of the opportunity afforded by this republication, to revise and correct them, principally in matters of style.

It will be found that some of the addresses, being on the same or similar occasions or subjects, exhibit a considerable similarity in the train of remark, and even in the illustrations. This is particularly the case with the orations delivered at Concord and Lexington, on the cineteenth of April, 1825, and 1835. Such a similarity was scarcely to be avoided. The general plan of the wo addresses is different, but they necessarily required Come description of the same memorable incidents; and ny attempt to avoid the repetition must have been at he sacrifice of topics consecrated to the occasion.

The author, being desirous, in submitting this collection to the public, to make a contribution to the literature of the country which, however humble, might at least possess he negative merit of being inoffensive, the speeches delivred by him on political occasions have been excluded, and nothing of a party character has been knowingly admitted.

He is fully aware that, as the addresses which make up he volume were in their origin occasional, the collection of them cannot be expected to form a work of permanent Interest and importance. It would be all he could hope, that they should be thought, at the time of their separate appearance, not to fall below the line of the indulgence usually extended to performances of this character. He has been induced, more by the encouragement of partial friends, than his own judgment of their value, to submit them again to the public in their present form.

CHARLESTOWN, Mass., July, 1836.

PREFACE

то

THE SECOND EDITION.

THE first of these volumes is a reimpression of one which was published in 1836, and which has been for several years out of print. Its contents are the same, with the exception that a short speech on the Western Railroad has been transferred to the second volume, for the sake of equalizing the size of the two. The second volume consists principally of addresses delivered since 1836.

In revising the earlier compositions in this collection for the present edition, I have applied the pruning-knife freely to the style. This operation might have been carried still farther with advantage; for I feel them to be still deficient in that simplicity which is the first merit in writings of this class. When I was at college, the English authors most read and admired, at least by me, and I believe generally by my contemporaries, were Johnson, Gibbon, and Burke. I yielded myself with boyish enthusiasm to their irresisti ble fascination. But the stately antithesis, the unvarying magnificence, and the boundless wealth of diction of these great masters, amply sustained in them by their learning,

their power of thought, and weight of authority, are too apt, on the part of youthful imitators, to degenerate into ambitious wordiness.

Some indulgence is perhaps due to these volumes for other reasons. With the exception of the lectures, the addresses contained in them were either written to be spoken, or having been spoken generally from heads prepared beforehand, were afterwards written out from the reporters' notes. The occasions, without exception, were

of a popular character. It would be trying performances of this kind by a severe standard, to expect of them the terseness and condensation which belong to writings of a more serious cast, prepared for the graver business occasions of life. I hope, however, that those who may take the trouble to read the two volumes through will find some adaptation of manner to the varying nature of the occasion.

An objection has been taken to some of the earlier patriotic orations contained in this collection as too strongly eulogistic of this country. On this point I can only plead that every thing said by me, to which this objection may be supposed to apply, has been said in good faith. The earlier orations were delivered not long after my return from a residence of four or five years in Europe, principally on the continent. The last country visited by me was Greece, at that time subject to the Turkish yoke, but fermenting with the discontents which soon broke out in revolution. In Italy, France, and Germany, the restored bureaucracy of the old régime was every where in force, and felt with great impatience in the literary and social circles in which my acquaintance principally lay. In

England, the liberal ideas and principles embodied in the legislation of the last twenty-five years were still matters of doubtful debate. There was, at the same time, on the part of the literary and political journals of highest repute, (not excepting those whose general principles, it should seem, would have dictated a different course,) a tone of unfriendliness and disparagement towards the United States; far less frequently manifested, I am happy to say, at the present day.

Returning with deep impressions produced by this state of things, I was charged for four years with the editorship of the North American Review. This placed me, almost of necessity, in the position of a champion, and led me to contemplate some national questions very much in a polemical point of view. Traces of this may be found in some of the addresses contained in the present collection. In reference to great principles, I do not find that the feelings under which I wrote, heightened as they were by the ardor of youth, led me to maintain opinions which, after the lapse of twenty-five eventful years, require to be qualified. But I am free to confess, that there is occasionally an exaggerated nationality in the tone with which principles, correct in themselves, are stated, which does not now appear to me in the best taste.

It has also been objected to the manner in which some topics in American history are treated in these addresses, that it runs into overstrained sentiment. I am aware that there is danger of falling into this fault in orations for the fourth of July and other great popular festivals. But it ought not to be forgotten that a somewhat peculiar state of things existed among us twenty or thirty years

ago, calculated to give the character in question to the fugitive literature of the day. The great rapidity with which the United States had grown up since the declaration of independence, had given that kind of importance to recent events, that hold upon the imagination, — which, in a slower march of things, can usually be the result of nothing but a lapse of centuries. There were still lingering among us distinguished leaders of the revolutionary struggle. Our heroic age was historical, was prolonged even into the present time; and the present and the historical consequently acquired something of the interest of the heroic past. Amidst all the hard realities of the present day, we beheld some of the bold barons of our Runnymede face to face. This tended to lift events from the level of dry matter of fact into the region of sentiment. Other circumstances some of them incidents of this state of things—exerted a powerful influence in the same direction. Such were the fusion of the old political parties that commenced soon after the peace of 1815; the expiration, in 1820, of the second century from the landing at Plymouth, and in 1830, the like event in reference to Massachusetts; great eras these for the whole New England race!-the passage of several laws by Congress, pensioning the survivors of the revolutionary army; the visit of Lafayette in 1824; the commemoration, the following year, of the half century from the breaking out of the revolutionary war; the commencement of the Bunker Hill Monument in 1825; and the simultaneous death of Adams and Jefferson on the fourth of July, 1826. These, and some similar occurrences, were well adapted to excite the minds of youthful writers and speakers, and