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124.-JAMES OGLETHORPE.

JAMES OGLETHORPE, the founder of Georgia, was born in England, about the year 1688. Entering the army at an early age, he served under Prince Eugene, to whom he became secretary and aid-de-camp. On the restoration of peace, he was returned a member of parliament, and distinguished himself as a useful legislator, by proposing several regulations for the benefit of trade, and a reform in the prisons. His philanthropy is commemorated in

Thomson's Seasons.

In 1732, he became one of the trustees of Georgia. In the prosecution of this trust, Mr. Oglethorpe embarked in November, with a number of emigrants, and, arriving at Charleston, in the middle of January, 1733, proceeded immediately to Savannah river, and laid the foundation of the town of Savannah. He made treaties with the Indians, and crossed the Atlantic several times, to promote the interests of the colony.

Being appointed general and commander in chief of his majesty's forces, in South Carolina and Georgia, he brought from England in 1738, a regiment of six hundred men, to protect the southern frontier from the Spaniards. After the commencement of the war between Great Britain and Spain, in 1739, he visited the Indians, to secure their friendship; and, in 1740, conducted an unsuccessful expedition against St. Augustine.

As the Spaniards laid claim to Georgia, three thousand men, a part of whom were from Havanna, were sent, in 1742, to drive Oglethorpe from the frontiers. When this force proceeded up the Altamaha, he was obliged to retreat to Frederica. He had but about seven hundred men, besides Indians: yet, with a part of these, he approached within two miles of the enemy's camp, with the design of attacking them by surprise, when a French soldier, of his party, fired his musket, and ran into the Spanish lines.

His situation was now very critical; for he knew that the deserter would make known his weakness. Returning, however, to Frederica, he had recourse to the following expedient. He wrote a letter to the deserter, desiring him to acquaint the Spaniards with the defenceless state of Frederica, and to urge them to the attack. If he could not

effect this object, Oglethorpe directed him to use all his art to persuade them to stay three days at fort Simon's; as, within that time, he should have a reinforcement of two thousand land forces, with six ships of war; cautioning him, at the same time, not to drop a hint of Admiral Vernon's meditated attack upon St. Augustine.

A Spanish prisoner was intrusted with this letter, under promise of delivering it to the deserter: but he gave it, as was expected and intended, to the commander in chief, who instantly put the deserter in irons. In the perplexity occasioned by this letter, while the enemy was deliberating what measures to adopt, three ships of force, which the governor of South Carolina had sent to Oglethorpe's aid, appeared on the coast.

The Spanish commander was now convinced, beyond all question, that the letter, instead of being a stratagem, contained serious instructions to a spy; and, in this moment of consternation, set fire to the fort, and embarked so precipitately, as to leave behind him a number of cannon, with a quantity of military stores. Thus by an event beyond human foresight or control, by the correspondence between the artful suggestions of a military genius, and the blowing of the winds, was the infant colony saved from destruction, and Oglethorpe gained the character of an able general.

He now returned to England, and never again revisited Georgia. In 1745, he was promoted to the rank of major general, and was sent against the rebels, but did not overtake them; for which he was tried by a court martial, and honourably acquitted.

After the return of Gage to England, in 1775, the command of the British army, in America, was offered to General Oglethorpe. He professed his readiness to accept the appointment, if the ministry would authorize him to assure the colonies that justice would be done them: but the command was given to Sir William Howe.

He died in August, 1785, at the age of ninety-seven ; being the oldest general in the service. Nine years before his death, the province of Georgia, of which he was the father, was raised to the rank of a sovereign, independent state, and had been for two years acknowledged as such by the mother country, under whose auspices it had been planted. RAMSAY.

125.-ADDRESS OF DANIEL WEBSTER TO THE SURVIVORS OF THE BATTLE of Bunker HILL, DELIVERED AT THE LAYING OF THE CORNER-STONE OF THE BUNKER HILL MONUMENT.

VENERABLE MEN! you have come down to us from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives, that you might behold this joyous day. You are now where you stood, fifty years ago, this very hour, with your brothers, and your neighbours, shoulder to shoulder, in the strife for your country. Behold, how altered! The same heavens are indeed over your heads; the same ocean rolls at your feet; but all else how changed! You hear now no roar of hostile cannon, you see no mixed volumes of smoke and flame rising from burning Charlestown. The ground strewed with the dead and the dying; the impetuous charge; the steady and successful repulse; the loud call to repeated assault; the summoning of all that is manly to repeated resistance; a thousand bosoms freely and fearlessly bared in an instant to whatever of terror there may be in war and death;-all these you have witnessed, but you witness them no more. All is peace. The heights of yonder metropolis, its towers and roofs, which you then saw filled with wives and children and countrymen in distress and terror, and looking with unutterable emotions for the issue of the combat, have presented you to-day with the sight of its whole happy population, come out to welcome and greet you with an universal jubilee. Yonder proud ships, by a felicity of position appropriately lying at the foot of this mount, and seeming fondly to cling around it, are not means of annoyance to you, but your country's own means of distinction and defence. All is peace; and God has granted you this sight of your country's happiness, ere you slumber in the grave for ever. He has allowed you to behold and to partake the reward of your patriotic toils; and he has allowed us, your sons and countrymen, to meet you here, and in the name of the present generation, in the name of your country, in the name of liberty to thank you!

But, alas! you are not all here! Time and the sword have thinned your ranks. Prescot, Putnam, Stark, Brooks, Read, Pomeroy, Bridge! our eyes seek for you in vain amid this broken band. You are gathered to your fathers,

and live only to your country in her grateful remembrance, and your own bright example. But let us not too much grieve, that you have met the common fate of men. You lived, at least, long enough to know that your work had been nobly and successfully accomplished. You lived to see your country's independence established, and to sheathe your swords from war. On the light of liberty you saw arise the light of peace, like

'another morn,

Risen on midnoon ;'

and the sky, on which you closed your eyes, was cloudless. But--ah!-him! the first great martyr in this great cause! Him! the premature victim of his own self-devoting heart! Him! the head of our civil councils, and the destined leader of our military bands; whom nothing brought hither but the unquenchable fire of his own spirit; him! cut off by Providence, in the hour of overwhelming anxiety and thick gloom; falling, ere he saw the star of his country rise; pouring out his generous blood, like water, before he knew whether it would fertilize a land of freedom or of bondage! how shall I struggle with the emotions that stifle the utterance of thy name!--Our poor work may perish; but thine shall endure ! This monument may

moulder away; the solid ground it rests upon may sink down to a level with the sea; but thy memory shall not fail! Wheresoever among men a heart shall be found that beats to the transports of patriotism and liberty, its aspirations shall be to claim kindred with thy spirit.

But the scene amid which we stand does not permit us to confine our thoughts or our sympathies to those fearless spirits, who hazarded or lost their lives on this consecrated spot. We have the happiness to rejoice here in the presence of a most worthy representation of the survivors of the whole revolutionary army.

Veterans! you are the remnant of many a well fought field. You bring with you marks of honour from Trenton and Monmouth, from Yorktown, Camden, Bennington, and Saratoga. Veterans of half a century! when in your youthful days, you put every thing at hazard in your country's cause, good as that cause was, and sanguine as youth is, still your fondest hopes did not stretch onward to an hour like this! At a period to which you could not reason

ably have expected to arrive; at a moment of national prosperity, such as you could never have foreseen, you are now met here, to enjoy the fellowship of old soldiers, and to receive the overflowings of a universal gratitude.

But your agitated countenances and your heaving breasts inform me that even this is not an unmixed joy. I perceive that a tumult of contending feelings rushes upon you. The images of the dead, as well as the persons of the living, throng to your embraces. The scene overwhelms you, and I turn from it. May the Father of all mercies smile upon your declining years, and bless them! And when you shall here have exchanged your embraces; when you shall once more have pressed the hands which have been so often extended to give succour in adversity, or grasped in the exultation of victory; then look abroad into this lovely land, which your young valour defended, and mark the happiness with which it is filled; yea, look abroad into the whole earth, and see what a name you have contributed to give to your country, and what a praise you have added to freedom, and then rejoice in the sympathy and gratitude which beam upon your last days from the improved condition of mankind. WEBSTER.

126. THE PATRONAGE OF SOVEREIGNS.

ABOUT half a league from the little sea port of Palos, in the province of Andalusia, in Spain, stands a convent dedicated to St. Mary. Some time in the year 1486, a poor way-faring stranger, accompanied by a small boy, makes his appearance, on foot, at the gate of this convent, and begs of the porter a little bread and water for his child. This friendless stranger is Columbus. Brought up in the hardy pursuit of a mariner, with no other relaxation from its toils but that of an occasional service in the fleets of his native country, with the burden of fifty years upon his frame, the unprotected foreigner makes his suit to the haughty sovereigns of Portugal and Spain. He tells them, that the broad flat earth on which we tread, is round ;-he proposes, with what seems a sacrilegious hand, to lift the veil which had hung, from the creation of the world, over the floods of the ocean;-he promises, by a western course,

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