The republic. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1849-1853, 1851-05-15

Wldu6 UNI 0Qlt2tE uc6p be2s
the proud spirit Of intellect and thought. small
sentiment or unworthy motive ever mingles with
| its mighty pillows. (Cheers Aud here. now
Character. with the confidence q mariner who
knows the glorious nature of the element to which
he coufdes his fortune. loud applause.l
Mr.. Lee having, alluded. in the course Of his re-
marks, to General Waddy Thompson, Mr.. Barney
teok occasion TO introduce the following toast
General Waddy Thompson, Of South Cayolins--
A patriot of the South-a man of the Union and
Union man."
General Thompson responded in a speech warm
| with the most glowing sentiments Of love for the
Union. He deprecated the course of his State
one too likely to provoke civil war, the horrors OF
which he had fully realized during his sojourn in
| Mexico. He paid high compliment to Mr.. Web
ster and other distinguished men of the North who
had united in carrying through those measures Of
Compromises which be yet hoped would prove the
| North contained srch men theae, willing to
make every sacrifice in their fealty to the Consti
tuition, he, a man of the South, would never be
willing to be parted from them by the exertions OF
such fanatics as Seward Hale, Gddings, and others
| Of that stamp. He closed with sentiment to
| maryland and South Carolina"
The Rev. DR.. Burnap then rose to propose the
health of Mr. Topper, accompanying it with the
| following remarks:
MIR. PRESIDENT: Permit me to rec all the attention
of the society from painful themes--from the dark
clouds which lower over one point Of our political
horizon-from the prospects of domestic discord
and political dissolution, to the more pleasant du-
ties Of hospitality. Permit me to repeat your well
come to my friend on my right Martin Farquhar
of the great interest OF English literature will
not say of him, as the boasfu Trojan wanderer did
Of himself in his adventurous visit to the West,
fdma super aethsrd notus," but will say that the
author must have some pretensons to notoriety,
when his works simultaneously read on the
plains of India, at the mouth of the Hudson and at
the mines of California.
The presence of SO successful contributor to the
treasures of literature, leads curiosity to in
quire not only the country Of his birth, but tho
place of his education. And we find that he halls
from Oxford, of those two ancient and venera-
BILE universities which for six hundred years have
been the beacon lights Of England, and been con-
tinually pouring forth statesmen, philosophers,
poets, divines and literary men, who have blessed
their country and the world
| mother six hundred years old might possibly
suggest the idea that she may have become super
animated, but when such offspring she
ever!,
To the alumni of these two universities the
world is chiefly indebted for one of the greatest
boons that has ever been conferred upon it, the
mass OF English literature-a literature which in
copiousness, variety, and power transcends every
thing which the world has ever seen-a literature
which has gathered to itself all that is most pre-.
man wisdom, and in the piety of the ancient people
of God and moreover added element of its own,
no less vital and vauable-Anglo- Saxon common
| sense.
been putting belt of civilization round the world,
English scholars, philosophers, and men of genius,
have been creating literature worthy to follow,
perpetunte, and establish the conuuesta her enter
prise has won. To that literature we of America
are over ready to do homage and acknowledge
obligations II il true, when we came of age we
declared ourselves politically independent of Eng
land but we never have been able to thro of the
dominion Of her great minds. We have never
wished to do SO. We ack nowledge our parentage,
not only in physical but in intellectual sense,
and are not ashamed to own that habits of
thought, our opinions and sentiments, have been
| shaped and moulded by such minds Bacon,
Locke Milton, and Shakespeare This process OF
intellectual generation ia going on all the time and
everywhere-in our colleges, our schools, and at
our hresdes; for there is not cottage, or noun
tain, or plain, through the length and breadth of
this vast country, where English literature has not
penetrated and found home.
i five have any thing to complain Of, it is perhaps
that our mother has been too kind and too bounti
full to us. She has laid up an inheritance for
vast that she has left us scarcely any thing to do
i Every department has been filled 30 we'll as to ex
cite in us wonder and despair. Who shall be SO
presumptuous as to tread again those paths in
which perfection has already been reached, Who
shall dare to after Milton when he high
to lose his vision in the blaze of uncreated light
/ Who shall be superfuous to write plays,
when every line he pens will only remind him how
much better the same thing has been said by the
Bard of Avon?
Gentlemen, let me give you the health of our
guest. Martin Farquhar Upper, worthy and
successful laborer in the great causc of literature,
morality, and religion.
i "Omne tulit punctum, qui miscuit utile dulci."
This introduction of Mr.. Upper was greeted
with rounds of cheerful welcome that gentleman
rose to his feet to reply, and when silence OBJ
tanned, he spoke for some time, in very effective
conversational strain, which was received with the
warmest demonstrations of applause. Having ex-
pressed his thanks in appropriate and feeling
manner, and acknowledged his superior gratitude
to the Author of all Good, he alluded to the inter
national loving kindness, which he avowed to be
one main errand Of his life; and very happily
brought in, as Horace's prophetical description of
England and America in their relations of mother
and child, part of the beautiful ode:
I. 30 mater pulchra fila pulchrior."
Some striking anecdotes followed of the good
feeling which pervades the old country in favor of
her illustrious offspring; one which we remember,
abiding to the fact that the Royal Naval School at
Greenwich had inserted the we'll known .sBallad to
Brother Jonathan" in collection published for
the of the British navy. Mr.. Topper then
spoke in warm eulogy of the literature Of Ameri-
ca, our poets statesmen, historians, and divines
and rejoiced exceedingly that " insular America
and continental England were 80 intimately and
inseparably intermingled in the authorial produc.
| lions OF the human mind, US well as bound to8
gether by the strongest ties of nature and religion,
of lineage, laws, and language He adverted to
the wise picty of such associations the one be-
fore him, Instituted to keep together the records Of
the past, that they may sanctify the present, and
be an encouragement to good or a warning against
evil Tor the future. he severely commented upon
the Vandalism of the national archives at Wash
| ington having been burnt by the troops under
Gen. Ross, payfully hoping that it might have
been accidental, and introducing the fino lines of
| Milton
Lift not thy spear against the Muses. bower,
The great Emathian conqureror bid spare
The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower
Went to the ground!'
He then took occasion, from the feelings so ex-
cited, to applaud, in suitable terms, those who
i were now constituted in the embodied form of so
c,ees such as the present, the Yates Sacer of Anne
rican history.
| In conclusion, Mr. Topper related what appeared
to him an important and interesting idea-possi.
bly, dscovcry-as to the origin of our national
flag, which he specially commended to the inves-
tigation of the Maryland Historical Society. He
said Yesterday made pilgrimage to Mount
Vernon, and was exceedingly struck by the cir
cumstance that the ancient family coat-of-arms of
the llustrious Washington consists of three stars
in the portion Of the ehield and three strpes