His parliamentary career was interrupted by an episode which belongs to the poetry of history. On the unanimous invitation of the Congress of the United States, he again visited the land whose Independence he helped to secure. This was in 1824. Forty years had passed since he was last here. But throughout this long period of a life transcendent in activity and privations, as well as in fame, he had ever turned with fondness to the scene of his early consecration, and proudly avowed himself American in heart and American in principle. His early compeers were all numbered with the dead, and he remained sole survivor among the generals of Washington. But the people had multiplied, and the country had grown in wealth and power. All rose to meet his coming, and he was welcomed everywhere as the Nation’s guest. To the inquiry, on his landing at New York, how he would be addressed, he replied, “As an American General,”--thus discarding again the title of his birth. From beginning to end, men and women, young and old, official bodies, towns, cities, States, Congress, all vied in testimonies of devotion and gratitude, while the children of the schools, boys and maidens, swelled the incomparable holiday, which, stretching from North to South, and covering the whole country, absorbed for the time every difference, and made all feel as children of one household. The strong and universal sentiment found expression in familiar words, repeated everywhere:-- “We bow not the neck, We bend not the knee, But our hearts, Lafayette, We surrender to thee.” It belongs to the glory of Lafayette that he inspired this sentiment, and it belongs to the glory of our country to have felt it. As there was never such a guest, so was there never such a host. They were alike without parallel. But amidst this grandest hospitality, binding him by new ties, he kept the loyalty of his heart: he did not forget the African slave.[119]