I can never fail, certainly, to remember his countless acts of kindness to myself during a friendship of thirty years. I do not forget that at least once in my life I have differed from him on important questions, and that recently; but I can honestly say that there was no living man from whom I differed with a deeper regret, or with a greater distrust of my own judgment. Nor can I fail to remember with inexpressible joy at this hour that within a week, I had almost said within a day, after that difference was avowed and acted upon, he reciprocated most kindly and most cordially an assurance that our old relations of friendship and affection should suffer no estrangement or interruption and that we would never distrust each other's sincerity or each other's mutual regard. "I am not afraid [he wrote me] that we shall give each other cause of offence and we will not let others put us at variance." Fellow citizens, I knew not how to commence these imperfect and desultory remarks and I know not how to close them. There is, I am sensible, much to console us in our bereavement, severe and sudden as it is. We may well rejoice and be grateful to God that our illustrious and beloved friend was the subject of no lingering illness or infirmity, that he was permitted to die while in the full possession of his powers, while at the very zenith of his fame, and while he had a hold on the hearts of his countrymen such as even he had never before enjoyed. We may well rejoice, too, that his voice was last heard in advocating a measure of signal humanity which appealed to every heart throughout the land, and that he lived to see of the fruit of his lips and to be satisfied. I hold in my hand one of his last notes-written on Thursday evening to our munificent and excellent fellow citizen, Mr. William Gray, and which, in his own neces sary and regretted absence, he has kindly permitted me to read: "Summer St., Jan. 12, 1865. "My Dear Mr. Gray:-I am greatly obliged to you for sending me word of the success of the Savannah subscription. What a large-hearted, openhanded place we live in! It is on these occasions that I break the tenth commandment and covet the wealth of you millionaires. I have been in bed almost ever since Monday, having narrowly escaped an attack of pneumonia. I had been in the court house all the morning, and had to return to it for three hours in the afternoon to attend to a harassing arbitration case, and left Faneuil Hall with my extremities ice and my lungs on fire. But in such a cause one is willing to suffer. This little note, my friends, in his own unmistakable and inimitable hand written within two days of his death shows clearly what thoughts were uppermost in that noble heart before it so suddenly ceased to beat. In such a cause he was willing to suffer. In such a cause he was not unwilling to die. But whatever consolation may be found in the circumstances of his death, or in the occupation of his last years or months or days, we cannot still but feel that no heavier public calamity could at this moment if at any moment have befallen our community. We cannot but feel that not Boston only, not Massachusetts only, not New England only, but our whole country is called to deplore the loss of its most accomplished scholar, its most brilliant orator, its most valuable citizen. More and more as the days and the years roll on will that loss be perceived and felt by all who have known, admired, and loved him. The public proceedings of this day, the sad ceremonials to-morrow, will find their place on the page of history. All the customary tributes of respect and gratitude to our lamented friend will at no distant day be completed. We shall hang his portrait on these hallowed walls in fit companionship with the patriot forms which already adorn them. We shall place a statue of him in due time, I trust, on yonder terrace, not far from that of his illustrious and ever honored friend. But neither portrait nor statue, nor funeral pomp nor public eulogy will have done for his memory what he has done for it himself. The name and the fame of Edward Everett will in no way more surely be perpetuated than by the want which will be experienced, by the aching void which will be felt on all our occasions of commemoration, on all our days of jubilee, on every literary anniversary, at every festive board, in every appeal for education, for charity, for country, in every hour of peril, in every hour of triumph, from the loss of that ever-ready, ever-welcome voice, which has so long been accustomed to say the best, the most appropriate, the most effective word, in the best, the most appropriate, the most effective manner. For nearly half a century no public occasion has ever seemed complete without his presence. By a thousand conspicuous acts of public service, by a thousand nameless labors of love for young and old, for rich and poor, for friends and for strangers, he has rendered himself necessary—so far as any one human being ever can be necessary to the welfare and the honor of the community in which he lived. I can find no words for the oppression I feel in common I am sure, with all who hear me, at the idea that we shall see his face and hear his voice no more. As I looked on his lifeless form a few hours only after his spirit had returned to God who gave it as I saw those lips which we had so often hung upon with rapture, motionless and sealed in death-and as I reflected that all those marvellous acquisitions and gifts, that matchless memory, that exquisite diction, that exhaustless illustration, that infinite variety which no age could wither and no custom stale-that all, all, were henceforth lost to us forever, I could only recall the touching lines which I remem bered to have seen applied to the sudden death not many years ago of a kindred spirit of old England-one of her greatest statesmen, one of his most valued friends: "Could not the grave forget thee and lay low Some less majestic, less beloved head? Those who weep not for kings shall weep for thee Y CENTENNIAL ORATION AT YORKTOWN DELIVERFD OCTOBER 19, 1881 ES, it is mine,-and somewhat peculiarly mine, perhaps, notwithstanding the presence of the official representatives of my native State,-to bear the greetings of Plymouth Rock to Jamestown; of Bunker Hill to Yorktown; of Boston, recovered from the British forces in '76, to Mount Vernon, the home in life and death of her illustrious deliverer; and there is no office within the gift of congresses, presidents, or people, which I could discharge more cordially and fervently. And may I not hope, as one who is proud to feel coursing in his veins the Huguenot blood of a Massachusetts patriot who enjoyed the most affectionate relations with the young Lafayette when he first led the way to our assistance; as one, too, who has personally felt the warm pressure of his own hand and received a benediction from his own lips, under a father and a mother's roof nearly threescore years ago when he was the guest of the nation; and let me add as an old presiding officer in that representative chamber at the Capitol, where side by side with that of Washington,-its only fit companion-piece,-the admirable full-length portrait of the Marquis, the work and the gift of his friend Ary Scheffer, was so long a daily and hourly feast for my eyes and inspiration for my efforts; may I not hope that I shall not be regarded as a wholly unfit or inappropriate organ of that profound sense of obligation and indebtedness to Lafayette, to Rochambeau, to De Grasse, and to France, which is felt and cherished by us all at this hour? For indeed, fellow citizens, our earliest and our latest acknowledgments are due this day to France for the inestimable services which gave us the crowning victory of the 19th of October, 1781. It matters not for us to speculate now whether American independence might not have been ultimately achieved without her aid. It matters not for us to calculate or conjecture how soon, or when or under what circumstances that grand result might have been accomplished. We all know that, God willing, such a consummation was as certain in the end as to-morrow's sunrise, and that no earthly potentates or powers, single or conjoined, could have carried us back into a permanent condition of colonial dependence and subjugation. From the first bloodshed at Lexington and Concord, from the first battle at Bunker Hill, Great Britain had lost her American colonies, and their established and recognized independence was only a question of time. Even the surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga in 1777,-the only American battle included by Sir Edward Creasy in his "Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World," of which he says that "no military event can be said to have exercised a more important influence on the future fortunes of mankind," and of which the late Lord Stanhope had said that this surrender" had not merely changed the relation of England and the feelings of Europe toward these insurgent colonies, but had modified for all time to come the connection between every colony and every parent |