of Boston; and I, as a boy, to the Public Latin School just opposite. From that time to this I have enjoyed his acquaintance and his friendship, and have counted them among the cherished privileges of my life. But there are those of our number, and some of them present with us to-day, who have been associated with him, as I have never been, in more than one of his varied public employments, and who can bear personal testimony to the fidelity. and ability with which he discharged them.

We may look in vain, it is true, for any of the personal associates of his early career as a statesman. He had outlived almost all the contemporaries of his long and brilliant service in our State and National Legislatures. But associates and witnesses are still left of his vigorous and most successful administration of our municipal affairs, and of his faithful and devoted labors for sixteen years as President of our beloved University. Meantime, the evidences of his literary and intellectual accomplishments are familiar to us all, in his History of the University, in his History of the Athenæum, in his Municipal History of Boston, in his Biographies of his ever-honored father and of his illustrious friend and kinsman, John Quincy Adams, and in so many speeches, addresses, and essays upon almost every variety of topic, historical, political, literary, social, and moral.

We may follow him back, indeed, to the day when he was graduated with the highest honors at the University of which he lived to be the oldest alumnus; and we shall never find him idle or unemployed, nor ever fail to trace him by some earnest word or some energetic act. Everywhere we shall see him a man of untiring industry, of spotless integrity, of practical ability and sagacity, of the boldest independence and sturdiest self-reliance; a man of laborious investigation as well as of prompt action, with a ready pen and an eloquent tongue for defending and advocating whatever cause he espoused and whatever policy he adopted. Even those who may have differed from him-as not a few, perhaps, did as to some of his earlier or of his later views of public affairs, could never help admiring the earnest enthusiasm of his character, and the unflinching courage with which he clung to his own deliberate convictions of duty. Nor could any one ever doubt that a sincere and ardent love of his country and of his

fellow-men, of political and of human liberty, was the ruling passion of his heart.

And seldom, certainly, has there been witnessed among us a more charming picture of a serene and honored old age than that which he has presented during the last few years. Patient under the weight of personal infirmities; hopeful in the face of public dangers and calamities; full of delightful reminiscences of the past, and taking an eager interest in whatever might promote the welfare of the present; grateful to God for a long and happy life, and ready to remain or depart as it might please Him, he seemed, so far as human judgment might presume to pronounce, to have attained a full measure of that wisdom of which it is written, "Length of days is in her right hand; and, in her left, riches and honor."

Not many years ago, he prepared an agricultural Essay, which is now on our table. Not many months ago, and when he was on the eve of his ninety-second birthday, I met him at the Cambridge Observatory, coming to visit the institution which had been a special object of his interest and of his bounty, and to take a last look, as he said, at the great revealer of the stars. Still later, I found him in his own library, reading Thucydides, and applying the matchless periods of Pericles to the dangers of our dear land, and to the heroic deaths of so many of our brave young men. Nothing seemed wanting to complete the picture of such an old age as was described by the great Roman orator, and exemplified by the great Roman censor. Nor would it be easy to find a better illustration than his last years afforded of those exquisite words in which the great poet of the English lakes has translated and expanded one of the most striking passages of that consummate essay of Cicero:

THE NOMINATION OF MCCLELLAN.

A SPEECH MADE AT THE GREAT RATIFICATION MEETING IN UNION SQUARE, NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 17, 1864.

I THANK you, fellow-citizens, for this friendly and flattering reception. I thank your honored President for the kind words in which he has presented me to you. I feel glad in being here under the lead of one who, as the gentleman who called the meeting to order well said, has added new honor to a name that was already associated with so much true and tried patriotism, with so much of spotless integrity, and with so much of financial and commercial wisdom. You know me, men of New York, - if I may presume to imagine that you know me at all, as a member of the old Whig party of the Union, as long as that party had any organization or existence. And I cannot help recalling the fact, on this occasion, that among my earliest political efforts, nearly thirty years ago, was a speech in this city against the Democratic candidates of that day. I fear that my faculty of making a speech, or certainly an open-air speech, is somewhat impaired by the lapse of years; but such as I can make is heartily at the service of the Democratic candidates of to-day. I could not find it in my heart to refuse the request of your Committee of Arrangements, seconded as it was by an old and valued friend, whom I knew so long ago as the tried and trusted friend of Daniel Webster, that I would at least be present as a witness of this great demonstration. Nor, being here, can I refuse to respond to the call which has been made on me by your honored Presi dent, and to bear my humble testimony to the cause in which you are engaged. It was promised me that I should see the greatest meeting ever held in America; and no one can doubt, I think,

that the promise is fulfilled. It is, indeed, a glorious sight, this vast assemblage of American citizens, unseduced by patronage, unawed by power, in the great commercial metropolis of the Union, itself one of the noblest products of that Union,-all rallying beneath a common banner, all animated by a common resolve; that banner, the Stars and Stripes, that resolve, to do all that in us lies for the rescue of our country from the dangers by which it is encompassed. You are assembled in Union Square, and I am glad to know that you all intend to stand square on the platform of the Union. You are assembled on the anniversary of the day on which the Constitution of the United States received the attesting signatures of its framers; and I rejoice to be assured that you are all resolved to uphold the authority and vindicate the supremacy of that Constitution. Yes, my friends, in yonder city of Philadelphia, — which we are glad to remember, in this connection, was also the birthplace of George B. McClellan, on the seventeenth day of September, 1787, that sacred instrument was perfected, which has secured union and peace to our land for more than seventy years past, and which, if this day's ratification shall be successfully carried out, may still, I fondly hope and believe, secure union and peace to our land for seven times, or even for seventy times, seventy years to come. You are assembled, too, on the anniversary of the day, when the noble candidate, whose nomination you are about to ratify, completed his great work of rescuing the capital of his country from the Confederate hosts by the glorious victory of Antietam. You have not forgotten those memorable days of September, 1862, when the fate of our Republic seemed just trembling in the scales, when almost all men's hearts were failing them for fear, and when the gallant McClellan, forgetting the unmerited indignities to which he had just been subjected,forgetting every thing but his country's dangers and his own determination to stand or fall with its flag, and responding without a murmur, or a moment's delay, to the personal appeal of the President, gathered up the scattered fragments of his brave but broken army, re-organized their shattered battalions as by the waving of a magician's wand, drove back the invaders across the Potomac, and once more secured the safety of Washington

and of the Government. I would not disparage the successes which have been achieved on other days and under other commanders. We all remember, with grateful admiration, the splendid victories which have been won, on the land and on the sea, by Meade and Grant and Sherman, by Porter and Kearsarge Winslow and the heroic Farragut, and by so many others of our generals and admirals. All honor to the heroes of Vicksburg and Chattanooga, of Gettysburg and Atlanta, of Mobile Bay, and of the blessed waters, whatever they are called, which at last engulfed the Alabama; and all gratitude to the soldiers and sailors, by whose brave hearts and stout arms those victories were achieved! But none of them have eclipsed, or even dimmed, the brilliant record of the Army of the Potomac and its leader during those eventful days which ended at South Mountain and Antietam. For that gallant leader it is glory enough that it may be said of him, as the result of that brief but almost miraculous campaign, that, born in the birthplace of the Constitution, he was privileged, by an auspicious and beautiful coincidence, to commemorate its seventy-fifth birthday, by saving the capital of his country. But who of us is not ready to accept the omen, that it is still reserved for him who saved the capital on that day, to save the country itself at this?

And now, fellow-citizens, you have not forgotten that this was the last military service which General McClellan was permitted to perform in the defence of the Union. You have not forgotten that only a few weeks afterward he was summarily deprived of his command and sent into that retirement from which no patriotic offers of his own, and no persistent solicitations of his friends, have prevailed on the Administration to recall him. But the day is at length at hand when the people of the United States have the constitutional opportunity and the constitutional right to revise and reverse the decrees of the Administration; and most heartily do I hope that this one of their decrees, if no other, will be revised, and will be reversed. Most heartily do I hope, that disregarding all consideration of parties and platforms, and with the single and simple view of restoring Union and Peace to our distracted land, the people of the loyal States will resolve, by their votes in November next, to take up upon their own shoul