Mr. President and Gentlemen

Of the Petersburg Library Association. I am here to night in pursuance of your kind invitation, and propose to perform a melancholy, but at the same time an agreeable task. It is to wander among the tombs, and to remove the moss, if any, which thirteen years have thrown over inscriptions which should be continued legible for all coming time. My task will be brief. Eulogies have already been spoken. My offering will be one, however humble, of high admiration and undying friendship. Standing beside their graves I recall them such as they were in life. I see them as formerly at the Cabinet Board, undisturbed by the ravings of faction or the roar of the political tempest, intent only on the public good, and earnest to record their names on the pages of history as public benefactors. Spargere flores, spargere breves rosas-and to whom can this office be more appropriately assigned than to myself? We were comrades-sat at the same table-break bread and ate salt together-bared our bosoms to the same storms, and when the angry clouds so far parted as to admit a ray of sunshine, we basked in it together. I confided in them while living, I revere their memories now they are dead. Let no man fear that I shall so illy acquit myself of my task as to introduce into my address any thing that can excite party feeling. I shall do no such injustice to the memory of those of whom I design to speak-what they were politically, is for

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others to mention--I design no more than to draw their daguerreotypes-upon the historian will devolve the duty of drawing their full length portraits. I shall speak of them in the order in which they bade adieu to the world and closed their career of usefulness-and the name of HUGH SWINTON LEGARE is the first on the catalogue of the dead.

I remember the first time I ever saw him. It was in the infancy of steam-power, und a slight frost sufficed to prevent the running of the steamer that plied between Washington and Potomac Creek. The stage coach was at the time the only means of conveyance over the almost impassable roads between Washington and Fredericksburg. I was returning to my home in Virginia, in the winter of 1819-20, during a brief respite from service as a member of the House of Representatives. Chance seated me by the side of a young man who I soon learned had but a few days before returned to the United States from his European travels. We were strangers to each other, but who waits for an introduction in a stage coach. Its chief recommendation consists in the absence of all form and ceremony. Each passenger feels himself bound, in some sort, to contribute to relieve the fatigue of the journey. The conversation thus becomes general, and before the journey is ended good fellowshipis established among the passengers. So was it upon the occasion I have mentioned. The slow progress of the coach gave full leisure for

conversation—and the passengers were indebted to the youthful stranger for much to interest them. He was full of his travels. France, Italy, England and Scotland were spoken of with graphic power. The sun of the great Napoleon had set, and the glory which had flashed from minaret and tower, had sunk into the twilight of the ancient regime. The enthusiasm of the young traveller found its only excitement in the marvels of the times of the consulate and empire. We visited with him as our cicerone those battle-fields where crowns were the stakes, and whereon kingdoms were lost and wonluxuriated in the beauty and fragrance of the Imperial gardens-visited the great works which if all else was wanting, would serve as enduring monuments to the memory of the Emperor-conversed with the great Marshals, and shed tears at the bloody death of "the bravest of the brave," a death which has left the upon garments of those who ordered it a stain so deep that all the waters in the world cannot wash it out, but the blood then shed shall, in the language of Lady Macbeth "rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green, one We crossed the Simplon and descended into Italy. Rome as in the time of Augustus, rose up before us in all its majestic proportions, its seven hills clothed with the glories of the old republic-and then stumbling over the ruins of the mighty past, we entered with profound awe and reverence the holy edifice of St. Peter, the creation of the genius of Michael Angelo. Thus was represented the imperial city at one time glorying in her conquests and almost universal powerand holding in her lap the dowry of nations at another weeping like Niobe over the children of her earthly glory, the offspring of her feverish ambition, begotten of policy and won by the sword—and then again, rising from her ruins with the mitre on her brow, and the crozier in her hand, exercising a power far greater than that ever exercised by her consuls and emperors in the olden time. Then passed before us Venice, rising from the ocean sea Cybele," the gems which glittered on her brow, and the silks which adorned

red."

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her person, brought from the far distant lands of the orient-her annual espousal of the Adriatic-the magnificence of her Doges-her gondoliers, and the songs of Tasso the Rialto with its "prison and its palace on each hand,"-all rose up before us at the plastic touch of the young LEGARE. We fought the battle of Hastings over again-saw the Saxon banner go down before the Norman-witnessed the signing of the great charter at Runnemede, rejoiced in the accession of William of Orange to the throne, and in the steady advances of public freedom over privilege and arbitrary power-and crossing the Channel, wandered over England's classic grounds. We then entered Scotland, the home of his maternal ancestors. A new enthusiasm was awakened-Sir Walter Scott had peopled every hill and glen with the old memories. The stout Sir Allen Swinton had played his part in the battle of Hallidon hill.

"There needed not to blazon forth the Swinton
His ancient burgonet, the s ble boar
Chained to the gnarled oak, nor his proud step
Nor giant stature, nor the ponderous mace
Which only he in Scotland's realm could wield;
His discipline and wisdom mark the leader,
As doth his name the champion."

No wonder that in touching the old soil which had been so proudly trodden by his stalwart race, the young traveller should have been awakened to a new enthusiasm. The mighty men of the claymore and the spear, armed as they were in life-reappeared from the spirit land. The Wallace and the Bruce and the Campbell and the Douglas, reenacted their parts, and "James Fitz James, the Commons king," held royal court at Stirling-and there too was Ellen Douglass and the devoted Græme. The unfortunate Mary, and the last of her race who aspired to the throne, figured on the canvass, until hill-top responded to hill-top in the national air of the day,

"Wha will be king but Charlie,"

which continued to awaken the slumbering echoes long after the fatal and bloody day of Culloden.

We parted at Richmond and I saw no more of him for years. In the mean time

he had risen to eminence, and his native Stute of South Carolina had bestowed upon him distinguished marks of her esteem and confidence. He had embellished the pages of the public reviews by contributions from his pen, which the whole country had read with admiration and delight, and which gave him rank among the best writers of the age. He had attained celebrity at the bar, and had won laurels as a debater in the House of Representatives. Upon a vacancy occurring, I invited him to a seat in the Cabinet as Attorney General. I had reason to rejoice in the selection. Familiar with all questions of constitutional and municipal law, he had also a large knowledge of international law, which found in him at the Cabinet board, on many interesting occasions, an able expounder. His mind was a deep well which was in no danger of being exhausted by the copious drafts made upon it. There never was councillor more faithful-patriot more sincerestatesman with broader or more liberal views, or a man more unassuming yet of firmer or more decided character. Truth was the great magnet whose influence he obeyed, and whithersoever that guided he followed. If Congress placed a mistaken interpretation on the force and effect of a statute, as it did in a notable instance, LEGARE on being called upon for his opinion, had no hesitation in pronouncing Congress in error, and so accordingly, at an after day, it was decided to be by the unanimous opinion of the Supreme Court. It is not believed that a single instance has occurred wherein his seriatim opinion has been overruled by that high tribunal. It may be said without fear of mistake that he was more deeply read in the civil law, than any other man in the Union. On all questions involving its principles, he was the Magnus Apollo of the court. With all his reverence for the common law, he had a still greater for the civil, as a more perfect system of justice. He sought on all occasions to soften down the seeming asperities of the first, by an infusion into it of the principles of the last, and in this respect followed the example of Lord Mansfield, on the bench of England. Several of the States of the Union

have of late incorporated into their statutes the principles of the civil law, but whether experience will approve the innovation remains to be seen. For myself I frankly confess my attachment to the system of the common law, which has come down to us from so remote an antiquity, gushing forth in its origin from the hearts of the brave and untamed, and bearing along with it the principles of human right, to sustain and adorn the great structure of public liberty—a system so perfect, that to remove any single column is to endanger the entire fabric. Mr. LEGARE thought differently, and I remember with what exultation he called upon me one morning, not long before his death, to inform me of his having received the evening before, from Europe, an ancient work on the civil law, which he had been long anxious to obtain. He was at the time the Secretary of State ad interim, having been appointed to the place on the retirement of Mr. Webster, in May 1843. Qualified as he was to be the exponent of the law and the constitution in his office of Attorney General, he was no less so to conduct the affairs of the State Department-but alas! how weak is the staff of life on which we lean-our hopes how delusory-the early promise of morning how fleeting and transient! I was invited to Boston to be present at the delivery of the speech of Mr. Webster on the completion of the Bunker Hill monument. The journey was commenced some days in advance of that appointed for the delivery of the oration, and Mr. LEGARE was prevented from accompanying me by some pressing business in the State Department; and only reached Boston on the day set apart for the oration. He complained of being too unwell to attend. An eminent physician was called in, who at first did not regard the attack as of any serious moment. Fatal error, which a brief day served to dissipate. Death had seized upon its victim, and the commonwealth was called upon to mourn the loss of one of its purest and noblest sons. That well-stored mind which had shed broad light over the country upon so many occasions, was now extinguished-that calm and unimpassioned friend,