Jefferson and Adams were great men by nature. Not great and eccentric minds "shot madly from their spheres" to affright the world and scatter pestilence in their course; but minds whose strong and steady light, restrained within their proper orbits by the happy poise of their characters, came to cheer and to gladden a world that had been buried for ages in political night. They were heaven-called avengers of degraded man. They came to lift him to the station for which God had formed him, and to put to flight those idiot superstitions with which tyrants had contrived to inthrall his reason and his liberty. And that Being who had sent them upon this mission, had fitted them, pre-eminently, for his glorious work. He filled their hearts with a love of country which burned strong within them, even in death. He gave them a power of understanding which no sophistry could baffle, no art elude; and a moral heroism which no dangers could appal. Careless of themselves, reckless of all personal consequences, trampling under foot that petty ambition of office and honor which constitutes the master-passion of little minds, they bent all their mighty powers to the task for which they had been delegated-the freedom of their beloved country, and the restoration of fallen man. They felt that they were Apostles of human liberty; and well did they fulfil their high commission. They rested not until they had accomplished their work at home, and given such an impulse to the great ocean of mind, that they saw the waves rolling on to the farthest shore, before they were called to their reward. And then left the world,

hand in hand, exulting, as they rose, in the success of their labors.

From this glance at the consummation of their lives, it falls within the purpose that has drawn us together, to look back at the incidents by which these great men were prepared and led on to their destiny. The field is wide and tempting; and, in this rich field, there is a double harvest to be gathered. But the occasion is limited in point of time.

With all the brevity, therefore, compatible with the subject, let us proceed to recall the more prominent incidents, leaving to their biographers those which we must reluctantly omit. And let me hope that the recapitulation, however devoid of interest in itself, will be endured, if not enjoyed, for the sake of those to whom it relates. The review will unavoidably carry us back to scenes of no pleasant nature, which once occurred between our country and a foreign nation with which we now maintain the happiest relations of peace and amity; towards which, at this day, we cherish no other feelings than those of the sincerest respect and good will; and with whose national glory, indeed, as the land of our forefathers, we feel ourselves, in a great measure, tified. If, therefore, there should be any one within the sound of my voice, to whom the language of this retrospect might otherwise seem harsh,* I trust it will be borne in mind that we are Americans, assembled on a purely American occasion, and that we are speaking of things as they were, not as they are: for, in the lan

The British Minister was present.

iden

guage of one of our departed fathers, "though enemies in war, in peace we are friends."

The hand of Heaven was kindly manifested even in the place of birth assigned to our departed fathers. Their lots were cast in two distant States, forming links in the same extended chain of colonies. The one, to borrow the language of Isaiah, was called from the North" and "the rising of the sun;" the other, from the South, where he shews his glory in the meridian. The colonies, though held together by their allegiance to a common crown, had separate local governments, separate local interests, and a strikingly contrasted cast of character. The intercourse between them had been rare; the sympathies consequently weak; and these sympathies still further weakened by certain rivalries, prejudices, and jealousies, the result of their mutual ignorance of each other, which were extremely unpropitious to that concerted action on which the success of the great work of Independence rested. To effect this work, it was necessary that men should arise in the different quarters of the Continent, with a reach of mind sufficiently extended to look over and beyond this field of prejudice, and mark the great point in which the interest of the whole united; and, with this reach of mind, that they should combine a moral power of sufficient force to make even the discordant materials around them harmoniously subservient to the great end to be accomplished. It pleased Heaven to give us such men, and so to plant them on the theatre of action, as to ensure the concert that the occasion demanded. And in that constellation

Putnam, of Worcester: but, the crown of preparation was placed on his head by Jeremiah Gridley.* Gridley was a man of first rate learning and vigor, and as good a judge of character as he was of law. He had been the legal preceptor, also, some years before, of the celebrated James Otis; and, proud of his two pupils, he was wont to say of them at the bar, with playful affection, that he had raised two young eagles who were one day or other to peck out his eyes." The two young eagles were never known to treat their professional father with irreverence; but how well they fulfilled his prediction of their future eminence, has been already well told by the elegant biographer of one, and remains to furnish a rich theme for that of the other.

It was in the commencement of his legal studies, and when he was yet but a boy, that Mr. Adams wrote that letter from Worcester which has been recently given to the world. Considering the age of the writer, and the point of time at which it was written, that letter may be pronounced, without hyperbole, a mental phenomenon, and far better entitled to the character of a prophecy, than the celebrated passage from the Medea of Seneca, which Bacon has quoted as a prophecy of the discovery of America.

Before I call your attention more particularly to this letter, it is proper to remark, that Mr. Adams lived at a time, and among men, well fitted to evoke his youthful powers. Massachusetts had been, from its earliest set

* Mr. Samuel L. Knapp's Address on the Death of Adams and Jefferson. Mr. Knapp's Life of Gridley.

tlement, a theatre of almost constant political contention. The spirit of liberty which had prompted the pilgrims to bid adieu to the land and tombs of their fathers, and to brave the horrors of an exile to the wilds of America, accompanied them to the forests which they came to subdue; and questions of political right and power, between the parent country and the colony, were continually arising, to call that spirit into action, and to keep it bright and strong. These were a peculiar People, a stern and hardy race, the children of the storm; inured from the cradle to the most frightful hardships which they came to regard as their daily pastime, their minds, as well as their bodies, gathered new strength from the fearful elements that were warring around them, and whatever they dared to meditate as right, that they dared and never failed to accomplish. The robust character of the fathers descended upon their children, and with it, also, came the same invigorating contests. Violations of their charters, unconstitutional restraints upon their trade, and perpetual collisions with the royal Governors sent over to bend or to break them, had converted that province into an arena, in which the strength of mind had been tried against mind, for a century, before the tug of the Revolution came. And these were no puerile sports. They were the stern struggle of intellectual force, for power on the one hand, and liberty on the other. And from that discipline there came forth such men as such a struggle only seems capable of generating; rough, and strong, and bold, and daring; meeting their adver