EDWARD EVERETT, a younger brother of Alexander H. Everett,* and one of the most eminent of American scholars and rhetoricians, was born in Dorchester, near Boston, in 1794, and at the early age of thirteen entered Harvard University, where he graduated in 1811, with an extraordinary reputation for abilities and acquirements. He at first turned his attention to the law, but yielding to the wishes of his friends decided to study theology, and had been two years in the divinity school at Cambridge, when Boston was thrown into mourning by the death of the youthful and eloquent Buckminster, and he was chosen to succeed him as minister of the church in Brattle street. He was now but nineteen years of age, and his society, perhaps the largest and most intellectual in the city, had been accustomed to hear one of the most remarkable orators of modern times; but his success was still such as to justify the most sanguine anticipations of his friends. In addition to his ordinary and arduous professional labours, in the first eight months of his ministry he wrote and published, in a volume of nearly five hundred pages, a very able Defence of Christianity, against a work which had then just appeared under the title of The Grounds of Christianity Examined, by Comparing the New Testament with the Old.

In 1815, before he was twenty-one years of age, he was elected professor of the Greek Language and Literaturef in the University, with permission to visit Europe for the improvement of his health, which had been impaired by severe application to his pastoral duties. He embarked at Boston soon after the peace, intending to proceed immediately to Germany, but on arriving in Liverpool ascertained that Napoleon had escaped from Elba, and so was detained in England until after the battle of Waterloo. He then went to Göttingen, where he acquired the German language, and afterward visited the principal universities of the *See ante, page 284.

†M. Cousin, who was with Mr. Everett in Germany, informed a friend of ours that he was the best Grecian he ever knew, and the translator of Plato must have known a good many of the very best.-The [London] Quarterly Review.

country to inquire into the state of learning and the prevailing modes of instruction. In the autumn of 1817 he reached Paris, where he passed the following winter in preparation for his duties in the University, and became acquainted with many eminent men, one of whom was Coray, whose writings had so powerfully contributed to the regeneration of modern Greece. The summer of 1818 he spent in England, Scotland and Wales, the autumn in France, Switzerland and Italy, and the winter in Rome, where he became acquainted with Canova, then engaged on his statue of Washington, and studied ancient literature in the library of the Vatican. In the spring of 1819, carrying letters from Lord Byron to Ali Pacha, he went to the Ionian Islands, and Greece, to Troy, Constantinople, and Adrianople, and proceeding through Vienna and Paris to London, returned to the United States, having been absent about four years and a half.

He immediately entered upon the duties of his professorship at Cambridge, where he delivered courses of lectures on the History of Greek Literature, on Antiquities, and on Ancient Art, and published a Greek Grammar, from the German of Buttmann, and a Greek Reader, on the basis of the one by Jacobs.

The North American Review had now passed from the possession of the club under whose auspices it was established, and at the request of the new proprietors Mr. Everett became its editor. The first number issued under his direction was that for January, 1820, and he conducted it with an industry and ability which soon won for it an unprecedented popularity. In the four years of his editorship he wrote for it about fifty articles, making nearly one-half of the entire work for that period, and afterward, while it was under the charge of his brother, or his successors, contributed altogether some sixty articles, among which are many of the most elaborate and powerful that have ever appeared in its pages. All of them, it should be remembered, were the product only of leisure moments, amidst other occupations which had a prior claim upon him.

This was particularly the case while he was editor, as he was then engaged in the active duties of his professorship. About the time his editorial connection with the Review ceased, he became a member of Congress, and also began to be called upon frequently to deliver public addresses. Although as a member of Congress he spoke but rarely, he did a great deal of labour in the committee room, generally drafting the reports on all matters of business, even when in a political minority. After having been ten years in the House of Representatives, Mr. Everett was in 1836 elected Governor of Massachusetts, and was reëlected in 1837, 1838 and 1839. In this period his special engagements left him very little leisure for literary pursuits, and his contributions to the Review are much less frequent than before. Some of his hundred articles, thrown off currente calamo, are undoubtedly ill arranged and superficial, but altogether they evince a variety and depth of learning, and a degree of feeling, fancy, energy and power, rarely combined in an individual. The happy wit and good temper shown in his reviewals of German and English travellers in America; the æsthetic cultivation indicated in his articles on Canova and the Epochs of Plastic Art; the fine enthusiasm which animates the paper on Coray's Aristotle and the rest of that brilliant series which electrified the country in behalf of the Greeks during their war for independence; and the statesmanlike views which mark the papers on Reform in Europe; with the familiar knowledge of the great masters of antiquity, the ready apprehension of truth and beauty, the exuberant illustration, and copious and forcible diction, which characterize his essays generally, show that literature suffered no common loss when he entered the arena of politics.

In 1836 Mr. Everett published a collection of twenty-seven Orations and Speeches delivered by him on various occasions in the preceding eleven years. It embraced, with others, those on the motives to intellectual exertion in America, the landing of the Pilgrims, the arrival of Winthrop, the battles of Concord, Lexington, Bunker Hill, and Bloody Brook, and those which he delivered at public dinners given to him at Nashville in Tennessee, Lexington, in Kentucky, and other places, during his tour through the Valley of the Mississippi to New Orleans in 1829. His speeches on political occasions, and historical and literary dis

courses delivered since 1836, would fill another volume equal in extent, variety, and interest. As an orator he has living very few equals. He is graceful and fervid in a remarkable degree, and his ready copiousness and felicity of illustration and quotation show how extensive and thorough has been his research, how retentive is his memory, and with what rapidity are made the decisions of his taste. He is eminently picturesque in grouping and narration, and his classical allusions have the charm of a perfect familiarity with the richest stores of learning.

In 1841 Mr. Everett was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to the court of London, at which he resided about five years. While in England the degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred upon him by the University of Cambridge. On his return to the United States he was elected to the presidency of Harvard University, and was inaugurated on the thirtieth of April, 1846. The position of head of the oldest, wealthiest and most respectable institution of learning on this continent, is one of great dignity and importance; and no person could be found better qualified for it than the distinguished scholar whose youth and early manhood were spent in her halls as a student and professor of written learning, and whose middle age has been as fruitful of opportunities to study mankind.

Mr. Everett has scarcely fulfilled the expectations which were awakened by his first brilliant essays. He came completely armed and thoroughly trained into the lists, but has never attempted any achievement that would test the full capacity of his skill, the full might of his nature. He has been industrious; no man indeed has been more so; his discourses and reviews alone would have occupied the lifetime of an author of more than ordinary fertility; and they have been produced amid engagements that would have exhausted the energies and resources of a common mind; they have been the mere pastimes of a laborious student and statesman. Had the same activity, facility and strength been concentrated upon two or three continuous works, his reputation would be as enduring as it has been brilliant. It may be said of him that he has been perfectly successful in every thing that he has undertaken; but he has written and spoken to the present generation. The country still looks for his Life Poem.

sway of most faithful, most catholic, most Christian princes. Fatigued as they are with the Holy Alliance, it were preposterous to suppose they can long submit to a horde of Tartarian infidels. The idea that the most honorable, the most responsible, the most powerful office in the state, can, like a vile heirloom, follow the chance of descent, is quite enough to task the forbearance of this bold and busy time. What then shall become of viziers and sultans, when ministers are bewildered in their cabinets, and kings are shaken on their thrones ? Instead of arming their misbelieving host against a people who have taken hold of liberty, and who will be free, let them rejoice that great and little Bucharia are still vacant, and take up their march for the desert.

ARISTOCRACY.

FROM THE PROSPECTS OF REFORM IN EUROPE.

No man in the Catholic Church can take the first degrees of saintship, under a century, nor be fully canonized under two. It requires a hundred years to raise human weakness to beatific purity;-but the hundred years, if circumstances are favourable, will do it. What subsists to-day by violence, continues to-morrow by acquiescence, and is perpetuated by tradition; till at last the hoary abuse shakes the gray hairs of antiquity at us, and gives itself out as the wisdom of ages. Thus the clearest dictates of reason are made to yield to a long succession of follies. And this is the foundation of the aristocratic system at the present day. Its stronghold, with all those not immediately interested in it, is the reverence of antiquity.

By this system we mean the aggregate of all the institutions which a people, supposing them to be virtuous and well informed, and meeting together free from all prejudices, to organize themselves into a political community, and capable of foresceing consequences, would reject, as not tending to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number. We will assume that a people thus assembling would decide, that it was best to have an efficient civil government; composed of the legislative, executive, and judicial departments; that they would provide for the choice of the man whom the majority should think best qualified, as chief magistrate, and that they would furnish this executive officer with all the requisite means to enable him to discharge his functions. We do not, therefore, think a vigorous and well organized executive government a part of the abusive aristocratic system. But the people would plainly see, that their chief magistrate was not only constituted for their advantage, but derived his authority from their choice; consequently if any one started the idea that he possessed it by birth or divine right, the suggestion would be instantly rejected as groundless; it might even be derided as absurd. We therefore regard hereditary monarchy as a part of the system which is founded in abuse. Sooner or later, we doubt not, the time will come, when the absurdity of such a system will be as generally felt, as that of the establishment to which

Fletcher of Saltoun compares it,―an hereditary professorship of divinity, which he says he heard of in some part of Germany.

This assembly would no doubt constitute a legislative body, and would probably (supposing it, as we have stated, gifted with the foresight of what experience has taught us) organize it into two separate chambers of legislation; but of this we speak with less confidence, as the experiment of one has never been fairly tried. But whether one or two, the people would of course arrange a plan of election, by which the members of the legislature should be designated by the people. If membership were viewed as a privilege, it ought not to be monopolized; if as a burden, not to be permanently borne by one: consequently provision would be made for a limited tenure of the representative office, and an exercise, at marked intervals, of the popular choice. If any one should intimate, that in both or either of the houses, the right and duty of legislation ought to be hereditary; that when one legislator died, his place should be taken by his oldest son, or his nephew, or, in default of nearer kin, by the most distant assignable heir, (who may be, perhaps, the most stupid, the most vicious, the most contemptible person in the community); and should remain wholly vacant if he had no heir, -as if his family alone were endowed with special grace to fill it,-such an intimation would be received with astonishment and disgust, and apprehensions for the sanity of the man who made it. We therefore regard an hereditary House of Lords as a part of the aristocratic system, founded on the most flagrant abuse. By the same test of principle, we should arrive at the same conclusion, in respect to an established Church, the law of primogeniture, and all antiquated, unequal, and abusive corporate monopolies, in civil or ecclesiastical, public or private affairs.

DIVINE RIGHT AND TRADITION.

FROM THE SAME.

Was it all mere arrogant assumption; all gratuitous fraud upon a credulous age, which taught that the establishment of crown and church was jure divino? Far from it. It was a calculation of the deepest worldly wisdom, a provision of the most consummate selfish sagacity. Starting from the simple and undoubted principle that civil government is approved by Providence, and that Christianity is a revelation of Divine truth, men were trained on to the toleration, and at last to the reverence of an established church and an hereditary crown, subsisting by the grace of God. The subtle spirits who reared this fabric knew well that it could rest on no other foundation. The great master principle of human weakness, man's dread of the mysterious unknown, his self-prostration before the Infinite, was resorted to, by the authors of these institutions, because no other principle was strong enough to subdue him to these institutions. They looked round for shoulders broad enough to bear this yoke. Chivalry rattled her sword at the

very suggestion of it. The great barons looked over their battlements, and laughed at their fellow baron, the king, who, claiming to be greater than the greatest, was sometimes weaker than the weakest; but Superstition offered his sturdy back to the burden, and bore it like the strong ass in the Bible, for centuries. But those centuries are passed. The divine right of the crown and an established church are exploded, and on what foundation do they now rest?... They are the traditionary institutions of England; the pillars of the British monarchy. They are now, if you will, erect, but their basis is insecure. It is not two centuries since the great usurper heaved them from their foundation, and showed that their substructions, as the historian says of those of the Roman capitol, were insane. The era of the elder political fanaticism has gone by. A milder delusion succeeded, and the revolting features of the ancient toryism are now hidden under the mask of tradition. The sanctity of that tradition is in its turn assailed, and in it the only conservative principle of the British Constitution. We do not say, that the British Constitution is doomed to irremediable abuse,-to the forced toleration of any and every existing evil. But we humbly apprehend, that the only principle of reform, which is consistent with its preservation, is the temperate correction of practical evils, by specific remedies applied to the individual case. General and theoretic remedies are inadmissible; for theoretically the whole monarchy is an abuse.

THE LANDING OF THE MAYFLOWER.

FROM A CENTENNIAL ADDRESS AT BARNSTABLE.

Do you think, sir, as we repose beneath this splendid pavilion, adorned by the hand of taste, blooming with festive garlands, wreathed with the stars and stripes of this great republic, resounding with strains of heart-stirring music, that, merely because it stands upon the soil of Barnstable, we form any idea of the spot as it appeared to Captain Miles Standish, and his companions, on the 15th or 16th of November, 1620? Oh, no, sir. Let us go up for a moment, in imagination, to yonder hill, which overlooks the village and the bay, and suppose ourselves standing there on some bleak, ungenial morning, in the middle of November of that year. The coast is fringed with ice. Dreary forests, interspersed with sandy tracts, fill the background. Nothing of humanity quickens on the spot, save a few roaming savages, who, ill-provided with what even they deem the necessaries of life, are digging with their fingers a scanty repast out of the frozen sands. No friendly lighthouses had as yet hung up their cressets upon your headlands; no brave pilot-boat was hovering like a sea-bird on the tops of the waves, beyond the Cape, to guide the shattered bark to its harbour; no charts and soundings made the secret pathways of the deep as plain as a gravelled road through a lawn; no comfortable dwellings along the line of the shore, and where are now your well-inhabited streets, spoke a

welcome to the Pilgrim; no steeple poured the music of Sabbath morn into the ear of the fugitive for conscience' sake. Primeval wildness and native desolation brood over sea and land; and from the 9th of November, when, after a most calamitous voyage, the Mayflower first came to anchor in Provincetown harbour, to the end of December, the entire male portion of the company was occupied, for the greater part of every day, and often by night as well as by day, in exploring the coast and seeking a place of rest, amidst perils from the savages, from the unknown shore, and the elements, which it makes one's heart bleed to think upon.

But this dreary waste, which we thus contemplate in imagination, and which they traversed in sad reality, is a chosen land. It is a theatre upon which an all-glorious drama is to be enacted. On this frozen soil,-driven from the ivy-clad churches of their mother land,―escaped, at last, from loathsome prisons, the meek fathers of a pure church will lay the spiritual basement of their temple. Here, on the everlasting rock of liberty, they will establish the foundation of a free State. Beneath its ungenial wintry sky, principles of social right, institutions of civil government, shall germinate, in which, what seemed the Utopian dreams of visionary sages, are to be more than realized.

But let us contemplate, for a moment, the instruments selected by Providence, for this political and moral creation. However unpromising the field of action, the agents must correspond with the excellence of the work. The time is truly auspicious. England is well supplied with all the materials of a generous enterprise. She is in the full affluence of her wealth of intellect and character.

The age of Elizabeth has passed and garnered up its treasures. The age of the commonwealth, silent and unsuspected, is ripening towards its harvest of great men. The Burleighs and Cecils have sounded the depths of statesmanship; the Drakes and Raleighs have run the whole round of chivalry and adventure; the Cokes and Bacons are spreading the light of their master-minds through the entire universe of philosophy and law. Out of a generation of which men like these are the guides and lights, it cannot be difficult to select the leaders of any lofty undertaking; and, through their influence, to secure to it the protection of roy alty. But, alas, for New England! No, sir, happily for New England, Providence works not with human instruments. Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. The stars of human greatness, that glitter in a court, are not destined to rise on the lowering horizon of the despised Colony. The fecble company of Pilgrims is not to be marshalled by gartered statesmen, or mitred prelates. Fleets will not be despatched to convoy the little band, nor armies to protect it. Had there been honours to be won, or pleasures to be enjoyed, or plunder to be grasped, hungry courtiers, mid-summer friends, godless adventurers, would have eaten out the heart of the enterprise. Silken Buckinghams and Somersets would have blasted it with their patronage. But, safe amidst their unenvied perils, strong