observing his precepts and imitating his example. Similitudine decoremus.* He has built his own monument. We, and those who come after us in successive generations, are its appointed, its privileged guardians. This wide-spread Republic is the true monument to Washington. Maintain its Independence. Uphold its Constitution. Preserve its Union. Defend its Liberty. Let it stand before the world in all its original strength and beauty, securing peace, order, equality, and freedom to all within its boundaries, and shedding light, and hope, and joy, upon the pathway of human liberty throughout the world; and Washington needs no other monument. Other structures may fitly testify our veneration for him; this, this alone, can adequately illustrate his services to mankind.

Nor does he need even this. The Republic may perish; the wide arch of our ranged Union may fall; star by star its glories may expire; stone after stone its columns and its capitol may moulder and crumble; all other names which adorn its annals may be forgotten; but as long as human hearts shall anywhere pant, or human tongues shall anywhere plead, for a true, rational, constitutional liberty, those hearts shall enshrine the memory, and those tongues shall prolong the fame, of George WashINGTON!

* We may well add, with Tacitus, Si natura suppeditet.

8*

THE

LIFE AND SERVICES OF JAMES BOWDOIN.

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE MAINE HISTORICAL SOCIETY, AT BOWDOIN COLLEGE, ON THE AFTERNOON OF THE ANNUAL COMMENCEMENT, SEPTEMBER 5, 1849.

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the MainE HISTORICAL SOCIETY, —

I AM here, as you are aware, and as I trust this crowded and brilliant assembly is aware, for no purpose of literary discussion, philosophical speculation, or oratorical display. The character of the occasion would alone have pointed me to a widely different line of remark, and would, indeed, have imperatively claimed of me some more substantial contribution to the objects for which you are associated. But your committee of invitation have kindly relieved me from the responsibility of selecting a topic from the wide field of American history, and have afforded me a most agreeable and welcome opportunity of fulfilling a longcherished intention. They have called upon me, as one likely to have more than ordinary materials for such a work, as well as likely to take a more than ordinary interest in its performance, to give some ampler account than has ever yet been supplied, of a Family, which, while it may fairly claim a place in the history of the nation, as having furnished one of the most distinguished of our revolutionary statesmen and patriots, has been more directly identified, both by its earliest adventures and by its latest acts, with the history of Maine; - of Maine, both as it once was, an honored and cherished part of the good old Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and as it now is, a proud, prosperous, and independent State.

-a

In preparing myself to comply with this call, I have felt bound to abandon all ideas of ambitious rhetoric, to forego all custom of declamation, to clip the wings of any little fancy which I might possess, and to betake myself to a diligent examination of such private papers and public records as might promise to throw light upon my subject. I come now, gentlemen, to lay before you, in the simplest manner, the fruits of my research.

I hold in my hand an original manuscript in the French language, which, being interpreted, is as follows:

"To his Excellency, the Governor-in-Chief of New England, humbly prays Pierre Baudouin, saying: that having been obliged, by the rigors which were exercised towards the Protestants in France, to depart thence with his family, and having sought refuge in the realm of Ireland, at the City of Dublin, to which place it pleased the Receivers of His Majesty's Customs to admit him, your petitioner was employed in one of the bureaux; but afterwards, there being a change of officers, he was left without any employment. This was what caused the petitioner and his family, to the number of six persons, to withdraw into this territory, in the town of Casco, and Province of Maine; and seeing that there are many lands which are not occupied, and particu. larly those which are situated at the point of Barbary Creek, may it please your Excellency to decree that there may be assigned to your petitioner about one hundred acres, to the end that he may have the means of supporting his family. And he will continue to pray God for the health and prosperity of your Excellency.

"PIERRE BAUDOUIN."

Such was the first introduction into New England of a name which was destined to be connected with not a few of the most important events of its subsequent history, and which is now indissolubly associated with more than one of its most cherished institutions of education, literature, and science.

Driven out from his home and native land by the fury of that religious persecution, for which Louis XIV. gave the signal by the revocation of the edict of Nantz,- disappointed in his attempt to secure the means of an humble support in Ireland, whither he had at first fled, -Pierre Baudouin, in the summer of 1687, presents himself as a suppliant to Sir Edmund Andros, then Governor-in-Chief of New England, for a hundred acres of unoccupied land at the point of Barbary Creek in Casco Bay, in the Province of Maine, that he may earn bread for himself and his family by the sweat of his brow.

He was one of that noble sect of Huguenots, of which John

Calvin may be regarded as the great founder and exemplar,— of which Gaspard de Coligny, the generous and gallant admiral, who “filled the kingdom of France with the glory and terror of his name for the space of twelve years," was one of the most devoted disciples and one of the most lamented martyrs, and which has furnished to our own land blood every way worthy of being mingled with the best that has ever flowed in the veins either of southern Cavalier or northern Puritan.

He was of that same noble stock which gave three Presidents out of nine to the old Congress of the Confederation; which gave her Laurenses and Marions, her Hugers and Manigaults, her Prioleaus and Gaillards and Legarés to South Carolina; which gave her Jays to New York, her Boudinots to New Jersey, her Brimmers, her Dexters, and her Peter Faneuil, with the Cradle of Liberty, to Massachusetts.

He came from the famous town of Rochelle, which was for so many years the very stronghold and rallying point of Protestantism in France, and which, in 1629, held out so long and so heroically against the siege, which Richelieu himself thought it no shame to conduct in person.

He is said to have been a physician by profession. The mere internal evidence of the paper which I have produced, though the idiom may not be altogether of the latest Parisian, shows him to have been a man of education. While, without insisting on tracing back his pedigree, as others have done, either to Baldwin, Count of Flanders in 862, or to Baldwin the chivalrous King of Jerusalem in 1143, both of whom, it seems, spelled their names precisely as he did, there is ample testimony that he was a man both of family and fortune in his own land.

"I am the eldest descendant," wrote James Bowdoin, the patron of the College within whose precincts we are assembled, "from one of those unfortunate families which was obliged to fly their native country on account of religion;-a family, which, as I understand, lived in affluence, perhaps elegance, upon a handsome estate in the neighborhood of Rochelle, which at that time (1685) yielded the considerable income of 700 louis d'ors per annum."

This estate was, of course, irrecoverably forfeited by his flight,

and at the end of two years of painful and perilous adventure, he landed upon the shores of New England, with no other wealth but a wife and four children, and the freedom to worship God after the dictates of his own conscience.

His petition, which has no date of its own, but which is endorsed 2d August, 1687, was favorably received by Sir Edmund Andros, and the public records in the State department of Massachusetts contain a warrant, signed by Sir Edmund, and directed to Mr. Richard Clements, deputy surveyor, authorizing and requiring him to lay out one hundred acres of vacant land in Casco Bay for Pierre Baudouin, in such place as he should be directed by Edward Tyng, Esq., one of his majesty's council. The warrant bears date October 8, 1687.

Before this warrant was executed, however, Pierre Baudouin had obtained possession of a few acres of land on what is now the high road from Portland to Vaughan's Bridge, a few rods northerly of the house of the Hon. Nicholas Emery. A solitary apple tree, and a few rocks which apparently formed the curbing of a well, were all that remained about twenty years ago, to mark the site of this original dwelling-place of the Bowdoins in America. I know not whether even these could now be found.

In this original dwelling-place, Pierre and his family remained only about two years and a half. He had probably heard of the successful establishment in Boston, a year or two previously, of a Protestant church by some of his fellow fugitives from France. He is likely to have been still more strongly prompted to an early abandonment of this residence, by its extreme exposure to the hostile incursions and depredations of the French and Indians, who were leagued together, at this time, in an attempt to break up the British settlements on this part of the North American continent. And most narrowly, and most providentially, did he escape this peril. On the 17th of May, 1690, the fort at Casco was attacked and destroyed, and a general massacre of the settlers was perpetrated by the Indians. On the 16th, just twentyfour hours previously, Pierre Baudouin and his family had plucked up their stakes and departed for Boston. A race which had survived the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's, and the siege of Rochelle, was not destined to perish thus ignobly in the wilderness!