PREFACE. JOHN FOSTER, in one of his conversations, remarks, that an author will sometimes plead haste in preparing and putting forth a book, as if there were a famine of books, and awkward defects were to be overlooked on the score of benevolent zeal to satisfy the pressing demands of the public. No plea of this sort will be set up on behalf of the present unpretending volume, the author feeling pretty conscious, that did such famine really exist—as it never has existed since the time of Solomon-there is little in this book to appease its gnawings. The discourses were given in the ordinary course of a ministry to the Reformed Dutch Church of Saugerties, New York, and between the years 1848 and 1854. The miscellaneous papers, with one exception, were contributed to various periodicals during the same interval. Several of the discourses have been given to the press separately, and the present purpose is little more than to put in a tangible and fixed form what has hitherto existed in a fugitive one. If the reader remark the seeming incongruity of placing moral and critical essays, and discourses such as those on Adams, Clay, and Webster, side by side with those which are strictly religious, it is proper to observe, that the volume being miscellaneous in its character, the author is not "shut up" to the treatment of a specific class of subjects, while his own taste and judgment are alone responsible for the selections made. In those discourses on the illustrious men mentioned, whose names and services are historic, the design has been to illustrate by striking and memorable examples, the patriotic virtues, the earnest life-long devotion to the interests of our noble country and her benign institutions, and from the survey of these exemples, to draw out whatever wholesome lessons they may be found fit to furnish. The author has only to add, that he shall feel no disappointment if the reading of this volume is confined to the not very wide circle of those who know him personally, or at least to the denomination within which his lot is cast. Should its circulation, however, chance to stray beyond this narrow boundary, he is happy to believe that the subjects treated in the volume are sufficiently varied and important to afford somewhat of interest and -it may be of profit to any into whose hands it may fall. Greenwich, New York, June, 1856. THE PRICELESS WORTH OF A GOOD NAME. ON THE DEATH OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. Divitiarum et forma gloria fluxa atque fragilis; virtus clara eternaque habetur.-SALLUST. "A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches." PROV. XXII. 1. THE "Ingratitude of Republics" has long furnished to those given rather to declamation than to reasoning, a favorite and fertile theme. The phrase belongs to that useful class of topics, not only ready at the call of the humblest, but seeming to contain a sonorous truism, which, urged as an argument, bears a force not easy to parry. The truth of the saying, almost a proverbial one, has been rather taken for granted, than scrutinized with the view of detecting any fallacy that might underlie the proposition, or of determining whether from too few facts and examples, too broad and sweeping a conclusion had not been drawn. A Republic, it is averred, based upon the principle |