play them; the hand-organs of the Savoyards in all cities repeat them, and the chimes of bells ring them in the spires. They are the property and the solace of mankind.[213] XXIII REMARKS AT THE CELEBRATION OF THE THREE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF SHAKSPEARE BY THE SATURDAY CLUB AT THE REVERE HOUSE, BOSTON, 1864 England’s genius filled all measure Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure, Gave to mind its emperor And life was larger than before; And centuries brood, nor can attain The sense and bound of Shakspeare’s brain. The men who lived with him became Poets, for the air was fame. SHAKSPEARE ’Tis not our fault if we have not made this evening’s circle still richer than it is. We seriously endeavored, besides our brothers and our seniors, on whom the ordinary lead of literary and social action falls—and falls because of their ability—to draw out of their retirements a few rarer lovers of the muse—“seld-seen flamens”—whom this day seemed to elect and challenge. And it is to us a painful disappointment that Bryant and Whittier as guests, and our own Hawthorne,—with the best will to come,—should have found it impossible at last; and again, that a well-known and honored compatriot, who first in Boston wrote elegant verse, and on Shakspeare, and whose American devotion through forty or fifty years to the affairs of a bank, has not been able to bury the fires of his genius,—Mr. Charles Sprague,—pleads the infirmities of age as an absolute bar to his presence with us. We regret also the absence of our members Sumner and Motley. We can hardly think of an occasion where so little need be said. We are all content to let Shakspeare speak for himself. His fame is settled on the foundations of the moral and intellectual world. Wherever there are men, and in the degree in which they are civil—have power of mind, sensibility to beauty, music, the secrets of passion, and the liquid expression of thought, he has risen to his place as the first poet of the world. Genius is the consoler of our mortal condition, and Shakspeare taught us that the little world of the heart is vaster, deeper and richer than the spaces of astronomy. What shocks of surprise and sympathetic power, this battery, which he is, imparts to every fine mind that is born! We say to the young child in the cradle, ‘Happy, and defended against Fate! for here is Nature, and here is Shakspeare, waiting for you!’