n the return of Francis I. from a Spanish prison to his own
beautiful France; than the daring and rapid march of the conqueror at
Austerlitz from Frejus to Paris. It was a pageant, indeed, rivaled only in
the elements of the grand and the pathetic, by the journey of our own
Washington through the different states. Need I say that I allude to the
visit of Lafayette to America?

But Lafayette returned to the land of the dead, rather than of the living.
How many who had fought with him in the war of '76, had died in arms, and
lay buried in the grave of the soldier or the sailor! How many who had
survived the perils of battle, on the land and the ocean, had expired on
the deathbed of peace, in the arms of mother, sister, daughter, wife!
Those. who survived to celebrate with him the jubilee of 1825, were
stricken in years, and hoary-headed; many of them infirm in health; many
the victims of poverty, or misfortune, or affliction. And, how venerable
that patriotic company; how sublime their gathering through all the land;
how joyful their welcome, how affecting their farewell to that beloved
stranger!

But the pageant has fled, and the very materials that gave it such depths
of interest are rapidly perishing: and a humble, perhaps a nameless grave,
shall hold the last soldier of the Revolution. And shall they ever meet
again? Shall the patriots and soldiers of '76, the "Immortal Band," as
history styles them, meet again in the amaranthine bowers of spotless
purity, of perfect bliss, of eternal glory? Shall theirs be the
Christian's heaven, the kingdom of the Redeemer? The heathen points to his
fabulous Elysium as the paradise of the soldier and the sage. But the
Christian bows down with tears and sighs, for he knows that not many of
the patriots, and statesmen, and warriors of Christian lands are the
disciples of Jesus.

But we turn from Lafayette, the favorite of the old and the new world, to
the peaceful benevolence, the unambitious achievements of Robert Raikes.
Let us imagine him to have been still alive, and to have visited our land,
to celebrate this day with us. No national ships would have been offered
to bear him, a nation's guest, in the pride of the star-spangled banner,
from the bright shores of the rising, to the brighter shores of the
setting sun. No cannon would have hailed him in the stern language of the
battlefield, the fortunate champion of Freedom, in Europe and America. No
martial music would have welcom