illustrated his opinions by numerous anecdotes. From Cambridge he went to Worcester, and for a time instructed in the grammar school in that town; and studied the profession of the law with Mr Putnam, a barrister of eminence. By him he was introduced to the celebrated Jeremy Gridley, then Attorney General of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. At the first interview they became friends. Gridley at once proposed Mr Adams for admission to the bar of Suffolk, and took him into special favor. Soon after his admission, Mr. Gridley led his young friend into a private chamber, with an air of secrecy, and pointing to a book-case, said, "Sir, there is the secret of my eminence, and of which you may avail yourself if you please." It was a pretty good collection of treatises on the civil law, with the Institutes of Justinian. It was, indeed, a field which had not been very widely opened to the lawyers of the day. In this place Mr. Adams spent his days and nights, until he made himself a good master of the code. It may seem strange to us of the present time, to find that there was so much empiricism in a profession now so far from mystery. Yet it was, unquestionably, the case in that day." pp. 7, 8.

Mr. Sprague's Eulogy is very respectable. Our Declaration of Independence is thus compared with the Magna Charta of England.

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'It is as a great, solemn political act, that it demands our highest veneration. What had the world ever seen that was equal, that approached to it? Go to antiquity-to Greece, to Rometravel over France, Spain, Germany, and the whole of modern continental Europe. All was comparative gloom; political science had not risen. Go to the isles of the sea-to Britain, then the freest of nations; and Englishmen would proudly point you to their Magna Charta, as their most valuable birthright, and the greatest bulwark of liberty which any nation had raised. It was so. And yet how does it dwindle in the contrast with our Declaration of Independence, which was a greater era in the history of mankind, than Magna Charta was in the history of England. The latter was a concession, extorted by armed barons from their sovereign. It was, what it is called, a charter, from the king, as the fountain of all right and power. He was their lord and masterthe ultimate owner of all the soil in the kingdom; and this was a grant, forced, it is true, but still a grant, from his grace and favor, allowing the exercise of some rights to his subjects, and consenting to some limits to his royal prerogative.

"The former is not a grant of privileges to a portion of a single nation-it is a DECLARATION, by a whole people, of what before existed, and will always exist, the native equality of the human race, as the true foundation of all political, of all human institu

tions. It was an ASSERTION, that we held our rights, as we hold our existence, by no charter, except from the KING of KINGS. It vindicated the dignity of our nature. It rested upon this one inextinguishable truth, which never has been, and never can be, wholly eradicated from the human heart, placed as it is, in the very core and centre of it by its Maker, that man was not made the property of man-that human power is a trust for human benefit, and that when it is abused, resistance becomes justice and duty.'

pp. 10-12.

The following anecdote illustrates Mr. Adams's warmth of temperament and personal courage, though displayed in a manner rather inconsistent with his duty as a public minister.

"Mr. Adams was removed from the Congress to other scenes of important duty and usefulness. In August, 1779, he was sent to Europe as a Commissioner of peace. The public ship, on board of which he embarked, was commanded by the gallant Commodore Tucker, now living, and a citizen of this state [Maine], who took more guns from the enemy during the revolutionary war, than any other naval commander, and who has been far less known and rewarded than his merits deserved. One occurrence on their passage is worthy of relation, as illustrating the characters of both. Discovering an enemy's ship, neither could resist the temptation to engage, although against the dictates of prudent duty. Tucker, however, stipulated that Mr Adams should remain in the lower part of the ship, as a place of safety. But no sooner had the battle commenced, than he was seen on deck, with a musket in his hands, fighting as a common marine. The Commodore peremptorily ordered him below, but, called instantly away, it was not until considerable time had elapsed, that he discovered this public minister still at his post, intently engaged in firing upon the enemy. Advancing, he exclaimed, Why are you here, Sir? I am commanded by the Continental Congress to carry you in safety to Europe, and I will do it; and seizing him in his arms, forcibly carried him from the scene of danger.' pp. 15, 16.

Mr. Sergeant's Oration is a highly finished performance, written with eloquence and neatness. As a specimen, we extract a passage describing the old age of Adams and Jefferson.

"Arrived at an age when nature seemed to demand repose, each had retired to the spot from which the public exigencies had first called him-his public labors ended, his work accomplished, his beloved country prosperous and happy-there to indulge in the blessed retrospect of a well-spent life, and to await that period which comes to all. But not to await it in idleness or indifference.

The same spirit of active benevolence, which made the meridian of their lives resplendent with glory, continued to shed its lustre upon their evening path. Still intent upon doing good, still devoted to the great cause of human happiness and improvement, neither of these illustrious men relaxed in his exertions. They seemed only to concentrate their energy as age and increasing infirmity contracted the circle of action, bestowing without ostentation their latest efforts upon the state and neighbourhood in which they resided. There, with patriarchal simplicity, they lived the objects of a nation's grateful remembrance and affection; the living records of a nation's history; the charm of an age which they delighted, adorned, and instructed, by their vivid sketches of times that are past; and, as it were, the embodied spirit of the revolution itself, in all its purity and force, diffusing its wholesome influence through the generations that have succeeded, rebuking every sinister design, and invigorating every manly and virtuous resolution."

It is stated moreover in this Oration, that

"It was John Adams, who, on the 15th of June, 1775, nominated George Washington 'to command all the continental forces, raised and to be raised for the defence of American liberty!' It was upon that nomination, the father of his country was unanimously elected. This interesting circumstance does not appear on the printed journals of Congress. It would seem to have been the practice not to give the names of those who made either nominations or motions. But it is stated upon the most respectable authority, whence also are derived some particulars, which it may not be uninteresting to mention. The person, who had been previously thought of for this high station, was General Ward, of Massachusetts. As he was of the same colony with Mr. Adams, it must have been a sacrifice of feeling thus to pass him by. He generously and readily made it to advance the great good cause. A striking example of disinterestedness. Washington, not aware of the intention of Mr. Adams, was in his seat in Congress at the time of the nomination. The instant it was made, he rose and left the hall. A beautiful instance of unaffected modesty."

Mr. Cushing's Eulogy, though it would be improved by the free use of the pruning-knife, is a production of spirit and power. The word metropolis, on pages 28 and 33, as applied to the mother country, strikes us as altogether objectionable; for whatever be its use in Greek, and in some modern tongues, it has not obtained that sense in ours; nor is it desirable that it should, at the expense of an expressive English phrase. Voiced, as

used in the following passage, "their names voiced by millions of their grateful fellow-citizens," though convenient, we believe is obsolete, and the revival of it will hardly be permitted to a writer of prose. Of the general style of this discourse, our readers will not form an unfair judgment from the following extract.

"Still there is an occasion more than all others propitious to the display of pre-eminent qualities of the mind. It is when the stirring impulses of revolution pass through a refined and populous people; and a great nation is struggling to be free. A poor and savage country produces no exhibition of talent, but cunning, stratagem, and courage, in hunting or in war; or the rude effusions of bards and minstrels, mingling their irregular strains with the scene of barbarous manners around them, like the beautiful wild flower springing up with its gay and brilliant foliage in the midst of the desert. The Indian of South America, or the Asiatic Tartar, as he flies across the boundless savannas of his country, on steeds fleet as the viewless winds, devoted only to the pleasures of the chase, and moved to greater exertion in the tumult of warfare alone, has comparatively little to evoke his intellectual powers. But among a people who have attained the blessings of civilization, the various inducements, which awaken our dormant powers, are multiplied beyond all conception, and act with redoubled force in stimulating our thoughts and passions. There the soul soars on the wings of glory, to the ethereal regions of fancy. There luxury and opulence spread a thousand temptations before the eye of taste and invention, and tax the resources of genius to the utmost, for the supply of innumerable complicated wants, unknown to a rugged, untaught nation. There, when the foundations of society are unsettled by some mighty popular commotion, or the passions of men are acted upon in the mass by overpowering causes of excitement, and above all, if the conjuncture be one of those revolutionary movements, which occasionally agitate empires, then is the moment for the children of genius to rise, like a second earthborn progeny, to astonish the world by their seemingly instantaneous growth, and by the stupendous effects of their intellect. Witness the constellation of talents, which, on every such emergency, has poured a tide of glory, in reckless prodigality of profusion, over lands, that dared to claim and exercise the inalienable right of men, the right to be free. Witness the illustrious names, which, crowned with splendor in the conflicts of ancient Greece, have rested, in all succeeding times, upon every lip, from lisping infancy to faltering old age. Witness the citizens of the noble democracies of modern Italy, who, less known to us because their history is not associated with the acquisition of a classical language, yet emulated the magnanimity of their

Athenian models, and ought to be equally the study of statesmen in every republican country. Witness the transient brightness of the commonwealth of England, when Hampden and Cromwell, Milton and Vane, the companions and friends of our pilgrim fathers, trod the path of honor, and attained an eminence, which we, at least, the heirs of their political and religious principles, should appreciate and applaud. And to abstain from examination of later events,―of the progress of the revolutionary spirit in Europe and in Spanish America,-witness the heroic and patriotic men, who shot upward in our sky, like a meteor, but not like a meteor to dazzle and expire,-called into life, as it were, by the allcreative energies of the war of our independence. Such were the men, of whom the congress of seventy-six was composed, and such the occasion, which elicited the masterly efforts of their genius." pp. 25-28.

Mr. Everett's Address, though, as we have understood, it was prepared in haste, and though a demand had so lately been made on the resources of the author in treating kindred topics, contains much of his usual and peculiar eloquence. He thus illustrates the respective shares of Adams and Jefferson in the preparation of the Declaration of Independence.

"To have been the instrument of expressing, in one brief, decisive act, the consecrated will and resolution of a whole family of States; of unfolding, in one all-important manifesto, the causes, the motives, the justification of the great movement in human affairs which was then taking place; to have been permitted to give the impress and peculiarity of his own mind, to a charter of public right, destined, or rather, let me say, already elevated to an importance, in the estimation of men, beyond every thing human, ever borne on parchment, or expressed in the visible signs of thought, this is the glory of Thomas Jefferson. To have been among the first of those who forsaw, and foreseeing, broke the way for this consummation; to have been the mover of numerous decisive acts, its undoubted precursors; to have been among many able and generous spirits, that united in this perilous adventure, by acknowledgment unsurpassed in zeal, and unequalled in power; to have been exclusively associated with the author of the declaration; and then, in the exercise of an eloquence as prompt as it was overwhelming, to have taken the lead in inspiring the Congress to adopt and proclaim it, this is the glory of John Adams." pp. 26, 27.

Their patriotic zeal in throwing the weight of their talents into the scale of resistance is shown in the following manner.