nation's gratitude towards Lafayette, that rolls on undying to freedom's furthest mountains, was eloquently infused in the hearts of the audience. We cite the remarkable passage herewith, from this beautiful production, for the purpose of introducing an effective compliment from Josiah Quincy, then mayor of the city, and because of its patriotic spirit:

"Fear not party zeal,- it is the salt of your existence. There are no parties under a despotism. There, no man lingers round a ballotbox; no man drinks the poison of a licentious press; no man plots treason at a debating society; no man distracts his head about the science of government. All there is a calm, unruffled sea; even a dead sea of black and bitter waters. But we move upon a living stream,— forever pure, forever rolling. Its mighty tide sometimes flows higher and rushes faster than its wont; and, as it bounds and foams and dashes along, in sparkling violence, it now and then throws up its fleecy cloud. But this rises only to disappear; and, as it fades away before the sunbeams of intelligence and patriotism, you behold upon its bosom the rainbow signal of returning peace, arching up to declare that there is no danger."

One may readily conceive the inspiring effect of such conceptions on the warm heart of Mayor Quincy. Doubtless, this splendid oration was the theme of conversation, as the public authorities and invited citizens proceeded in procession to the State-house, after its delivery; and this felicitous sentiment of the mayor was spontaneously elicited at the dinner in Faneuil Hall: "Real Genius: To which everything is easy; which can spring a rainbow over the tempestuous sea of liberty, and inscribe its own glories on the heavens with the sunbeams which constitute it." The toast of the orator, on this occasion, was as follows: "Lords Temporal and Lords Spiritual: The land where wisdom creates the one, and holiness ordains the other; and where absent members can never vote away the rights of the people by proxy." We will give another happily-conceived sentiment of Mr. Sprague, at the publicschool festival in Faneuil Hall, August, 1825, that should be had in perpetual remembrance: "May Boston boys remember that Benjamin Franklin began his career as a hawker of ballads in their own streets, and ended it by making treaties with the kings of Europe."

Is not the prediction of a recent English reviewer, in writing on the poetry of America, entirely gratuitous, in stating that we have not one national poet, and that our forests must one day drop down a poet

whose genius shall be worthy of their age, their vastitude, the beauty which they enclose, and the load of gratitude below which they bend, --when such a poet as the fervent, patriotic and compressive Charles Sprague dwells among us, breathing such inspiring remembrances of our forefathers as are melodiously tuned in the Centennial Ode,—a production destined to be revived on every Boston centennial celebration, to the end of time? We unite with the reviewer, in the hope that a poet such as he anticipates will "one day drop down" upon our country; but have we not the like, in Charles Sprague, now breathing amongst us? We will cite a passage to the point, from this patriotic ode:

"Forget? No, never-ne'er shall die

Those names to memory dear;

I read the promise in each eye
That beams upon me here.
Descendants of a twice-recorded race,
Long may ye here your lofty lineage grace:
'Tis not for you home's tender tie
To rend, and brave the waste of waves;
'Tis not for you to rouse and die,

Or yield and live a line of slaves:

The deeds of danger and of death are done;
Upheld by inward power alone,
Unhonored by the world's loud tongue,
'Tis yours to do unknown,

And then to die unsung.

To other days, to other men, belong
The penman's plaudit and the poet's song;
Enough for glory has been wrought;
By you be humbler praises sought;

In peace and truth life's journey run,
And keep unsullied what your fathers won."

The irrepressible thought within him, says a reviewer of Sprague, is the only motive that will account for his productions. In his poetry, after the presence of those general qualities that are indispensable to every poet, imagination, a seeing eye, mental vigor, an artist's sense of proportion, and a rich command of expression,-- the chief quality to be noticed is his severe and chaste simplicity. This is his peculiarity: either he must exercise a rigid power of exclusion in his composition, or else there never was a creative mind more unvisited by confused conceptions, incongruous images, or artificial conceits. His words are as clear as his thoughts; his style is as transparent as his spirit. What an immense distance separates him from the whole mul

titudinous progeny of modern misty rhapsodists and verse fanciers, so desperately determined on originality, that if they cannot give it to us in the idea, they will make up for it in outlandishness of phraseology, and give us specimens of grand and lofty tumbling, on an arena of fog and moonbeams! It is getting to be understood that a mind of native force, thirsting for wisdom, and having a message to utter, will proclaim itself as certainly from some East India House, Sheffield smithy, London reporter's desk, or Globe Bank in Boston, as from the walks of the professions. And, on the other hand, it is a thing not altogether unknown, that a blockhead should find his way into and quite through a university. It is not worth while to be paralyzed with amazement at either spectacle, as if it were a miracle. Mr. Sprague's writings have no occasion to derive any adventitious distinction from the fact that their author handles bank-notes. They have been judged by their merits, and can afford to be.

There needs no inscription to the memory of Charles Sprague, beside that of Thomas Campbell, on the Poet's Corner, in Westminster Abbey:

"My Shakspeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer or Spenser; or bid Beaumont lie

A little further to make thee a room;
Thou art a monument without a tomb,

And art alive still, while thy book doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give."

JOSIAH QUINCY.

JULY 4, 1826. FOR THE CITY AUTHORITIES.

THIS second oration of the senior Quincy breathes fervently the spirit of patriotism. He says: "Parents and children! We have come to the altar of our common faith, not like the Carthaginian, to swear enmity to another nation, but, in the spirit of obedience, and under a sense of moral and religious obligation, to inquire what it is to fulfil well our duty to ourselves and our posterity. And while we pass before our eyes, in long array, the outspread images of our fathers' virtues, let us strive to excite in our own bosoms, and enkindle in each

other's, that intense and sacred zeal by which their patriotism was animated and refined. Fifty years after the occurrence of the greatest of our national events, we gather with our children around the tombs of our fathers, as we trust,—and may Heaven so grant! - fifty years hence, those children will gather around ours, in the spirit of gratitude and honor, to contemplate their glory, to seek the lessons suggested by their example, and to examine the principles on which they laid the foundations of their country's prosperity and greatness."

DAVID LEE CHILD.

JULY 4, 1826. FOR THE WASHINGTON SOCIETY.

WAS born at West Boylston; graduated at Harvard College in 1817, when he took part in a disputation, whether the power of eloquence be diminished by the progress of literature and science; became a teacher in the Boston Latin School, and married Lydia Maria Francis, author of the Boston Rebels. He was private secretary to Gen. Dearborn, when minister to Portugal, and was an officer in the Spanish American service; was captain of the Independent Fusileers: brigade major and member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery; was a Boston representative in 1827; an editor of the Massachusetts Whig; became a zealous abolitionist, and was author of a pamphlet on the Blessings of Freedom; was a manufacturer of beet-sugar, and settled in the western country. He was a fine classical writer, and very tenacious of his opinions. His oration on National Independence is a highly spirited, classical, and patriotic performance. We will quote a passage: "Dr. Johnson, the pensioned advocate of passive submission, the ministerial pamphleteer of the American Revolution, derives one of his best titles to respect and admiration from a temporary exhibition, on one occasion, of that inflexible firmness and proud independence of character which belong peculiarly to republicans. We admire him for his indignant, yet decorous, reply to Lord Chesterfield,—for his Romanlike contempt of title and wealth, coupled with meanness and hypocrisy; and it may be safely asserted that Chesterfield, with all his wit, his learning, and his eloquence,— all the triumphs of the drawingroom and the honors of the peerage,- has left no action,-nay, that all

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his actions together, his accomplishments, his speeches, his sayings and his polished letters; all do not occupy so large a space, in the memory and admiration of men, as that single republican letter, in which the lexicographer repels the cold and selfish patronage of the peer. Where his own feelings and dignity were concerned, Johnson could assume the port and bearing of a Roman; but, when there was nothing at stake but the dignity and prosperity of these distant colonies, who, he said, 'did not know how to read,' he shrunk again into the obsequious courtier, bribed by an exchequer warrant, and excited to childish glee by a word and a smile from majesty."

DANIEL WEBSTER.

AUGUST 2, 1826. EULOGY ON ADAMS AND JEFFERSON.

THE popular sentiment is more powerfully influenced by the orations and speeches that perpetually rise and enter the public mind, than by any other medium, our free press only excepted; and, though our poets often provide our orators with rockets, shells and artillery, and sometimes win their battles, they are never so well rewarded for their genius as the political orator. What Napoleon once said,— that four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a hundred thousand bayonets,- may be very properly applied to such men as Daniel Webster and Edward Everett, in their power over the people. As the orations of Demosthenes and Cicero have passed onward from age to age, and have been received by successive generations with the same sense of force and freshness as when first published, so the condensed orations of Webster and Everett are destined to become the classics of all posterity, and receive like veneration. Indeed, we know not the political orators of America who have unfolded the principles of our constitution with more power and beauty; and the masculine vigor of Daniel Webster forcibly reminds one of the lion-hearted Richard, in Scott's Crusaders, whose muscular power was so effective that he would sever a massive bar of iron with his broad-sword as readily as the woodman rends a sapling with a hedging-bill; while the rhetorical