e to burst the orb, can overturn it;
its branches spread wide; they stretch their protecting arms broader and
broader, and its top is destined to reach the heavens. We are not
deceived. There is no delusion here. No age will come in which the
American Revolution will appear less than it is, one of the greatest
events in human history. No age will come in which it shall cease to be
seen and felt, on either continent, that a mighty step, a great advance,
not only in American affairs, but in human affairs, was made on the 4th
of July, 1776. And no age will come, we trust, so ignorant or so unjust
as not to see and acknowledge the efficient agency of those we now honor
in producing that momentous event.

We are not assembled, therefore, fellow-citizens, as men overwhelmed
with calamity by the sudden disruption of the ties of friendship or
affection, or as in despair for the republic by the untimely blighting
of its hopes. Death has not surprised us by an unseasonable blow. We
have, indeed, seen the tomb close, but it has closed only over mature
years, over long-protracted public service, over the weakness of age,
and over life itself only when the ends of living had been fulfilled.
These suns, as they rose slowly and steadily, amidst clouds and storms,
in their ascendant, so they have not rushed from their meridian to sink
suddenly in the west. Like the mildness, the serenity, the continuing
benignity of a summer's day, they have gone down with slow-descending,
grateful, long-lingering light; and now that they are beyond the visible
margin of the world, good omens cheer us from "the bright track of their
fiery car"!

There were many points of similarity in the lives and fortunes of these
great men. They belonged to the same profession, and had pursued its
studies and its practice, for unequal lengths of time indeed, but with
diligence and effect. Both were learned and able lawyers. They were
natives and inhabitants, respectively, of those two of the Colonies
which at the Revolution were the largest and most powerful, and which
naturally had a lead in the political affairs of the times. When the
Colonies became in some degree united, by the assembling of a general
Congress, they were brought to act together in its deliberations, not
indeed at the same time, but both at early periods. Each had already
manifested his attachment to the cause of the country, as well as his
ability to maintain it, by printed addresses, public sp