return home, for a little Episcopal chapel at Athens, then under the care of Dr. Hill, whose character and services he ever spoke of with the highest admiration. The twofold glories of the spot, as the scene of the grandest efforts of the two noblest orators of the world, the classic and the Christian Demosthenes, inspired him with even an unwonted enthusiasm; and few things gratified him more (if I may judge by repeated expressions of his own), than to have secured for himself, and for a few of his American friends, the privilege of offering this little pledge of Christian sympathy to those who should assemble beneath the shadows of Mars-hill-where Paul so triumphantly confronted the Epicurean and the Stoic, and that whole inquisitive and jeering crowd of Athenians and strangers to partake of the supper of our Lord, and to commemorate the transcendent reality of the resurrection from the dead. Not long afterwards, he took "Paul, as an Athenian Orator," for the subject of a popular lecture.

But I will detain you no longer, gentlemen, from the worthier tributes which others are prepared to pay to the memory of our departed friends, and for which I have been instructed to open the way by introducing the following resolution:

Resolved, That this Society has heard, with the deepest regret, of the deaths of their esteemed and respected associates, the Hon. WILLIAM APPLETON, and CORNELIUS CONWAY FELTON, LL.D.: and that Dr. Chandler Robbins be requested to prepare the customary Memoir of Mr. Appleton: and Mr. Hillard, that of President Felton.

TRACTS FOR THE SOLDIERS.

A SPEECH MADE AT THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, BOSTON, MAY 27, 1862.

I HOLD it a high honor, ladies and gentlemen, to be called on to take the chair on this occasion, as one of the Vice-Presidents of the old American Tract Society, whose history for four and thirty years is an illuminated calendar of Christian labors; and I return very grateful acknowledgments to those to whom I am indebted for so valued a compliment.

I cannot forget, in entering on the discharge of my duties, that the year which has elapsed since your last Anniversary Meeting, has witnessed not a few changes in your official roll. The late venerable President of the Association has been called from these earthly scenes, within a few months past, to enter, as we trust, upon the rich rewards of a long and useful life. His place has already been filled, at the late meeting of the Society at New York, where tributes of the most enviable character have been paid to his memory. But it becomes us here also, to give at least some passing expression to our sense of the loss which we have sustained by the death of so distinguished a son of New England.

Few men, certainly, of our age and generation, have left a more precious memory in the hearts of good men throughout the country, than the late Chief-Justice Williams of Connecticut. The eminent places which he has held, in so many different spheres of public duty, form but the slightest part of his claim to the remembrance of posterity. I will not attempt to recount them; for official position, alas, has ceased to furnish any safe criterion of private virtue or personal merit. But his pure and spotless

character; his noble illustration of Christian principle; his untiring activity in every good work of philanthropy and benevolence; and the signal liberality of his contributions, both living and dying, to so many of our great and best institutions for the promotion of moral and religious improvement, will secure an honored place for his name among the benefactors of our land.

Nor can we forget that more than one of our most distinguished Vice-Presidents have preceded or followed him to the grave, during the same short period. Among them I may be permitted to recall a venerable and venerated Bishop of the Diocese of Virginia; of whom one may well say, in view of all the deplorable events of which he was a witness, and something more, I fear, than a witness, during the latter months of his life, that "had he but died an hour before this chance, he had lived a blessed time."

Among them, too, I cannot fail to remember the excellent Theodore Frelinghuysen, of New Jersey, whose whole character and career, through a life of more than threescore years and ten, presented so noble a combination of the scholar, the statesman, and the Christian gentleman.

The genial and brilliant Bethune, too, has suddenly fallen in a foreign land, and has hardly left his peer as an orator, whether for the pulpit or the platform.

But we may not dwell too long upon the dead. Our duties are to the living, and we cannot but feel those duties pressing upon us all the more heavily, when so many of our associates are stricken down upon our right hand and upon our left.

I am not here to-day for the first time, my friends, to bear my humble testimony to the importance of this Association; and I do not propose to detain you with any general advocacy of its objects or its operations. I turn at once to a very brief consideration of the peculiar work which it has been called on to discharge, in common with other Associations of a kindred character, in the existing emergency of our national condition; and of the urgent demands which that work makes upon us all for our active cooperation and support.

I need hardly remind any one of the widely extended field which has been opened, by the existing civil war, for every variety

of benevolent and philanthropic enterprise. The mere statement of the stupendous fact, that more than half a million of the young men of our land, almost three-quarters of a million the numbers are rapidly mounting up while I speak - have been suddenly summoned from their homes and their altars, to contend for the defence of the Union, and to encounter all the exposures of the camp, and all the dangers of the battle-field, is enough to awaken every thoughtful mind and every earnest heart to the duty which rests upon those of us who remain behind.

And what is that duty? It is to accompany and to follow our gallant volunteers, not merely with words of approbation and shouts of encouragement, but with ample and substantial supplies of whatever may afford them the greatest comfort and support in the hardships and deprivations to which they are subjected, and of whatever may best prepare them for meeting, bravely and heroically, the great issues of life or death which await them.

We all rejoice in the successful operations of those sanitary commissions which have been organized in so many parts of the country; and no one can have witnessed without the highest admiration and the warmest sympathy, the unwearied efforts of the mothers and daughters of the loyal States, to make every needful, and I had almost said every conceivable, provision for the bodily comfort of their sons and brothers.

But we all know that there are other and higher needs than those of the body. We all know that in the camp and in the hospital, in the exposures of the day and in the watches of the night, in every hour of temptation from within or of danger from without, in the anguish of disease, in the agony of conflict, in the sharpness of death, there is a want which cannot be met by any mere material supplies.

This is the want, sometimes most needed where it is least felt, for which the Association before me, and others of a similar character, have undertaken to provide; and for which, to so considerable a degree, they have already provided. The Bible, the Prayer Book, the Hymn Book, the precious pages of your little Tracts and Messengers, scattered like leaves for the healing of wounds beyond the reach of all other surgery; some of them reproducing the Scripture texts which nerved the hearts of the

Puritan soldiers of Cromwell in the great Civil Wars of England, and some of them recounting the triumphs of prayer and faith in the peculiar conflicts of our own Pilgrim or Patriot Fathers; who shall estimate the value of supplies like these for our young soldiers and young sailors in their hours of trial!

Whose heart has not swelled with emotion, and been animated to higher hopes for our cause and for our country, as he has remarked that under influences like these, and by the example and authority of our Scotts and McClellans, our Wools, Andersons, and Footes, profanity, intemperance, and gambling have been discouraged and rebuked in our camps; that the Sunday has been so generally observed as a day of rest and of worship, even on the very verge of battle; and that so often around the evening watch-fires, the glorious notes of Old Hundred and the Army Hymn have resounded to the skies, in fit alternation with Hail Columbia and the Star-spangled Banner!

God forbid that there should be any lack of means for keeping up supplies of this sort, from whatever source, or from whatever society, they may come! and I trust that whatever else may be done, or left undone, during this Anniversary week, the amplest provision may be made for securing the full amount which may be necessary for carrying on this noble work of mingled piety and patriotism.

Doubtless, my friends, among the eighty-six or eighty-seven millions of pages, which have been printed by this Society, since your last anniversary meeting; or even among the more than fifty millions of pages which have been gratuitously distributed by it, during the past year; there might be found some, which would not altogether approve themselves to the judgment or the taste of us all. But what is the chaff to the wheat?

For myself, certainly, I can say, that in one particular policy of your worthy Publishing Committee I have heretofore most heartily concurred. I rejoice especially to remember that, up to the moment when the relations of the North and the South were so wantonly and treacherously broken up, not a line had been printed under their authority which could not have free and welcome circulation among Christian men and women of all sections of the Union.