DEDICATION

This and the four addresses that follow it have little in
common except that all were delivered at the opening
exercises of libraries. Everett's address at the opening of
the Boston Public Library appropriately heads the group. The
reader will look in it in vain for any reflection of the
conservative opinions expressed in the letter to George
Ticknor printed on page 53 of this volume, unless perhaps in
the total absence of anything radical. It is typical oratory
of the day--ponderously graceful, if that is not a
contradiction in terms.

Edward Everett was born in Dorchester, Mass., April 11,
1794. He graduated at Harvard in 1811 and served there as
professor of Greek in 1819-25. He was a member of Congress
in 1825-35, governor of Massachusetts in 1836-40, minister
to Great Britain in 1841-45, president of Harvard, 1846-49,
U.S. secretary of state in 1852-53, and U.S. senator in
1853-54. He died in Boston, Jan. 15, 1865. His reputation as
a scholarly orator was very high.

MR. MAYOR:--

In behalf of the Trustees of the City Library, I receive with extreme
pleasure the keys which you have placed in my hands. The completion of
the noble building, which the city government now confides to our care,
is an event to which the Trustees have looked forward with the greatest
interest, and which they now contemplate with the highest satisfaction.
They deem themselves especially honored in their connection with an
institution, for whose use this stately and commodious edifice has been
erected, and which they doubt not is destined to be instrumental of the
highest good to the community, and to reflect lasting credit upon the
liberality, public and private, with which it has been founded and
endowed.

The city of Boston, owing to peculiar circumstances in its growth and
history, has been at all times, as I think, beyond most cities in the
world, the object of an affectionate attachment on the part of its
inhabitants; a feeling entitled to respect and productive of good, even
if it may sometimes seem to strangers over-partial in its
manifestations. It is not merely its commanding natural situation, the
triple hills on which it is enthroned, its magnificent bay and harbor,
and the group of islands and islets that sparkle like emeralds on their
surface; not merely this most admirable common, which opens before our
windows, delightful even at th