JAMES SAVAGE.

JULY 4, 1811. FOR THE TOWN AUTHORITIES.

IN the peroration of the eloquent performance of Mr. Savage, we have a remonstrance against the commercial encroachments of Napoleon, at the very period when he was the most powerful despot in the world, which evinces a manly and patriotic spirit.

"Can we be deluded, my countrymen," says Mr. Savage, "out of our liberties by him who announces that 'the Americans cannot hesitate as to the part which they are to take;' who declares that 'we ought either to tear to pieces the act of our independence,' or coincide with his plans; who implicitly calls our administration 'men without just political views, without honor, without energy;' and who threatens them that it will be necessary to fight for interest, after having refused to fight for honor'? Shall the emperor, who is no less versed in the tactics of desolation than in the vocabulary of insult and the promises of perfidy, deceive our government by assertions that 'His Majesty loves the Americans,' their prosperity and their commerce are within the scope of his policy? We knew before that his political magazine contains rattles for babies, as well as whips for cowards. Our commerce has, indeed, long been within the scope of his policy, as our merchants and mariners will forever remember. His Majesty, no doubt, does love the Americans, as the butcher delights in the lamb he is about to slaughter, as the tiger courts the kid he would mangle and devour. For such promises, the sacrifice of honor, of interest, of peace, of liberty, and of hope, is required. For such promises, some are willing to stir up former national antipathies, and, when these are too weak for their purpose, to employ new artifices of treachery, to excite the passions of those who are slow to reason; while others promote the design by reproaching opponents with idle words, and threatening them with empty menaces. If Heaven has abandoned us to be so deceived into ruin, on some future anniversary of our national existence we may exclaim, with Antony, in the bitterness of despair:

They tell us 't is our birthday, and we 'll keep it

With double pomp of sadness;

'Tis what the day deserves that gave us breath.

Why were we raised the meteor of the world,

Hung in the skies, and blazing as we travelled,

Till all our fires were spent, and then cast downwards

To be trod out by Cæsar?'

"Without adverting to the political questions of our own government, we have, my fellow-citizens, a criterion by which to distinguish the supporters of American independence. They who behold with indifference the freedom of other nations prostrated are no friends of our own. One country after another, in melancholy and rapid succession, is absorbed in the imperial vortex; and some of our citizens are led, by the enmity against England which they are instructed to cherish, to exult in these forewarnings of our destruction. Shall the delusion be corrected? Shall we feel that our own existence is hazarded, when Holland, and Switzerland, and Naples, and Spain, dissolve into the heated mass of French power, like the towering ice-mountains of the pole, as they float towards the south? Shall our rulers 'suffer scorn till they merit it,' and lose the inheritance of valor by the expedients of imbecility? Shall they adhere to error till it becomes treason? Ardent as is my execration of the cowardly policy that submits without resistance to degradation, I should more earnestly abhor the alliance in which many apprehend that we are irrevocably bound. Every part of our body that was sensible to pain has smarted with the lash of French enmity; but the sighs and groans of Europe, from the Baltic to the Hellespont, witness the exquisite torments inflicted by their friendship. Let the spirit of our fathers be evoked from their tombs, to recall their posterity to the recollection of their honorable origin, to the vindication of their ancient glory. There is, we hope, a redeeming spirit in the people, which will restore dignity to government and prosperity to the country,- which will bring us back to the principles of better times, and the practice of Washington,— which will assert our independence wherever the enterprise of our commerce has been exhibited, and make it lasting and incorruptible as the private virtues of our countrymen."

The ancestor of James Savage, who was Maj. Thomas Savage, came to Boston from St. Albans, Hertfordshire, April, 1635, in the ship Planter, Nic. Trarice, master; was one of the Court of Assistants, and a founder of the Old South Church. He was one of those who undertook, in 1673, to erect a barricade in Boston harbor, for security against a fleet then expected from Holland; out of which grew, in less than forty years, the Long Wharf, a small portion of which has continued

ever since, the property of some of his descendants. The father of James Savage was Habijah, a merchant of Boston, who married Elizabeth, daughter of John Tudor, whose residence was in Winter-street, on the south side, opposite the Common, where the subject of this outline was born, July 13, 1784. His mother died before he was four years of age, and he early entered Derby Academy, in Hingham, under the tuition of Abner Lincoln, and Washington Academy, at Machias, Me., under Daniel P. Upton. He graduated at Harvard College in 1803, on which occasion he gave an oration in English on the Patronage of Genius. Mr. Savage engaged in the study of law under the late Chief Justice Parker, Samuel Dexter, and William Sullivan, and entered Suffolk bar, January, 1807; previous to which he became a member of the Boston Anthology Society, and was its secretary in January of that year; and being, previous to this period, in declining health, he visited, with his relative and devoted friend, William Tudor, Jr., in 1805, the islands of Martinique, Dominique, St. Thomas, St. Domingo, and Jamaica. He was an original founder and life-subscriber of the Boston Athenæum, in the same year.

Mr. Savage was, during a period of five years, an editor of the Monthly Anthology, which was the first purely literary periodical in New England, conducted by members of the Anthology Society, a literary club of many of our finest scholars, which met at private dwellings, and after supper devoted their time to literary criticisms and general discussions on polite literature, theology, and varied controversy. When this periodical was discontinued, in 1811, New England was without a literary review of like character; and it was not until 1815 that the North American Review, like a phoenix, arose from its ruins, originated by such scions of the parent club as William Tudor and William S. Shaw, to which review Mr. Savage was a contributor.

There is, in the pages of the Anthology, a curious controversy between Dr. J. S. J. Gardiner and Rev. J. S. Buckminster, on the merits of Gray as a poet. This dispute bears some resemblance to the discussions between the romantic and classical schools in literature, says the biographer of Buckminster. Dr. Gardiner maintains, with dry reasoning, that Pope's is the only true model for real poetry. The object of an allusion to this controversy is to introduce an anecdote related by Mr. Savage, then a member of the society. "Controversy," said he, "sprang up in the club, on the literary nature of Gray's Odes; and the war began with a burlesque ode to Winter, by our president, Rev.

J. S. J. Gardiner, who followed it up with one on Summer, also in the Anthology. In the same number, Buckminster gave a forcible defence of the imagery and epithets of the poet, which the next month was replied to by the assailant, and in the following number was strengthened by the other side; and this also was counteracted by another parody of the lyric inspiration, in which Gray's Odes were caricatured. A fourth attempt at the ludicrous, by our president, contained something unguardedly personal from the satirist to his antagonist, which produced strong though silent emotions of sympathy in many of the party. In an instant, the writer threw the inconsiderate effusion into the fire. From that moment, no allusion was made in the club to Gray's merits."

In 1806, when Mr. Savage was a candidate for the degree of Master of Arts, he gave an oration on the progress and advancement of commerce; and in 1812 he pronounced the Phi Beta Kappa oration. Mr. Savage was elected a State representative several times, first in 1812; to the State Senate, first in 1826; to the Executive Council, first in 1830, and is an overseer of Harvard College. In 1819 Mr. Savage visited Demarara. He was elected to the Common Council first in 1823, to the board of Aldermen, first in 1827, and to the school committee. In April, 1823, Mr. Savage married Elizabeth Otis, widow of James Otis Lincoln, Esq., and daughter of George Stillman, of Machias, Me., an officer of the Revolution; by whom he had one son, James, and three daughters, one of whom married Prof. William B. Rogers, of the University of Virginia, 1849; another daughter married Amos Binney, of Boston.

Mr. Savage was a delegate to the State convention on the revision of the constitution in 1820, and was actively engaged in the debates. In a discussion on education, he remarked, the common schools are the children of religion, and religion not the child of town-schools. He hoped that the children would never succeed to destroy their mother. An abstract of his excellent speech against religious tests appears in the printed journal of the convention.

Mr. Savage published, in the year 1825, The History of New England from 1630 to 1649, by John Winthrop, first Governor of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, from his original manuscripts: with Notes to illustrate the civil and ecclesiastical concerns, the geography, settlement, and institutions of the country, and the lives and manners of the principal planters. The learned Notes of Mr. Savage to this work

will ever rank him among the most profound antiquaries of his country. But would it detract from the reputed candor of Mr. Savage, should the Notes to a new edition of this work be entirely divested of his own expression of sectarian feeling? Whenever Mr. Savage has restored the true reading, he has accompanied it with a note of reference to the corresponding word or sentence in the first edition as inserted at the bottom of the page. Who will suppose that Gov. Winthrop could say, in speaking of a night which he was obliged to pass in the woods in consequence of losing his way, that it was through God's mercy a weary night, instead of a warm night; or, that one Noddle, an honest man of Salem, was drowned while running wood in a canoe, instead of carrying wood; or, lastly, that all breeches were made up, and the church saved from ruin beyond all expectation, instead of breaches? The good sense and impartiality of Mr. Savage's comments form a singular contrast to the strong and unqualified partiality too often extended by editors towards authors whom they have labored to render famous.

The last days of James Savage are devoted to antiquarian research. "During the summer of 1842," says he, "in a visit to England, I was chiefly occupied with searching for materials to illustrate our early annals; and, although disappointment was a natural consequence of some sanguine expectations, yet labor was followed by success in several. Accident threw in my way richer acquisitions, which were secured with diligence." These comprise gleanings from New England history, extending along one hundred pages in the Massachusetts Historical Collections, of names of early settlers, extracts from records, and an account of rare books and tracts written in New England. May the shade of Prince environ our antiquary! His last, best days are intensely devoted, both by day and sometimes to the last hour of night, in preparing an elaborate work exhibiting the early genealogy of the first settlers of New England; and no subtle divine or civilian ever followed up the minutest point of doubt with more conscientious regard to accuracy, which will render him the most eminent genealogist in America. The very exordium to the oration of Mr. Savage, at the head of this article, exhibits the ruling passion of his mind; for he says: "If the accidental advantage of generous birth may well be a cause of congratulation to an individual, how greatly ought we to exult, my countrymen, on a review of our national origin! Descended from the only people to whom Heaven has afforded the enjoyment of