ADDRESS.
MR. PRESIDENT,—I am to speak this evening of one who early consecrated himself to Human Rights, and throughout a long life became their representative, knight-errant, champion, hero, missionary, apostle,—who strove in this cause as no man in history has ever striven,—who suffered for it as few have suffered,—and whose protracted career, beginning at an age when others are yet at school, and continued to the tomb, where he tardily arrived, is conspicuous for the rarest fidelity, the purest principle, and the most chivalrous courage, whether civil or military. There is but one personage to whom this description is justly applicable, and you have anticipated me when I pronounce the name of Lafayette. As in Germany Jean Paul is known as “the Only One,” so would I hail Lafayette as “the Faithful One.” If Liberty be what philosophy, poetry, and the human heart all declare, then must we treasure the example of one who served her always with a lover’s fondness and with a martyr’s constancy, nor demand perfections which do not belong to human nature. It is enough for unstinted gratitude that he stood forth her steadfast friend, like the good angel,—
“unmoved,
Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified,—
trampling on all the blandishments of youth, of fortune, and of power, keeping himself sternly aloof whether from King or Emperor, and always insisting upon the same comprehensive cause,—with a soul as fearless and irreproachable as Bayard, from whom generals and kings received knighthood, as unbending as Cato, who singly stood out against Cæsar, and as gentle as that best loved disciple, who leaned on the bosom of the Saviour, and alone of all the Twelve followed him to the Cross.
If anything could add to the interest which this unparalleled career is calculated to awaken, I should find it in special associations which I have enjoyed. Often, when in Paris halting about as an invalid, I turned from its crowded life to visit the simple tomb of Lafayette in the conventual cemetery of Picpus, watched by white-hooded nuns, within the circle of the old walls, where he lies by the side of his heroic wife, pattern of noblest womanhood. Gazing on this horizontal slab of red freestone, in shape like that of Albert Dürer in the republican graveyard of Nuremberg, bearing an inscription without title of any kind, and then casting my eyes upon the neighboring monuments, where every name has the blazon of prince or noble, I seemed to see before me that youthful, lifelong, and incomparable loyalty to a great cause with perfect consistency to the end, marking him a phenomenon of history, which will be my theme to-night. The interest inspired at the republican tomb was strengthened at Lagrange, the country home of Lafayette, a possession derived from the family of his wife, where he passed the last thirty years of life in patriarchal simplicity, surrounded by children and grandchildren, with happy guests, and where everything still bears witness to him.