and the various and wonderfully complicated agency of the institutions of men in society,- of individual character, of exploits, discoveries, commercial adventure, the discourses and writings of wise and eloquent men,-educes the progressive civilization of the race. Under these circumstances it is scarcely possible to approach the subject in any direction with a well-grounded hope of presenting it in new lights, or saying anything in which this intelligent and patriotic audience will not run before me, and anticipate the words before they drop from my lips. But it is a theme that can never tire nor wear out. God grant that the time may never come, when those who at periods however distant shall address you on the 19th of April, shall have anything wholly new to impart. Let the tale be repeated from father to son till all its thrilling incidents are as familiar as household words; and till the names of the brave men who reaped the bloody honors of the 19th of April, 1775, are as well known to us as the names of those who form the circle at our firesides. In the lives of individuals there are moments which give a character to existence - moments too often through levity, indolence, or perversity, suffered to pass unimproved; but sometimes. met with the fortitude, vigilance, and energy due to their momentous consequences. So, in the life of nations, there are all-important junctures when the fate of centuries is crowded. into a narrow space,-suspended on the results of an hour. With the mass of statesmen, their character is faintly perceived, their consequences imperfectly apprehended, the certain sacrifices exaggerated, the future blessings dimly seen; and some timid and disastrous compromise, some faint-hearted temperament, is patched up, in the complacency of short-sighted wisdom. Such a crisis was the period which preceded the 19th of April. Such a compromise the British ministry proposed, courted, and would. have accepted most thankfully; but not such was the patriotism nor the wisdom of those who guided the councils of America, and wrought out her independence. They knew that in the order of that Providence in which a thousand years are as one day, a day is sometimes as a thousand years. Such a day was at hand. They saw, they comprehended, they welcomed it; they knew it was an era. They met it with feelings like those of Luther when he denounced the sale of indulgences, and pointed his thunders at once - poor Augustine monk-against the civil and ecclesiastical power of the Church, the Quirinal, and the

Vatican. They courted the storm of war as Columbus courted the stormy billows of the glorious ocean, from whose giddy curling tops he seemed to look out, as from a watch-tower, to catch the first hazy wreath in the west which was to announce that a new world was found. The poor Augustine monk knew and was persuaded that the hour had come, and he was elected to control it, in which a mighty revolution was to be wrought in the Christian church. The poor Genoese pilot knew in his heart that he had as it were but to stretch out the wand of his courage and skill, and call up a new continent from the depths of the sea; - and Hancock and Adams, through the smoke and flames of the 19th of April, beheld the sun of their country's independence arise, with healing in his wings.

And you, brave and patriotic men, whose ashes are gathered in this humble place of deposit, no time shall rob you of the well-deserved meed of praise! You too perceived, not less clearly than the more illustrious patriots whose spirit you caught, that the decisive hour had come. You felt with them that it could not, must not be shunned. You had resolved it should not. Reasoning, remonstrance had been tried; from your own townmeetings, from the pulpit, from beneath the arches of Faneuil Hall, every note of argument, of appeal, of adjuration, had sounded to the foot of the throne, and in vain. The wheels of destiny rolled on; the great design of Providence must be fulfilled; the issue must be nobly met or basely shunned. Strange it seemed, inscrutable it was, that your remote and quiet village should be the chosen altar of the first great sacrifice. But so it was; the summons came and found you waiting; and here in the centre of your dwelling-places, within sight of the homes you were to enter no more, between the village church where your fathers worshiped and the grave-yard where they lay at rest, bravely and meekly, like Christian heroes, you sealed the cause with your blood. Parker, Munroe, Hadley, the Harringtons, Muzzy, Brown:-alas! ye cannot hear my words; no voice but that of the archangel shall penetrate your urns; but to the end of time your remembrance shall be preserved! To the end of time, the soil whereon ye fell is holy; and shall be trod with reverence, while America has a name among the nations!

JOHANNES EWALD

(1743-1781)

BY WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE

HE latter half of the eighteenth century is known in Danish literature as the "age of enlightenment"; but although a period fairly prolific in literary production, it is distinguished by few conspicuous names. Altogether the most important among these few is that of Johannes Ewald, who stands out as the one great figure of the transition period between Holberg and Oehlenschläger. Born in Copenhagen, November 18th, 1743, he came to manhood a few years after the death of Holberg had bereft Denmark of the father of its literature. He died March 17th, 1781, a little more than a year later than the birth of Oehlenschläger, the most illustrious of his successors.

His brief life of thirty-seven years was outwardly uneventful, except for a boyish attempt to win fame as a warrior, which came to an inglorious end before he had reached the age of eighteen. It was a life of baffled ambition and unsympathetic environment, a life of poverty and sickness,—and it must be added, of reckless dissipation, - brightened only near its close by the sunshine of royal favor and popular recognition. Viewed from within, however, this life, to outward seeming so nearly a failure, was rich with emotion, phantasy, and imaginative experience. The son of a Lutheran priest, and himself destined for that calling, his temperament was the least possible fitted for enlistment in such service; and although he went through the forms, passing his theological examination with great credit, he never undertook pastoral duties, and the poetic impulse soon became so strong as to put a professional career entirely out of the question for him.

Of his youthful feelings and aspirations, Ewald has written with charming naïveté in his 'Levnet og Meninger' (Life and Opinions), a fragment of autobiography almost as candid and outspoken as the 'Confessions' of Rousseau:

"I was from my childhood a lover, an admirer of everything remarkable, whereby one might set himself apart from the crowd, become noticed, discussed, pointed out with the finger. What fruit of true and shining deeds might have sprung from this seed, had it been properly cultivated and given the right direction! But all my pedantic teachers, without a single exception,