memories you can lay up for old age. It may grieve you to break friendships, but truth and duty are your nearest friends. It may be painful to live amongst those who upbraid and condemn you; but be a coward when virtue is in peril, and your own accusing conscience you must live with forever. Study those exemplars of excellence who came purified and resplendent out of fiery trials. It is said of Francis the First, that when he read the valorous exploits of Gaston de Foix, he wept tears of emulation. Rejoice, then, though marshalled in the fore front of battle when the Rights of Humanity are in danger, and you shall rejoice again and forever in their triumph. Read and ponder what was so nobly said by one of the heathen of the old world, and be ashamed, yea, weep for your country and your kind, if the Christianity of America has fallen below the paganism of Rome. Seneca says, "Virtue covets danger; and whatever may be her aim, she never stops to consider how much she may suffer, since her sufferings are a part of her glory. Military men glory in their scars. With exultation they point us to their blood flowing in an honorable cause. Though they who return unharmed from the field of battle may have done as many and as noble deeds, yet it is the wounded soldier who receives double honors. God provides for those whom he would make most honorable, by furnishing them with opportunities for achieving valiant and noble deeds. Hence he strews difficulties along their path. It is in the storm you see who is worthy to be a pilot; and in battle, who is the soldier. How can I know with what constancy and endurance one will bear up against reproach and obloquy and popular odium, if he has grown old amidst the applauses of the world, if he has never encountered misfortune, and has been followed by the indiscriminating favor of men? . . . . Be not affrighted, I beseech you, at the dangers which were intended by the immortal gods only as stimulants to exertion. The season of calamity is virtue's opportunity. They, rather, are to be esteemed wretched, who lie torpid in luxurious ease, whom a sluggish calm detains on the great voyage, like vessels that lie weltering on a sea without a gale. Whom God approves and loves, he exercises, and tries them again and again, and thus inures them to hardship; but those whom he designs to enervate, he spares and indulges and saves them from impending ills. The bravest of the army are they whom the commander selects for the most perilous service. The general details his choicest men to send on secret expeditions by night, or to explore an unknown way, or to dislodge a garrison from their entrenchments. No man chosen for such an enterprise is ever heard to say, 'My commander has wronged and dishonored me,' but rather, 'He has known well whom to choose.' Such, too, is the language of those who are required to suffer what would make the timid and the ignoble weep. We stand honored in the divine regards when the great experiment, how much human nature can endure for a virtuous cause, is tried in ourselves. As teachers deal with their scholars, so God deals with good men. he has most confidence."* WEST NEWTON, October, 1851. He demands most of those in whom LETTER ACCEPTING THE NOMINATION FOR THE THIRTIETH CONGRESS, MADE BY THE WHIG CONVENTION OF DISTRICT No. 8, MARCH, 1848. GENTLEMEN; YOUR Communication of the 16th inst., being directed to Newton, (instead of West Newton, where I reside,) did not reach me until this morning. I thank you cordially for the kind expressions of personal regard with which you have been pleased to accompany it. You inform me that at a convention of delegates assembled in Dedham, on Wednesday, the 15th inst., I was nominated as a candidate to fill the vacancy in Congress occasioned by the death of the great and good man whose irreparable loss we, his constituents, with a nation for our fellow-mourners, deplore. At first thought, the idea of being the immediate successor of John Quincy Adams in the councils of the nation might well cause any man to shrink back from the inevitable contrast. But it is obvious, on a moment's reflection, that the difference is so trivial between all the men whom he has left, compared with the disparity between them and him, as to render it of little consequence, in this respect, who shall succeed him; and the people in the Eighth District, in their descent from Mr. Adams to any successor, must break and bear the shock of the fall, as best they can. I most heartily concur with you in that estimate of tne services, and veneration for the character, of our late representative, which your resolutions so eloquently express. To be fired by his example, to imi |