Still, this identification of Christ with humanity has worked, and does work, blessedly for man. To it we owe much of all that Christianity has achieved on earth. If Christianity, like its author, has gone about doing good; if it has explored every region where man and misery have had existence; if it has made every century and every country venerable with institutions of charity and monuments of piety, we owe it all to the life which it has drawn from Jesus. The virtues which Christianity especially appreciates are those which show themselves in a. gentle humanity. Many of the qualities which paganism dignified as virtues were but stern. and resisting passions, and in the moral excellences of Judaism there was much that was austere and antisocial. But those qualities which Christianity respects are such as refine and calm the spirit, such as render men to each other mutually forbearing and mutually attractive. Cruel things have, no doubt, been done, for which Christian authority has been pleaded; but the very sophistry of persecution has found nothing to sustain it in any trait of the personal character of Christ. But take Christianity with all its faults, it has given a force, a compass, and an elevation to the sentiment of mercy, which almost makes it a new and a positive revelation. In conclusion, we notice the dignity and solemnity which Christianity imparts to human life. If Christ, when he received the child, caused some wonder to his disciples, it was that they saw not, as he did, the grandeur of its nature infolded in its weakness. That spirit which we observe in his life has been preserved in his religion; and by it, as well as by its author, infancy is embosomed and venerated. Still deeper the interest is, of course, with which it invests the family. There it lays the foundation of its best institutions; there it raises the altar of its truest worship; and there it originates a union, which foreshadows the society of the saints. If from this we go to the world at large, with what reflections must we look out upon its populations! How must we think of its manifold tribes, how must we gaze upon that awful throng of hundreds of millions of every shade, and spreading from pole to pole! At this instant, many are going to their eternal fate; others 1850.] Christianity and Humanity. 395 are drawing their first breaths. The throngs of which we are now members are in a few years to be all dead, and to leave their bodies in the dust on which they are walking; and, as the earth rolls on, and as the unaltered sun rises over it and sets, through centuries upon centuries, the drama is repeated, these millions disappear, and other millions, who knew them not, come to replace them! And what are they all? What does Christianity tell us of them? It tells us they are imperishable souls, and not alone imperishable, but infinitely progressive. Unlike other systems, Christianity does not conceal death, does not disguise it by a false shroud, but presents it in all its reality; and that awful interest which Christianity alone has created, with which Christianity has invested all objects, arises from the associations of death and immortality which Christianity has thrown around them. As Christianity looks towards the invisible in one direction, and towards Christ in another, to the one with a divine hope, and to the other with a divine faith, she unites memory and anticipation in an interest at once human and infinite. And this we feel when the Christian spirit is in us, wherever Christianity has an institution or a monument. When we are where the Saviour labored and died; when we are where his martyrs preached and bled; when we sit under the ruins of the dark monastic pile, and wander in the solemn cloisters, through which the dim, religious light was wont to stream, and matin and vesper melody to flow; when we pass through the place of tombs, whether the stone be there but of yesterday, or have on it the moss of years, whether the Protestant has inscribed on it a text of Scripture, or the Catholic a pathetic prayer for the peace of the departed; when we linger where religion has had her contests, where she has fought her good fight and kept her faith, be it in the ruins of Rome, be it in Alpine valleys, be it in the plains of France, be it in the library of Wickliffe, in the Patmos of Luther, or in the prison of Servetus, be it on St. Paul's cross, in the throng of Smithfield, or among the rocks of Scotland, be it of Romanism for its mass, of Episcopalianism for its mitre, of Puritanism for its independence, of Presbyterianism for its synods; - Christianity has connected them all with human history by manifestations of the loftiest of human sentiments; it has sublimed them all with the glory of a spiritual desire, or the majesty of an upright conscience. H. G. ART. V. EVERETT'S ORATIONS AND SPEECHES.* THE series of Mr. Everett's oratorical triumphs begins with the oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa society of Harvard University in 1824, which is the first in the order of his collected discourses as published. To have been present at, and to remember, that occasion, is some consolation for being no longer young. The anniversary exercises of that society are always attractive, and seldom fail in collecting a numerous audience, remarkable for intelligent apprehension and that mysterious and magnetic sympathy which at once kindles and supports a speaker. Around and near the orator, on such occasions, are assembled the elder graduates of the college, to whom years have given gentleness of judgment and tenderness of feeling; before him are the young scholars, fresh from the brooding wing of their Alma Mater, a critical and fastidious audience, intolerant of commonplace, but vividly responsive to every touch of genius; while from the galleries, crowded with graceful and intelligent women, without whose favor neither orator nor poet deems his triumphs complete, that fine feminine influence is rained, which has done so much to purify and elevate the literature of modern times. But to that particular occasion an element of interest and enthusiasm was added more than commensurate to all the rest. It is only to the younger part of our readers that we need add that that element was the presence of Lafayette, who had landed in the country only about a week before. Generations may pass away before so animating and suggestive a theme is offered to a public speaker as was afforded by the face and form of that admirable person. It was the late Sir Robert Peel, we * Orations and Speeches on Various Occasions. By EDWARD Everett, In two volumes. Boston: Little & Brown. 8vo. pp. 670, 674. 1850.] Visit of Lafayette. 397 believe, who made use of the expression, "the electric shock of a nation's gratitude." And never was the language more appropriate than to the visit of Lafayette. One electric thrill of feeling ran through the whole nation, and vibrated in every breast. To the old men, his contemporaries, his countenance was a renewal of their youth, while to the young he was a visible piece of history, bending with the recollections and associations of the two most eventful revolutions the world has ever seen. The great shades of Washington and Napoleon seemed to be at his side, giving dignity to his expression, and weight to his words. Our people are of an excitable temperament, and much addicted to hero-worship, and the fervor of feeling awakened by the presence of a man who had led so noble and consistent a life, who had done and suffered so much, and who had such immense claims upon our gratitude, was such as can now hardly be recalled by those who partook of it, much less conveyed to others. Young and old, men and women, the city and the country, the cultivated and the ignorant, were all lifted off their feet, and borne along by the irresistible torrent of enthusiastic pride and gratitude. All powerful emotions are levelling in their influence, and before the sweeping flame of that deep-hearted excitement, all ordinary distinctions were melted down, and the whole land spoke in one voice and with one language. The great heart of the nation throbbed with one impulse. When we say that the presence of Lafayette on such an occasion was a piece of unexampled good-fortune to an orator, we mean, of course, an orator worthy of the opportunity, for to an indifferent speaker it would have been an ordeal to be shunned, and not courted. The dulness of a dull man would have been peculiarly intolerable, for it would have brought down the exalted spirits of the audience, and cooled the glow of their enthusiasm. But in Mr. Everett the society had found a man worthy of the hour. He was at that time, though young in years, a ripe scholar and a good one, with an air and presence full of the consciousness of fresh hopes and unworn energies. His mind had been enriched by diligent study, and by the observation of men and manners, at home and abroad. He was already widely and favorably known, as a scholar and writer who had de served well of the rising literature of his country. He had done much, and given assurance of more, and both records and promises attended upon his steps. To these substantial gifts and accomplishments were added the external advantages of an orator; an expressive countenance; a graceful, though somewhat formal manner; a voice sweet, powerful, and flexible; and an enunciation singularly clear and distinct. Under these fortunate circumstances, and with these capacities to profit by them, he rose before an audience filling to its utmost capacity the old church in Cambridge, now numbered with the things that were, to deliver the oration upon the Circumstances favorable to the Progress of Literature in America, which occupies the first thirty pages of the first volume of the present publication. As we now have it, it is a production which may be read with unalloyed pleasure, but not always with unqualified assent. There can be but one opinion as to the beauty of the style, the felicity of the allusions, the comprehensive grasp with which the subject is seized and presented, the wide range of reading brought into play, and never violently or pedantically, and the vivid eloquence of particular passages; but upon the soundness of all of its conclusions we may reasonably pause. It is more like the persuasive argument of a brilliant advocate, than the summing up of an impartial judge. The case is stated rather too strongly in favor of the necessary and inevitable connection between popular institutions and a vital and progressive literature. The most zealous republican, if he be candid, must acknowledge that literature may flourish and has flourished under despotic governments, and may languish and has languished under popular institutions, and, indeed, that it is difficult to say of any one political element, that it has been uniformly favorable to literary growth. But, commended as the orator's views then were by his graceful and persuasive delivery, and under the cordial influences of the occasion, he was heard with no misgivings and no dissent. The sympathies of his audience went with him in a rushing stream, as he painted in glowing hues the political, social, and literary future of our country. They drank with thirsty ears his rapid generalizations and his sparkling rhetoric. The whole assembly put on one |