tions of government, full of the liberty which we ourselves bring and breathe; from our zeal for learning institutions shall spring which shall scatter the light of knowledge throughout the land, and, in time, paying back where they have borrowed, shall contribute their part to the great aggregate of human knowledge; and our descendants through all generations shall look back ◄ to this spot, and to this hour, with unabated affection and regard.”

I close with the solemn and impressive peroration in which the orator addresses those who are to come after him.

"Advance then, ye future generations! We would hail you as you rise in your long succession to fill the places which we now fill, and to taste the blessings of existence where we are passing, and soon shall have passed, our own human duration. We bid you welcome to this pleasant land of the fathers. We bid We bid you welcome to the healthful skies and the verdant fields of New England. We greet your accession to the great inheritance which we have enjoyed. We welcome you to the blessings of good government and religious liberty. We welcome you to the treasures of science and the delights of learning. We welcome you to the transcendent sweets of domestic life, to the happiness of kindred and

parents and children.

We welcome you to the immeasurable blessings of rational existence, the immortal hope of Christianity, and the light of everlasting truth!”

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE BUNKER HILL ORATION.

THE oration at Plymouth first revealed the power of Mr. Webster. There are some men who exhaust themselves in one speech, one poem, or one story, and never attain again the high level which they have once reached.

It was not so with Daniel Webster. He had a fund of reserved power which great occasions never drew upon in vain. It might be that in an ordinary case in court, where his feelings were not aroused, and no fitting demand made upon his great abilities, he would disappoint the expectations of those who supposed that he must always be eloquent. I heard a gentleman say once, "Oh, I heard Mr. Webster speak once, and his speech was commonplace enough."

"On what occasion ?"

"In court."

"What was the case?"

"Oh, I don't remember case."

some mercantile

It would certainly be unreasonable to expect any man to invest dry commercial details with eloquence. Certainly a lawyer always ambitious in his rhetoric would hardly commend himself to a sound, sensible client.

But Mr. Webster always rose to the level of a great occasion. His occasional speeches were always carefully prepared and finished, and there is not one of them but will live. I now have to call special attention to the address delivered at the laying of the corner-stone of Bunker Hill Monument, at Charlestown, June 17, 1825. It was an occasion from which he could not help drawing inspiration. His father, now dead, whom he had loved and revered as few sons love and revere their parents, had been a participant, not indeed in the battle which the granite shaft was to commemorate, but in the struggle which the colonists waged for liberty. It may well be imagined that Mr. Webster gazed with no common emotion at the veterans who were present to hear their patriotism celebrated. Though the passages addressed to them-in part at least-are familiar to many of my readers, I will nevertheless quote them here. Apart from their subject they will never be forgotten by Americans.

"Venerable men! you have come down to us from a former generation. Heaven has boun

teously lengthened out your lives that you might behold this joyous day. You are now where you stood fifty years ago, this very hour, with your brothers and your neighbors, shoulder to shoulder in the strife of your country. Behold how altered! The same heavens are indeed over your heads; the same ocean rolls at your feet; but all else how changed! You hear now no roar of hostile cannon, you see now no mixed volumes of smoke and flame rising from burning Charlestown. The ground strewed with the dead and the dying; the impetuous charge; the steady and successful repulse; the loud call to repeated assault; the summoning of all that is manly to repeated resistance; a thousand bosoms freely and fearlessly bared in an instant to whatever of terror there may be in war and death-all these you have witnessed, but you witness them no more.

"All is peace. The heights of yonder metropolis, its towers and roofs, which you then saw filled with wives and children and countrymen in distress and terror, and looking with unutterable emotions for the issue of the combat, have presented you to-day with the sight of its whole happy population come out to welcome and greet you with an universal jubilee. Yonder proud ships, by a felicity of position appropriately lying at the foot of this mound, and seeming fondly to cling around