rds of life are centred in the heart, and you shall soar with
rapid and steady wing to the summit of human glory. Nearly a
century ago, one of those rare minds to whom it is given to discern
future greatness in its seminal principles upon contemplating the
situation of this continent, pronounced, in a vein of poetic
inspiration, "Westward the star of empire takes its way." Let us
unite in ardent supplication to the Founder of nations and the
Builder of worlds, that what then was prophecy may continue
unfolding into history,--that the dearest hopes of the human race
may not be extinguished in disappointment, and that the last may
prove the noblest empire of time.

LAFAYETTE (Delivered in Congress, December 31st, 1834)

On the sixth of September, 1757, Lafayette was born. The kings of
Prance and Britain were seated upon their thrones by virtue of the
principle of hereditary succession, variously modified and blended
with different forms of religious faith, and they were waging war
against each other, and exhausting the blood and treasure of their
people for causes in which neither of the nations had any beneficial
or lawful interest.

In this war the father of Lafayette fell in the cause of his king
but not of his country. He was an officer of an invading army, the
instrument of his sovereign's wanton ambition and lust of conquest.
The people of the electorate of Hanover had done no wrong to him or
to his country. When his son came to an age capable of
understanding the irreparable loss that he had suffered, and to
reflect upon the causes of his father's fate, there was no drop of
consolation mingled in the cup from the consideration that he had
died for his country. And when the youthful mind was awakened to
meditation upon the rights of mankind, the principles of freedom,
and theories of government, it cannot be difficult to perceive in
the illustrations of his own family records the source of that
aversion to hereditary rule, perhaps the most distinguishing feature
of his own political opinions and to which he adhered through all
the vicissitudes of his life....

Lafayette was born a subject of the most absolute and most splendid
monarchy of Europe, and in the highest rank of her proud and
chivalrous nobility. He had been educated at a college of the
University of Paris, founded by the royal munificence of Louis XIV.,
or Cardinal Richelieu. Left an orphan in early childhood, with the
inheritance of a prin