108 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The orator at the fifth annual festival of the Society, 

 September 18, 1833, Hon. Alexander H. Everett, after 

 expressing the hope that the sacred domain of Mount 

 Vernon might be purchased by the people, and held as 

 national property through the intervention of the Gen- 

 eral Government, closed his address thus : 



" In the mean time you have commenced on the smaller scale, 

 corresponding with the wants and the resources of a single State, 

 an establishment of this description, which promises to become 

 one of the chief ornaments of the neighborhood, and of which the 

 progress thus far does great credit to the discernment and taste 

 of your Society. Superior in its natural advantages of position 

 to the famous sepulchral grounds of the ancient world, we may 

 venture to hope, unless the sons of the Pilgrims shall degenerate 

 from their fathers, that Mount Auburn will hereafter record in its 

 funeral inscriptions examples not less illustrious than theirs of 

 public and private virtue. Even now, while the enclosures that 

 surround it are scarcely erected, while the axe is still busy in dis- 

 posing the walks that are to traverse its interior, this consecrated 

 spot has received the remains of more than one whose memory a 

 grateful people will not willingly permit to die. There was laid, 

 by the gentle ministration of female friendship, as the first 1 tenant 

 of the place, the learned, devout, and simple-hearted daughter of 

 the Pilgrims, who has wrought out an honorable name for herself 

 by commemorating theirs. There reposes in peace the young 

 warrior, cut off like a fresh and blooming flower in the spring of 

 his career. There, too, rests beside them the generous stranger, 

 who, in his ardent zeal for the welfare of man, had come from a 

 distant continent to share the treasures of his wisdom with an 

 unknown people. 2 Around their remains will gradually be gath- 

 ered the best, the fairest, the bravest, of the present and of many 

 future generations. In a few short years, we too, gentlemen, who 

 are now employed in decorating the surface of Mount Auburn, or 

 describing its beauties, will sleep in its bosom. How deep the 



1 Not the first, but one of the earliest. 



2 The persons alluded to by Mr. Everett were Miss Hannah Adams, 

 Lieut. Watson, and Dr. Spurzheim. 



