Essay on the Claims of Citizens of the United States on Foreign Governments, which originally appeared in the North American Review; a Life of General Stark, which appears as the first article in Mr. Sparks' Library of American Biography; and a Biographical Memoir of Mr. Webster, forming the introduction to the new edition of his works. The speeches and reports of Mr. Everett in Congress, and his other political speeches and writings, would probably form a collection as large as that of his miscellaneous orations and speeches. Above a hundred articles are stated to have been written by him in the North American Review, and many in other journals. A hope was expressed, by Judge Story, in the letter above cited, that Mr. Everett would devote himself to the preparation of some elaborate work. It would appear, from the following paragraph in the preface to the collection of his orations, that he has contemplated such an undertaking:

"It is still my purpose, should my health permit, to offer to the public indulgence a selection from a large number of articles contributed by me to the North American Review, and from the speeches, reports and official correspondence, prepared in the discharge of the duties of the several official stations which I have had the honor to fill, at home and abroad. Nor am I wholly without hope that I shall be able to execute the more arduous project, to which I have devoted a good deal of time for many years, and towards which I have collected ample materials,- that of a systematic treatise on the modern law of nations, more especially in reference to those questions which have been discussed between the governments of the United States and Europe since the peace of 1783."

GEORGE STILLMAN HILLARD.

JULY 4, 1835. FOR THE CITY AUTHORITIES.

"IT cannot be denied that we have been, for some time past, growing indifferent to the celebration of this day," says Hillard. "It was once hailed and some who hear me can remember the time-with emotions too deep for words. The full hearts of men overflowed in the copious, gushing tears of childhood, and silently went up to heaven on the wings of praise. With their own sweat and their own blood

they had won their inheritance of peace, and they prized it accordingly. They were yet fresh from the great events which we read of as cold matters of history. The storm had passed by, but the swell of the troubled waters, rising in dark-heaving ridges, yet marked its duration and violence. All things then wore the beauty of novelty, and long possession had not dulled the sense of enjoyment. The golden light and glittering dews of the morning were above and around them. The wine of life sparkled and foamed in its freshly-poured cup. The lovely form of Liberty-to us so familiar-seemed like a bright vision, newly lighted upon this orb, from the starry courts of heaven; and men hung, with the rapture of lovers, upon her inspiring glances and her animating smiles. But a half-century has rolled by, and a new generation has sprung up, who seem to think that their social and political privileges belong to them as naturally as air and light, and reflect as little upon the way in which they came by them. The very magnitude of our blessings makes us insensible to their value, as the ancients supposed that the music of the spheres could not be heard, because it was so loud. The whole thing has become to us an old story. We have heard so much of the spirit of Seventy-six, and of the times that tried men's souls, that we are growing weary of the sound. The same feeling which made the Athenians tired of hearing Aristides called the just, makes us tired of hearing this called a glorious anniversary. But that man is little to be envied who cannot disentangle this occasion from the secondary and debasing associations which cling to it,from its noise, its dust, its confusion, its dull orations and vapid toasts, --and, ascending at once into a higher region of thought and feeling, recognize the full, unimpaired force of that grand manifestation of moral power which has consecrated the day. A cold indifference to this celebration would, in itself, be a sign of ominous import to the fortunes of the republic. He who greets the light of this morning with no throb of generous feeling is unworthy of a share in that heritage of glory which he claims by right of the blood which flows in his degenerate veins. That man, had he lived sixty years ago, would most surely have been found wanting to his country, in her hour of agony and struggle. Neither with tongue, nor purse, nor hand, would he have aided the most inspiring cause that ever appealed to a magnanimous breast. The same cast of character which makes one incapable of feeling an absorbing emotion, makes him incapable of heroic efforts and heroic sacrifices. He who cannot forget himself in admir

ing true greatness, can never be great; and the power of justly appreciating and heartily reverencing exalted merit is, in itself, an unequivocal sign of a noble nature."

George Stillman Hillard was born at Machias, Maine, Sept. 22, 1808. His mother, a daughter of Gen. Stillman, died when he was an infant. He entered the Boston Latin School in 1822. His reminiscences of this schoolhouse, when it was demolished, in the year 1844, as given in the Boston Book of 1850, are very impressive. "Certainly there were no intrinsie charms in the building to commend it to the affectionate remembrances of the boys. There never was any thing more bare, more tasteless, more uncouth," says Mr. Hillard. "The walls were the blankest, the seats the hardest, the desks the most inconvenient, that could be imagined. Going out' was such a farce! It was only exchanging a room with a roof for one without; and, really, not big enough for a well-grown boy to swing a kitten in. But what did we care for all this? Youth and hope, and light hearts, are such mighty magicians! How they gilded and colored those walls! What more than regal tapestry they hung round their naked desolation! with what roses they empurpled that dusty floor! what beauty they shed around that narrow staircase!" After enlarging on the advantage of a spacious public schoolhouse, and the fierce democracy of the scholars, Mr. Hillard continues: "There is no better illustration of Homer than the daily course of a public school. His heroes are grown-up boys. Like them, they speak out the whole truth. Like them, they call names. Like them, they weep honest tears, and laugh hearty laughs. When a boy chances to make an ass of himself, by word or deed, with what distinctness is the fact communicated to him! He is never left to grope his way by inferences. Would that we could all be boys again, for one day! What faces we should see in Court-street and State-street! I pass daily, in the streets, some of my old school-fellows. To me they are always boys. I see the blooming looks of childhood through those strong and manly lines. And yet, how many are changed! Such cold, money-getting eyes are turned upon me! Some have protuberant waistcoats, and are growing almost gouty. Some have that compressed lip and furrowed brow which speak of suppressed grief,- of that unspoken sorrow whose darkling current mines away the heart unseen. In some, the natural face is so changed that it looks like a mask. Some-many-are unaltered. With them, the flavor of youth is unimpaired. Towards them,

the dark cloud has not been turned. With them, the boy has flowed into the man, as the brook expands into the river. As I pass by these early companions, with a cold nod of recognition, I have often longed to stop them, and say to them, 'Tell me, in ten words, your history. Where do you feel the pinch of life?" " After allusions to his teacher and certain favorite schoolmates, Mr. Hillard writes of the higher advantages of culture now enjoyed. "We were compelled," says he,

to feed on such husks as the Gloucester Greek Grammar, Lemprière's Dictionary, and a Delphin Virgil, with an ordo meandering along the margin,- things now as much out of date as wigs and threecornered hats. I hear now in the school a sound of logical predicates,' as strange to my ears as nouns and verbs were to Jack Cade's. These fine lads are striding after us with seven-leagued boots." Mr. Hillard entered Harvard College in 1824, and to his latest life has never forgotten that period when, with heart full of fear and satchel full of books, he went to be examined before entering college, and there breathed the atmosphere of letters. We cannot forbear embodying here a very agreeable reminiscence of Mr. Hillard in regard to Edward Everett, who was a professor in the college when he became a student in that institution: "We recall, certainly with no complacent sense of superiority for the colder heart of manhood, the boyish enthusiasm with which we ourselves hung upon his accents in those days. He seemed to express and embody our dreams of an accomplished scholar and a finished man. To miss hearing him, whenever he addressed the public, was an annoyance which rose almost to the dignity of a misfortune. And to this day, we confess an incapacity to apply anything like an impartial judgment to his earlier discourses, because they are so indissolubly associated with all the entrancements and illusions of youth. The fresh gales of the morning blow around as we read, and the dew of hope lies bright once more upon the untried world. To us, there are words between the lines. Faces, now unknown on earth, throng back upon us, and we listen again to voices locked in the rugged cell of death. In that Nestor-like disparaging comparison, so apt to come with coming years, we have sometimes asked ourselves, not merely whether there was any one now capable of awakening such enthusiasm in young natures, but whether the feeling still survived,— whether any fairy shapes of enchantment yet lingered in the morning twilight of life, unscared by the invading blaze of useful knowledge." At a college exhibition, in 1817, Mr. Hillard delivered an oration on the

Abuses of Genius; and, when a candidate, in 1831, for the degree of Master of Arts, he gave another oration, on the Dangers to which the Minds of Young Men in our country are exposed. He was a student in the Law School of the college until he graduated, in 1832, when he read law with Charles P. Curtis, Esq., and was an attorney at the Suffolk bar. Mr. Hillard is an eminent counsellor. In 1835 he married Susan T., daughter of the late Judge Howe, of Northampton. In 1845 he was elected to the city Council, of which he continued a member until July, 1847, and was two years its president. He has been a representative to the State Legislature, and was elected to the Senate in 1849.

The manly and decided course of Mr. Hillard, in the State Senate, elicited from Hon. Daniel Webster, in the United States Senate, a warm response. In his remarks on legislative instructions to representatives in Congress, Mr. Webster made a happy allusion to Mr. Hillard, March 7, 1850. He said it had become quite too frequent a practice for State Legislatures to present resolutions in Congress on all subjects, and to instruct us here on all subjects. "I took notice, with pleasure," said Mr. Webster, "of some remarks on this subject, made the other day, in the Senate of Massachusetts, by a young man of talent and of character, from whom the best hopes may be entertained. I mean Mr. Hillard. He told the Senate of Massachusetts that he would vote for no instructions whatever, to be forwarded to members of Congress, nor for any resolutions to be offered, expressive of the sense of Massachusetts as to what their members of Congress ought to do. He said he saw no propriety in one set of public servants giving instructions and reading lectures to another set of public servants. To their own master they must stand or fall, and that master is their constituents." Mr. Webster further remarked: "If the question be one which affects her interest, and at the same time affects the interests of all other States, I should no more regard her political wishes or instructions, than I would regard the wishes of a man who might appoint me an arbiter or referee to decide some important private right, and who might instruct me to decide in his favor."

A journalist, in noticing the oration of Mr. Hillard on our national independence, remarks that "it is full of passages of the highest eloquence, couched in language of a Tyrian dye." The clear fountain of such a mind as his should not cease to pour forth copious streams for intellectual refreshment. Who would not learn a lesson from his beautiful little moral of "A Patch on both Knees, and Gloves on"? He