primitive poets beheld it in the islands of the blest; the Doric bards surveyed it in the Hyperborean regions; the sage of the academy placed it in the lost Atlantis; and even the sterner spirit of Seneca could discern a fairer abode of humanity, in distant regions then unknown. We look back upon these uninspired predictions, and almost recoil from the obligations they imply. By us must these fair visions be realized, by us must be fulfilled these high promises, which burst in trying hours from the longing hearts of the champions of truth. There are no more continents or worlds to be revealed; Atlantis hath arisen from the ocean, the farthest Thule is reached, there are no more retreats beyond the sea, no more discoveries, no more hopes. Here then a mighty work is to be fulfilled, or never, by the race of mortals. The man who looks with tenderness on the sufferings of good men in other times; the descendant of the Pilgrims, who cherishes the memory of his fathers; the patriot who feels an honest glow at the majesty of the sys. tem of which he is a member; the scholar, who beholds with rapture the long sealed book of unprejudiced truth ex. panded to all to read; these are they, by whom these auspi ces are to be accomplished. Yes, brethren, it is by the intellect of the country, that the mighty mass is to be inspired; that its parts are to communicate and sympathize, its bright progress to be adorned with becoming refinements, its strong sense uttered, its character reflected, its feelings interpreted to its own children, to other regions, and to after ages.

Meantime the years are rapidly passing away and gathering importance in their course. With the present year will be completed the half century from that most important era in human history, the commencement of our revolutionary war. The jubilee of our national existence is at hand. The space of time, that has elapsed from that momentous date, has laid down in the dust, which the blood of many of

them had already hallowed, most of the great men whom, under Providence, we owe our national existence and privileges. A few still survive among us, to reap the rich fruits of their labors and sufferings; and one has yielded himself to the united voice of a people, and returned in his age, to receive the gratitude of the nation, to whom he devoted his youth. It is recorded on the pages of American history, that when this friend of our country applied to our commissioners at Paris, in 1776, for a passage in the first ship they should despatch to America, they were obliged to answer him, (so low and abject was then our dear native land,) that they possessed not the means nor the credit sufficient for providing a single vessel, in all the ports of France. Then, exclaimed the youthful hero, 'I will provide my own;' and it is a literal fact, that when all America was too poor to offer him so much as a passage to our shores, he left, in his tender youth, the bosom of home, of happiness, of wealth, of rank, to plunge in the dust and blood of our inauspicious struggle.

Welcome, friend of our fathers, to our shores! Happy are our eyes that behold those venerable features. Enjoy a triumph, such as never conqueror or monarch enjoyed, the assurance, that throughout America, there is not a bosom, which does not beat with joy and gratitude at the sound of your name. You have already met and saluted, or will soon meet, the few that remain of the ardent patriots, prudent counsellors, and brave warriors, with whom you were associated in achieving our liberty. But you have looked round in vain for the faces of many, who would have lived years of pleasure on a day like this, with their old companion in arms and brother in peril. Lincoln, and Greene, and Knox, and Hamilton, are gone; the heroes of Saratoga and Yorktown have fallen before the only foe they could not meet. Above all, the first of heroes and of men, the friend of your youth, the more than friend of his country, rests in the bosom of the

soil he redeemed.

On the banks of his Potomac, he lies in glory and peace. You will revisit the hospitable shades of Mount Vernon, but him whom you venerated as we did, you will not meet at its door. His voice of consolation, which reached you in the Austrian dungeons, cannot now break its silence, to bid you welcome to his own roof. But the grateful children of America will bid you welcome, in his name. Welcome, thrice welcome to our shores; and whithersoever throughout the limits of the continent your course shall take you, the ear that hears you shall bless you, the eye that sees you shall bear witness to you, and every tongue exclaim, with heartfelt joy, welcome, welcome La Fayette!

EXTRACT FROM A SPEECH,

ON THE BILL PROPOSING TO PAY MARIGNY D'AUTERIVE FOR INJURY DONE TO A SLAVE WHILE WORKING IN THE TRENCHES BEFORE NEW-ORLEANS, JAN. 1, 1815.

BY TRISTAM BURGES.

I want words, Sir, to express my regret that such a ques tion, and for such an amount, should have been brought into debate on this floor-that such principles and such terms should have been pressed into the discussion. Why urge the question of slavery upon us, and at the same time, declare that we dare not decide it? We have no right-we claim no right—we wish for no right-to decide the question of slavery. Men from the free States have already decided the question for themselves, within their own State jurisdic tion; and such men, to decide it here for other States, must first be renegade from the Constitution, or oblivious of its high and controlling principles. When has this question been raised, and not by men interested in its eternal slumber? The Missouri Question was, as it has truly been said on this floor, no triumph. It was no triumph of policy; it was no triumph of humanity. To contract, and not extend the theatre of it, is the true policy of every statesman, as well in the slave-holding, as in those States uncursed by this moral and political mischief. On this matter of slavery, singular and ominous political events have, within the last forty years, transpired in the great community of the New World. What another half century will exhibit, is known

to Him only who holds in his hand the destiny of nations, This kind of population is rapidly increasing; and, should any large and united number of them make a desperate struggle for emancipation, it will then indeed be found, that the policy which had placed aid and relief at any greater distance, was cruelly and fatally unwise. Humanity surely did not triumph in that decision. It widened the mart of slavery. Southern men have nobly aided in driving from the ocean a traffic which had long dishonored our country, and outraged the best feelings of our nature. The foreign slave-trade is now piracy. Would to God, the domestic might, like his barbarous brother of the sea, be made an outlaw of the land, and punished on the same gibbet.

The Constitution, we know, does not permit one class of the States to legislate on the nature or condition of the property of the other class. Why tell us, for we already know, that neither our religion or our humanity can reach or release that condition. Humanity could once bathe the fevered forehead of Lazarus-she could not bring to his comfort so much as a crumb from the sumptuous and profuse table of Dives. Religion may weep, as the Saviour of the World wept over the proud city of Herod : but her tears will fall like the rain-drops on the burning plough-share, and serve only to render the stubborn material more obdurate.

We are called and pressed to decide this question, and yet threatened, that the decision will dissolve the Union. "The discussion and the Constitution will terminate together.''Southern gentlemen will, in that event, leave this Hall.' Who makes this menace, and against whom? It cannot be a war cry; can it be a mere party watch-word? On what event of immeasurable moment are we thus adjured? In a paltry claim of two hundred and nine and 'thirty' pieces of silver, shall we, who have in this Hall, lifted the hand, or kissed' the hallowed gospel of God, in testimonial of high devotion to its requirements, shall we