the possible destiny of the American Union. His "Olympian" soul, like that of PERICLES, had been educated and exalted by the study of nature and nature's laws, from which exhaustless fountain he drew analogies worthy of his mighty mind. A friend recollects him walking, near midnight, around the Capitol. Their conversation turned upon the possible dangers to the American Republic from an undue extension of its geographical limits. Turning his face up to the starry firmament, which shone reflected in his deep cavernous eyes, he solemnly asked, "Did the discovery of Neptune, impair the stability of the solar system?" Do not the scene and the man reproduce the portrait, which Ovid had painted eighteen centuries before

Os...sublime dedit, coelumque tueri...?

Even his pleasantry, on that occasion, was somewhat colossal and elephantine. Affectionately throwing his arm around his friend, at parting, he said, in his large and grandly cordial way, "Come down to Washington, and come often. I want none of 66 your short-legged sixty day fellows about me, with their three "days' grace. I want inen,-long-legged men,-who go striding "down the century, like those pre-Adamite birds in the old "Connecticut Valley !"

We

But we must hurry away from PERICLES and WEBSTER. must get back to our College walls, and our Class of 1814, and see what company we kept in our Olympiad.

What then were the surrounding accessories, and what the immediate antecedents, which gave to our Class its form and features?

Historically and chronologically speaking, nearly all of our number were born shortly after the foundation of our present National Government. All of us lived in the atmosphere breathed by WASHINGTON. Many of our number first saw the

light during the French Revolution, amid the horrors of the Reign of Terror. When the good king, Louis the Sixteenth, the friend of American independence, was beheaded, some of the Class were old enongh to hear the widespread groan, coming heavily across the Atlantic. While at school we heard the shouts of the victors at Aboukir and Trafalgar. We followed on our maps, "the Lit tle Corporal" from Lodi to Marengo, to Jena and to Austerlitz.

In the year 1810, when we entered college, the French Emperor had reached the summit, the very culminating point of his victorious career. He stood preeminent and aloft, at once the dominant power and the terror of the world. Europe was ringing with the crash of its ancient thrones, and he was rebuilding on their ruins the Western Roman Empire of Charlemagne, and ambitiously imitating that of Augustus. A Senatus Consultum of the Legislative Assembly of the Empire, at Paris, in 1810, preceded by a glowing exordium from Regnault de St. Jean d'Angely, in its own official language, "unites to the French Empire "the city of Rome, the ancient patrimony of the Cæsars and "of Charlemagne; joins parts of the Roman Empire, which have "long been separated; and establishes an alliance between the "Tiber and the Seine, between Paris and Rome. In a short period, beyond the Pyrenees, the ports of Spain," so prophecies the document, "shall be opened to our arms and closed to Eng"land. The peace of Europe from that moment will be secured

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by the sanctity of treaties, the extent of power, the uniformity "of interests, and the superiority of genius!" Such was the legal form of the imperial process of European consolidation.

Its details had been already partially carried out. The pre-existing legal "Departments of France" had been extended eastward to the Elbe, and southward to the northern boundary of Naples, thereby formally absorbing and converting into integral portions of France, all the territories of Holland, Flanders, the Free Hanseatic Cities, and of Italy north of Na

ples, including the ancient Republic of Venice. The adjacent territories in Naples, Spain and part of Germany, had been erected into French monarchies, ruled by relatives of the Emperor, and subject to change, at any moment, at his single will. Politically speaking, the Rhine, the Weser, and the Elbe were no longer German rivers. The Zuyder-Zee ceased to be Dutch. The Alps and the Appennines became mountains. of France, while Vesuvius was transmuted by the fiery Conqueror into a French volcano, and Etna was only saved by the naval force of England from the grasp of his lieutenant.

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Napoleon was married, in 1810, to Maria Louisa, of the House of Austria, an event by which "France," in the ecstatic language of the Legislative Assembly, was intoxicated with joy "and transported with love!" It was but the prelude to his plan of universal dominion. Their child, when born, amid the unbo:inded acclamations of Paris, was formally created "King of Rome"; the "Cæsar" to the French Augustus.

In 1812, an army of five hundred thousand men, composed of levies from France and all the conquered nations, and glittering with all the pomp and circumstance of modern war, was led by this Agamemnon, this "King of Kings," to the Niemen, to conquer and destroy the Empire of Russia. The mighty array filled the whole world, not excepting England, with terror and dismay.

The historian Alison, whose English partialities no one will doubt, reviewing the state of the world at that eventful period, states that "the power of Napoleon appeared to be too great to "be withstood by any human effort; and even the strongest "heads could anticipate no other issue from the war than the "final prostration of Russia, the conquest of Turkey, and the "establishment of French supremacy from the English Channel "to the Black Sea." 66 A general despair seized the minds of men: it seemed doubtful if even the British navy in the end

"could secure the independence of their favored isle, and the

general subjugation of the civilized world was anticipated, probably to be rescued from slavery only by a fresh deluge of "northern barbarians."

The belief that the mighty Conqueror was destined to universal dominion, was not confined to Europe, but largely filled the American mind. His progress seemed so irresistible, that the question was asked in all quarters, how soon he would attempt to add the Western World to his conquests. It was even made a theme for school exercises by boys of tender age; for I find, among my own preposterous juvenilities, that I was set the task, by the village schoolmaster, of discussing, at the sapient age of ten years, in a written "Dispute" with an opponent but little older than myself, (who has since become the President of one of our best American Colleges) the remarkably modest question: "If Bonaparte conquers England, can he conquer America?"

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In 1812, by which time our Class had become "Sophomores,' the alarm had risen to such a pitch, that it was quite seriously contended by many worthy people, that Napoleon differed very little, in name or in fact, from "Apollyon." All of us will surely recollect the remarkable Essay which, in that year, went the rounds of the newspapers, seeking to show from Scripture the imperial usurper to be identical with, or twin brother of "the

great red dragon" of the Revelations, which rather startling proposition the writer strove to support by the coincidence of the seventeen letters composing "Napoleon Bonaparte" with the aggregate number of the "seven heads and ten horns," not to mention the "seven crowns," of his celestial counterpart.

The only European Power which had been able to resist the progress of the Conqueror, was the United Kingdom of the British Islands, briefly denominated "England." Her insular position, and the splendid naval victories of her heroic NELSON,

had effectually secured her supremacy on the ocean; but they drove Napoleon in his turn, to enforce on the land his celebrated "Continental System," interdicting throughout the European continent every species of commerce with the British Islands, and by a singular legal fiction, declaring them to be "in a state of blockade." As the necessary legal consequence, he claimed the belligerent right to "burn, sink, and destroy" every neutral vessel trading with England, or carrying its products or property. This brought on the English "Orders in Council," in retaliation; so that the commerce of the United States on the ocean soon fell a prey to the two belligerents, who agreed in nothing but their undisguised contempt for our young Republic. The whole ocean was lighted by the flames of our burning vessels, destroyed without stint or mercy, while England superadded the further outrage and indignity, of impressing into her navy our American seamen by thousands. By the year 1810, our maritime commerce was virtually annihilated, and the only question was, which of the two great ocean robbers we should first attack.

The effects of that question in forming the political character of the Class of 1814, will require a brief review of the origin and distinctive features of the two great parties, which had more or less divided the country from the foundation of the government.

The Constitution was the work of WASHINGTON, aided largely by HAMILTON and his associates. The character of that school of political thinkers was essentially English and practical. In erecting our political structure, they naturally sought to construct a machine which would not only steadily run without interruption, but would fully provide for its own preservation. With that view, they created and established, as they supposed, a political "Union," a unit, undivided and indivisible, absolutely supreme and sovereign within the limits prescribed by the Constitution, with a judicial tribunal of its own creation,

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