content with the humiliation of the foe? or shall we complete his subjugation? Would that severity be magnanimous, or even just? Nay, is the war itself just?

Who provoked, and by what unpardonable offence, this disastrous strife between two eminent Republics, so scandalous to Democratic Institutions? Where shall we trace anew the ever-advancing line of our empire? Shall it be drawn on the shore of the Rio Grande, or on the summit of the Sierra Madre ? or shall Mexican Independence be extinguished, and our eagle close his adventurous pinions only when he looks off upon the waves that separate us from the Indies? Does Freedom own and accept our profuse oblations of blood, or does she reject the sacrifice? Will these conquests extend her domain, or will they be usurped by ever-grasping slavery? What effect will this new-born ambition have upon ourselves? Will it leave us the virtue to continue the career of social progress? How shall we govern the conquered people? Shall we incorporate their mingled races with ourselves, or rule them with the despotism of proconsular power? Can we preserve these remote and hostile possessions in any way, without forfeiting our own blood-bought heritage of freedom?

Steam and lightning, which have become docile messengers, make the American people listeners to this high debate, and anxiety, and interest, intense and universal, absorb them all. Suddenly the council is dissolved. Silence is in the capitol, and sorrow has

thrown its pall over the land. What new event is this? Has some Cromwell closed the legislative chambers? or has some Cæsar, returning from his distant conquests, passed the Rubicon, seized the purple, and fallen in the Senate beneath the swords of self-appointed executioners of his country's vengeance? No! nothing of all this. What means, then, this abrupt and fearful silence ? What unlooked for calamity has quelled the debates of the Senate and calmed the excitement of the people? An old man, whose tongue once indeed was eloquent, but now through age had well nigh lost its cunning, has fallen into the swoon of death. He was not an actor in the drama of conquest-nor had his feeble voice yet mingled in the lofty argument—

"A grey-haired sire, whose eye intent
Was on the visioned future bent."

And now he has dreamed out at last the troubled dream of life. Sighs of unavailing grief ascend to Heaven. Panegyric, fluent in long-stifled praise, performs its office. The army and the navy pay conventional honors, with the pomp of national woe, and then the hearse moves onward. It rests appropriately, on its way, in the hall where independence was proclaimed, and again under the dome where freedom was born. At length the tomb of JOHN ADAMS opens to receive a SON, who also, born a subject of a king, had stood as a representative of his emancipated country, before prin

cipalities and powers, and had won by merit, and worn without reproach, the honors of the Republic.

From that scene, so impressive in itself, and impressive because it never before happened, and can never happen again, we have come up to this place surrounded with the decent drapery of public mourning, on a day set apart by authority, to recite the history of the citizen, who, in the ripeness of age, and fulness of honors, has thus descended to his rest. It is fit to do so, because it is by such exercises that nations regenerate their early virtues and renew their constitutions. All nations must perpetually renovate their virtues and their constitutions, or perish. Never was there more need to renovate ours than now, when we seem to be passing from the safe old policy of peace and moderation into a career of conquest and martial renown. Never was the duty of preserving our free institutions in all their purity, more obvious than it is now, when they have become beacons to mankind in what seems to be a general dissolution of their ancient social systems.

The history of JOHN QUINCY ADAMS is one that opens no new truth in the philosophy of virtue; for there is no undiscovered truth in that philosophy. But it is a history that sheds marvellous confirmation on maxims which all mankind know, and yet are prone to undervalue and forget. The exalted character before us was formed by the combination of virtue, courage, assiduity, and modesty, under favorable con

ditions, with native talent and genius, and illustrates the truth, that in morals as in nature, simplicity is the chief element of the sublime.

John Quincy Adams was fortunate in his lineage; in the period, and in the place of his nativity; in all the circumstances of education; in the age and country in which he lived; in the incidents, as well as the occasions of his public service; and in the period and manner of his death. He was a descendant from one of the Puritan planters of Massachusetts, and a son of the most intrepid actor in the Revolution of Independence. Quincy, the place of his birth, is a plain, bounded on the west by towering granite hills, and swept without defence by every wind from the ocean. Its soil in ancient times was as sterile as its climate is always rigorous.

Born on the eleventh day of July, 1767, in the hour of the agitation of rebellion, and reared within sight and sound of gathering war, the earliest political ideas he received were such as John Adams then uttered"We must fight." "Sink or swim-live or die-survive or perish with my country, is my unalterable determination." A mother fervently pious, and eminent in intellectual gifts, directed with more than maternal assiduity and solicitude the education of him who was to render her own name immortal. Never quite divorced from home, yet twice, and for long periods in his youth, a visitor in Europe, he enjoyed always the parental discipline of one of the founders of the Amer.

ican State, and often the daily conversation of Franklin and Jefferson; and combined travel in France, Spain, England, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, and Russia, and even diplomatic experience, with the instructions of the schools of Paris, of the University at Leyden, and of Harvard University at Cambridge; and all these influences fell upon him at a period when his country, then opening the way to human liberty through trials of fire, fixed the attention of mankind.

The establishment of the Republic of the United States of America, is the most important secular event in the history of the human race. It did not disentangle the confused theory of the origin of Government, but cut through the bonds of power existing by prescription, at a blow; and thus directly and immediately affected the opinions and the actions of men in every part of the civilized world. It animated them everywhere to seek freedom from despotic power and aristocratic restraint. Whenever and wherever they have since moved, either by peaceful agitation or by physical force, to meliorate systems of government, whether in France at the close of the last century, or afterward on the second subversion of the elder branch of the Bourbons, or in the recent overthrow of the constitutional king, or in Ireland, or in England, or in Italy, or in Greece, or in South America, whether they succeeded or failed, there, in the tumult or in the strife, was the spirit of the American Revolution. "It gave an example of a great people, not merely emancipating