cate and champion on the floor of the House, was John Adams."

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The resolution having been carried, the draughts of the Declaration came to be examined in detail; and, so faultless had it issued from the hands of its author, that it was adopted as he had prepared it, pruned only of a few of its brightest inherent beauties, through a prudent deference to some of the States. It was adopted about noon of the Fourth, and proclaimed to an exulting nation, on the evening of the same day.

That brave and animated band who signed itwhere are they now? What heart does not sink at the question? One only survives: CHARLES CARROLL, of Carrollton-a noble specimen of the age that has gone by, and now the single object of that age, on whom the veneration and prayers of his country are concentrated. The rest have bequeathed to us the immortal record of their virtue and patriotism, and have ascended to a brighter reward than man can confer.

Of that instrument to which you listen with reverence on every returning anniversary of its adoption, "which forms the ornament of our halls, and the first political lesson of our children," it is needless to speak. You know that in its origin and object, it was a statement of the causes which had compelled our Fathers to separate themselves from Great Britain, and to declare these States free and independent. It was the voice of the American Nation addressing herself to the other Nations of the earth and the address is, in all respects, worthy of this noble personification. It is the great argument of America in vindication of her course; and as Mr. Adams had been the Colossus of the cause on the floor of Congress, his illustrious friend, the author of

this instrument, may well be pronounced to have been its Colossus on the theatre of the World.

It is the remark of one of the most elegant writers of antiquity, in the beautiful essay which he has left us "on Old Age," that "to those who have not within themselves the resources of living well and happily, every age is oppressive; but that to those who have, nothing is an evil which the necessity of nature brings along with it." How rich our two patriots were in these internal resources, you all know. How lightly they bore the burthen of increasing years was apparent from the cheerfulness and vigour with which, after having survived the age to which they properly belonged, they continued to live among their posterity. How happy they were in their domestic relations, how beloved by their neighbours and friends, how revered and honoured by their country, and by the friends of liberty in every quarter of the world, is a matter of open and public notoriety. Their houses were the constant and thronged resort of the votaries of virtue, and science, and genius, and patriotism, from every portion of the civilized globe; and no one ever left them without confessing that his highest expectations had been realized, and even surpassed, in the interview.

Of "the chief of the Argonauts," as Mr. Jefferson so classically and so happily styled his illustrious friend of the North, it is my misfortune to be able to speak only by report. But every representation concurs, in drawing the same pleasing and affecting picture of the Roman simplicity in which that Father of his Country lived; of the frank, warm, cordial, and elegant reception that he gave to all who approached him; of the interesting kindness with which he disbursed the golden treasures of his expe rience, and shed around him the rays of his descend

ing sun. His conversation was rich in anecdote and characters of the times that were past; rich in political and moral instruction; full of that best of wisdom, which is learnt from real life, and flowing from his heart with that warm and honest frankness, that fervour of feeling and force of diction, which so strikingly distinguished him in the meridian of his life. Many of us heard that simple and touching account given of a parting scene with him, by one of our cloquent divines: When he rose up from that little couch behind the door, on which he was wont to rest his aged and weary limbs, and with his silver locks hanging on each side of his honest face, stretched forth that pure hand, which was never soiled even by a suspicion, and gave his kind and parting benediction. Such was the blissful and honoured retirement of the sage of Quincy. Happy the life which, verging upon a century, had met with but one serious political disappointment! and even for that, he had lived to receive a golden atonement, even in that quarter in which he had garnered up his heart."

Let us now turn for a moment to the patriot of the South. The Roman moralist, in that great. work which he has left for the government of man in all the offices of life, has descended even to prescribe the kind of habitation in which an honoured and distinguished man should dwell. It should not he says, be small, and mean, and sordid: nor, on the other hand, extended with profuse and wanton extravagance. It should be large enough to receive and accommodate the visiters which such a man never fails to attract, and suited in its ornaments, as well as its dimensions, to the character and fortune of the individual. Monticello has now lost its great charm. Those of you who have not already visited it, will not be very apt to visit it, hereafter: and, from the feelings which you cherish for its departed owner, I persuade myself that you will not be displeased with

a brief and rapid sketch of that abode of domestic bliss, that temple of science. Nor is it, indeed foreign to the express purpose of this meeting, which in looking to "his life and character," naturally embraces his home and his domestic habits. Can any thing be indifferent to us, which was so dear to him, and which was a subject of such just admiration to the hundreds and thousands that were continually resorting to it, as to an object of pious pilgrimage?

The Mansion House at Monticello was built and furnished in the days of his prosperity. In its dimensions, its architecture, its arrangements, and ornaments, it is such a one as became the character and fortune of the man. It stands upon an elliptic plain, formed by cutting down the apex of a mountain; and, on the West, stretching away to the North and the South, it commands a view of the Blue Ridge for a hundred and fifty miles, and brings under the eye one of the boldest and most beautiful horizons in the world: while, on the East, it presents an extent of prospect, bounded only by the spherical form of the earth, in which nature seems to sleep in eternal repose, as if to form one of her finest contrasts with the rude and rolling grandeur on the West. In the wide prospect, and scattered to the North and South, are several detached mountains, which contribute to animate and diversify this enchanting landscape: and among them, to the South, Williss' Mountain, which is so interestingly depicted in his Notes. From this summit, the Philosopher was wont to enjoy that spectacle, among the sublimest of Nature's operations, the looming of the distant mountains; and to watch the motions of the planets, and the greater revolution of the celestial sphere. From this summit, too, the patriot could look down, with uninterrupted vision, upon the wide expanse of the world around, for which he considered himself born; and upward, to the open and

vaulted Heavens which he seemed to approach, as if to keep him continually in mind of his high responsibility. It is, indeed, a prospect in which you see and feel, at once, that nothing mean or little could live. It is a scene fit to nourish those great and high-souled principles which formed the elements of his character, and was a most noble and appropriate post, for such a sentinel, over the rights and liberties of man.

Approaching the house on the East, the visitor instinctively paused, to cast around one thrilling glance at this magnificent panorama: and then passed to the vestibule, where, if he had not been previously informed, he would immediately perceive that he was entering the house of no common man. In the spacious and lofty hall which opens before him, he marks no tawdry and unmeaning ornaments: but before, on the right, on the left, all around, the eye is struck and gratified with objects of science and taste, so classed and arranged as to produce their finest effect. On one side, specimens of sculpture set out, in such order, as to exhibit at a coup d'œil, the historical progress of that art; from the first rude attempts of the aborigines of our country, up to that exquisite and finished bust of the great patriot himself, from the master hand of Caracci. Ou the other side, the visitor sees displayed a vast collection of specimens of Indian art, their paintings, weapons, ornaments, and manufactures; on another, an array of the fossil productions of our country, mineral and animal; the polished remains of those colossal monsters that once trod our forests, and are no more; and a variegated display of the branching honours of those "monarchs of the waste," that still people the wilds of the American Continent.

From this hall he was ushered into a noble saloon, from which the glorious landscape of the West again burst upon his view; and which, within, is hung thick around with the finest productions of the