EDWARD EVERETT.
THE GREAT CLASSIC ORATOR OF NEW ENGLAND.
EORGE S. HILLARD, himself an orator of no slight renown, has spoken with much critical insight and appreciation of the mental characteristic and oratorical style of Edward Everett, the great classic orator of Massachusetts: “The great charm of Mr. Everett’s orations consists not so much in any single and strongly developed intellectual trait as in that symmetry and finish which, on every page, give token to the richly endowed and thorough scholar. The natural movements of his mind are full of grace; and the most indifferent sentence which falls from his pen has that simple elegance which it is as difficult to define as it is easy to perceive. His style, with matchless flexibility, rises and falls with his subject and is alternately easy, vivid, elevated, ornamented, picturesque, [♦]adapting itself to the dominant mood of the mind, as an instrument responds to the touch of a master’s hand. His knowledge is so extensive and the field of his allusion so wide, that the most familiar views, in passing through his hands, gather such a halo of luminous illustrations that their likeness seems transformed, and we entertain doubts of their identity.”
[♦] ‘adpating’ replaced with ‘adapting’
He was born in Dorchester, Mass., April 11, 1794, and was graduated from Harvard College with the highest honors in 1811. He entered the ministry, and at the age of nineteen he was installed as pastor of the Unitarian Church in Brattle Square, Boston, and only six years later he preached a sermon in the Hall of Representatives at Washington, which made a marvelous impression on all who heard it, and won him great fame for eloquence.
He was chosen at the age of twenty to fill the Chair of Greek Literature at Harvard College, and he spent four years abroad to qualify himself for this position, and Victor Cousin said of him at this period that he was one of the best Grecians he ever knew.
In 1820, crowded with honors and distinguished in many fields, he became editor of the “North American Review;” during the four years of his editorship he contributed fifty articles to this magazine.
He sat in Congress as Representative from Massachusetts from 1824 to 1834. In 1835, and for three years following, he was Governor of Massachusetts, and in the election following he was defeated by one vote.
While traveling abroad he received the appointment as Minister to England, and during this period of sojourn he received from Oxford the degree of D.C.L., and from Cambridge and Dublin that of LL.D.
For three years, from 1846 to 1849, he was President of Harvard College, and in 1852 he succeeded Daniel Webster as Secretary of State, becoming in the year following a member of the United States Senate, which position he filled with great dignity, and rendered his country honorable service. It was largely through his efforts that the money was raised to purchase Mount Vernon. For this purpose the great orator delivered one hundred and twenty-two times his oration on “Washington,” from which more than $58,000 was realized, and he secured $10,000 from a series of articles in the New York “Ledger.”
His lecture on the “Early Days of Franklin,” and other lectures for charitable purposes, brought in no less than $90,000.
His orations have been collected and published, and form one of the most remarkable collections of graceful and eloquent addresses ever produced in this country. They are as follows: “Orations and Speeches on Various Occasions” (Boston, 1836); “Orations and Speeches on Various Occasions from 1826 to 1850” (2 Vols., Boston, 1850); “Orations and Speeches” (Boston, 1859). He is also the author of two stirring poems, “Alaric the Visigoth” and “Santa Croce.”
Despite the fact that he and Daniel Webster were often on opposite sides of great questions and issues, and frequently crossed swords in the debate of the giants, they were life-long friends, and Mr. Webster wrote to him three months before the death of the former in the following touching words: “We now and then see stretching across the heavens a clear, blue, cerulean sky, with no cloud or mist or haze. And such appears to me our acquaintance from the time when I heard you for a week recite your lessons in the little schoolhouse in Short Street to the date hereof” [July 21, 1852].
In 1860, much against his will, Mr. Everett became the candidate for the Vice-Presidency on the ticket of the Constitutional-Union Party, which polled thirty-nine electoral votes.
He died at his home in Boston, January 15, 1865.
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF PEACE.
hile we act, sir, upon the maxim, “In peace prepare for war,” let us also remember that the best preparation for war is peace. This swells your numbers; this augments your means; this knits the sinews of your strength; this covers you all over with a panoply of might. And, then, if war must come in a just cause, no foreign state—no, sir, not all combined—can send forth an adversary that you need fear to encounter.
But, sir, give us these twenty-five years of peace. I do believe, sir, that this coming quarter of a century is to be the most important in our whole history. I do beseech you to let us have these twenty-five years, at least, of peace. Let these fertile wastes be filled up with swarming millions; let this tide of emigration from Europe go on; let the steamer, the canal, the railway, and especially let this great Pacific railway, subdue these mighty distances, and bring this vast extension into a span.
Let us pay back the ingots of California gold with bars of Atlantic iron; let agriculture clothe our vast wastes with waving plenty; let the industrial and mechanic arts erect their peaceful fortresses at the waterfalls; and then, sir, in the train of this growing population, let the printing office, the lecture-room, the village schoolhouse, and the village church, be scattered over the country. And in these twenty-five years we shall exhibit a spectacle of national prosperity such as the world has never seen on so large a scale, and yet within the reach of a sober, practical contemplation.
THE FATHER OF THE REPUBLIC.
O be cold and breathless, to feel not and speak not—this is not the end of existence to the men who have breathed their spirits into the institutions of their country, who have stamped their characters on the pillars of the age, who have poured their heart’s blood into the channels of the public prosperity.
Tell me, ye who tread the sods of yon sacred height, is Warren dead? Can you not still see him—not pale and prostrate, the blood of his gallant heart pouring out of his ghastly wound, but moving resplendent over the field of honor, with the rose of heaven upon his cheek and the fire of liberty in his eye?
Tell me, ye who make your pious pilgrimage to the shades of Vernon, is Washington indeed shut up in that cold and narrow house? That which made these men, and men like these, cannot die.
The hand that traced the charter of independence is, indeed, motionless; the eloquent lips that sustained it are hushed; but the lofty spirits that conceived, resolved and maintained it, and which alone, to such men, make it life to live—these cannot expire.
THE LAND OF OUR FOREFATHERS.
OR myself, I can truly say that, after my native land, I feel a tenderness and a reverence for that of my fathers. The pride I take in my own country makes me respect that from which we are sprung. The sound of my native language beyond the sea is a music to my ears beyond the richest strains of Tuscan softness or Castilian majesty.
I am not—I need not say I am not—the panegyrist of England. I am not dazzled by her riches nor awed by her power. The sceptre, the mitre and the coronet, stars, garters and ribbons, seem to me poor things for great men to contend for.
But England is the cradle and the refuge of free principles, though often persecuted; the school of religious liberty, the more precious for the struggles through which it has passed; she holds the tombs of those who have reflected honor on all who speak the English tongue; she is the birthplace of our fathers, the home of the Pilgrims; it is these which I love and venerate in England.
I should feel ashamed of an enthusiasm for Italy and Greece did I not also feel it for a land like this. In an American it would seem to me degenerate and ungrateful to hang with passion upon the traces of Homer and Virgil, and follow without emotion the nearer and plainer footsteps of Shakespeare and Milton. I should think him cold in love for his native land who felt no melting in his heart for that other native country which holds the ashes of his forefathers.
