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THOMAS POWER.

JULY 4, 1840. FOR THE CITY AUTHORITIES.

WAS born at Boston, Oct. 8, 1786; and his birth-place was on the estate next above the Golden Ball in Hanover-street, where Benjamin Franklin was employed in the shop of a tallow-chandler. He graduated at Brown University in 1808, and engaged in the study of law, under the guidance of Hon. Judge Jackson. He became a counsellorat-law in 1811, opened an office at Northfield, where he practised law for a period of four years, when he settled at Boston, and was, during a period of seven years, an efficient member of the primary school committee. He married Elizabeth Sampson, of Duxbury, a descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers; and was the clerk of the Boston Police Court, from the foundation of the city government. It was in the office of Mr. Power, who conceived the idea, that it was decided to plant the four rows of beautiful elm-trees that flourish on the main street of Northfield.

Mr. Power possesses a highly poetical vein, besides great capacity in the legal profession; and whatever he attempts he executes with all his power, whether as author or in his vocation at court. He is a fervid national poet. His Log Cabin Song, which was sung by the Louisiana delegation, on their entrance into Boston, in September, 1840, to attend the electioneering gathering for Gen. Harrison, and the song for President Taylor, in 1848,

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moreover, "The Old Grist Mill," from his hand, reflect much credit to the warmth of his heart. His contributions to the Daily Atlas indicate the purity of his judgment in musical criticism. Mr. Power has been a political admirer of the policy of Harrison Gray Otis; and, at a public festival in Faneuil Hall, March 4, 1829, when he was mayor of Boston, gave this sentiment,-"Hon. H. G. Otis: Made dearer to Bostonians by Washington railing and Boston railways." Amid the multiplicity of his engagements, Mr. Power has found leisure to exercise his native talent; and of his productions we find Masonic Melodies, 108 pages 8vo.; Secrecy, a poem delivered before the Knights Tem

plars, Feb. 28, 1832. His best effort is, Lafayette, a Poem,- dedicated to the young men of Boston, 1834, in twenty-eight pages. He gave a Masonic Oration at Waltham, in 1821, and an oration at Northfield, July 4, 1812; beside the oration at the head of this article. Mr. Power should ever devote his intervals of leisure to national literature. The poet who wrote the elegant effusion before us should never restrain the inspiration of his Muse. Here is a fine conception of the Liberty Tree destroyed by the British soldiers during the siege of Boston, in 1775, which flourished two centuries ago. We select from "Lafayette, a Poem:"

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There stood, in its unfading green,
A monarch of the forest-scene;
Aloft, abroad its branches spread,
'Mong its deep foliage zephyrs played,
And fair its form, and deep its shade;
Princes and peasants, too, 't is said,
Sought its protection when the sun
Half his bright, burning course had run,
And owned their deep devotion due

Where thoughts are free and hands are true.
Fair, too, the verdant spot where stood

That towering monarch of the wood,
And sweet the flowers, of mingled hues,
That clustered there, in heaven's own dews,
That flourished 'neath that holy tree
To throw their perfume on the air,

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The warrior hears the clash of arms,
The shock of battle, loudly rise,
And courtly rays and beauty's charms
Fade like a vapor in the skies.
Fair Freedom now has power alone

To lead his heart and guide his hand,
For pomp and honors near a throne,
He seeks a home in foreign land.
The cry is, Up! wake! freemen, wake!
Oppression shrinks, and man is free;
The bolts and bars of tyrants break,
When touched by heavenly Liberty.
In the far-distant west is seen,

Where beauty the horizon streaks,
A lovely garden, fresh and green,
'Tis the new home the warrior seeks.

His hopes are high, and onward still
Unwearied fancy proudly bears,

Where war's loud trumpet, sharp and shrill,
The march of Freedom's host declares.
With soul on fire, his piercing eye,
Prophetic, sees that little band;
He hears, elate, the battle-cry-
For God, our liberty, our land!

RUFUS CHOATE.

APRIL 21, 1841. EULOGY ON PRESIDENT HARRISON.

WAS born at Essex (formerly Chebacco), Essex County, Oct. 1, 1799. When at school, he was remarkable for a great memory and abstracted habits,-avoiding youthful sports, and ever at the head of his class. He graduated at Dartmouth College in 1819, and was a tutor there until 1821. He entered the Dane Law School, at Cambridge, and read law in the office of Hon. David Cummings, of Salem, and under William Wirt, at Washington, who was then the U. S. Attorney General. He practised law at Danvers, of which town he was a representative in 1826-7. He removed to Salem, and finally settled at Boston, in 1834. He married Helen, daughter of Hon. Mills Olcott, of Hanover, N. H. In 1830 he was elected, for Essex, to the State Senate; in 1832 he was a representative in Congress; and in 1842 he was elected to the U. S. Senate, for Suffolk, by the State Legislature, which station he resigned in 1845. Mr. Choate is a regent of the Smithsonian Institute, at Washington; a member of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and New England Historic and Genealogic Society.

He is an eminent counsellor; and the Law Reporter remarks of him, that "he is certainly one of the most gifted orators of New England. A brilliant intellect, which has been developed by exact and laborious study, a wonderful power of discrimination and abstraction, an exuberant flow of language, a sparkling wit, a lively fancy, and an overwhelming enthusiasm, enable him to control almost any audience, and entitle him to the name of the American Erskine. Yet, with many of Erskine's excellences, he has some of his failings. Among these may

be included a strong love of the marvellous, and a disposition to make too much of small things. As Hamlet would say, he almost tears a passion to tatters, in his anxiety to bear upon a single point. This is a great element of rhetorical power; but we doubt whether it be in good taste in a court of justice, where the object is to convince, and not to carry by storm."

When Mr. Choate pronounced the eulogy on the beloved Harrison, his eye kindling with excitement, his countenance overshadowed with grief, and, in his deep-toned, musical voice, enlarged on the history and the virtues of the departed, in language breathing the very essence of eloquence, it was a scene as overpowering as the oratory of Greece and Rome. "In looking over the history of his life," said Mr. Choate, "more carefully, to form an estimate of the aggregate of his character, I venture to think, that while through his life he displayed the requisite capacity for the formation and administration of laws, or whatever public duty was required of him, it was the warm, pure and great heart that attracted and retained for him the love of his countrymen. He should be remembered, and we will speak of him to our children, as the GOOD PRESIDENT. Homely as that epithet may appear, how much more has it of real significance than the imperial title 'great,' so often given to men who have waded through blood to thrones! I need give but two anecdotes, to illustrate this trait in his disposition. He pardoned the negro who sought his life; and rescued him, by his own solicitation, when fastened to the stake for military punishment. He recovered heavy damages, by a verdict, in a case for slander, and then divided the money received among the children of the slanderers, and the orphan children of some of his old soldiers. Although he was hospitable beyond the usual hospitality of the west, it was always the remnant of the armies of Harmar and St. Clair that found the warmest welcome at his ever ready board. When the ear heard him, it blessed him; when the eye saw him, it gave witness to him, because he delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him. Consider, then, that combined benevolence and integrity, worthy the accounts of Grecian and Roman fame, to which he was not ashamed to turn his attention backwards, behold him tried by the temptation of an office from which he might have amassed a princely fortune, and, with the conscientious honor of a Washington, retiring from it poor,-and you will feel and see, in a moment, what it was that impelled towards him the love of a people. The country had long been

Be this his eulogy. That not for his military victories, not for

unprosperous, from causes into which we need not inquire. We were laboring the livelong day, and feeling, as we lay down at night, that we were growing poorer and poorer. The people were puzzled with various theories and arguments. They were growing more and more distrustful with all mere great talent; there grew up a wide and irrepressible craving, in the public heart, for an honest man from among themselves, to preside over their affairs, and help them backward to the glories of their fathers' days. Then it was that they turned to him. Be this the lesson of his life. for descent from an exalted line, not his dexterity in the partisanship of professional politics, was he chosen to relieve and reform the land, but because he was a good and just man, fearing God and loving his country." These were the last words of the tribute: "We stand on this spot, where the heart of an American must throb with pride and joy. And yet, perhaps you have embellished the glories of even this place, by hanging these emblems of mourning to its pillars, by this dim religious light we have added to the memories of its ancestral glories." Mr. Choate, possessing the keenest sensitiveness to impressions, is distinguished as much for his power of selfcontrol as his power of self-excitation; and his emotions, like welltrained troops, are "impetuous by rule." They appear always to rise up to his mind with a personal existence. Thus New York, with him, is not simply a city distinguished for commercial energy, but a city which with one hand "grasps the golden harvests of the west, and with the other, like Venice, espouses the everlasting sea." "Massachusetts," he says, "will ever be true to the constitution. She sat among the most affectionate at its cradle; she will follow, the saddest of the procession of sorrow, its hearse." Again, he observes that, after we came out of the war of 1812, "the baptism of fire and blood was on our brow, and its influence on our spirit and legislation."

We will relate an instance of the excitable powers of our orator. In an argument on a case of impeachment, before a legislative committee, Mr. Choate remarked that he never read, without a thrill of sublimity, the concluding article in the Bill of Rights,- the language of which is borrowed directly from Harrington, who says he owes it to Livy,—that "in the government of this commonwealth, the legislative department shall never exercise the executive and judicial powers, or either of them; the executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them; the judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them;—to the end that it

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