his age and race, like that of Washington among patriots, or that of Shakespeare or Milton among poets.

It would be doing grievous injustice to our lamented friend, were we to deny or conceal that there were elements in his character which made his own warfare, in this respect, a stern one. He was no stranger to the love of accumulation. He was no stranger to the passion for gaining and saving and hoarding. There were in his nature the germs, and more than the germs, of economy and even of parsimony; and sometimes they would sprout, and spring up, in spite of himself. Nothing less strong than his own will, nothing less indomitable than his own courage, could have enabled him, by the grace of God, to strive successfully against that greedy, grudging, avaricious spirit which so often besets the talent for acquisition. In a thousand little ways, you might perceive, to the last, how much within him he had contended against, how much within him he had overcome and vanquished. All the more glorious and signal was the victory! All the more deserved and appropriate are these trappings of triumph with which his remains have been restored to us! You rob him of his richest laurel, you refuse him his brightest crown, when you attempt to cover up or disguise any of those innate tendencies, any of those acquired habits, any of those besetting temptations, against which he struggled so bravely and so triumphantly. Recount, if you please, every penurious or mercenary act of his earlier or his later life, which friends have ever witnessed,-if they have ever witnessed any, or which malice has ever whispered or hinted at,-and malice, we know, has not spared him in more ways than one,-and you have only added to his titles to be received and remembered as a hero and a conqueror.

As such a conqueror, then, you have received him from that majestic turreted Iron-clad which the gracious Monarch of our motherland has deputed as her own messenger to bear him back to his home. As such a conqueror, you have canopied his funeral car with the flag of his Country-aye, with the flags of both his countries, between whom I pray God that his memory may ever be a pledge of mutual forbearance and affectionate regard! As such a conqueror, you mark the day and the hour of his burial by minute-guns, and fire a farewell shot, it may be, as the clods of his native soil are heaped upon his breast.

We do not forget, however, amidst all this martial pomp, how eminently he was a man of peace; or how earnestly he desired, or how much he had done, to inculcate a spirit of peace, national and international. I may not attempt to enter here, to-day, into any consideration of the influence of his specific endowments, at home or abroad, American or English; but I may say, in a single word, that I think his tory will be searched in vain for the record of any merely human acts,

recent or remote, which have been more in harmony with that angelic chorus, which, just as the fleet, with this sad freight, had entered on its funeral voyage across the Atlantic, the whole Christian World was uniting to ring back again to the skies from which it first was heard,-any merely human acts, which while, as I have said, they have waked a fresh and more fervent echo of "Glory to God in the highest," have done more to promote "Peace on earth and good-will towards men."

THE GREAT PROCESSION OF AMERICAN HISTORY.

[Oration on the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Landing of the Pilgrims. Plymouth, Mass., 21 December, 1870.-From the Same.]

A

S we look back ever so cursorily on the great procession of American History as it starts from yonder Rock, and winds on and on and on to the present hour, we may descry many other scenes, many other actors, remote and recent, in other parts of the Union as well as in our own, of the highest interest and importance. There are Conant and Endicott with their little rudimental plantations at Cape Ann and at Salem. There is the elder Winthrop, with the Massachusetts Charter, at Boston, of whom the latest and best of New England Historians, Dr. Palfrey, has said "that it was his policy, more than any other man's, that organized into shape, animated with practical vigor, and prepared for permanency, those primeval sentiments and institutions that have directed the course of thought and action in New England in later times." There is the younger Winthrop, not far behind, with the Charter of Connecticut, of whose separate Colonies Hooker and Haynes and Hopkins and Eaton and Davenport and Ludlow had laid the foundations. There is Roger Williams, "the Apostle of soul freedom," as he has been called, with the Charter of Rhode Island. There is the brave and generous Stuyvesant of the New Netherlands. There are the Catholic Calverts, and the noble Quaker Penn, building up Maryland and Pennsylvania alike, upon principles of toleration and philanthropy. There is the benevolent and chivalrous Oglethorpe, assisted by Whitefield and the sainted Wesleys, planting his Moravian Colony in Georgia. There is Franklin, with his first proposal of a Continental Union, and with his countless inventions in political as well as physical science. There is James Otis with his great argument against Writs of Assistance, and Samuel Adams with his inexorable demand for the removal of the British regiments from Boston. There are Quincy with his grand remonstrance against the Port Bill, and Warren, offering himself as the Proto-martyr

on Bunker Hill. There is Jefferson with the Declaration of Independence fresh from his own pen, with John Adams close at his side, as its "Colossus on the floor of Congress." There are Hamilton and Madison and Jay bringing forward the Constitution in their united arms; and there, leaning on their shoulders, and on that Constitution, but towering above them all, is WASHINGTON, the consummate commander, the incomparable President, the world-honored Patriot. There are Marshall and Story as the expounders of the Constitution, and Webster as its defender. There is John Quincy Adams with his powerful and persistent plea for the sacred Right of Petition. There is Jackson with his Proclamation against Nullification. There is Lincoln with his ever memorable Proclamation of Emancipation. And there, closing for the moment that procession of the dead, for I presume not to marshal the living,is George Peabody, with his world-wide munificence and his countless benefactions. Other figures may present themselves to other eyes as that grand Panorama is unrolled. Other figures will come into view as that great procession advances. But be it prolonged, as we pray God it may be, even "to the crack of doom," first and foremost, as it moves on and on in radiant files,-"searing the eyeballs" of oppressors and tyrants, but rejoicing the hearts of the lovers of freedom throughout the world,—will ever be seen and recognized the men whom we commemorate to-day, the Pilgrim Fathers of New England. No herald announces their approach. No pomp or parade attends their advent. "Shielded and helmed and weapon'd with the truth," no visible guards are around them, either for honor or defence. Bravely but humbly, and almost unconsciously, they assume their perilous posts, as pioneers of an advance which is to know no backward steps, until, throughout this Western hemisphere, it shall have prepared the way of the Lord and of liberty. They come with no charter of human inspiration. They come with nothing but the open Bible in their hands, leading a march of civilization and human freedom, which shall go on until time shall be no more, -if only that Bible shall remain open, and shall be accepted and reverenced, by their descendants as it was by themselves, as the Word of God!

It is a striking coincidence that while they were just taking the first steps in the movement which terminated at Plymouth Rock, that great clerical Commission was appointed by King James, which prepared what has everywhere been received as the standard English version of the Holy Scriptures; and which, though they continued to use the Geneva Bible themselves, has secured to their children and posterity a translation which is the choicest treasure of literature as well as of religion. Nor can I fail to remember, with the warmest interest, that, at this moment, while we are engaged in this Fifth Jubilee Commemoration, a similar

Commission is employed, for the first time, in subjecting that translation to the most critical revision;-not with a view, certainly, to attempt any change or improvement of its incomparable style and language, but only to purge the sacred volume from every human interpolation or error.

No more beautiful scene has been witnessed in our day and generation, nor one more auspicious of that Christian unity which another world shall witness, if not this, than the scene presented in Westminster Abbey, in the exquisite chapel of Henry VII, by that Revision Commission, in immediate preparation for entering on their great task, on the morning of the 22d of June last;-"such a scene," as the accomplished Dean Alford has well said, "as has not been enacted since the name of Christ was first named in Britain." I can use no other words than his, in describing it: "Between the latticed shrine of King Henry VII. and the flat pavement tomb of Edward VI. was spread 'God's board,' and round that pavement tomb knelt, shoulder to shoulder, bishops and dignitaries of the Church of England, professors of her Universities, divines of the Scottish Presbyterian and Free Churches, and of the Independent, Baptist, Wesleyan, Unitarian Churches in England,—a representative assembly, such as our Church has never before gathered under her wing, of the Catholic Church by her own definition,—of all who profess and call themselves Christians."" It was a scene to give character to an age; and should the Commission produce no other valuable fruit, that opening Communion will make it memorable to the end of time.

Yes, the open Bible was the one and all-sufficient support and reliance of the Pilgrim Fathers. They looked, indeed, for other and greater ref ormations in religion than any which Luther or Calvin had accomplished or advocated; but they looked for them to come from a better understanding and a more careful study of the Holy Scriptures, and not from any vainglorious human wisdom or scientific investigations. As their pastor Robinson said, in his farewell discourse, "He was confident the Lord had more truth and light yet to break forth out of his Holy Word."

THE WASHINGTON NEEDLE.

[Oration on the Completion of the National Monument to Washington. U. S. H. of R., 22 February, 1885.-From the Same.]

IT

T was a custom of the ancient Egyptians, from whom the idea of our monument has been borrowed,-I should rather say, evolved,-to cover their obelisks with hieroglyphical inscriptions, some of which have to this day perplexed and baffled all efforts to decipher them. Neither

Champollion, nor the later Lepsius, nor any of the most skilful Egyptologists, have succeeded in giving an altogether satisfactory reading of the legends on Pompey's Pillar and Cleopatra's Needle. And those legends, at their best,-engraved, as they were, on the granite or porphyry, with the letters enamelled with gold, and boasted of as illuminating the world with their rays,-tell us little except the dates and doings of some despotic Pharaoh, whom we would willingly have seen drowned in the ocean of oblivion, as one of them so deservedly was in the depths of the Red Sea. Several of the inscriptions on Cleopatra's Needle, as it so strangely greets us in the fashionable promenade of our commercial capital, inform us, in magniloquent terms, of Thothmes III., who lived in the age preceding that in which Moses was born, styling him a "Child of the Sun," "Lord of the two Worlds," "Endowed and endowing with power, life, and stability." Other inscriptions designate him, or Rameses II.,-the great oppressor of the Israelites, as the "Chastiser of Foreign Nations," "The Conqueror," "The Strong Bull!" Our Washington Needle, while it has all of the severe simplicity, and far more than all of the massive grandeur, which were the characteristics of Egyptian architecture, bears no inscriptions whatever, and none are likely ever to be carved on it. Around its base bas-reliefs in bronze may possibly one day be placed, illustrative of some of the great events of Washington's life; while on the terrace beneath may, perhaps, be arranged emblematic figures of Justice and Patriotism, of Peace, Liberty, and Union. All this, however, may well be left for future years, or even for future generations. Each succeeding generation, indeed, will take its own pride in doing whatever may be wisely done in adorning the surroundings of this majestic pile, and in thus testifying its own homage to the memory of the Father of his Country. Yet to the mind's eye of an American Patriot those marble faces will never seem vacant,never seem void or voiceless. No mystic figures or hieroglyphical signs will, indeed, be descried on them. No such vainglorious words as "Conqueror," or "Chastiser of Foreign Nations," nor any such haughty assumption or heathen ascription as "Child of the Sun," will be deciphered on them. But ever and anon, as he gazes, there will come flashing forth in letters of living light some of the great words, and grand precepts, and noble lessons of principle and duty, which are the matchless bequest of Washington to his country and to mankind.

Can we not all read there already, as if graven by some invisible finger, or inscribed with some sympathetic ink,-which it requires no learning of scholars, no lore of Egypt, nothing but love of our own land, to draw out and make legible, those masterly words of his Letter to the Governors of the States, in 1783:

“There are four things which, I humbly conceive, are essential to the