true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed." But Cicero, methinks, did better justice to the theme. We are told that when that illustrious orator and statesman saw the books which composed his precious private library, fairly arranged in the apartment which he had provided for them, in his villa at Antium, he wrote to his friend Atticus, Postea vero quam Tyrannio mihi libros disposuit, mens addita videtur meis ædibus. "Now that my books have been put in their places by your learned Greek, Tyrannio, a Soul seems to have been added to my dwelling."

And our own American Cicero is at this moment at your side, sir, prepared to receive these keys from your hand, in behalf of the trustees over whom he so fitly presides; and under his auspices, and with the aid of his associates, it is hardly too much to say that a living, breathing, imperishable soul will have been infused into this now merely material structure. Yes, my friends, within these walls shall soon be gathered, not merely the mighty masters of philosophy and rhetoric, of history and poetry, whom the Roman Cicero recognized and reverenced as introducing a soul into his dwelling, but the great lights of all ages, the wise and learned of all climes; and those, especially, who have adorned a civilization, and vindicated a liberty, and illustrated a Christianity, which that Cicero never conceived of, shall be congregated around them. Here soon shall many a waiting heart be kindled into something of the exultation of that good old Bishop of Norwich, when he exclaimed on the sight of a great Library, "What a happiness is it, that, without all offence of necromancy, I may here call up any of the ancient worthies of learning, whether human or divine, and confer with them of all my doubts! — that I can at pleasure summon up whole synods of reverend fathers and acute doctors, from all the coasts of the earth, to give their well-studied judgments on all points and questions which I may propose!"

And not the reverend fathers and acute doctors only shall answer to our call; but here also the poets of all ages shall be ever ready to sing to us their choicest strains, the dramatists. of all ages to rehearse to us their richest scenes of wit or of woe, the orators of all ages to recite to us the triumphant

argument, or the thrilling appeal, which may have shaken empires from their base, or changed the current of the world's affairs. Here, too, the practical inventor and ingenious mechanic shall exhibit to us his specifications, his plans, and his drawings. Here the great interpreters of nature shall unfold to us the mechanism of the heavens, the testimony of the rocks, and the marvels and mysteries of animal and vegetable life. Here the glowing pictures of fiction and fancy shall pass and repass before our vision, beneath the magic wand of a Scott, a Dickens, or a Cooper; the living portraits of sages and patriots, of other lands and of our own land, be displayed to us by a Guizot or a Brougham, a Carlyle or a Campbell, a Sparks or an Irving ; and the grander panoramas of history be unrolled for us by a Gibbon or a Grote, a Hume or a Macaulay, a Bancroft, a Prescott, or a Motley.

But I can do no justice to a theme like this in the closing sentences of a discourse, which has already occupied you too long, and I leave it, all unfinished, and almost unattempted, for those who are to follow me.

Let me conclude, Mr. Mayor and gentlemen of the City Council, by thanking you once more, in the name of my associates and in my own name, for the confidence with which you have honored us in the execution of our commission, and let me offer you our best wishes and prayers that this institution may fulfil the most sanguine expectations of its founders and friends. May God, in his goodness, grant, that increased supplies of wisdom and knowledge and virtue, for us and our posterity, may be its rich and abundant fruits; that it may be so sanctified by his grace to the highest interests of the whole community that here, at least, the tree of Knowledge may never be disunited from the tree of Life; and that, constituting, as it will, the complement and the crown of our great Republican system of popular education, it may do its full part in bearing up and sustaining, for a thousand generations, a well-compacted and imperishable fabric of Freedom, of that freedom which rests upon intelligence, which must be regulated by law, and which can only be maintained by piety, philanthropy, and patriotism.

THE BOSTON LIGHT INFANTRY.

A SPEECH MADE AT FANEUIL HALL, BOSTON, JUNE 16, 1858.

MR. COMMANDER AND GENTLEMEN OF THE BOSTON LIGHT INFANTRY, In rising to renew at somewhat greater length the welcome which I have been commissioned to offer you on this occasion, in behalf of those who have preceded you in the posts you so honorably fill, I am sure I shall not be misunderstood when I say, that it is not the mere fact that you have just returned from a brief but brilliant military excursion to New York, which has prompted such a manifestation of our sympathy and regard.

You went forth from your peaceful homes a few days since, I hardly need intimate, upon no service of peril or privation. You have visited no enemy's country. You have been called to endure no tedious marches by day, no weary watches by night, no stinted soldier's fare. You have encountered no hostile reception, and brought back no serious list of killed and wounded. Even the pelting of the pitiless storm, which followed your departure and has again preceded your return, has only furnished an opportunity for showing that you were something more than mere sunshine soldiers, and that, like your fathers in the Revolution, you were not prepared to lay down your arms in the face of a tyrannical and oppressive reign.

Your trip has been one, I am sure, of recreation and enjoyment. You have been among friends, fellow-citizens, and brother soldiers, who were eager to meet you beneath the folds of a common and glorious flag, — floating in peace and beauty over almost half a hemisphere, and who rejoiced to welcome you to those sumptuous hospitalities which are never wanting in the great metropo

lis of the Union. You have been the guests of that proud commercial emporium, which witnessed the original organization of our federal government, under him who is ever first in the hearts of his countrymen, and which is in itself the noblest illustration of the prosperity, the progress, and the power which such a government, with such a Constitution, and such a Union, could alone have developed.

You will hardly expect us, then, to sentimentalize or sympathize with you very deeply, on account of any little disappointments or dampers which may have attended such experiences as these. We have observed with the highest gratification and pride the distinguished attentions which you have everywhere received, and have felt that any fatigues or hardships which may have been occasioned by wind or weather, have been far more than counterbalanced by the hospitalities and honors which have been so abundantly showered upon you.

Mr. Commander and gentlemen, the experiences of an encampment or military excursion have been greatly changed since I was an officer in your corps. I remember one of them, certainly, not far from thirty years ago, which was commenced by a rapid afternoon march to Lynn, and thence the next day, under the blaze of a midsummer sun, to Salem, and which ended on the fourth day (for we were always careful to be at home on Saturday night), by a march the whole way from Salem to Boston, by the longest road, between noon and nine in the evening. A wisp of straw for our bed, and a bit of thin bunting above our heads, through which we could see the sentinel stars keeping their watch in the sky, more vigilant than any sentinels we could station, were our only and all-sufficient accommodations; and a little molasses and water and ginger a switchel I think it was called was our best drink. Indeed, our commissariat was so economically organized, that I never remember eating any thing in my life with more of the ravenous hunger which proverbially belongs to the halffamished animal, by whose name we are sometimes called, than an ear of hot corn, which I bought for a fip from a child's basket on Salem Common, soon after the hour when the sun ought to have risen, and probably did rise, on a foggy morning of July or August, somewhere about the year 1829. I have acknowl

edged that corn most gratefully ever since. But what a contrast does such a picture as this present to your comfortable conveyances by railroad and steamers, and to your luxurious accommodations and banquets at the Lafarge or the Astor!

No, gentlemen, it is not any thing you have done or suffered during the New-York expedition, which we have come here especially to commemorate by this festival. Some of us, perhaps, may even have been led to doubt the value or expediency of such expeditions altogether. Few of us would regard them as experiments to be very frequently repeated, considering all the exposure and expense which they necessarily involve. And one of us, at least and I am sure you will pardon the frankness with which I say it notwithstanding the habitual excellence and eloquence of Dr. Higby's sermons would prefer to see every variety of volunteer military service-not even excepting military funerals —included and terminated within the six secular days of the week.

But your return has presented an opportunity for offering you a deserved acknowledgment for what you have done, and what you are doing, at home. We are here to assure you of our interest in witnessing the condition of unprecedented and unparalleled prosperity into which you have recently brought the old corps with which we have all had, and still have, so many happy and cherished associations. We are here to manifest the pride we all feel in beholding its full ranks, its exact and excellent discipline, its honorable and gentlemanly spirit, and the readiness it has uniformly exhibited to do its full share, and discharge its whole responsibility, in whatever service of duty or of ceremony the varying exigencies of the community in which we live our city, our Commonwealth, or our country-may have called for.

of:

Mr. Commander and gentlemen, I believe I express the views of all who are associated with me in this compliment to our old corps, I know that I express my own views, when I say that whatever else we may have lost in the lapse of years, we have not lost any thing of our respect and reverence for that article of our National Constitution which recognizes "a well-regulated militia. as essential to the security of a Free State." And that, too,