The Sun.
London, England, 1865-02-01 00:00:00

Mr. Edward • Everett has caused general regret
throughout the North. Mr. Seward, instructed by
the President, has officially notified " that the seve-
ral Executive departments of the Government will
cause appropriate honours to be rendered to the
memory of the deceased, at home and abroad,
wherever the national name and authority are re-
organised." Mr. Everett was not a statesman, but a
polished gentleman of the class rarely met with
among Americans except such as have travelled in
Europe, a pleasing writer, and a very fluent orator.
He had the art of making beautiful speeches about
nothing and containing nothing but a flow of grace-
ful words and well-turned periods. At the com-
mencement of the war Mr. Everett, in common
with many abler and more earnest politicians, was
of opinion that the Northern States had no right to
use coercion towards the South, if the Southern
States or any considerable number of them chose to
break up the political partnership of the Union, and
was put forward as a candidate for the Vice-Presi-
dency under Mr. Bell, of Tennessee, for the Presi-
dency, on the strictly Conservative platform of the
" Union and the Constitution," and any guarantee
to slavery that the Constitution might sanction.
But as time wore on he was carried away with
the multitude, and became as passionate a pro-
moter of the war as was consistent with the almost
feminine gentleness and gracefulness of his cha-
racter. He was quiet, methodical, precise—never in
a hurry, and never excited to overpass either in word
or accent, or even in manner, the line of polite
propriety and decorous if not stoical dignity. It
is related of his eloquent oration on Washington
—which he committed to memory without the loss
or addition of a word, and which he delivered no
less than 120 times in all the principal towns and
cities of the Union for the benefit of the fund for
the purchase of Washington's home and tomb at
Mount Vernon—that he always drew out his white
cambric pockethandkerchief and wiped his tearful
eyes at the same exact passage, that he always waited
for the popular applause at the exact sentence which
he had framed to catch it, and that the same exact
wave and motion of the right hand or the left was
invariable mode at the beginning or end of the
phrase where he had planned to introduce it. He
had no fire, no abandon, no gust of irrepressible
energy, but ran over the mill wheel of his work with
the most exemplary continuity and regularity. He
had no enemies and no friends, and was a graceful
specimen of honest and inoffensive mediocrity. He
never made any mark in statesmanship, and the
mark which he made in literature was neither deep
nor broad, nor likely to be permanent. He forsook
his true vocation when he abandoned the pulpit, for
which he was originally intended. America boasts
of many clergymen who merit the sobriquet of the
" Rev. Mr. Brimstone." It had one to deserve the
softer title of the" Rev. Mr. Treacle," and lost him
when Mr. Everett abandoned theology for statecraft,
and converted a persuasive divine into an irresolute
Politician. The popularity which during the last
four years of his life Mr. Everett for the first time
enjoyed was due to the part he took at the outbreak
of the war. It was expected from his character and
antecedents that his sympathies would have been
with the South. They declared themselves strongly
in favour of the North. From that circumstance he
became a favourite both with the Administration
and the people, and holding no office, either civil or
military, he did nothing to forfeit the favour which
he had so easily and unexpectedly acquired, and
which, now that he is no more, has settled upon his
memory, and will hand him down to posterity as
one of the lights—though not among the most
brilliant—of American history.