls have grown up into a higher being; whose pleasure is to be useful; whose wealth is an unblemished reputation; who respire the breath of honorable fame; who have deliberately and consciously put what is called life to hazard, that they may live in the hearts of those who come after. Such men do not, cannot die. To be cold and breathless; to feel not and speak not; this is not the end of existence to the men who have breathed their spirits into the institutions of their country, who have stamped their characters on the pillars of the age, who have poured their hearts' blood into the channels of the public prosperity. Tell me, ye who tread the sods of yon sacred height, is Warren dead? Can you not still see him, not pale and prostrate, the blood of his gallant heart pouring out of his ghastly wound, but moving resplendent over the field of honor, with the rose of heaven upon his cheek, and the fire of liberty in his eye? Tell

me, ye who make your pious pilgrimage to the shades of Vernon, is Washington indeed shut up in that cold and narrow house? That which made these men, and men like these, cannot die. The hand that traced the charter of independence is, indeed, motionless; the eloquent lips that sustained it are hushed; but the lofty spirits that conceived, resolved, and maintained it, and which alone, to such men, "make it life to live," these cannot expire;—

These shall resist the empire of decay,

When time is o'er, and worlds have passed away;
Cold in the dust the perished heart may lie,

But that which warmed it once can never die."

This is their life, and this their eulogy. In these our feeble services of commemoration, we set forth not their worth, but our own gratitude. The eulogy of those who declared our independence is written in the whole history of independent America. I do not mean that they alone achieved our liberties; nor should we bring a grateful offering to their tombs, in sacrificing at them the merits. of their contemporaries. But no one, surely, who considers the history of the times, the state of opinions, and the obstacles that actually stood in the way of success, can doubt that if John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had thrown their talents and influence into the scale of submission, the effect would have been felt to the cost of America, for ages. No, it is not too much to say that ages on ages may pass, and the population of the United States may overflow the uttermost regions of this continent, but never can there be an American citizen who will not bear in his condition and in his welfare some trace of what was counseled, and said, and done by these great men. This is their undying praise; a praise which knows no limits but those of America, and which is uttered not merely in these our eulogies, but in the thousand inarticulate voices of art and nature. It sounds from the woodman's axe, in the distant forests of the west; for what was it that unbarred to him the gates of the mountains? The busy water-wheel echoes back the strain; for what was it that released the industry of the country from the fetters of colonial restriction? Their praise is borne on

the swelling canvas of America to distant oceans, where the rumor of acts of trade never came; for what was it that sent our canvas there? and it glistens at home, in the eyes of a prosperous and grateful people. Yes, the people, the people rise up and call them blessed. They invoke eternal blessings on the men who could be good as well as great; whose ambition was their country's welfare; who did not ask to be rewarded by being allowed to oppress the country which they redeemed from oppression.

I shall not, fellow citizens, on this occasion, attempt a detailed narrative of the lives of these distinguished men. To relate their history at length would be to relate that of the country, from their first entrance on public life to their final retirement. Even to dwell minutely on the more conspicuous incidents of their career would cause me to trespass too far on the proper limits of the occasion. Let us only enumerate those few leading points in their lives and characters which will best guide us to the reflections we ought to make, while we stand at the tombs of these excellent and honored men.

Mr. Adams was born on the 30th of October, 1735, and Mr. Jefferson on the 13th of April, 1743. One of them rose from the undistinguished mass of the community, while the other, born in higher circumstances, voluntarily descended to its level. Although, happily, in this country it cannot be said of any one, that he owes much to birth or family, yet it sometimes happens, even under the equality which prevails among us, that a certain degree of deference follows in the train of family connections, apart from all personal merit. Mr. Adams was the son of a New England farmer, and in this alone, the frugality and moderation of his bringing up are sufficiently related. Mr. Jefferson owed more to birth. He inherited a good estate from his respectable father; but instead of associating himself with the opulent interest in Virginia-at that time, in consequence of the mode in which their estates were held and transmitted, an exclusive and powerful class, and of which he might have become a powerful leader-he threw himself into the ranks of the people.

It was a propitious coincidence, that of these two eminent statesmen, one was from the North, and the other

from the South; as if, in the happy effects of their joint action, to give us the first lesson of union. The enemies of our independence, at home and abroad, relied on the difficulty of uniting the colonies in one harmonious system. They knew the difference in our local origin; they exaggerated the points of dissimilarity in our sectional character. It was therefore most auspicious that, in the outset of the Revolution, while the North and the South had each its great rallying point in Virginia and Massachusetts, the wise and good men, whose influence was most felt in each, moved forward in brotherhood and concert. Mr. Quincy, in a visit to the Southern colonies, had entered into an extensive correspondence with the friends of liberty in that part of the country. Richard Henry Lee and his brother Arthur maintained a constant intercourse with Samuel Adams. Dr. Franklin, though a citizen of Pennsylvania, was a native of Boston; and from the first moment of their meeting at Philadelphia, Jefferson and Adams began to co-operate cordially in the great work of independence. While theoretical politicians, at home and abroad, were speculating on our local peculiarities, and the British ministry were building their hopes upon the maxim, Divide and conquer, they might well have been astonished to see the Declaration of Independence reported into Congress, by the joint labor of the son of a Virginia planter and of a New England yeoman.

Adams and Jefferson received their academical education at the colleges of their native States, the former at Cambridge, the latter at William and Mary. At these institutions, they severally laid the foundation of very distinguished attainments as scholars, and formed a taste for letters which was fresh and craving to the last. They were both familiar with the ancient languages and their literature. Their range in the various branches of general reading was perhaps equally wide, and was uncommonly extensive; and it is, I believe, doing no injustice to any other honored name, to say that, in this respect, they stood at the head of the great men of the Revolution.

Their first writings were devoted to the cause of their country. Mr. Adams, in 1765, published his essay on the Canon and Feudal Law, which two years afterwards was republished in London, and was there pronounced