ART. V.-EVERETT'S ORATIONS AND

SPEECHES.

Orations and Speeches on various occasions. By EDWARD EVERETT. Second edition. Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown.

THERE is something in the character of this work, apart from its peculiar merits, that seems to us to have an auspicious bearing on our American literature. We refer to the fact that it is the gathering up in an attractive and enduring form, of the occasional efforts of a great mind, which would otherwise scarcely survive the day in which they were put forth; for pamphlets are so essentially fugitive, that however heavy laden they may be with gems of thought or feeling or expression, we hardly think of looking for them, after a short season, unless it be among the rubbish of the garret or the treasures of the antiquary. If there has been a period in the history of our country, which has been more signalized for the vigorous workings of the human intellect on great and exciting topics, than any other, undoubtedly it was the latter half of the last century. The press had not indeed then its present efficiency; and it had enough to do to chronicle the great events that were occurring, without giving forth the great speeches and orations and discourses of various kinds, with which those events were connected; but unhappily, even the few which were published at the time, though they accomplished a glorious work in their day, have now nearly all passed into oblivion. The same remark holds true in respect to some of the finest efforts of the pulpit: the enthusiasm with which they were received, lasted long enough to secure their publication, but not long enough to protect them permanently from the depredations of the worm. Mayhew and Chauncey and the younger Cooper, who, though not all of them the most orthodox, were certainly among the most influential of the clergy of New England, published many sermons commemorative of great events in their time, and displaying intellectual powers of the highest order, the very titles of which are now almost universally forgotten. President Dwight, at a later period, published a large number of discourses of a similar character, which are well. worthy of perpetual preservation; but, although little more than a single lustrum has passed since his death, few of the present generation, have any knowledge of the greater part of these discourses, notwithstanding some of them are decidedly among the most eloquent of the author's productions.

Now we look upon it as among the propitious signs of the times, that there is an increasing disposition to save what is really

worth saving, for posterity, and even to stop many valuable things in their course down the stream of time, which seemed rapidly tending towards the gulf of oblivion. Within the last few years, the fugitive productions of several highly gifted minds, whose names form part of the history of our country, have been brought together (in some instances as the fruit of much antiquarian research,) and embodied in a form which renders them universally accessible, while it secures to them a permanent existence. Very much more of this kind of labour remains to be performed; and we cannot but think that those whose thoughts and efforts are turned in this direction, accomplish the triple end of rendering due honour to the past, and of performing good service for the present and the future. We are happy to observe, however, what we consider a yet more excellent way, and which, if adopted to the extent that is desirable, would supersede the necessity of all efforts to recover the lost treasure of other days;-we refer to that of which we have a noble specimen in these volumes of Mr. Everett, the collecting and publishing of occasional discourses of various kinds, and delivered at different periods, with the consent and under the supervision of the author. This is far better than to leave the work to be done by others; as it secures to the author the opportunity of selecting and rejecting what he pleases, and to the reader the benefit of the author's careful and mature revision.

A large part of the orations and speeches that compose these volumes, we have had the privilege of reading in their original form, as they have been issued in successive years, during the last quarter of a century. So strong was the impression we received from the perusal of most of them, that we might perhaps have safely enough trusted to our recollections for the materials requisite to the present notice; but that we might have the greater chance of doing some justice to the work, we have chosen to go over anew with what was already somewhat familiar to us, especially as, in doing so, we were treating ourselves to the highest intellectual luxury. We do not propose to attempt any thing like a regular critique upon these volumes, but merely to state some of the most obvious reflections that have occurred to us in reading them, and perhaps to add a few quotations in justification of what we shall say of their extraordinary attractions.

If this work were to fall into the hands of an intelligent foreigner so ignorant of this country as not to have heard of Mr. Everett, (if the case be a supposable one,) he would have no occasion to look beyond the table of contents to arrive at the conclusion that the author must be a remarkable man; for we exceedingly doubt whether there is any other man of the age,certainly there is no one on this side of the water,-whose labours have been put in requisition on such a variety of great occasions.

One can scarcely imagine a subject, intellectual or moral, sacred or secular, on which he has not been called to speak; and most of the large towns in New England and many out of it have been honoured to be the theatre of his public efforts. Leaving out of view, therefore, the character of these discourses, as they are embodied in the present work, we have no hesitation in saying that the occasions which produced them must confer lasting honour upon their author, and that no one who should look over the list of subjects here treated, would require any other evidence that he was about to be brought in contact with one of the master spirits of the day.

We hazard nothing in saying that no expectation would be excited by an examination of the table of contents, that would not be fully met by an examination of the contents themselves. The first thing that strikes us is the extent and variety of the author's knowledge. As he has written on almost every subject that can be imagined, so he seems equally at home upon all ; and he always writes with such freedom and fullness, that one would suppose that the particular subject which he is treating, must have constituted the favorite study of his life. No matter whether it is history, or politics, or education, or morals, or science, or agriculture, or commerce, or manufactures, or railroads, or any thing else within the range of human contemplation, to which his attention is directed, he seems to bring out with the utmost facility all the most important facts and speculations in relation to it, and not unfrequently opens up some new field, which perhaps he has been the first to explore. We remember to have heard it said that when he was in college he was not only first in his class on the whole, but first in every thing; and we rather think that this fact furnished a pretty correct index to the history

of his life.

But it is not merely the exuberance and variety of his information as exhibited in these volumes, that we so much admire, but the extremely unpretending manner in which it is put forth, and the excellent practical account to which it is turned. Where a writer or speaker is called upon to go out of his ordinary track, and discourse upon matters that are not familiar to his thoughts, we generally feel at least the result of an extraordinary effort; and sometimes we find it is too easy to follow him in his illustrations, through other authors, and recognize material which he has borrowed from them, and incorporated with his own thoughts, without even subjecting it to the process of assimilation. At best he betrays the fact that he is not within his appropriate sphere; and it is well for him, if he does not actually need the apology which this fact suggests. But no one was ever farther from this than Mr. Everett. We never find him saying anything, however extraordinary, with an air of self complacence,

or even with an apparent consciousness that he is rising above the level of ordinary minds. Whether he is dispensing from the treasures of his scientific knowledge, or whether he is uttering words of lofty import concerning the state, in high places, every thing is done with the graceful simplicity of nature; he seems to speak or write the thing that comes first to his thoughts; and we recognize in what he produces rather the easy working of a highly gifted and accomplished mind, than any thing like special elaboration.

The high practical tone of these writings also, as we have intimated, forms another of their attractions. There are writers of the present day of no mean intellectual standing, who accomplish nothing and aspire to nothing beyond mere airy speculations; with whom the matter of utility is of little moment compared with a reputation for originality; who had rather say a novel thing that is untrue than a true and useful thing that bears no stamp of novelty. When we speak of Mr. Everett's writings as eminently practical, we do not mean that they are lacking in the due development of principles, or that they do not teach men how to think as well as how to act; for they always contain enough of philosophy to meet the demands of the subject and the occasion, though they show clearly that they emanate from a mind that has kept back much more of philosophy than it has dispensed; but we mean that the writer has always some end in view beyond mere momentary gratification; that he is always looking diligently at the well being of the race; and that, however much his performance may be admired, it has failed of its intended effect unless it has done something in aid of the great interests of society. As there is a word in season here for all classes, so there is that by which men of all classes may profit: the most accomplished statesman and the humblest citizen, the merchant, the mechanic and the farmer, men of every profession and every occupation, may find in these volumes that which will either constitute an addition to their knowledge, or give a new impulse to their efforts.

There is also a rich vein of moral feeling running through these volumes, which cannot be too highly commended. Unhappily, our English and even American, literature furnishes too many examples of the perversion of high intellectual endowments to purposes of moral depravation; the man of genius has too often been found to be an infidel or a profligate; and when his productions have come to be analyzed, there have been detected the secret germs of false and corrupting thought, which he had intended should develope themselves unsuspected, amidst the bewildering glare of his splendid conceptions. And the cases are still more frequent in which there is observed a rigid neutrality in respect to every thing bearing upon human duty: there is no

positive infusion adverse to the interests of virtue,-nothing on which to found the charge of infidelity or corruption; but yet there is such a careful exclusion of every thing of an opposite character, that the effect can hardly fail to be injurious; not merely because such a silence is always accounted significant of indifference, if not of unbelief, but because the absence of a positively good influence upon the mind always leaves it at least defenceless against contamination. Mr. Everett has, in the uniform tone of these orations and speeches, administered an exemplary rebuke to both these classes of authors. He always moves not only on the high ground of honour, but on the yet higher ground of a pure, evangelical morality. There is not a sentence in either of these volumes in respect to the moral influence of which any Christian parent would wish to put a child upon his guard; while there is a spirit diffused through the whole, that every one feels must have been imbibed from the New Testament, and is fitted to minister to the growth of whatsoever is pure, lovely and of good report, in human conduct. No matter what may be the subject of which he treats, he rarely, if ever, dismisses it, without having left the decided stamp of high moral feeling; and there are not a few of these addresses that were called forth by the great moral or charitable or religious enterprizes of the day. Temperance, prison discipline, the famine in Ireland, the claims of various charitable institutions, and above all the Bible, have furnished themes for his eloquent and stirring appeals. The last mentioned effort particularly,―his address before the Massachusetts Bible society,-not only breathes the purest moral sentiment, but is one of the most fitting and beautiful tributes to our common Christianity that we remember to have met with. We would venture to suggest whether it might not be an important service rendered to the cause of religious truth, to send forth this address in the form of a tract, especially among the higher classes; for unless we greatly mistake, its eloquent and persuasive tone in connection with its sound and enlightened views, would be far more likely to recover one who had gone astray, or to establish one who was doubtful, than many of the more formal and elaborate vindications of Christianity which seem to have become the accredited and standard antidotes to skepticism.

We like these works of Mr. Everett for another reason: they breathe throughout the spirit of reform, and yet they are essentially conservative. We live in a day when men cannot be contented with the past or even the present, but are incessantly reaching forward to some hitherto unattained advantage. Progress, progress, is emphatically the law of the age; and it were as vain to think of stopping the onward march of things in the intellectual and moral world, as it would be to change the ordinance of Heaven in respect to the revolutions of the planets. So