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THE MEMORIAL OF VIllTUE 
 
 SERMON 
 
 PREACHED IN THE WEST CHURCH, JAN. 22, I860, 
 
 ^fter t!)e WtRt^ 
 
 OF 
 
 EDWARD EYERETT. 
 
 By C. a. slilTOL. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 WAF.KKK, WISE, AND COMPANY, 
 
 245, Washington Street. 
 
 1865. 
 
THE MEMORIAL OF VIRTUE 
 
 SERMON 
 
 PREACHED IN THE WEST CHURCH, JAN. 22, 18C5, 
 
 after tijc IDcatb 
 
 OF 
 
 EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 By C. a. BARTOL. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 WALKER, AVISE, AND COMPANY, 
 
 245, Washington Street. 
 
 18G5. 
 

 BOSTON: 
 
 PRESS OF JOHN ■\VILSOX AND SON, 
 15, Water Street. 
 
r-» 
 
 S E 11 M N. 
 
 "The memorial thereof js ijimortal." — Wisdom of Solomon, iv. 1. 
 
 The question whether we should care for reputation 
 or posthumous renown, we need not debate. It is 
 settled in our constitution. The breath is no sooner 
 out of a man's body than we consider his career to 
 decide his character. The present condition of his 
 spirit, I heard proposed for discussion respecting a 
 distinguished deceased person, on the very day when 
 he died. 
 
 Virtue is her own supreme motive ; but what may 
 be said of our conduct re-enforces virtue that is not 
 quite strong enough, as with most of us it is not, 
 to go alone. So the guileless Charles Lamb quaintly 
 speaks of the dehght of doing good by stealth, and 
 having it found out by accident ; and the strong- 
 willed Andrew Jackson declared, that, looking into 
 his heart for the brave deed, he also believed all 
 brave men would approve it. So the memorial of 
 virtue, wherever may stand its living record of the 
 
human soul, is the true scripture and only holy book. 
 With what a thrill we follow that famous succession 
 of short but great eulogies, in the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, of Abraham and Moses and Joseph and 
 the rest ! Over the Old-Testament stories of Adam 
 and Cainan and Jared, which we peruse with a dog- 
 ged perseverance, from an inherited sense of the duty 
 of reading the Bible through, — when we come to 
 Enoch, why are we startled? Because, of all those 
 mentioned before, it is only written, that they lived 
 so many hundreds of years, and "begat sons and 
 daughters ; " but of Enoch it is added, that " he walked 
 with God." This makes his title in every letter ven- 
 erable, till history be no more. We are informed in 
 Genesis of many " dukes." Why do we know nothing 
 about them but their names ? Because by no excel- 
 lence were they, any more than a thousand modern 
 dukes, embalmed in the recollection of their race. 
 Teman, Zepho, Kenaz, and Gatam are forgotten: 
 Abel, dead long before them, is remembered still. 
 
 What will be told of us, after we are gone ? The 
 date of our birth and death, our parentage and genea- 
 logical tree, the descent of our estate and blood ; but 
 beyond these inferior, transitory trifles, our worth, 
 if we have any, will be the main thing in the mouths 
 of men, bad men and good men alike. It was the 
 Roman centurion, the agent in Christ's crucifixion, 
 with the sword in his hand, that gleamed over and 
 
o 
 
 guarded the dreadful doom, who cried out, " Certamly 
 this was a righteous man." " A good name is better 
 than precious ointment," and it should be prized. 
 
 " For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, 
 
 This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned, 
 Left the warm precincts of the cheerful da}'. 
 Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind 1 " 
 
 Even where the blaze of transcendent genius eclipses 
 details of conduct, and streams down an aurora to 
 all ages, our persuasion is, that the author of the 
 divine sentences, syllabled for ever in the au", must 
 have been a good man. AVithout goodness, talent has 
 no crown. It can hardly amount to genius, or but 
 to genius not of the highest order, or only of a way- 
 ward and flitting sort. I think Galileo loses more by 
 his recanting, than he gains by his discovery of the 
 earth's motion. " I would rather have the regard of 
 my neighbors," said a New-England poet, ^' tlian the 
 fame of Shakspeare." " I would rather have written 
 Watts's Hymns," said the holy man, your former min- 
 ister, " than the plays of Shakspeare." The account 
 of some men, like the geological record, is imperfect. 
 But it has been said, not any man's genius, but only 
 his character, what he wills to be, is immortal. I lis 
 genius may be an accident of his organization, like 
 his temperament, complexion, or tone of voice. His 
 virtue will live for ever. If blind old Homer carried 
 his harp from door to door, or Shakspeare entertained 
 the poor players at his board, the mercy and hospitality 
 
6 
 
 were of more account with God tliiiii the music and 
 the poetry; though I cannot but think these, too, as 
 more than earthly endowments, will, in their posses- 
 sors, re-appear on the morning of the resurrection, 
 and survive for ever. 
 
 These remarks have been suggested by the bereave- 
 ment which Boston and the nation have just been 
 called to meet. If I did not believe the eminent 
 fellow-citizen, in the shadow of whose death, day 
 after day, we walk, to have been a good man, for no 
 lustre of his intellectual distinction would I pronounce 
 his panegyric, world-wide as its resounding will be. 
 Of his mental accomplishments there will be no 
 query. Though not a poet or philosopher, neither 
 imaginatively creative, nor metaphysically close-grained 
 in his writing, he was the prince, of scholars and 
 rhetoricians, a luminous adorner of all truth. He 
 was one of the number of singular individuals born 
 into the world, whose mould is used but once, and 
 then broken ; without peer or parallel in his precise 
 quality. There has been, there could be, but one 
 Edward Everett. But deeper than his special gifts 
 of learning and reflective power, or all the graces 
 that hung round him, lay the rare kindness he had 
 not full credit for. It was hid somewhat beneath his 
 grave and solemn mien. The applauded man seemed 
 very solitary ; in a centre of admirers rather than a 
 cluster of friends. He was a monumental man, whom 
 
 ) 
 
 / 
 
one surveyed with a cool enthusiasm, and hesitated to 
 approach with familiarity, till his self-enclosure was 
 found to be but a tender-hearted shyness and mod- 
 esty, not pride or intentional distance. Perhaps he 
 appeared so much away from us, by his dwelling in 
 the past. His recollection held so much, it seemed 
 less the faculty of an individual than the memory of 
 mankind. Like a huge ship, he was steady with the 
 weight he bore ; yet that ruddy cast of his complexion 
 lacked not a tremulous natural sensibility. His pace 
 in the street appeared as remote as a planetary revo- 
 lution, in our cool, telescopic view ; yet, if one joined 
 him, nothing could exceed the benignity and free- 
 dom of his instructive communications, in a courtesy 
 as humane as it was exquisite, and as genuine as 
 it was abundant. He is the only person I ever knew, 
 who always acknowledged the sending to him even of 
 a pamphlet. He had not the native force of passion 
 that may come in aid of philanthropy, to stiffen at 
 once and kindle the reformer. Defective self-reliance, 
 with excessive deference to others, kept him from 
 heading and leading an unpopular cause, when he 
 had no want of benevolence more than braver men. 
 He could not rush to be the captain of a forlorn hope. 
 It was not in him. God did not put it in him. But 
 his caution, if not large-sighted, was conscientious. 
 He wished and needed to feel the ground under him. 
 Perhaps he hesitated because, by way of circumspec- 
 
 \ 
 
8 
 
 tion rather than prophetic vision, he saw so much, — 
 possibly more than some who were before him in 
 their word or deed. 
 
 He has been complained of as long deaf to the cry 
 of the oppressed among us. I count it a great virtue 
 to have been antislavery from the beginning. But it 
 is not the only virtue. Some, who were so, were 
 faulty otherwise ; and some, not actively so, — being 
 hindered by Constitutional scruples, — were virtuous 
 otherwise. Else we should have a great many bad 
 men, more than we should well know how to live with. 
 Mr. Everett was not an early abolitionist; whether 
 delayed by a fastidious taste, or willingness to com- 
 promise from fear of offence, or by sense of legal 
 duty, or by apprehension of the blood to which Mr. „ 
 Webster, so long ago as he was in England, is re-# 
 ported, when urged in conversation, to have said the 
 matter must come ; though of that blood none could 
 foresee the precious sum. But, if he sometimes 
 marched slowly when the object was grand, he never 
 moved at all when it was mean ; while no man has 
 done more to promote that education which is the 
 insurance of every worthy enterprise, and without 
 which no beneficent undertaking has any basis, and 
 no civilization or freedom can stand. The good seed 
 itself, springing up in a quick-conceiving soil, soon 
 sadly withers away. Human knowledge must deepen 
 the ground even for God's word. If he valued wealth 
 
9 
 
 and worldly advantages, who has been more con- 
 spicuously unselfish to employ them for the common 
 welfare ? What an almoner he has been, creathigr 
 the charities he dispensed ! Nobly he stood self- 
 appointed treasurer, chancellor of the exchequer for 
 the patriotism and pity of the time. When I think 
 of him, what comes before me is not the governor, 
 senator, ambassador, secretary, or college-president ; 
 but the traveller, night and day, in cold and wet, 
 summer or winter, in his old age, through the 
 
 \ United States, to coin his own golden accents into 
 the Washington fund, — the purveyor of subsistence 
 for the suff"erers of Tennessee, the pleader for a 
 Sailors' Home, the advocate of " Christian retaliation" 
 . on our rebellious foes. If he looked too much to 
 the impression he made, that must be pardoned to 
 an orator. Oratory, being an appeal to the instanta- 
 neous verdict of the crowd, tempts whoever can wield 
 its incomparable arts, — the wondrous weapons that 
 vanquish without violence or pain, — to vanity and 
 subserviency. It becomes sometimes a moral jugglery 
 to entertain and deceive people with, or an mstrument 
 of revenge to which sympathetic hearers can be ready 
 coadjutors ; and this is the worse side of the two. 
 But there was no hate or falsehood in him. If in his 
 good nature he ever flattered anybody, he never 
 resented or retorted insult or wrong. I suppose no 
 speaker, that appeared so frequently, succeeded so 
 
10 
 
 invariably ; and no one in the prime of his days 
 could gather to the sound of his lips such an audience 
 throughout the country as he, at threescore and ten : 
 as I am assured by his early hearers no voice of these 
 generations was so sweet as that of his young classic 
 manhood. Yet this sensitive, seductive, intoxicating 
 element, of air alive, and throbbing with his own re- 
 echoed words, while he could not escape the praise 
 in it he may have enjoyed, he notably turned, even 
 on show-occasions, in practical directions. As it was 
 said of Walter Scott, that he was a benefactor simply 
 by the uncorrupting pleasure from his books, what a 
 delight for millions has been Mr. Everett's speech ! 
 But not the elegance, which has been specified of his 
 address, should be emphasized so much as its con- 
 secration to all good ends ; especially, let us all with 
 grateful emotion say, to the union, re-union, freedom, 
 and perpetual peace of this so long-distracted land. 
 Call him backward ? Who has met the present crisis 
 with a more burning zeal ] He has been cold, has he? 
 Yes, like Mount Hecla, in Iceland, quiet and frost- 
 bound while biding its time ; but, when the season for 
 an eruption came, naturalists tell us, one of the most 
 furious volcanoes in the world, as it flamed and 
 poured its own molten bowels through its hoary 
 top of eternal snow ! So the gray head of Edward 
 Everett, uplifted to the universal gaze, shook and 
 warmed in some passages with the outbreak and tor- 
 
11 
 
 rent of his patriotic appeals, which had of angry 
 invective no spark, of personal malignity not one 
 lav a- drop. 
 
 He culminated at his close. His grand climacteric 
 was not at thirty or forty or fifty, but seventy. It 
 is getting in these days to be the grand climacteric of 
 others besides him ! Age is accepted as an apology 
 for rest. But, in his case, the veteran tree ceased not 
 bearing because it had been prematurely fruitful as a 
 slender slip. The idea of precocity all had of him at 
 the outset was contradicted in the end, by there being 
 no corresponding compensatory decline ! He grew 
 as long as if he had grown ever so tardily. What he 
 effected, only a prodigious, never-remitted industry 
 can explain. For a reward of his diligence, he 
 waxed to the last, and did not wane when with sud- 
 den beauty he set. 
 
 "No pale gradations quenched his ray." 
 
 He departed, being translated, "and was not; for God 
 took him." He died ascending^ as the day-star rises 
 for ever, only seeming to go down, and makes the 
 Orient where itself is. His last compositions are the 
 strongest in style as in principle. He concluded, 
 holding forth the righteousness and truth with whose 
 preaching he began. 
 
 Mr. Everett's character from childhood up was 
 touched by no wilful transgression. It had in it 
 
12 
 
 nothing of grossness or flaw. He must be reckoned 
 one of the great men whose private as his pubhc 
 behavior is without stain. His purity was a logical 
 result. He was a Christian believer. He was a con- 
 stant, some might say old-fashioned, morning and 
 afternoon public worshipper. He refused, in the 
 West, it is stated, to see Sunday callers, on the ground 
 that he was getting ready to go to church. His mor- 
 ality, more than conventional, held him strictly to 
 every obligation he knew, and made him an example 
 to young and old. He was the converter of conserva- 
 tive men. He w^rought for the right in quarters 
 no other man could reach. He admitted his own 
 mistakes with matchless magnanimity. His was not 
 the stuff" for hero or martyr, but a rare combination 
 of blameless traits. Not sublimity or glory, but 
 serene proportion, was his mark. He had the balance 
 in which virtue is said to consist. Spots on the sun I 
 care not to point out. They are not in the sun's sub- 
 stance, but in his atmosphere and our eyes : so our 
 censures are often in our conceptions, and touch not 
 the soul. 
 
 Of all J\lr. Everett did and said, finish is the de- 
 scriptive word ; and death, as if respecting in him 
 this peculiar property, came to him not untimely, 
 but when his work was done, and a perfect finish on 
 his life. Seldom have attributes and actions so uni- 
 formly rounded as his, with no angle to fix the eye, 
 made an impression so strong. 
 
13 
 
 With much form and many words, in Europe and 
 America, the decease of our iUustrious countryman 
 will be observed. But its best celebration was the 
 quickness with which it was known ; as if on all at 
 once a cloud had risen, or the evening twilight fell. 
 It was noticed how long was the cortege that bore his 
 body to the burial. But the tens of thousands of 
 specators, " old men and maidens, young men and 
 children," lining the chilly streets, were the true pro- 
 cession. Not to commemorate transcendent intelli- 
 gence, but extraordinary service, the bier was thronged, 
 the bells tolled, the cannon pealed, the arms were 
 reversed, public offices closed, the flags half-mast, 
 business stopped, and the mournful melodies, to hush 
 other noises, played. A man had gone of the few 
 whom no one is inclined to reproach. 
 
 From earthly sleep, he went to the great rest. He 
 awoke to find himself with God. The morning 
 broke on him, of time and eternity both. His sab- 
 bath-day's journey was but a step to heaven. The 
 religion he defended in his youth, and made the 
 law of his life, was his refuge from death. A path 
 ran for him how clear over the shadowy valley into 
 the kingdom of light ! Let us so follow as to reach 
 the same destiny, and, through the dark of nature, 
 find our way home. 
 
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