PREFACE

то

THE PRESENT 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 sti 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 irresistible 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

to give a complexion to their thoughts and style. They produced, if I mistake not, in the community at large, a feeling of comprehensive patriotism, which I fear has, in a considerable degree, passed away. While it lasted, it prompted a strain of sentiment which does not now, as it seems to me, find a cordial response from the people in any part of the country. Awakened from the pleasing visions of former years by the fierce recriminations and dark forebodings of the present day, I experience the feelings of the ancient dreamer when cured of his harmless delusions:

"me occidistis, amici,

Non servastis, ait, cui sic extorta voluptas,

Et demtus per vim mentis gratissimus error."

A few words more of explanation will perhaps be pardoned me. Although the following addresses cover a considerable portion of my life, it would be unjust to regard them as its main business. They are all of them occasional, most of them hasty productions. It is still my purpose, should my health permit, to offer to the public indulgence a selection from a large number of articles contributed by me to the North American Review, and from the speeches, reports, and official correspondence prepared in the discharge of the duties of the several official stations, which I have had the honor to fill at home and abroad. Nor am I wholly without hope that I shall be able to execute the more arduous project to which I have devoted a good deal of time for many years, and towards which I have collected ample materials that of a systematic treatise on the modern