EULOGY ON LAFAYETTE.*

PREFATORY NOTE, FROM THE ORIGINAL EDITION.

To avoid the necessity of frequent marginal references, I would observe, that the account of Lafayette's first visit to America is chiefly taken from a very interesting article on that subject, communicated by Mr Sparks to the Boston Daily Advertiser, of 26th June, 1834, from his edition of Washington's Works, now in the press. Among the other authorities which I have consulted are the well-known works of Sarrans, the Memoirs of Lafayette and the Constitutional Assembly, by Regnault-Warin, Montgaillard's History of France, from the close of the reign of Louis XVI. to the year 1825, and Mr Ticknor's beautiful sketch of the life of Lafayette, originally published in the North American Review. But I owe a more particular acknowledgment to Mr Sparks, who not only furnished me with the sheets of those parts of the unpublished volumes of Washington's Works which throw light on the military services of Lafayette in the war of the American revolution, but placed in my hands a great mass of original papers, of the highest interest and value, relating to the career of Lafayette, and furnished to Mr Sparks by the general himself, from his own collections and the public offices at Paris. These papers contain the Correspondence of Lafayette with Washington, from the year 1778 to his death; his Correspondence and Notes of his Conferences with the Count de Vergennes and other French ministers; his Correspondence with his family and friends, from America and from his prisons in Germany; Notes and Commentaries on the most important incidents of his life; his Correspondence with the Governor of Virginia and officers of the army, especially during the campaign of 1781, and miscellaneous papers bearing on the main subject. They form altogether ample materials for a history of the life and services of Lafayette; a work which no one is so well qualified as Mr Sparks to execute, and which, it is greatly to be wished, he might be induced to undertake.

* Delivered in Faneuil Hall, at the request of the young men of Boston, on the 6th of September, 1834.

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EULOGY.

WHEN I look round upon this vast audience, and reflect upon the deep interest manifested by so many intelligent persons in the occasion which has called us together, when I consider the variety, the importance, and singularity of the events which must pass in review before us, and the extraordinary character of the man whom we commemorate, - his connection with Europe and America, in the most critical periods of their history, his intercourse in both hemispheres with the master spirits of the age, — his auspicious, long protracted, and glorious career, alternating with fearful rapidity from one extreme of fortune to the other, and when I feel that I am expected, by the great multitude I have the honor to address, the flower of this metropolis, to say something not inappropriate to such an occasion, nor wholly beneath the theme, I am oppressed with the weight of the duty I am to perform. I know not how, in the brief space allotted to me, to take up and dispose of a subject so vast and comprehensive. I would even now, were it possible, retire from the undertaking; and leave to your own hearts, borne upwards with the swelling strains of yonder choir, whose pious and plaintive melody is just dying on the ear, to muse, in expressive silence, the praise of him we celebrate. But since this may not be, since the duty devolved upon me must, however feebly, be discharged, let me, like the illustrious subject of our contemplation, gather strength from the magnitude of the task. Let me calmly trace him through those lofty and perilous paths of duty which he trod with serenity, while empires were toppling round him; and,

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trampling under foot the arts of the rhetorician, as he trampled under foot all the bribes of vanity, avarice, and ambition, and all the delights of life, let me, in the plainness of history and the boldness of truth, not wholly uncongenial to the character of the man I would reproduce to your admiration and love, discharge as I may the great duty which you have assigned to me.

There is, at every great era of the history of the world, a leading principle, which gives direction to the fortunes of nations and the characters of distinguished men. This prin

ciple, in our own time, is that of the action and reaction upon each other of Europe and America, for the advancement of free institutions and the promotion of rational liberty. Ever since the discovery of America, this principle has been in operation, but naturally and necessarily with vastly increased energy, since the growth of a civilized population this side the water. For the formation of a man of truly great character, it is necessary that he should be endowed with qualities to win respect and love; that he should be placed in circumstances favorable to a powerful action on society; and then, that, with a pure affection, a strong, disinterested, glowing zeal, -a holy ambition of philanthropy, he should

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devote himself to the governing principle of the age. a combination, humanly speaking, produces the nearest approach to perfection which the sphere of man admits. Of such characters the American revolution was more than commonly fertile, for it was the very crisis of that action and reaction which is the vocation of the age. Such a character was Washington; such was Lafayette.

He was born at Chavaniac, in the ancient province of Auvergne, in France, on the sixth day of September, 1757 — seventy-seven years ago, this day. His family was one of the most ancient in the country, and of the highest rank in the French nobility. As far back as the fifteenth century, one of his ancestors, a marshal of France, was distinguished for his military achievements; his uncle fell in the wars of Italy, in the middle of the last century; and his father lost. his life in the Seven Years' war, at the battle of Minden.

His mother died soon after; and he was thus left an orphan at an early age, heir to an immense estate, and exposed to all the dangers incident to youth, rank, and fortune, in the gayest and most luxurious city on earth, at the period of its greatest corruption. He escaped unhurt. Having completed the usual academical course, at the college of Duplessis, in Paris, he married, at the age of sixteen, the daughter of the Duke D'Ayen, of the family of Noailles, somewhat younger than himself, and at all times the noble encourager of his virtues, the heroic partner of his sufferings, of his great name, and of his honorable grave.

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The family to which he thus became allied was then, and for fifty years had been, in the highest favor at the French court. Himself the youthful heir of one of the oldest and richest houses in France, the path of advancement was open before him. He was offered a brilliant place in the royal household. At an age and in a situation most likely to be caught by the attraction, he declined the proffered distinction, impatient of the attendance at court which it required. He felt, from his earliest years, that he was not born to loiter in an ante-chamber. The sentiment of liberty was already awakened in his bosom. Having, while yet at college, been required, as an exercise in composition, to describe the well-trained charger, obedient even to the shadow of the whip, he represented the noble animal, on the contrary, as rearing at the sight of it, and throwing his rider. With this feeling, the profession of arms was, of course, the most congenial to him; and was, in fact, with the exception of that of courtier, the only one open to a young French nobleman before the revolution.

In the summer of 1776, and just after the American declaration of independence, Lafayette was stationed at Metz, a garrisoned town on the road from Paris to the German frontier, with the regiment to which he was attached as a captain of dragoons, not then nineteen years of age. The Duke of Gloucester, the brother of the King of England, happened to be on a visit to Metz, and a dinner was given to him by the commandant of the garrison. Lafayette was invited, with

other officers, to the entertainment. Despatches had just been received by the duke, from England, relating to American affairs the resistance of the colonists, and the strong measures adopted by the ministers to crush the rebellion. Among the details stated by the Duke of Gloucester was the extraordinary fact, that these remote, scattered, and unprotected settlers of the wilderness had solemnly declared themselves an independent people. That word decided the fortunes of the enthusiastic listener; and not more distinctly was the great Declaration a charter of political liberty to the rising states, than it was a commission to their youthful champion to devote his life to the same cause.

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The details which he heard were new to him. The American contest was known to him before but as a rebellion, tumultuary affair in a remote transatlantic colony. He now, with a promptness of perception which, even at this distance of time, strikes us as little less than miraculous, addressed a multitude of inquiries to the Duke of Gloucester on the subject of the contest. His imagination was kindled at the idea of a civilized people struggling for political liberty. His heart was warmed with the possibility of drawing his sword in a good cause. Before he left the table, his course was mentally resolved on; and the brother of the King of England (unconsciously, no doubt) had the singular fortune to enlist, from the French court and the French army, this gallant and fortunate champion in the then unpromising cause of the colonial congress.

He immediately repaired to Paris, to make further inquiries and arrangements, towards the execution of his great plan. He confided it to two young friends, officers like himself, the Count de Ségur and Viscount de Noailles, and proposed to them to join him. They shared his enthusiasm, and determined to accompany him, but, on consulting their families, they were refused permission. But they faithfully kept Lafayette's secret. Happily - shall I say he was an orphan, independent of control, and master of his own fortune, amounting to near forty thousand dollars per annum.

He next opened his heart to the Count de Broglie, a mar