4. 5. 6. 7. That pavement, damp and cold, No smiling courtiers tread; One silent woman stands, No mingling voices sound, An infant wail alone; A sob suppressed,-again O change!-0 wondrous change ! Burst are the prison bars, This moment there, so low, O change! stupendous change! There lies the soulless clod; The Sun eternal breaks, The new immortal wakes, Wakes with his God. LESSON CXXIII. EXPLANATORY NOTE.-1. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS died in the Capitol of the United States, at Washington, on the 23rd of February, 1848, in the 81st year of his age, having been seized by sudden illness, while sitting at his desk in the House of Representatives, on the 21st of February. On the day following, his decease was announced by the SPEAKER of the House, as follows: PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE DEATH OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 1. Gentlemen of the House of Representatives of the United States.-Ir has been thought fit that the Chair should announce officially to the House, an event already known to the members individually, and which has filled all our hearts with sadness. A seat on this floor has been vacated, toward which all eyes have been accustomed to turn with no common interest. 2. A voice has been hushed forever in this Hall, to which all ears have been wont to listen with profound reverence. A venerable form has faded from our sight, around which we have daily clustered with an affectionate regard. A name has been stricken from the roll of the living statesmen of our land, which has been associated, for more than half a century, with the highest civil service, and the loftiest civil renown. 3. Whatever advanced age, long experience, great ability, vast learning, accumulated public honors, a spotless private character, and a firm religious faith, could do, to render any one an object of interest, respect, and admiration, they had done for this distinguished person; and interest, respect, and admiration, are but feeble terms to express the feelings, with which the members of this House and the people of the country have long regarded him. 4. After a life of eighty years, devoted from its earliest maturity to the public service, he has, at length, gone to his rest. He has been privileged to die at his post; to fall while in the discharge of his duties; to expire beneath the roof of the Capitol; and to have his last scene associated forever, in history, with the birthday of that illustrious Patriot,* whose just discernment brought him first into the service of his country. 5. The close of such a life, under such circumstances, is not an event for unmingled emotions. We can not find it in our hearts to regret, that he has died as he has died. He himself could have desired no other end. "This is the end of earth," were his last words, uttered on the day, on which he fell. But we might almost hear him exclaiming, as he left us,—in a language hardly less familiar to him than his native tongue :-"Hoc est, nimirum, magis feliciter de vitâ migrare, quam mori."t * WASHINGTON, who was born on the 22nd of February, 1732. While President he appointed Mr. Adams a resident minister to the United Netherlands, in the year 1794. This is, indeed, rather a happy departure from life, than a mere death. LESSON CXXIV. EXPLANATORY NOTE.-1. After an address by Mr. HUDSON of Massachusetts, giving a brief account of Mr. Adams' life, Mr. Holmes of South Carolina rose and delivered the following address. EULOGY ON THE LIFE AND SERVICES OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. HOLMES. 1. MR. SPEAKER :-The mingled tones of sorrow, like the voice of many waters, have come unto us from a sister State, -Massachusetts weeping for her honored son. The State I have the honor in part to represent, once endured, with yours, a common suffering, battled for a common cause, and rejoiced in a common triumph. Surely, then, it is meet that in this, the day of your affliction, we should mingle our griefs. 2. When a great man falls, the nation mourns; when a patriarch is removed, the people weep. Ours, my associates, is no common bereavement. The chain which linked our hearts with the gifted spirits of former times, has been rudely snapped. The lips from which flowed those living and glorious truths that our fathers uttered, are closed in death! 3. Yes; my friends, Death has been among us! He has not entered the humble cottage of some unknown, ignoble peasant; he has knocked audibly at the palace of a nation! His footstep has been heard in the Hall of State! He has cloven down his victim in the midst of the councils of a people! He has borne in triumph from among you, the gravest, wisest, most reverend head! Ah! he has taken him, as a trophy, who was once chief over many States, adorned with virtue, and learning, and truth; he has borne, at his chariot-wheels, a renowned one of the earth. 4. There was no incident in the birth, the life, the death of Mr. ADAMS, not intimately woven with the history of the land. Born in the night of his country's tribulation, he heard the first murmurs of discontent, he saw the first efforts for deliverance. While yet a little child, he listened with eagerness to the whispers of freedom, as they breathed from the lips of her almost inspired apostles; he caught the fire that was then kindled; his eye beamed with the first ray; he watched the day-spring from on high, and long before he departed from earth, it was graciously vouchsafed unto him to behold the effulgence of her noontide glory. 5. His father saw the promise of the son, and early led him by the hand to drink of the very fountains of light and liberty itself. His youthful thoughts were kindled with the idealism of a republic, whose living form and features he was destined to behold visibly. Removed, at an early age, to a distant country, he there, under the eye of his father, was instructed in the rigid lore of a FRANKLIN. His intellect was expanded by the conversations, and invigorated by the acute disquisitions of the Academicians, whose fiery zeal, even at that early period, was waking up the mind of France to deeper thoughts, bolder inquiries, and more matured reflection,-to result ultimately, as we all know, in terrific action. 6. Returning to this country, he entered into the cool cloisters of the college; passed through the various stages to acquire that discipline of mind, which intense study can alone impart; and thence, as he was about to emerge, appeared those buds of promise, which soon blossomed into those blushing honors he afterward wore so thick around him. His was not the dreamy life of the schools; but he leaped into the arena of activity, to run a career of glorous emulation with the gifted. spirits of the earth. 7. He saw the efforts to place his country on a deep and stable foundation, where it now rests. He had seen the colonies emerge into States, and the States cemented into Union, and realized, in the formation of this confederated Republic, all that his ardent hopes had pictured out in the recesses of schools. Young as he then was, he contributed by the energy of his mind, and the vigor of his pen, to support the administration of WASHINGTON, who transferred him, at an early age, to a foreign court; scarcely initiated into its diplomacy, before his services were required for another and a more extended sphere. 8. Passing from that, he returned to his own country, and was placed by the suffrages of his State in the chamber at the other end of this Capitol; and there, the activity of his mind, the freedom of his thought, the independence of his action, rendered him to his constituents, for the time being, unacceptable, by uniting him to the policy of Mr. JEFFERSON. He retired from the halls of Congress; but he went to no ignoble ease. Wearied with the toils, heated with the contests, covered with the dust of politics, he withdrew to the classic groves of Cambridge, and there he bathed his weary mind in the pure stream of intellectual rest.* 9. Purified, refreshed, invigorated, he came forth, after severe study and devout prayer, to do his country service. He was sent immediately to Russia, not to repose amidst the luxuries of courts, or in rich saloons, amidst the glitter of lights and the swell of voluptuous music, but to watch the swell and play of those shadowy billows, with which all Europe heaved beneath the throes of the great heart of France. 10. Mr. ADAMS saw and felt that the pulse of freedom, day by day, beat feebler and feebler throughout the continent. He counseled the ministers of Russia. He was one of those that stimulated them to wake from their torpor, and he had the satisfaction to behold, from the frozen regions of the north, those mighty hordes pour out upon the sunny nations of the south, to give deliverance to People, States, and Powers. His own country demanded his services, and he became, with GALLATIN and CLAY, a mediator of that peace between two nations, which we trust shall exist forever, while the only contests shall be those of good-will on earth and mutual brotherhood. 11. He went, -as his father had gone after the first war of the Revolution,-upon the termination of the second war, to the Court of St. James. He remained not long before another sphere was opened to him. As Secretary of State for eight years, he fulfilled the arduous duties, incident to that high post, in a country just emerging from conflict. To the highest office of the people he was quickly raised; and how, in that * After resigning the office of United States Senator, Mr. Adams was appointed Professor of Rhetoric in Harvard University, Cambridge. |