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NEW-YORK, DEC. 10, 1832.

Rev. and dear Sir,

We are instructed by the Committee at whose request you delivered an Eulogium on the late Sir Walter Scott, to present to you an attested copy of the resolutions passed this day.

We take great pleasure in performing this duty, and beg, individually, to unite with the Committee, in tendering you our thanks for the very kind manner in which you acceded to their request, and expressing our admiration of the feeling and eloquence which characterized your Eulogium.

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On motion by Prosper M. Wetmore, Esq. it was unanimously Resolved, That the thanks of this Committee be presented to the Rev. Professor Mc Vickar, for his obliging compliance with the request to deliver an Eulogium on the late Sir Walter Scott.

Resolved, That a copy of the preceding resolution, authenticated by the Chairman and Secretary, be transmitted to the Rev. Professor, accompanied by a request for a copy of the eloquent and very interesting discourse pronounced by him at Clinton Hall, on the evening of Thursday the 6th instant, for publication. Extract from the minutes,

J. M. WAINWRIGHT, Chairman.

JAMES LAWSON, Secretary.

EULOGIUM.

We meet to-day, gentlemen, to render homage to the memory of Sir Walter Scott, a duty more congenial with our feelings than our powers; for it is not easy rightly to speak of one who in his life-time was equally loved for his virtues and revered for his genius, and in his death is by "nations honored and by nations mourned." Yet it is easy, too, to speak of him, for as a man he was without guile, as an author without envy, and as a genius without any of that wildering light which "dazzles but to betray." As a poet, he never strung his lyre to pamper passion, nor ever struck a note to which virtue could not respond; as an author, he never dipped his pen in gall, nor wrote, so far as my memory serves me, "one line which dying he would wish to blot."

Harp of the North, farewell! Farewell to the minstrel who charmed our boyhood, nor lost his attractions with advancing years! farewell to the novelist who, while he swayed our feelings with a magic power, never yet awakened one traitorous to duty, nor implanted one that was not of the stock of nobleness and true honor! Shall we then refuse now to pay to him the tribute of praise, to whom we have often heretofore paid (I speak at least for myself) the higher tribute of tears-when some touch of humanity that went

to the heart, some picture of filial gratitude or heroic selfdevotion, has taught us to sympathize as a brother with those we never saw, and, as at the bidding of some master magician, to receive as truth all the illusions he spread around us, and become moved spectators of a living scene? Or shall it be asked on what ground we, as Americans, stand forth to testify our sympathy on this occasion; I answer, on the ground of an equal inheritance as part of the great family of civilized man, as men who can honor worth, and reverence genius wherever it was born. But again, Scott was the poet of nature, the delineator of his species in every climate and on every soil, so that wherever his works were known, there was he to be regarded as a native and a denizen, and there should now be heard for him the mourning voice of lamentation or of praise. Or, if still nearer claim be wanting, can it not be found? "If blood be warmer than water," to use a Scottish adage, shall not we, in whose veins. flows the blood of a common ancestry, count ourselves nearer to Scott than the dwellers upon the Seine, the Rhine, or the Tiber? Are we not in truth one nation with that which gave him birth, in all the highest features of national likeness; a common language, common faith, and a common literature? Let us leave it to politicians to cloak under the plea of patriotism those hateful, jealous passions, which as charity condemns and religion abhors, so should literature despise to us belong, certainly at least on the present occasion, wider views of the bonds of brotherhood, and a holier interpretation of the claims of a common kindred. it was our Shakspeare and our Milton in whose footsteps Scott trode, so now is it our minstrel whose lyre is broken; our Scott whose name is now to be added to the list of the mighty dead. Over such gifted minds the petty distinctions of human origin have no power: they are nature's sons and all men's brethren. No nation can claim them as their own: the earth is their birthplace, heaven is their home, and the

heart of man their empire. As authors, they have no other domicile there they speak to our common humanity, and against their claims, as against all other sovereignty, prescription is no bar.

If ever writer deserved this universal citizenship, it was Sir Walter Scott. Man was his theme, nature his model, nations his readers: and who can count up the sum of innocent pleasure he has diffused, I may say, throughout the earth? Who can estimate its value as a substitute for

grosser excitements? How many vacant hours has he cheered? How many weary ones has he soothed? How many dangerous ones has he guarded? How often have pain and languor fled before that magic spell, which had power to transform the chamber of sleepless disease into the camp, the court, or the vine-clad cottage, and there wring sympathy for others' sorrows from hearts that were vainly brooding over their own? I do not say that such reading as this is to be the remedy for sorrow, or the occupation of the chamber of sickness; God forbid that a christian should say so; but still that may be a palliative which is not a remedy, and that an innocent relaxation which is not a worthy employment; and therefore, speaking as a philosopher and a christian, I do say that as the restless power of imagination has been given to man for happiness and not for misery, he performs for his fellow-men a high and useful and blessed part who finds for it harmless and attractive occupation, and supplies for hours of bodily feebleness or mental languor, which cannot all be gravely busy, that which can employ and soothe its lingering moments in innocence and peace. He who has never felt such power in the writings of this great master of fiction, cannot sympathize as he ought with us on this occasion; but whomsoever Scott has ever made to warm or weep, to him I say, some tribute is due when that bright star has set in whose light he has so oft rejoiced.

To trace that star from its rising to its meridian height.

and again to its bright setting, is the grateful task to which I now invite your attention.

Sir Walter Scott was the descendant of a long and martial line of ancestors, which, although it can count up many bold and brave knights, and at least one famous wizard, yet would I counsel those who now bear the name, to rank the author of Ivanhoe as the rarest jewel in the ducal coronet which crowns their escutcheon. The walls of Abbotsford, when I visited it in 1830, were graced with many of these memorials of gentle blood, on whose character and exploits Sir Walter seemed not unwilling to converse. There was his great grandfather

"With flaxen beard and amber hair,
And reverend, apostolic air."

from the oft-repeated story of whose sufferings and devotion in the royal cause, as it sunk into his youthful heart, he no doubt derived some portion of his tender sympathy for the exiled race of the Stewarts. In the female line there too was one familiarly known as "mickle-mouthed Meg," whose courtship and character formed the subject of several humorous family pieces, and still more humorous family anecdotes. There too hung his grandfather, to whom the poet bore an unusual resemblance in looks, and perhaps too in character, since he was said to partake so much more of the olden than the modern time, that he loved to spend rather than accumulate, and therefore left little to his son beyond the inheritance, as Sir Walter said, of a fair name and the warm attachment of one faithful menial, of which he narrated a touching instance. His father, whose baptismal name he bore, I do not remember to have seen, but his early pursuits I was told were agricultural, his latter legal; and he lived and died in that laborious branch of it known under the title of "writers to the signet." But so far as genius is hereditary, Sir Walter derived it from his mother; a woman

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