founded schools and endowed colleges, what obligations do not rest upon us, living under circumstances so much more favorable both for providing and for using the means of education? Literature becomes free institutions. It is the graceful ornament of civil liberty, and a happy restraint on the asperities which political controversies sometimes occasion. Just taste is not only an embellishment of society, but it rises almost to the rank of the virtues, and diffuses positive good throughout the whole extent of its influence. There is a connection between right feeling and right principles, and truth in taste is allied with truth in morality. With nothing in our past history to discourage us, and with something in our present condition and prospects to animate us, let us hope, that, as it is our fortune to live in an age when we may behold a wonderful advancement of the country in all its other great interests, we may see also equal progress and success attend the cause of letters.

Finally, let us not forget the religious character of our origin. Our fathers were brought hither by their high veneration for the Christian religion. They journeyed by its light, and labored in its hope. They sought to incorporate its principles with the elements of their society, and to diffuse its influence through all their institutions, civil, political, or literary. Let us cherish these sentiments, and extend this influence still more widely; in the full conviction, that that is the happiest society which partakes in the highest degree of the mild and peaceful spirit of Christianity.

The hours of this day are rapidly flying, and this occasion will soon be passed. Neither we nor our children can expect to behold its return. They are in the distant regions of futurity, they exist only in the all-creating power of God, who shall stand here a hundred years hence, to trace, through us, their descent from the Pilgrims, and to survey, as we have now surveyed, the progress of their country, during the lapse of a century. We would anticipate their concurrence with us in our sentiments of deep regard for our common ancestors. We would anticipate and partake the pleasure with which they will then recount the steps of New England's advancement. On the morning of that

day, although it will not disturb us in our repose, the voice of acclamation and gratitude, commencing on the Rock of Plymouth, shall be transmitted through millions of the sons of the Pilgrims, till it lose itself in the murmurs of the Pacific seas.

We would leave for the consideration of those who shall then occupy our places, some proof that we hold the blessings transmitted from our fathers in just estimation; some proof of our attachment to the cause of good government, and of civil and religious liberty; some proof of a sincere and ardent desire to promote every thing which may enlarge the understandings and improve the hearts of men. And when, from the long distance of a hundred years, they shall look back upon us, they shall know, at least, that we possessed affections, which, running backward and warming with gratitude for what our ancestors have done for our happiness, run forward also to our posterity, and meet them with cordial salutation, ere yet they have arrived on the shore of being.

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 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!

THE REVOLUTION IN GREECE.*

Speech delivered in the House of Representatives of the United States, on the 19th

of January, 1824.

On the assembling of Congress, in December, 1823, President Monroe made the revolution in Greece the subject of a paragraph in his annual message, and on the 8th of December Mr. Webster moved the following resolution in the House of Representatives : —

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Resolved, That provision ought to be made, by law, for defraying the expense incident to the appointment of an Agent or Commissioner to Greece, whenever the President shall deem it expedient to make such appointment."

*Since this article was in type, we have met with the following tribute to the memory of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, delivered in the Greek House of Representatives, December 17, 1852:

On this day's session in the House of Representatives, Mr. Charmonzies, Deputy of Lamia, having taken the floor, proposed that the House should express its regret on hearing of the death of two of the great men of the United States, namely, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster; and that their names be inscribed on the walls in the peribolus of the Chamber.

The honorable Deputy introduced his proposition in the following address:

"When the wise government of a great nation- -a government worthy of respect for its virtues. goes into mourning, lamenting with its people the death of one of its citizens, that citizen truly must have been a great man. And the privation of a great man is an irreparable loss to all mankind. We took up arms to shake off a heavy yoke -a yoke of reproach, and one difficult to be borne; and the sanctity of our enterprise immediately found protection in the other hemisphere, where, among many others, two truly distinguished men had effectually raised up their Christian voice in behalf of the grievously suffering Greeks. Who among us, the surviving combatants, has forgotten, or who among our youth has not heard from his parents, that, independently of the ravages of war, - famine and sickness were decimating us? And who does not know that the bread and clothing of the Americans of the United States saved multitudes from the grasp of Charon? And who doubts that, if the noble and generous-minded citizens of the United States had lived in our hemisphere, the Greek contest would have been terminated soon er, and with more success?

"Gratitude, Sirs, is a cardinal virtue of man; and the Greek nation was ever of old distinguished for this virtue. Our immortal ancestors erected temples in honor of their benefactors. Among our benefactors, then, are numbered, since 1822, the ever-memorable Daniel Webster and Henry Clay, whose death a whole nation the people of the United States - this day lament. Let us, therefore, honorable representatives of the Greek nation, unite our tears with those of our noble brothers, the citizens of the United States, for this loss; and, as proof of our gratitude, let us inscribe on the walls of this peribolus the glorious names of the Philhellenes DANIEL WEBSTER and HENRY CLAY."

These, it is believed, are the first official expressions favorable to the independence of Greece, uttered by any of the governments of Christendom, and no doubt contributed powerfully towards the creation of that feeling throughout the civilized world which eventually led to the battle of Navarino, and the liberation of a portion of Greece from the Turkish yoke.

The House of Representatives having, on the 19th of January, resolved itself into a committee of the whole, and this resolution being taken into consideration, Mr. Webster spoke to the following effect:

I AM afraid, Mr. Chairman, that, so far as my part in this discussion is concerned, those expectations which the public excitement existing on the subject, and certain associations easily suggested by it, have conspired to raise, may be disappointed. An occasion which calls the attention to a spot so distinguished, so connected with interesting recollections, as Greece, may naturally create something of warmth and enthusiasm. In a grave, political discussion, however, it is necessary that those feelings should be chastised. I shall endeavor properly to repress them, although it is impossible that they should be altogether extinguished. We must, indeed, fly beyond the civilized world; we must pass the dominion of law and the boundaries of knowledge; we must, more especially, withdraw ourselves from this place, and the scenes and objects which here surround us, if we would separate ourselves entirely from the influence of all those memorials of herself which ancient Greece has transmitted for the admiration and the benefit of mankind. This free form of government, this popular assembly, the common council held for the common good, where have we contemplated its earliest models? This practice of free debate and public discussion, the contest of mind with mind, and that popular eloquence, which, if it were now here, on a subject like this, would move the stones of the Capitol, whose was the lan

guage in which all these were first exhibited ?

Even the

edifice in which we assemble, these proportioned columns,

- this ornamented architecture, all remind us that Greece has existed, and that we, like the rest of mankind, are greatly her debtors.

But I have not introduced this motion in the vain hope

of discharging any thing of this accumulated debt of centuries. I have not acted upon the expectation, that we, who have inherited this obligation from our ancestors, should now attempt to pay it to those who may seem to have inherited from their ancestors a right to receive payment. My object is nearer and more immediate. I wish to take occasion of the struggle of an interesting and gallant people, in the cause of liberty and Christianity, to draw the attention of the House to the circumstances which have accompanied that struggle, and to the principles which appear to have governed the conduct of the great states of Europe in regard to it; and to the effects and consequences of these principles upon the independence of nations, and especially upon the institutions of free governments. What I have to say of Greece, therefore, concerns the modern, not the ancient; the living, and not the dead. It regards her, not as she exists in history, triumphant over time, and tyranny, and ignorance; but as she now is, contending, against fearful odds, for being, and for the common privileges of human

nature.

As it is never difficult to recite commonplace remarks and trite aphorisms, so it may be easy, I am aware, on this occasion, to remind me of the wisdom which dictates to men a care of their own affairs, and admonishes them, instead of searching for adventures abroad, to leave other men's concerns in their own hands. It may be easy to call this resolution Quixotic, the emanation of a crusading or propagandist spirit. All this, and more, may be readily said; but all this, and more, will not be allowed to fix a character upon this proceeding, until that is proved which it takes for granted. Let it first be shown, that in this question there is nothing which can affect the interest, the character, or the duty of this country. Let it be proved, that we are not called upon, by either of these considerations, to express an opinion on the subject to which the resolution relates. Let this be proved, and then it will indeed be made out, that neither ought this resolution to pass, nor ought the subject of it to have been mentioned in the communication of the President to us. But, in my opinion, this cannot be