do as others have done before us. We must serve in the hard school of discipline; we must invigorate our powers by the studies of other times. We must guide our footsteps by those stars which have shone, and still continue to shine with inextinguishable light in the firmament of learning. Nor have we any reason for despondency. There is that in American character which has never yet been found unequal to its purpose. There is that in American enterprise which shrinks not, and faints not, and fails not in its labors. We may say with honest pride, "Man is the nobler growth our realms supply, And souls are ripen'd in our northern sky.' We may not then shrink from a rigorous examination of our own deficiencies in science and literature. If we have but a just sense of our wants, we have gained half the victory. If we but face our difficulties, they will fly before us. Let us not discredit our just honors by exaggerating little attainments. There are those in other countries who can keenly search out and boldly expose every false pretension. There are those in our own country who would scorn a reputation ill founded in fact, and ill sustained by examples. We have solid claims upon the affection and respect of mankind. Let us not | jeopard them by a false shame or an ostentations pride. The growth of two hundred years is healthy, lofty, expansive. The roots have shot deep and far; the branches are strong and broad. I trust that many, many centuries to come will witness the increase and vigor of the stock. Never, never may any of our posterity have just occasion to speak of our country in the expressiveness of Indian rhetoric, "It is an aged hemlock; it is dead at the top." of Europe. I do not ask if we have historians who have told with fidelity and force the story of our deeds and our sufferings. I do not ask if we have critics, and poets, and philologists, whose compositions add lustre to the age. I know full well that there are such. But they stand as lighthouses on the coasts of our literature, shining with a cheering brightness, it is true, but too often at distressing distances. In almost every department of knowledge the land of our ancestors annually pours forth from its press many volumes, the results of deep research, of refined taste, and of rich and various learning. The continent of Europe too burns with a generous zeal for science, even in countries where the free exercise of thought is prohibed, and a stinted poverty presses heavily on the soul of enterprise. Our own contributions to literature are useful and creditable; but it can rarely be said that they belong to the highest class of intellectual effort. We have but recently entered upon classical learning for the purpose of cultivating its most profound studies, while Europe may boast of thousands of scholars engaged in this pursuit. The universities of Cambridge and Oxford count more than eight thousand students trimming their classical lamps, while we have not a single university, whose studies profess to be extensive enough to educate a Heyne, a Bentley, a Porson, or a Parr. There is not, perhaps, a single library in America sufficiently copious to have enabled Gibbon to verify the authorities for his immortal History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Our advances in divinity and law are probably as great as in any branch of knowledge. Yet, until a late period, we never aspired to a deep and critical exposition of the Scriptures. We borrowed from Germany and England nearly all our materials, and are just struggling for the higher rewards of biblical least of all questionable, there are those among us who feel that sufficient of its learning, and argument, and philosophy, remains unmastered, to excite the ambition of the foremost advocates. I repeat it, we have no reason to blush for what we have been or what we are. But we shall have much to blush for, if, when the high-learning. And in law, where our eminence is est attainments of the human intellect are within our reach, we surrender ourselves to an obstinate indifference, or shallow mediocrity; if, in our literary career, we are content to rank behind the meanest principality of Europe. Let us not waste our time in seeking for apologies for our ignorance where it exists, or in framing excuses to conceal it. Let our short reply to all such suggestions be, like the answer of a noble youth on another occasion, that we know the fact, and are every day getting the better of it. What, then, may I be permitted to ask, are our attainments in science and literature, in comparison with those of other nations in our age? I do not ask if we have fine scholars, accomplished divines, and skilful physicians. I do not ask if we have lawyers who might excite a generous rivalry in Westminster Hall. I do not ask if we have statesmen who would stand side by side with those of the old world in foresight, in political wisdom, in effective debate. I do not ask if we have mathematicians who may claim kindred with the distinguished Let me not be misunderstood. I advert to these considerations, not to disparage our country, or its institutions, or its means of extensive, I had almost said, of universal education. But we should not deceive ourselves with the notion, that, because education is liberally provided for, the highest learning is within the scope of that education. Our schools neither aim at, nor accomplish such objects. There is not a more dangerous error than that which would soothe us into indolence, by encouraging the belief that our literature is all it can or ought to be; that all beyond is shadowy and unsubstantial, the vain theories of the scientific, or the reveries of mere scholars. The admonition which addresses itself to my countrymen respecting their deficiencies, ought to awaken new energy to overcome them. They are accustomed to grapple with difficulties. They reposited more durably in universal remem brance, than on their own tomb." Such is the lot of Adams and Jefferson. They have lived, not for themselves, but for their country; not for their country alone, but for the world. They belong to history, as furnishing some of the best examples of disinter should hold nothing, which human genius or human enterprise has yet attained, as beyond their reach. The motto on their literary banner should be "Nec timeo nec sperno." I have no fears for the future. It may not be our lot to see our celebrity in letters rival that of our public polity and free institutions. But the time cannot be far distant. It is scarcely pro-ested and successful patriotism. They belong phecy to declare, that our children must and will enjoy it. They will see not merely the breathing marble, and the speaking picture among their arts, but science and learning every where paying a voluntary homage to American genius. There is, indeed, enough in our past history to flatter our pride, and encourage our exertions. We are of the lineage of the Saxons, the countrymen of Bacon, Locke, and Newton, as well as of Washington, Franklin, and Fulton. We have read the history of our forefathers. They were men full of piety, and zeal, and an unconquerable love of liberty. They also loved human learning, and deemed it second only to divine. Here, on this very spot, in the bosom of the wilderness, within ten short years after their voluntary exile, in the midst of cares, and privations, and sufferings, they found time to rear a little school, and dedicate it to God and the church. It has grown; it has flourished; it is the venerable university, to whose walls her grateful children annually come with more than filial affection. The sons of such ancestors can never dishonor their memories; the pupils of such schools can never be indifferent to the cause of letters. There is yet more in our present circumstances to inspire us with a wholesome consciousness of our powers and our destiny. We have just passed the Jubilee of our Independence, and witnessed the prayers and gratitude of millions ascending to heaven for our public and private blessings. That independence was the achievement, not of faction and ignorance, but of hearts as pure, and minds as enlightened, and judgments as sound, as ever graced the annals of mankind. Among the leaders were statesmen and scholars, as well as heroes and patriots. We have followed many of them to the tomb, blest with the honors of their country. We have been privileged yet more; we have lived to witness an almost miraculous event in the departure of two great authors of our independence on that memorable and blessed day of jubilee. I may not in this place presume to pronounce the funeral panegyric of these extraordinary men. It has been already done by some of the master spirits of our country, by men worthy of the task, worthy as Pericles to pronounce the honors of the Athenian dead. It was the beautiful saying of the Grecian orator, that "This whole earth is the sepulchre of illustrious men. Nor is it the inscriptions on the columns in their native soil alone, that show their merit, but the memorial of them, better than all inscriptions, in every foreign nation, to posterity, as the instructors of all future ages in the principles of rational liberty and the rights of the people. They belong to us of the present age by their glory, by their virtues, and by their achievements. These are memorials which can never perish. They will brighten with the lapse of time, and, as they loom on the ocean of eternity, will seem present to the most distant generations of men. That voice of more that Roman eloquence, which urged and sustained the Declaration of Independence, that voice, whose first and whose last accents were for his country, is indeed mute. It will never again rise in defence of the weak against popular excitement, and vindicate the majesty of law and justice. It will never again awaken a nation to arms to assert its liberties. It will never again instruct the public councils by its wisdom. It will never again utter its almost oracular thoughts in philosophical retirement. It will never again pour out its strains of parental affection, and in the domestic circle give new force and fervor to the consolations of religion. The hand, too, which inscribed the Declaration of Independence is indeed laid low. The weary head reposes on its mother earth. The mountain winds sweep by the narrow tomb, and all around has the loneliness of desolation. The stranger guest may no longer visit that hospitable home, and find him there, whose classical taste and various conversation lent a charm to every leisure hour; whose bland manners and social simplicity made every welcome doubly dear; whose expansive mind commanded the range of almost every art and science; whose political sagacity, like that of his illustrious coadjutor, read the fate and interests of nations, as with a second sight, and scented the first breath of tyranny in the passing gale; whose love of liberty, like his, was inflexible, universal, supreme; whose devotion to their common country, like his, never faltered in the worst, and never wearied in the best of times; whose public services ended but with life, carrying the long line of their illumination over sixty years; whose last thoughts exhibited the ruling passion of his heart, enthusiasm in the cause of education; whose last breathing committed his soul to God, and his offspring to his country. Yes, Adams and Jefferson are gone from us forever-gone, as a sunbeam to revisit its native skies-gone, as this mortal to put on immortality. Of them, of each of them, every American may exclaim: "Ne'er to the chambers, where the mighty rest, Since their foundation, came a nobler guest, Nor e'er was to the bowers of bliss convey'd A fairer spirit, or more welcome shade." We may not mourn over the departure of such men. We should rather hail it as a kind dispensation of Providence, to affect our hearts with new and livelier gratitude. They were not cut off in the blossom of their days, while yet the vigor of manhood flushed their cheeks, and the harvest of glory was ungathered. They fell not as martyrs fall, seeing only in dim perspective the salvation of their country. They lived to enjoy the blessings earned by their labors, and to realize all which their fondest hopes had desired. The infirmities of life stole slowly and silently upon them, leaving still behind a cheerful serenity of mind. In peace, in the bosom of domestic affection, in the hallowed reverence of their countrymen, in the full possession of their faculties, they wore out the last remains of life, without a fear to cloud, with scarcely a sorrow to disturb its close. The joyful day of our jubilee came over them with its refreshing influence. To them, indeed, it was "a great and good day." The morning sun shone with softened lustre on their closing eyes. Its evening beams played lightly on their brows, calm in all the dignity of death. Their spirits escaped from these frail tenements without a struggle or a groan. Their death was gentle as an infant's sleep. It was a long, lingering twilight, melting into the softest shade. of antiquity; their old age was cheered by its delightful reminiscences. To them belongs the fine panegyric of Cicero, "Erant in eis plurimæ litteræ, nec eæ vulgares, sed interiores quædam, et recondita; divina memoria, summa verborum et gravitas et elegantia; atque hæc omnia vitæ decorabat dignitas et integritas." I will ask your indulgence only for a moment longer. Since our last anniversary, death has been annually busy in thinning our numbers. I may not look on the right, or the left, without missing some of those who stood by my side in my academic course, in the happy days spent within yonder venerable walls. The one, "These are counsellors, that feelingly persuade us what we are," and what we must be. Shaw and Salisbury are no more. whose modest worth and ingenuous virtue adorned a spotless life; the other, whose social kindness and love of letters made him welcome in every circle. But, what shall I say of Haven, with whom died a thousand hopes, not of his friends and family alone, but of his country. Nature had given him a strong and brilliant genius; and it was chastened and invigorated by grave, as well as elegant studies. Whatever be longed to human manners and pursuits, to human interests and feelings, to government, or science, or literature, he endeavored to master with a scholar's diligence and taste. Few men have read so much or so well. Few have united such Fortunate men, so to have lived, and so to manly sense with such attractive modesty. His have died. Fortunate, to have gone hand in thoughts and his style, his writings and his achand in the deeds of the Revolution. Fortu- tions, were governed by a judgment, in which nate, in the generous rivalry of middle life. energy was combined with candor, and benevoFortunate, in deserving and receiving the high-lence with deep, unobtrusive, and fervid piety. est honors of their country. Fortunate in old His character may be summed up in a single age to have rekindled their ancient friendship line, for there with a holier flame. Fortunate, to have passed through the dark valley of the shadow of death together. Fortunate, to be indissolubly united in the memory and affections of their countrymen. Fortunate, above all, in an immortality of virtuous fame, on which history may with severe simplicity write the dying encomium of Pericles, "No citizen, through their means, ever put on mourning." "was given To Haven every virtue under Heaven." He had just arrived at the point of his professional career, in which skill and learning begin to reap their proper reward. He was in possession of the principal blessings of life—of fortune, of domestic love, of universal respect. There are those who had fondly hoped, when I may not dwell on this theme. It has come they should have passed away, he might be over my thoughts, and I could not wholly sup- found here to pay a humble tribute to their press the utterance of them. It was my prin-memory. To Providence it has seemed fit to cipal intention to hold them up to my country-order otherwise, that it might teach us men, not as statesmen and patriots, but as scholars, as lovers of literature, as eminent examples of the excellence of the union of ancient learning with modern philosophy. Their youth was disciplined in classical studies; their active life was instructed by the prescriptive wisdom what shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue." We may not mourn over such a loss, as those who are without hope. That life is not too short which has accomplished its highest destiny; that spirit may not linger here, which is purified for immortality. THE AMERICAN INDIANS. But where are they? Where are the vil lages, and warriors, and youth; the sachemi and the tribes; the hunters and their families? They have perished. They are consumed. The wasting pestilence has not alone done the mighty work. No-nor famine, nor war. There has been a mightier power, a moral canker, which hath eaten into their heart-cores-a plague, which the touch of the white man communicated-a poison which betrayed them into a There is, indeed, in the fate of these unfortunate beings, much to awaken our sympathy, and much to disturb the sobriety of our judgment; much, which may be urged to excuse their own atrocities; much in their characters, which betrays us into an involuntary admiration. What can be more melancholy than their history? By a law of their nature, they seem destined to a slow, but sure extinction. Every where, at the approach of the white man, they fade away. We hear the rustling of their foot-lingering ruin. The winds of the Atlantic fan steps, like that of the withered leaves of au- not a single region which they may now call tumn, and they are gone for ever. They pass their own. Already the last feeble remnants mournfully by us, and they return no more. of the race are preparing for their journey be Two centuries ago, the smoke of their wigwams yond the Mississippi. I see them leave their and the fires of their councils rose in every val- miserable homes, the aged, the helpless, the ley, from Hudson's Bay to the farthest Florida, women and the warriors, "few and faint, yet from the ocean to the Mississippi and the lakes. fearless still." The ashes are cold on their naThe shouts of victory and the war-dance rang tive hearths. The smoke no longer curls round through the mountains and the glades. The their lowly cabins. They move on with a slow, thick arrows and the deadly tomahawk whistled unsteady step. The white man is upon their through the forests; and the hunter's trace and heels, for terror or despatch; but they heed the dark encampment startled the wild beasts him not. They turn to take a last look of their in their lairs. The warriors stood forth in their deserted villages. They cast a last glance upon glory. The young listened to the songs of other the graves of their fathers. They shed no tears; days. The mothers played with their infants, they utter no cries; they heave no groans. and gazed on the scene with warm hopes of the There is something in their hearts which passes future. The aged sat down; but they wept speech. There is something in their looks, not They should soon be at rest in fairer of vengeance or submission, but of hard necesregions, where the Great Spirit dwelt, in a sity, which stifles both; which chokes all utterhome prepared for the brave, beyond the west-ance; which has no aim or method. It is ern skies. Braver men never lived; truer men never drew the bow. They had courage, and fortitude, and sagacity, and perseverance, beyond most of the human race. They shrank froi no dangers, and they feared no hardships. If they had the vices of savage life, they had the virtues also. They were true to their country, their friends, and their homes. If they forgave not injury, neither did they forget kindness. If their vengeance was terrible, their fidelity and generosity were unconquerable also. Their love, like their hate, stopped not on this side of the grave. not. courage absorbed in despair. They linger but for a moment. Their look is onward. They have passed the fatal stream. It shall never be repassed by them-no, never. Yet there lies not between us and them an impassable guit. They know and feel that there is for them still one remove farther, not distant nor unseen. It is to the general burial-ground of their race.* From the Discourse pronounced at the request of the Essex Historical Society, in commemoration of the first set tlement of Salem, Mass. WILLIAM WIRT. WILLIAM WIRT, one of the most celebrated advocates and accomplished writers of the nineteenth century, was of a humble but respectable parentage. His father was a Swiss by birth, his mother a German. Some time prior to the Revolution they settled at Bladensburg, in Maryland, where they accumulated a small property by keeping the village tavern. At that place their distinguished son, who was their sixth and youngest child, was born, on the eighth day of November, 1772. During his infancy his father died, and on the death of his mother, which occurred just as he was entering upon his ninth year, he passed into the family of his uncle, Jacob Wirt, under whose guardianship he spent his minority. At seven he was sent from home to a school in Georgetown, now of the District of Columbia, from whence, after spending nearly a year unsatisfactorily, he was removed to a classical school in Charles County, Maryland. At this school he remained until the year 1782. Being naturally a lively boy and accustomed to say "smart things, and sing songs of humor very well," he became a great favorite among his schoolmates, as well as in the widow's family in which he resided, and was as happy as a child could be away from his home and the natural objects of his affections. In reverting to this period of his life, he says: "From the time I rose, until I went to bed, the live-long day, it was all enjoyment, save only with two drawbacks-the going to school, and the getting tasks on holidays which last, by-the-bye, is a practical cruelty that ought to be abolished. With the exception of these same tasks and a slight repugnance to the daily school, Mrs. Love's was an elysium to me." From this school he was transferred to that of the Reverend James Hunt, a Presbyterian minister in Montgomery county, and there, during four years' tuition, he received his principal instruction in the classics and mathematics. The library of his preceptor afforded a fund of general reading, which he eagerly grasped and profited by. He read with avidity the old dramas, Josephus, Pope, Addison, Horne's Elements of Criticism, and Guy, the Earl of Warwick, "which last he obtained from a carpenter in the employ of Mr. Hunt," and further satiated his passion for reading by a fragment of Peregrine Pickle, which he probably obtained from the same source. About this time he turned his attention to composition, and although in most of his poetical productions, thought was sacrificed to rhythm, a circumstance which soon put an end to his muse, in his prose efforts he met with encouragement, and became a confirmed reader and author. Among numerous essays which he prepared, one fell into the hands of his teacher, and was read with unqualified praise. The history of it, as given by his friend and biographer, will be read with interest: "It was engendered by a school incident, and was a piece of revenge more legitimate than schoolboy invention is apt to inflict when sharpened by wrongs real or imaginary. There was an usher at the school, and this usher, who was more learned and methodical than even-tempered, was one morning delayed in the customary routine by the absence of his principal scholar, who was young Wirt himself. In his impatience, he went often to the door, and espying some boys clinging like a knot of bees to a cherry tree not far off, he concluded that the expected absentee was of the number, and nursed his wrath accordingly. The truth was, that the servant of a neighbor with whom Wirt was boarded at that time, had gone that morning to mill, and the indispensable breakfast had been delayed by his late return. |