shal's guard," very appropriately taking their places. There is a chain on the Common to-day: it is the same chain that was around the court house in 1851; it is the chain that bound Sims; now it is a festal chain.

There are mottoes about the Common-" They mutually pledged to each other their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor." I suppose it means that the mayor and the kidnappers did this. "The spirit of "76 still lives." Lives, I suppose in the supreme court of Fugitive Slave Bill judges. 66 Washington, Jefferson, and their compatriots!—their names are sacred in the heart of every American.” That, I suppose, is the opinion of Thomas Sims and of Anthony Burns. And opposite the great Park Street Church,-where a noble man is this day, I trust, discoursing noble words, for he has never yet been found false to freedom-" liberty and independence, our Fathers' legacy!

"God forbid that we their sons should prove recreant to the trust!"

It ought to read "God forgive us that we their sons have proved so recreant to the trust!" So they will celebrate the Fourth of July and call it "Independence Day! The foolish press of France, bought and beaten and trodden on by Napoleon, the crafty, is full of talk about the welfare of the "Great Nation!" Philip of Macedon was conquering the Athenian allies town by town; he destroyed and swept off two-and-thirty cities, selling their children as slaves. All the Cassandrian eloquence of Demosthenes could not rouse degenerate Athens from her idle sleep. She also fell, the fairest of all free States; corrupted first,-forgetful of God's higher law. Shall America thus perish, all immature!

So was it in the days of old: they ate, they drank, they planted, they builded, they married, they were given in mar

riage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came and devoured them all!

Well, is this to be the end? Was it for this the Pilgrims came over the sea? Does Forefathers' Rock assent to it? Was it for this that the New England clergy prayed, and their prayers became the law of the land for a hundred years? Was it for this that Cotton planted in Boston a little branch of the Lord's vine and Roger Williams and Higginson-he still lives in an undegenerate son-did the same in the city which they called of peace, Salem? Was it for this that Eliot carried the Gospel to the Indians? that Chauncey and Edwards and Hopkins and Mayhew and Channing and Ware labored and prayed? for this that our fathers fought, the Adamses, Washington, Hancock? for this that there was an eight years' war and a thousand battle-fields? for this the little monuments at Acton, Concord, Lexington, West Cambridge, Danvers, and the great one over there on the spot which our fathers' blood made so red? Shall America become Asia Minor? New England, Italy? Boston such as Athens,-dead and rotten? Yes! if we do not mend, and speedily mend. Ten years more and the liberty of America is all gone. We shall fall,—the laugh, the byword, the proverb, the scorn, the mock of the nations, who shall cry against us. Hell from beneath shall be moved to meet us at our coming, and in derision shall it welcome

us,

"The heir of all the ages, and the youngest born of time!"

We shall lie down with the unrepentant prodigals of old time, damned to everlasting infamy and shame.

Would you have it so? Shall it be?

To-day America is a debauched young man, of good blood, fortune, and family, but the companion of gamesters and brawlers; reeking with wine; wasting his substance in riotous

living; in the lap of harlots squandering the life which his mother gave him. Shall he return? Shall he perish? One day may determine.

Shall America thus die? I look to the past,-Asia, Africa, Europe, and they answer, "Yes!" Where is the Hebrew Commonwealth; the Roman Republic; where is liberal Greece, Athens and many a far-famed Ionian town; where are the commonwealths of medieval Italy; the Teutonic free cities, German, Dutch, or Swiss? They have all perished. Not one of them is left. Parian Statues of Liberty, sorely mutilated, still remain; but the Parian rock whence liberty once hewed her sculptures out,-it is all gone. Shall America thus perish? Greece and Italy both answer, "Yes!" I question the last fifty years of American history and it says "Yes." I look to the American pulpit, I ask the five million Sundayschool scholars, and they say "Yes." I ask the federal court, the Democratic party, and the Whig, and the answer is still the same.

But I close my eyes on the eleven past missteps we have taken for slavery; on that sevenfold clandestine corruption; I forget the Whig party; I forget the present administration; I forget the judges of the courts; I remember the few noblest men that there are in society, church and state; I remember the grave of my father, the lessons of my mother's life; I look to the spirit of this age,—it is the nineteenth century, not the ninth; I look to the history of the Anglo-Saxons in America and the history of mankind; I remember the story and the song of Italian and German patriots; I recall the dear words of those great-minded Greeks,-Ionian, Dorian, Ætolian; I remember the Romans who spoke and sang and fought for truth and right; I recollect those old Hebrew prophets, earth's nobler sons, poets and saints; I call to mind the greatest,

noblest, purest soul that ever blossomed in this dusty world; and I say "No!" Truth shall triumph, justice shall be law! And if America fail, though she is one fortieth of God's family, and it is a great loss, there are other nations behind us; our Truth shall not perish even if we go down.

But we shall not fail! I look into your eyes,-young men and women, thousands of you, and men and women far enough from young! I look into the eyes of fifty thousand other men and women whom in the last eight months I have spoken to face to face, and they say, No! America shall not fail!” I remember the women, who were never found faithless when a sacrifice was to be offered to great principles; I look up to my God, and I look into my own heart, and I say, We shall not fail! We shall not fail!

CLAY

ASSIUS MARCELLUS CLAY, an eminent American orator and politician, was born in Madison County, Kentucky, October 19, 1810. He was educated at Centre College, Kentucky, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale College, and on returning to Kentucky after his graduation declared himself an emancipationist and freed his own slaves. He was admitted to the bar but never practised, and entering the Kentucky legislature in 1835 there advocated internal improvements and gradual slave emancipation, the owners of slaves to be reimbursed for their losses. His anti-slavery views caused his defeat in his endeavor to enter the legislature the next year, but he was successful in 1837, and again defeated in 1841, on the same ground as before. He opposed the admission of Texas, and when Henry Clay was the Whig candidate for the presidency he canvassed the State in behalf of the Kentucky statesman. He subsequently established an anti-slavery journal, "The True American," in Lexington, Kentucky, and when his office was mobbed he continued to issue the paper in Cincinnati and distributed it in his own State. Always ready to fight for his opinions he figured in several personal encounters as well as in several fatal duels. He served in the American army during the Mexican war and on his return to Kentucky was received with public honors by his former political enemies. In 1850 he was unsuccessful as the anti-slavery candidate for governor, and in the elections of 1856 and 1860 supported Fremont and Lincoln. He was minister to Russia in 1861-69, save for an interval of a year, when he served as major-general in the Federal army in the Civil War, and he subsequently espoused the Cuban cause and was president of the Cuban Aid Society. In 1872 and the two succeeding presidential campaigns he supported the Democratic candidates for the presidency, but in 1884 gave his allegiance to the Republican candidate, Blaine. After that period he lived in retirement at Whitehall, Kentucky, until his death. To him was due the introduction of the common-school system into Kentucky and certain reforms in the jury system.

ADDRESS AT YALE COLLEGE

DELIVERED ON THE CENTENNIAL BIRTHDAY OF WASHINGTON, FEBRUARY 22, 1832

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ENTLEMEN OF YALE COLLEGE,- Were a stranger to visit this land, in this time of peace and plenty, this mildness and tranquillity of nature, and hear, at a distance, the loud peals of cannon, and the murmurs of assembled multitudes, behold crowds of both