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of blood, will also find much more to admire in the private and personal virtues which made his whole life beautiful, noble and grand. The enthusiasm with which they contemplate the hero will be blended with approbation, love, and delight as the patriot, the citizen, the philanthropist rises to view. They may safely give their hearts to the conqueror who feared not man, for their lives will thereby be brought under the power of the example of one who feared God. It will be well for them to linger before the living canvass which delineates his form, for, although the sword of battle is at his side, and his arm rests upon the neck of his war-horse, the spirit of benevolence and of peace beams from his countenance, and the lessons of virtue are proclaimed from his life. Happy indeed is the people, who will for ever call him the FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY!

CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM was born at St. John, New Brunswick, May 4, 1802, and died at Salem, Mass., June 15, 1875. He graduated at Harvard College in 1821, and was settled over the First Congregational Church of Salem, December 8, 1824, but relinquished the ministry in 1844, on account of loss of voice. His "Life of Washington in the form of an autobiography, the narrative being to a great extent, conducted by himself, in extracts and selections from his own writings," was published at Boston in 1840, 2 vols., 12mo. The edition having been suppressed by the Circuit Court of the United States, as an invasion of the copyright of Sparks' Life of Washington, the stereotype plates were sent to England, and the work published in London, in 1852, with the title, "The Life of General Washington, First President of the United States, written by himself, comprising his memoirs and correspondence as prepared by him for publication." The materials for this work are judiciously selected and arranged, and the character of Washington, which we quote, ably written.

ARCHIBALD ALISON.

1842.

THE end of the same year (1796), witnessed the resignation of the presidency of the United States of America by General Washington, and his voluntary retirement into private life. not a more spotless character to commemorate.

Modern history has
Invincible in resolu-

tion, firm in conduct, incorruptible in integrity, he brought to the helm of a victorious republic the simplicity and innocence of rural life; he was forced into greatness by circumstances rather than led into it by inclination, and prevailed over his enemies rather by the wisdom of his designs, and the perseverance of his character, than by any extraordinary genius for the art of war. A soldier from necessity and patriotism rather than disposition, he was the first to recommend a return to pacific counsels when the independence of his country was secured; and bequeathed to his countrymen an address on leaving their government, to which there are few compositions of uninspired wisdom which can bear a comparison. He was modest without diffidence; sensible to the voice of fame without vanity; independent and dignified without either asperity or pride. He was a friend to liberty, but not to licentiousness-not to the dreams of enthusiasts, but to those practical ideas which America had inherited from her British descent, and which were opposed to nothing so much as the extravagant love of power in the French democracy. Accordingly, after having signalized his life by a successful resistance to English oppres

sion, he closed it by the warmest advice to cultivate the friendship of Great Britain; and exerted his whole influence, shortly before his resignation, to effect the conclusion of a treaty of friendly and commercial intercourse between the mother country and its emancipated offspring. He was a Cromwell without his ambition; a Sylla without his crimes and after having raised his country, by his exertions, to the rank of an independent state, he closed his career by a voluntary relinquishment of the power which a grateful people had bestowed. If it is the highest glory of England to have given birth, even amidst Transatlantic wilds, to such a man; and if she cannot number him among those who have extended her provinces or augmented her dominions, she may at least feel a legitimate pride in the victories which he achieved, and the great qualities which he exhibited, in the contest with herself; and indulge with satisfaction in the reflection, that that vast empire, which neither the ambition of Louis XIV nor the power of Napoleon could dismember, received its first shock from the courage which she had communicated to her own offspring; and that, amidst the convulsions and revolutions of other states, real liberty has arisen in that nation alone, which inherited in its veins the genuine principles of British freedom.

SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON was born at Kenley, Shropshire, England, December 29, 1792, and died at Glasgow, Scotland, May 23, 1867. He received his education in Edinburgh; was admitted to the bar in 1814, made Sheriff of Lanarkshire in 1828, Rector of Glasgow University in 1851, and created a baronet, 1852. His "History of Europe from the commencement of the French Revolution to the restoration of the Bourbons," 10 vols., 8vo, 1829-42, from Vol. IV, Chapter XXI, of which we quote, established his reputation as an historian, in Europe and America. Many editions have been published, and it has been translated into French, German, Hindostanee and Arabic.

DANIEL WEBSTER.

1843.

AMERICA has furnished to the world the character of Washington! And if our American institutions had done nothing else, that alone would have entitled them to the respect of mankind.

Washington! "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen!" Washington is all our own! The enthusiastic veneration and regard in which the people of the United States hold him, prove them to be worthy of such a countryman; while his reputation abroad reflects the highest honor on his country and its institutions. I would cheerfully put the question to-day to the intelligence of Europe and the world, what character of the century, upon the whole, stands out in the relief of history, most pure, most respectable, most sublime; and I doubt not, that, by a suffrage approaching to unanimity, the answer would be Washington!

The structure now standing before us,* by its uprightness, its solidity, its durability, is no unfit emblem of his character. His public virtues and public principles were as firm as the earth on which it stands; his personal motives, as pure as the serene heaven in which its summit is lost. But, indeed, though a fit, it is an inadequate emblem. Towering high above the column which our hands have

Bunker Hill Monument.-ED.

builded, beheld, not by the inhabitants of a single city or a single State-but by all the families of man, ascends the colossal grandeur of the character and life of Washington. In all the constituents of the one-in all the acts of the other-in all its titles to immortal love, admiration and renown-it is an American production. It is the embodiment and vindication of our transatlantic liberty. Born upon our soil-of parents also born upon it-never for a moment having had sight of the old world-instructed according to the modes of his time, only in the spare, plain, but wholesome elementary knowledge which our institutions provide for the children of the people-growing up beneath and penetrated by the genuine influences of American society -living from infancy to manhood and age amidst our expanding, but not luxurious civilization-partaking in our great destiny of labor, our long contest with unreclaimed nature and uncivilized man—our agony of glory, the war of Independence-our great victory of peace, the formation of the Union, and the establishment of the Constitution,-he is all-all our own! Washington is ours. That crowded and glorious life

"Where multitudes of virtues passed along,
Each pressing foremost, in the mighty throng
Ambitious to be seen, then making room
For greater multitudes that were to come;"-

that life, was the life of an American citizen.

I claim him for America. In all the perils, in every darkened moment of the state, in the midst of the reproaches of enemies and the misgiving of friends—I turn to that transcendent name for courage and for consolation. To him who denies, or doubts whether our fervid liberty can be combined with law, with order, with the security

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