Faneuil Hall has been called the _Cradle of Liberty_, so long and so often, that it may seem to savor of political heresy, to quarrel with the name--but, for the soul of me, I cannot help it. If it be intended to say, that Faneuil Hall is the _birth place_ of Liberty, I am not aware of a single instance, on record, of a baby, _born in a cradle_. The proverbial use of the cradle has ever been to rock the baby to sleep; and Heaven knows our old fathers made no such use of Faneuil Hall, in their early management of the bantling; for it was an ever-wakeful child, from the very moment of its first, sharp, shrill, life cry.
General Jackson has been reported--how justly I know not--upon some occasion, in a company of ladies, to have given a brief, but spirited, description of all his predecessors, in the Presidential chair, till he came down to the time of President Tyler, when, seizing his hat, he proceeded to bow himself out of the room. The ladies, however, insisted upon his completing the catalogue--_"Well, ladies," said he, "it is matter of history, and may therefore be spoken--President Tyler, ladies, was--pretty much nothing."_
A very felicitous description; and not of very limited application to men and things. I cannot find a better, for Master John Lovell's funeral oration, upon Peter Faneuil. This affair, which Dr. Snow, in his history of Boston, calls "_a precious relic_," is certainly a wonderfully flatulent performance. A time-stained copy of the original edition of 1743 lies under my eye. I hoped, not unreasonably, that it would be a lamp to my path, in searching after the historical assets of Peter Faneuil. But not one ray of light has it afforded me; and, with one or two exceptions, in relation to the _Hall_, and the general beneficence of its founder, it is, in no sense, more of a funeral oration, upon Peter Faneuil, than upon Peter Smink. In their vote of thanks to Master Lovell, passed on the day of its delivery, the committee speak of "_his oration_," very judiciously abstaining from all unwarrantable expletives. From this oration we can discover nothing of Faneuil's birth-place, nor parentage, nor when, nor whence, nor wherefore he came hither; nor of the day of his birth, nor of the day of his death, nor of the disease of which he died; nor of his habits of life, nor of the manner, in which he acquired his large estate; nor of his religious opinions, nor of his ancestors.