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ful occasion, and with the hearts of the living mass throbbing for the thousands of heroes who slept beneath the sod. On all sides stretched the battle-field; and from Cemetery Hill the eloquent words of Everett were spoken, followed by the more brief and more immortal sentences of Abraham Lincoln. As I recur to that day, it is mournful to recall the many who honored it that have since been summoned to their final account: Lincoln, Everett, Seward, Meade, Chase, Todd, Brough, Caleb N. Smith, Edwin M. Stanton, and many, many more.

It was on this occasion that Edward Everett proclaimed the great thought that, however the passions of the conflict might rage, the time must come when all would be forgiven and forgotten. And even as he spoke, the issue was not decidedsixteen months of wounds, death, tears, and sorrow were yet to come. The haughty crest of the rebellion was bowed, but not broken. The great captain, Grant, had not yet taken the tiger by the throat, nor laid his conquering sword on Richmond town; Vicksburg had fallen, but the capital of the Confederacy was still the rendezvous of the enemy; the seas were still swept by their corsairs, and thousands in the busy walks of life were soon to be summoned to the fated carnival. It was in that hour that Edward Everett spoke these words, only one of the myriad passages which crowd that unequalled and neverto-be-forgotten tribute, showing that even when the great work had not been completed, when the South was bristling with defiance and revenge, he pleaded for the end of war and the beginning of peace :

"But the hour is coming, and now is, when the power of the leaders of the rebellion to delude and inflame must cease. There is no bitterness on the part of the masses. The people of the South are not going to wage an eternal war for the wretched pretexts by which this rebellion is sought to be justified. The bonds that unite us as one people-a substantial community of origin, language, belief, and law (the four great

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ties that hold the societies of men together); common, rational, and political interests; a common history; a common pride in a glorious ancestry; a common interest in this great heritage of blessings; the very geographical features of the country; mighty rivers that cross the lines of climate, and thus facilitate the interchange of natural and industrial products, while the wonder-working arm of the engineer has levelled the mountain-walls which separate the East and the West, compelling your own Alleghanies, my Maryland and Pennsylvania friends, to open wide their everlasting doors to the chariot-wheels of traffic and travel: these bonds of union are of perennial force and energy, while the causes of alienation are imaginary, factitious, and transient. The heart of the people North and South is for the Union. Indications too plain to be mistaken announce the fact both in the East and the West of the States in rebellion. In North Carolina and Arkansas the fatal charm at length is broken. At Raleigh and Little Rock the lips of honest and brave men are unsealed, and an independent press is unlimbering its artillery. When its rifled cannon shall begin to roar, the hosts of treasonable sophistry, the mad delusions of the day, will fly like the rebel army through the passes of yonder mountain. The weary masses of the people are yearning to see the dear old flag again floating upon their capitals, and they sigh for the return of the peace, prosperity, and happiness which they enjoyed under a government whose power was felt only in its blessings. And now, friends, fellow-citizens of Gettysburg and Pennsylvania, and you from remoter States, let me again, as we part, invoke your benediction on these honored graves. You feel, though the occasion is mournful, that it is good to be here. You feel that it was greatly auspicious for the cause of the country that the men of the East and the West, the men of the nineteen sister States, stood side by side on the perilous ridges of the battle. You now feel it a new bond of union that they shall lie side by side till a clarion

louder than that which marshalled them to the combat shall awaken their slumbers. God bless the Union! It is dearer to us for the blood of the brave men which has been shed in its defence. The spots on which they stood and fell, these pleasant heights; the fertile plain beneath them; the thriving village whose streets so lately rang with the strange din of war; the fields beyond the ridge where the noble Reynolds held the advancing foe at bay, and, while he gave up his own life, assured, by his forethought and self-sacrifice, the triumph of the two succeeding days; the little streams that wind through the hills, on whose banks in after-times the wondering ploughman will turn up, with the rude weapons of savage warfare, the fearful missiles of modern artillery. Seminary Ridge; Peach Orchard; Cemetery, Culp, and Wolf Hill; Round Top; Little Round Top-honorable names, henceforward dear and famous, no lapse of time, no distance of space, shall cause you to be forgotten! The whole earth,' said Pericles, as he stood over the remains of his fellow-citizens who had fallen in the first year of the Peloponnesian war-'the whole earth is a sepulchre of illustrious men.' All time, he might have added, is the millennium of their glory. Surely I would do no injustice to the other noble achievements of the war which have reflected such honor on both arms of the service, and have entitled the army and the navy of the United States, their officers and men, to the warmest thanks and richest rewards which a grateful people can pay. But they, I am sure, will join us in saying, as we bid farewell to the dust of these martyr-heroes, that wheresoever throughout the civilized world the accounts of this great warfare are read, and down to the latest period of recorded time, in the glorious annals of our common country there will be no brighter page than that which relates to the battle of Gettysburg."

These, as I have said, were glowing words, never to be forgotten. As they fell from Mr. Everett's lips, he looked like a prophet of old, and every heart palpitated Amen. But the

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great scene of all was when Abraham Lincoln rose, and, in his plain, unpretending way, spoke that marvellous epic, which will live as long as language, and will be spoken in every country, under every sky, by every people ready to fight and die for their freedom:

"Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war; we are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting-place of those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this; but in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work that they have thus far so nobly carried on. It is rather for us here to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us; that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain. That the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and the Government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth."

And so ends this chapter, I fear already too long; but the character of Edward Everett, though much spoken of, is not so completely understood as it ought to be, and in my delineation of it I found it so much more absorbing than I expected that I am sure my readers will be as much interested in its study as I have been.

III.

RICHARD RUSH, THE DIPLOMATIST.

RICHARD RUSH, son of the celebrated Dr. Benjamin Rush, of Pennsylvania, and grandson of Richard Stockton, of New Jersey, both signers of the Declaration of Independence, was of the school of Edward Everett, more precise and formal, and far less imaginative. I have been recalling his past residence in Paris, since reading the news from France indicating the efforts to restore the Napoleonic empire under the Prince Imperial. I met Mr. Rush repeatedly during his life, and more than once heard him speak of his relations to public men at home and abroad, and I can see him in my mind's eye, with his careful dress and studied manners, and almost hear his slow and measured accents. He wrote much, and was a pleasant talker. He fairly rounded the circle of politics, and filled many positions. He was appointed Attorney-general of Pennsylvania in January, 1811, and State Treasurer in November of the same year; again Attorneygeneral of the State from 1814 to 1817; Secretary of State of the United States, under James Madison, in 1816; Minister to England from 1817 to 1825, under both Monroe and John Quincy Adams; Secretary of the Treasury from 1825 to 1829, under the latter; and candidate for Vice-President with John Quincy Adams, in 1828, against General Jackson. His relations with Mr. Adams were most intimate, and affected his whole career. In 1831 he became an anti-Mason, and in 1834 wrote a powerful report against the Bank of the United States, and ever afterwards co-operated with the Democratic party. He was selected Minister to France in 1847-1848, and figured during the reign of Louis Philippe, and saw the beginning of the rule of Louis Napoleon. President Polk had nominated Charles Jared Ingersoll for that position, but the Senate refused to confirm the appointment; and Mr. Rush happening in Washington

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