From March, 1853, to May, 1854, he was in the United States Senate. On February 22, 1856, he delivered in Boston an address, on the Character of Washington, which he repeated in different cities and towns nearly one hundred and fifty times. He gave the entire proceeds of this address toward the purchase of Mt. Vernon, the home of Washington, for the general government. He also gave for the same purpose $10,000 received for articles written for the New York Ledger, thus raising the entire amount contributed by him to over $100,000. In 1857 and 1858 he gave to different charitable associations the proceeds of other addresses, amounting to nearly $20,000. In 1860 he was nominated for the Vice-Presidency on the ticket with John Bell, of Tennessee, but was defeated. Though anxious for peace while there was a chance to avoid war, he threw the whole weight of his powers into a support of the Union after the War of Secession began, and won the gratitude of his countrymen by the fervent, patriotic eloquence of his speeches in all the principal cities of the North. His death occurred on January 15, 1865, and resulted from a cold caught on the evening of January 9, while delivering an address in aid of the suffering inhabitants of Savannah, which had just been captured by Gen. Sherman. Edward Everett's life of seventy-one years spanned a large portion of the youth of our nation. Born in the administration of Washington, he lived to see the War of Secession practically ended under Lincoln. Although thirty-six years old before the first locomotive engine made its appearance in the United States, he lived to see our country covered with a network of over thirty-five thousand miles of railways. During his life the population of the United States increased from about four to thirty millions, and the number of States from fifteen to thirty-six. It is not to be wondered at that he was fired with an in tense feeling of patriotism, or that his noble utterances struck responsive chords in the hearts of his listeners. He had a theory that man can do fairly well anything that he honestly tries to do; his own practice was to undertake whatever work lay before him, and so extraordinary was the versatility of his great mental power that he did remarkably well whatever he undertook. He achieved distinction as an orator, a man of letters, a statesman, and a diplomatist, but the single title which describes him best is that of orator. Had he labored continuously in some chosen field he would have left behind him even a greater monument of his remarkable power than is to be found in his numerous speeches and orations. FROM "THE CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON." COMMON Sense was eminently a characteristic of Washington; so called, not because it is so very common a trait of character of public men, but because it is the final judgment on great practical questions to which the mind of the community is pretty sure eventually to arrive. Few qualities of character in those who influence the fortunes of nations are so conducive both to stability and progress. But it is a quality which takes no hold of the imagination; it inspires no enthusiasm, it wins no favor; it is well if it can stand its ground against the plausible absurdities, the hollow pretences, the stupendous impostures of the day. But, however these unobtrusive and austere virtues may be overlooked in the popular estimate, they belong unquestionably to the true type of sterling greatness, reflecting as far as it can be done within the narrow limits of humanity that deep repose and silent equilibrium of mental and moral power which governs the universe. To complain of the character of Washington that it is destitute of brilliant qualities, is to complain of a circle that it has no salient points and no sharp angles in its circumference; forgetting that it owes all its wonderful properties to the unbroken curve of which every point is equidistant from the centre.1 Instead, therefore, of being a mark of infe 1 I was not aware, when I wrote this sentence, that I had ever read Dryden's "Heroic Stanzas consecrated to the Memory of his Highness Oliver, late Lord Protector of this Commonwealth, |