that is to set, I call upon you to
drink with full glasses and full hearts, health, happiness, and long
life to William Macready."]

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN:--I rise to thank you, I should say
to attempt to thank you, for I feel the task is far beyond my power.
What can I say in reply to all that the kindly feeling of my friend has
dictated? I have not the skill to arrange and address in attractive
language the thoughts that press upon me, and my incompetency may
perhaps appear like a want of sensibility to your kindness, for we are
taught to believe that out of the heart's fulness the mouth speaks. But
my difficulty, let me assure you, is a contradiction to this moral.
[Cheers.] I have to thank my friend, your distinguished chairman, for
proposing my health to you and for the eloquence--may I not add the
brilliant fancy, with which he has enriched and graced his subject. But
that we may readily expect from him, who in the wide and discursive
range of his genius touches nothing that he does not adorn. ["Hear!" and
cheers.] I have to thank you for the cordiality and--if I may without
presumption say so,--the enthusiasm with which the compliment proposed
has been received, and for the honor--never to be forgotten--that you
have conferred on me, by making me your guest to-day.

Never before have I been so oppressed with a sense of my deficiency as
at this moment, looking on this assemblage of sympathizing friends
crowded here to offer me a spontaneous testimony of their regard. I
observe among you many who for years have been the encouraging
companions of my course; and there are present too those who have
cheered even my very earliest efforts. To all who have united in this
crowning tribute, so far beyond my dues or expectations--my old friends,
friends of many years, who welcomed me with hopeful greeting in the
morning of my professional life, and to younger ones who now gather
round to shed more brightness on my setting, I should wish to pour forth
the abundant expression of my gratitude. [Loud cheers.] You are not, I
think, aware of the full extent of my obligations to you. Independent of
the substantial benefits due to the liberal appreciation of my
exertions, my very position in society is determined by the stamp which
your approbation has set upon my humble efforts. [Cheers.] And let me
unhesitatingly affirm that without undervaluing the accident of birth or
titular distinction, I would not exchange the gr