truly say, What could I have done unto my vineyard that I have not done unto it?' From his infancy he seemed to have been marked out for a scholar, and through his life he enjoyed exceptional advantages in acquiring knowledge, and the best use of his naturally brilliant faculties. His orations were composed for widely differing occasions, but in each case the treatment is so masterly that one would think the subject then in hand had been the special study of his life. But his care did not cease with the preparation; his voice, gestures, and cadences were always in harmony with his theme, so that he was absolute master of his audience. It is seldom that the literary annalist has to record a career in which the preacher and essayist is developed by natural growth into the statesman and diplomatist, while his scholastic tastes and habits grow in parallel lines, and the man at threescore is an epitome of the knowledge and an exemplar of the eloquence of his generation. "Everett's works are always interesting to the reader. Open a volume at random, and the thought at once engages attention. It is true we do not find passages, like those in Webster's speeches, which come upon us like thunder strokes; but, on the other hand, there are fewer arid spaces. Webster is often uninteresting, if not dull, for pages together. Everett, if he never astonishes, never fails to delight. "Mr. Everett's works are comprised in four vols. 8vo. He edited also the works of Webster, and wrote an introductory biography." Welcome to La Fayette. Meantime the years are rapidly passing away, and gathering importance in their course. With the present year will be completed the half century from that most important era in human history, the commencement of our Revolutionary War. The jubilee of our national existence is at hand. The space of time that has elapsed from that momentous date, has laid down in the dust, which the blood of many of them had already hallowed, most of the great men to whom, under Providence, we owe our national existence and privileges. A few still survive among us, to reap the rich fruits of their labors and sufferings; and one has yielded himself to the united voice of a people, and returned in his age to receive the gratitude of the nation to whom he devoted his youth. It is recorded on the pages of American history, that when this friend of our country applied to our commissioners at Paris, in 1776, for a passage to America, they were obliged to answer him (so low and abject was then our dear native land), that they possessed not the means nor the credit sufficient for providing a single vessel, in all the ports of France. "Then," exclaimed the youthful hero, "I will provide my own;" and it is a literal fact, that when all America was too poor to offer him so much as a passage to our shores, he left, in his tender youth, the bosom of home, of happiness, of wealth, of rank, to plunge in the dust and blood of our inauspicious struggle. Welcome, Friend of our Fathers, to our shores! Happy are our eyes that behold those venerable features. Enjoy a triumph such as never conqueror or monarch enjoyed the assurance that throughout America there is not a bosom which does not beat with joy and gratitude at the sound of your name. You have already met and saluted, or will soon meet the few that remain of the ardent patriots, prudent counselors, and brave warriors, with whom you were associated in achieving our liberty. But you have looked around in vain for the faces of many who would have lived years of pleasure on a day like this, with their old companion in arms and brother in peril. Lincoln, and Greene, and Knox, and Hamilton are gone; the heroes of Saratoga and Yorktown have fallen before the only foe they could not meet. Above all, the first of heroes and of men, the friend of your youth, the more than friend of his country, rests in the bosom of the soil he redeemed. On the banks of his Potomac he lies in glory and peace. You will revisit the hospitable shades of Mount Vernon, but him whom you venerated as we did, you will not meet at its door. His voice of consolation, which reached you in the Austrian dungeons, cannot now break its silence, to bid you welcome to his own roof. But the grateful children of America will bid you welcome in his name. Welcome, thrice welcome, to our shores; and whithersoever throughout the limits of the continent your course shall take you, the ear that hears you shall bless you, the eye that sees you shall bear witness to you, and every tongue exclaim, with heartfelt joy, Welcome, Welcome, Lafayette! Penn's Advice to His Children. Next, betake yourself to some honest, industrious course of life. and that not of sordid covetousness, but for example, and to avoid idleness. And if you change your condition and marry, choose with the knowledge and consent of your mother, if living, or of guardians, or of those that have the charge of you. Mind neither beauty nor riches, but the fear of the Lord, and a sweet and amiable disposition, such as you can love above all this world, and that may make your habitations pleasant and desirable to you. And being married, be tender, affectionate, patient and meek. Live in the fear of the Lord, and He will bless you and your offspring. Be sure to live within compass; borrow not, neither be |