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THE ULTIMA THULE.

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happiness. Auspicious omens cheer us. Great examples are before us. Our own firmament now shines brightly upon our path. WASHINGTON is in the clear upper sky. There other stars have now joined the American constellation; they circle round their centre, and the heavens beam with new light. Beneath this illumination, let us walk the course of life, and at its close devoutly commend our beloved country, the common parent of us all, to the Divine Benignity.

III. THE ULTIMA THULE.

EDWARD EVERETT.

WHEN We engage in that solemn study, the history of our race; surveying the progress of man, from his cradle in the East to these limits of his wanderings; when we behold him forever flying westward from civil and religious thraldom, over mountains and seas, seeking rest and finding none, but still pursuing the flying bow of promise to the glittering hills which it spans in Hesperian climes; we cannot but exclaim, with Bishop Berkeley, the generous prelate, who bestowed his benefactions, as well as blessings, on our country,—

"Westward the course of empire takes its way;
The first four acts already past,

A fifth shall close the drama with the day;
Time's noblest offspring is the last."

This exclamation is but the embodiment of a vision, which the ancients, from the earliest period, cherished of some favored land beyond the mountains and the seas; a land of equal laws and happy men. The primitive poets placed it in the Islands of the Blest; the Doric bards dimly beheld it in the Hyperborean region; the mystical sage of the Academy found it in his lost Atlantis; and even the stern spirit of Seneca dreamed of the restoration of the golden age in distant worlds, hereafter to be discovered. Can we look back upon these uninspired predictions, and not feel the weight of obligations which they imply? Here must these bright fancies be turned into truth; here must these high visions be realized, in which the seers and sages of the elder world took refuge from the calamities of the days in which they lived.

There are no more continents to be revealed; Atlantis hath arisen from the ocean; the farthest thule is reached; there are no more retreats beyond the sea, no more discoveries, no more hopes.

IV. OUR RELATION TO EUROPE.

HENRY CLAY.

SIR, gentlemen appear to me to forget that they stand on American soil; that they are not in the British House of Commons, but in the Chamber of the House of Representatives of the United States; that we have nothing to do with the affairs of Europe, the partition of territory and sovereignty there, except so far as these things affect the interests of our own country. Gentlemen transform themselves into the Burkes, Chathams, and Pitts, of another country, and forgetting, from honest zeal, the interests of America, engage with European sensibility in the discussion of European interests. If the gentlemen ask me whether I do not view with regret and horror the concentration of such vast power in the hands of Bonaparte, I reply that I do; I regret to see the Emperor of China holding such immense sway over the fortunes of millions of our species; I regret to see Great Britain possessing so uncontrolled a command over all the waters of our globe. If I had the ability to distribute among the nations of Europe, their several portions of sovereignty and power, I would say, that Holland should be reinstated, and given the weight she enjoyed in the days of her De Witts. I would confine France within her natural boundaries, the Alps, Pyrenees, and the Rhine, and make her a secondary naval power only. I would abridge the British maritime power, raise Prussia and Austria to their original conditions, and preserve the integrity of the empire of Russia. But these are speculations. I look at the political transactions of Europe, with the single exception of their possible bearing upon us, as I do at the history of other countries, or other times. I do not survey them with half the interest that I do the movements in South America. Our political relation with them is much less important than it is supposed to be. I have no fears of French or English subjugation. If we are united we

THE NAME OF REPUBLIC.

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are too powerful for the mightiest nation in Europe, or all Europe combined. If we are separated and torn asunder, we shall become an easy prey to the weakest of them. In the latter dreadful contingency, our country will not be worth preserving.

V. THE NAME OF REPUBLIC.

HUGH S. LEGARE.

THE name of REPUBLIC is inscribed upon the most imperishable monuments of the species, and it is probable that it will continue to be associated, as it has been in all past ages, with whatever is heroic in character, sublime in genius, and elegant and brilliant in the cultivation of arts and letters. What land has ever been visited with the influence of liberty, that did not flourish like the spring? What people has ever worshipped at her altars without kindling with a loftier spirit, and putting forth more noble energies? Where has she ever acted that her deeds have not been heroic? Where has she ever spoken, that her eloquence has not been triumphant and sublime?

Is it nothing then to be free? How many nations, in the whole annals of human kind, have proved themselves worthy of being so? Is it nothing that we are Republicans? Were all men as enlightened, as brave, as proud as they ought to be, would they suffer themselves to be insulted with any other title? Is it nothing that so many independent sovereignties should be held together in such a confederacy as ours? What does history teach us of the difficulty of instituting and maintaining such a polity, and of the glory that, of consequence, ought to be given to those who enjoy its advantages in so much perfection, and on so grand a scale? For, can anything be more striking and sublime than the idea of an Imperial Republic, spreading over an extent of territory, more immense than the empire of the Cæsars, in the accumulated conquests of a thousand years-without præfects, or proconsuls, or publicans-founded in the maxims of common sense-employing within itself no arms but those of reasonand known to its subjects only by the blessings it bestows or perpetuates, yet capable of directing, against a foreign foe,

all the energies of a military despotism-a Republic in which men are completely insignificant, and principles and laws exercise, throughout its vast dominion, a peaceful and irresistible sway, blending in one divine harmony, such various habits and conflicting opinions; and mingling in our institutions the light of philosophy, with all that is dazzling in the associations of heroic achievement and extended domination, and deep-seated and formidable power!

VI.-EULOGIUM ON ANDREW JACKSON.

GEORGE BANCROFT.

No man in private life so possessed the hearts of all around him-no public man of this century, ever returned to private life with such an abiding mastery over the affections of the people. No man with truer instinct received American ideas- —no man expressed them so completely, or so boldly, or so sincerely. He was as sincere a man as ever lived. He was wholly, always, and altogether sincere and true. Up to the last, he dared to do anything that it was right to do. He united personal courage and moral courage beyond any man of whom history keeps the record. Before the nation, before the world, before coming ages, he stands forth the representative, for his generation, of the American mind. And the secret of his greatness is this: by intuitive conception, he shared and possessed all the creative ideas of his country and his time. He expressed them with dauntless intrepidity; he enforced them with an immovable will; he executed them with an electric power, that attracted and swayed the American people. The nation, in his time, had not one great thought, of which he was not the boldest and clearest expositor.

History does not describe the man that equalled him in firmness of nerve. Not danger, not an army in battle array, not wounds, not wide-spread clamor, not age, not the anguish of disease, could impair, in the least degree, the vigor of his steadfast mind. The heroes of antiquity, would have contemplated with awe the unmatched hardihood of his character; and Napoleon, had he possessed his disinterested will, could never have been vanquished. Andrew Jackson never

INJUSTICE TOWARD KOSSUTII.

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He conquered

was vanquished. He was always fortunate. the wilderness; he conquered the savage; he conquered the bravest veterans trained in the battle-fields of Europe; he conquered everywhere in statesmanship; and, when death came to get the mastery over him, he turned that last enemy aside as tranquilly as he had done the feeblest of his adversaries, and escaped from earth in the triumphant consciousness of immortality.

His body has its fit resting-place in the great central valley of the Mississippi; his spirit rests upon our whole territory; it hovers over the vales of Oregon, and guards, in advance, the frontier of Del Norte. The fires of party spirit are quenched at his grave. His faults and frailties have perished. Whatever of good he has done, lives, and will live forever.

VII-INJUSTICE TOWARD KOSSUTH.

DANIEL WEBSTER.

THE Emperor of Russia demands of Turkey that the noble Kossuth and his companions shall be given up. This demand is made in derision of the established law of nations. Gentlemen, there is something on earth greater than arbitrary or despotic power. The lightning has its power, and the whirlwind has its power, and the earthquake has its power. But there is something among men more capable of shaking despotic power than lightning, whirlwind, or earthquake,—that is the threatened indignation of the whole civilized world.

The Emperor of Russia holds himself to be bound by the law of nations, from the fact that he treats with nationsthat.he forms alliances-he professes in fact to live in a civilized age, and to govern an enlightened nation. I say, that if, under these circumstances, he shall perpetrate so great a violation of natural law, as to seize these Hungarians, and to execute them, he will stand as a criminal and malefactor in the view of the law. The whole world will be the tribunal to try him, and he must appear before it, and hold up his hand, and plead, and abide its judgment. The Emperor of Russia is the supreme lawgiver in his own country, and for aught I know, the executor of it also. But, thanks be to God, he is not the supreme lawgiver or executor of the national

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