France soon openly enlisted on our side. Turgot, the philosopher, and Necker, the financier, counselled, as farsighted ministers, against this step, which launched the ancient monarchy in a dangerous career. Jealous of a rival power, smarting under recent reverses, and brooding over the accumulated rancors of long generations, the court was willing to embarrass England, yet covertly and without the hazard of open war. The king himself never sympathized with the American cause. But public opinion, which in that nation inclines to generous ideas, was moved by the news of a distant people waging a contest for human rights, at first doubtful, and then suddenly illumined by the victory of Saratoga; while Franklin, the philosopher and diplomatist, our unequalled representative at Paris, challenged the admiration alike of grave and gay, and the example of Lafayette touched the heart of France. These wrought so far that court and king were obliged to bend before the popular will, and then came the Treaty of Alliance with the Colonies, by which their place in the family of nations was assured. The Treaty was communicated to the British Court, with a note referring Independence to the Declaration of the 4th of July, on which Lafayette, with constant instinct for popular rights, exclaimed, "Here is a principle of national sovereignty which will some day be recalled at home." Of course, if Americans could become independent by a Declaration, so could Frenchmen.

Arrived in Philadelphia, Lafayette announced that he had come to serve at his own expense, and as volunteer. The Continental Congress, touched by the magnanimous devotion of the youthful stranger, and apprised of his distinguished connections at home, appointed him without delay Major-General in the army of the United States, where he took rank by the side of Gates and Greene, Lincoln and Lee. Born to exalted condition in an ancient monarchy, he found himself welcomed to the highest place in the military councils of a struggling republic, and this while still a youth under twenty, younger than Fox, younger than Pitt, when they astonished the world by their precocious parliamentary powers, younger than Condé, in his own beautiful France, on the field of Rocroi.

As he became known, his simple and bountiful nature awakened the attachment of officers and men, so that in writing to his wife he was able to relieve her anxieties by saying that he had "the friendship of the army in gross and in detail,'

and also what he calls "a tender union with the most respectable, the most admirable of men, General Washington." Nor was this unnatural, when we consider how completely he became American in dress, food, and habits, as he was already American in heart. Avoiding no privation of fatigue, this juvenile patrician, educated to indulgence in all the forms that wealth and privilege could supply, showed himself more frugal and more austere even than his republican associates, living sometimes for months on a single ration.

The Commander-in-chief, usually so grave, was won at once to that perpetual friendship which endured unbroken as long as life, showing itself now in tears of joy, and then in tears of grief; watching the youthful stranger with paternal care; sharing with him table, tent, and on the field of Monmouth the same cloak for a couch; following his transcendent fortunes, now on giddiest hights and then in gloom, with constant, unabated attachment; corresponding with him at all times; addressing him in terms of unwonted endearment as "the man he loved," and saying again that he "had not words to express his affection, were he to attempt it"; sending kindly sympathy to that devoted wife in her unparalleled affliction, and pleading across sea and continent with the Austrian despot for his release from the dungeons of Olmütz.

It is much to have inspired the most tender friendship which history records in the life of Washington. There were with us other strangers, scarcely less brilliant than Lafayette. There was Kosciusko, the Pole, who afterwards played so great a part in his own country; Steuben, the German, who did so much for the discipline of our troops; De Kalb, the gallant soldier, who died for us at Camden; Rochambeau, the distinguished commander of the French forces, compeer with Washington at Yorktown; Lauzun, the sparkling courtier, whose fascinations were acknowledged by Marie Antoinette; Ségur, the high-bred youthful soldier and future diplomatist; Montesquieu, grandson of the immortal author of the "Spirit of Laws"; SaintSimon, whose military and ancestral honors are now lost in his fame as social reformer; also the unfortunate Count de Loménie, with the Prince de Broglie of the old monarchy, and Berthier, afterwards a prince of the Empire. All these were in our Revolutionary contest gathered about Washington; but Lafayette alone obtained place in his heart. Friendship is always a solace and delight; but such a friendship was a testi

mony. Let it ever be said that Washington chose Lafayette as friend, while Lafayette was to him always pupil, disciple, son.

The friendship of Washington and Lafayette deserves more than passing mention. It constitutes a memorable part in the life of each. They saw each other for the last time, in 1784, at Annapolis, where Washington had taken his guest in his carriage from Mount Vernon. There they parted, Washington returning to his peaceful home, Lafayette hastening across the ocean to the great destinies and the great misfortunes which awaited him. Though never meeting again, their intimacy was prolonged by an interchange of letters, the most remarkable of any in the life of either, by which their friendship is made one, and each lives doubly in the affection of the other.

Returned to Europe, Lafayette sought constant opportunities to promote our interests, writing especially of Jefferson, our Minister at Paris, that he was "happy to be his aide-de-camp." Nor did he confine his exertions to France. Wherever he appeared, our concerns, whether political or commercial, were still present to his thoughts. At the table of Frederick the Great he vindicated American institutions, and especially answered doubts with regard to "the strength of the Union," which he upheld always as a fundamental condition of national pros perity. He confidently looked to our Independence as the fruitful parent of a new order of ages, being that rightful selfgovernment, above all hereditary power, whether of kings or nobles, which he proudly called the "American Era.”

The ruling passion of his life was strong to the close. As at the beginning, so at the end, he was all for human rights. This ruled his mind and filled his heart. His last public speech was in behalf of political refugees seeking shelter in France from the proscription of arbitrary power. The last lines traced by his hand, even after the beginning of his fatal illness, attest his joy at that great act of Emancipation by which England had just given freedom to her slaves.

At the tidings of his death there was mourning in two hemispheres, and the saying of Pericles seemed to be accomplished, that "to the illustrious the whole earth is a sepulchre." It was felt that one had gone whose place was among the great names of history, combining the double fame of hero and martyr, hightened by the tenderness of personal attachment and gratitude. Nor could such example belong to France or America only. Living for all, his renown became the common property of the whole human family.

Judge him by the simple record of his life, and you will confess his greatness. Judge him by the motives of his conduct, and you will bend with reverence before him. More than any

other man in history, he is the impersonation of Liberty.

Early and intuitively he saw man as brother, and recognized the equal rights of all. Especially was he precocious in asserting the equal rights of the African slave. His supreme devotion to humanity against all obstacles was ennobled by that divine constancy and uprightness which from youth's spring to the winter of venerable years made him always the same, in youth showing the firmness of age, and in age showing the ardor of youth; ever steady when others were fickle, ever faithful when others were false; holding cheap all that birth, wealth, or power could bestow; renouncing even the favor of fellow-citizens, which he loved so well; content with virtue as his only nobility; and, whether placed on the dazzling heights of worldly ambition or plunged in the depths of a dungeon, always true to the same great principles, and making even the dungeon witness of his unequalled fidelity.

Great he was, indeed,-- not as author, although he has written what we are glad to read; not as orator, although he has spoken much and well; not as soldier, although he displayed both bravery and military genius; not even as statesman, versed in the science of government, although he saw instinctively the relations of men to government. Not on these accounts is he great. Call him less a force than an influence, less "king of men than servant of humanity, his name is destined to be a spell beyond that of any king, while it shines aloft like a star. Great he is as one of earth's benefactors, possessing in largest measure that best gift from God to man, the genius of beneficence sustained to the last by perfect honesty; great, too, he is as an early, constant Republican, who saw the beauty and practicability of. Republican Institutions as the expression of a true civilization, and upheld them always; and great he is as example, which, so long as history endures, must inspire author, orator, soldier, and statesman all alike to labor, and, if need be, to suffer for human rights. The fame of such a character, brightening with the progress of humanity, can be measured only by the limits of the world's gratitude and the bounds of time.

South Leaflets

SERIES, 1883

Boston.

SICUT PATRIBUS, SIT DEUS NOBIS.

By R. W. EMERSON.

READ IN FANEUIL HALL, ON THE CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY OF THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TEA, DECEMBER 16, 1873.*

THE rocky nook with hill-tops three
Looked eastward from the farms,
And twice each day the flowing sea
Took Boston in its arms;

The men of yore were stout and poor,
And sailed for bread to every shore.

And where they went on trade intent
They did what freemen can;

Their dauntless ways did all men praise,
The merchant was a man.

The world was made for honest trade,-
To plant and eat be none afraid.

The waves that rocked them on the deep
To them their secret told;

Said the winds that sung the lads to sleep,
"Like us be free and bold!"

The honest waves refuse to slaves
The empire of the ocean caves.

Old Europe groans with palaces,
Has lords enough and more;
We plant and build by foaming seas
A city of the poor; -

For day by day could Boston Bay
Their honest labor overpay.

Used for the Old South Leaflets by special permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.