exhibited in scatheless strength, until I received that appointment
which dissolved the parliamentary connection, and with it annihilated
all the opposition of feeling which had sometimes saddened it, and
invested the close of my life with the old regard, as unclouded by
controversy as when it illumined its opening. And now the expressions
of your sympathy await me, when, by the gracious providence of God,
I have been permitted to enter on a course of less fervid action, of
serener thought, of plainer duty. For me political animosities are
forever hushed and absorbed in one desire, which I share with you
all, for the happiness and honor of our country, and the peaceful
advancement of our species; and all the feverish excitements and
perils of advocacy, its ardent partisanship with various interests,
anxieties, and passions, are displaced by the office of seeking to
discover truth and to maintain justice. I am no longer incited to
aspire to public favor, even under your auspices: my course is marked
right onward--to be steadily trodden, whether its duties may accord
with the prevalent feeling of the hour, or may oppose the temporary
injustice of its generous errors: but it is not forbidden me to prize
the esteem of those who have known me longest and best, and to indulge
the hope that I may retain it to the last. To encourage me in the
aim still to deserve that esteem, I shall look on this gift of those
numbers of my townsmen whose regards have just found such cordial
expression. I shall cherish it as a memorial of earliest hopes
that gleam out from the depth of years; as a memorial of a thousand
incentives to virtuous endeavor, of sacred trusts, of delighted
solaces; as a memorial of affections which have invested a being,
frail, sensitive, and weak, with strength not its own, and under God,
have insured for it an honorable destiny; as a memorial of this hour,
when, in the presence of those who are nearest and dearest to me on
earth, my course has been pictured in the light of those friendships