ere! The great epic of their lives, how happily
concluded! Poetry itself has hardly closed illustrious lives, and
finished the career of earthly renown, by such a consummation. If we had
the power, we could not wish to reverse this dispensation of the Divine
Providence. The great objects of life were accomplished, the drama was
ready to be closed. It has closed; our patriots have fallen; but so
fallen, at such age, with such coincidence, on such a day, that we
cannot rationally lament that that end has come, which we know could not
long be deferred.

Neither of these great men, fellow-citizens, could have died, at any
time, without leaving an immense void in our American society. They have
been so intimately, and for so long a time blended with the history
of the country, and especially so united, in our thoughts and
recollections, with the events of the revolution [text destroyed] the
death of either would have touched the strings of public sympathy. We
should have felt that one great link connecting us with former times,
was broken; that we had lost something more, as it were, of the presence
of the revolution itself, and of the act of independence, and were
driven on, by another great remove, from the days of our country's early
distinction, to meet posterity, and to mix with the future. Like the
mariner, whom the ocean and the winds carry along, till he sees the
stars which have directed his course and lighted his pathless way
descent, one by one, beneath the rising horizon, we should have felt
that the stream of time had borne us onward till another luminary, whose
light had cheered us and whose guidance we had followed, had sunk away
from our sight.

But the concurrence of their death on the anniversary of independence
has naturally awakened stronger emotions. Both had been presidents,
both had lived to great age, both were early patriots, and both were
distinguished and ever honored by their immediate agency in the act of
independence. It cannot but seem striking and extraordinary, that these
two should live to see the fiftieth year from the date of that act; that
they should complete that year; and that then, on the day which had fast
linked forever their own fame with their country's glory, the heavens
should open to receive them both at once. As their lives themselves were
the gifts of Providence, who is not willing to recognize in their happy
termination, as well as in their long continuance, proofs that our