EULOGIUM. 
Me. Vice-President, and Gentlemen of the Society 
for the Promotion of Useful Arts,, 
When I undertook to deliver an address commemora¬ 
tive of the public and private virtues of the late Chancellor 
Livingston, I hardly reflected until it was too late to recede, 
on the responsibility I had assumed. And now, when I feel 
that responsibility, in all its extent and weight, I trust I may 
divest myself of the greater portion of it, by stating, that 
nothing but your unanimous appointment and repeated so¬ 
licitations could have induced me to attempt a task to which 
I honestly deemed myself inadequate. When this public 
expression of respect was determined on by the Society, I 
did hope, that some one of its members who had passed 
through life with the Chancellor, and intimately knew his 
worth, would have performed this solemn duty. To this 
end my exertions were first directed, and there is still cause 
to regret that they did not meet with success. 
Any attempt, however humble, to do justice to the mem¬ 
ory of the truly great, must ever excite great expectations, 
I am therefore not surprised to see this large and very res¬ 
pectable audience. But that these expectations, so justly- 
excited from the greatness and worth of him who is the sub¬ 
ject of them, will be in any degree satisfied, I have not yet 
ventured to believe. The enticement of novelty , the object 
of this address does not admit. The public life of a public 
man must be very generally known, and his private charac¬ 
ter and pursuits, so far as they are matters of general con¬ 
cern, do not wait to be told in a funeral oration. I know 
very well that this want of novelty and consequently of in¬ 
terest, might be remedied by imitating the common strain, 
•of eulogy, and drawing an imaginary picture of excellence 
