when he was elected to Congress, in which he served for ten successive years. He declined a re-election in 1834, and in 1835 was elected Governor of Massachusetts, holding the office by successive re-elections for four years. In 1840 he was sent as Minister Plenipotentiary to England. Daniel Webster, Secretary of State, died in October, 1852, and Mr. Everett filled that position during the remaining four months of Mr. Fillmore's administration. In 1853 he was elected United States Senator; but impaired health compelled him to resign his seat within a year.

Mr. Everett took an active part in the discussion of the political questions of the time; but he was more especially noted as an orator at literary and other public occasions. Collections of his Speeches and Addresses have been made at several periods. The second collection, in two volumes, made in 1850, contains more than eighty Addresses; a third volume appeared in 1858, and a fourth volume in 1869. One of the best of these is the Phi Beta Kappa Oration, delivered at Harvard on July 4, 1826, being the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. On that day, within a few hours of each other, Jefferson and Adams, of whom the orator had just feelingly spoken, passed from earth.

THE MEN AND DEEDS OF THE REVOLUTION.

Often as it has been repeated, it will bear another repetition; it ought especially to be repeated on this day :the various addresses, petitions, and appeals, the correspondence, the resolutions, the legislative and popular debates from 1764 to the Declaration of Independence VOL. IX.-24

EVERETT, EDWARD, an American statesman and orator, born at Dorchester, Mass., April 11, 1794; died at Boston, January 15, 1865. He graduated at Harvard in 1811, at the age of seventeen, and soon afterward became tutor in the college, pursuing at the same time his studies in divinity. In 1812 he delivered the Phi Beta Kappa Poem at Harvard, his subject, which was treated rather playfully, being " American Poets," as they would be in time, not as they then were; for as yet no American had printed any poem of considerable merit.

FUTURE POETS OF AMERICA.

When the warm bard his country's worth would tell,
To Mas-sa-chu-setts's length his lines must swell;
Would he the gallant tales of war rehearse,
'Tis graceful Bunker fills the polished verse;

Sings he, dear land, those lakes and streams of thine,
Some mild Mem-phre-ma-gog murmurs in his line,
Some A-mer-is-cog-gin dashes by his way,
Or smooth Con-nect-i-cut softens in his lay,
Would he one verse of easy movement frame,
The map will meet him with a hopeless name;
Nor can his pencil sketch one perfect act,
But vulgar history mocks him with a fact.

But yet, in soberer mood, the time shall rise,
When bards will spring beneath our native skies;
Where the full chorus of creation swells,
And each glad spirit, but the poet, dwells,

Where whispering forests murmur notes of praise;
And headlong streams their voice in concert raise.

Where sounds each anthem, but the human tongue,
And nature blooms unrivalled but unsung.

Oh yes! in future days our Western lyres,
Turned to new themes, shall glow with purer fires,
Clothed with the charms to grace their later rhyme,
Of every former age and foreign clime.

Haste happy times, when through these wide domains.
Shall sound the concert of harmonious strains;
Through all the clime the softening notes be spread,
Sung in each grove, and in each hamlet read.
Fair maids shall sigh, and youthful heroes glow,
At songs of valor and at tales of woe;
While the rapt poet strikes, along his lyre,
The virgin's beauty and the warrior's fire.
Thus each successive age surpass the old,
With happier bards to hail it than foretold,
While Poesy's star shall, like the circling sun,
Its orbit finish where it first begun.

-Phi Beta Kappa Poem, 1812.

This poem, written at eighteen, certainly gave promise that Everett's name might stand high on the list of American poets. This promise was never fulfilled. He wrote little verse; though one poem, Alaric the Visigoth, makes good his claim to rank among the poets in our English tongue. The poem is founded upon a passage in an old chronicle, which reads: "Towards the close of this year, 410, while engaged in the siege of Cosentia, Alaric was seized with an illness which proved fatal after a very short duration. He was buried, with his treasures, in the bed of the river Busentinus, which was diverted from its channel for that purpose, and all the prisoners who were engaged in the work were put to death, in order that the place of his sepulchre might remain unknown."