502 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



destined to interrupt his literary labors. In 1841, be was appointed to 

 represent his country at the Court of St. James, where he remained 

 for four years as Minister Plenipotentiary, and where he found an am- 

 ple field for displaying his abilities as a diplomatist as well as his ac- 

 complishments as a scholar and his eloquence as an orator. 



Returning home in the autumn of 1845, Mr. Everett was met with 

 the appointment of President of Harvard University. He accepted 

 this office with reluctance, but he administered its difficult duties with 

 the greatest assiduity and ability for three years, when the state of his 

 health compelled him to resign it. 



In 1852, on the death of Mr. Webster, Mr. Everett was summoned 

 to Washington as Secretary of State of the United States, and con- 

 ducted the foreign affiiirs of the country with great brilliancy during 

 the brief term which remained before the expiration of President Fill- 

 more's administration. 



In 1853, he was elected a Senator of the United States for six years 

 by the Legislature of Massachusetts, but his health proved insufficient 

 for the arduous labors of Congress during that exciting period of our 

 national affairs, and in the summer of 1854 he resigned his seat, and 

 retired finally to private life. 



This summary statement of Mr. Everett's official career, distinguished 

 and varied as that career was, furnishes, however, a very inadequate 

 idea of his life and labors even during the yeai's to which it relates. 

 While he always discharged the duties of the successive offices to which 

 he was called with conscientious and most exemplary fidelity, he by no 

 means confined himself to the mere routine of official service. On the 

 contrary, it was during this very period that he achieved the highest 

 distinction as a scholar and an orator by effiarts quite apart from the 

 duties of public station. In the three noble volumes of his works al- 

 ready published there will be found nearly a hundred orations, speeches, 

 or lectures, upon almost every variety of topic, moral, historical, literary, 

 or scientific, delivered during these thirty years of his official career, 

 from 1824 to 1854, hardly one of which has any relation to the offices 

 which he held. They were purely labors of love, superadded to those 

 of office, and undertaken voluntarily in the cause of popular education 

 and improvement. It is hardly too much to say, that had Mr. Everett 

 held no office during this whole period, the record of his life would still 

 have exhibited an amount of work done, and admirably done, which 

 would have insured him a most grateful remembrance and a most en- 

 viable reputation with posterity. 



