Having paid his respects to these venerated sages, “the Nation’s Guest” prepared to take his final departure from the midst of a grateful people.  The 7th of September, 1825, was the day appointed for taking leave.  About 12 o’clock, the officers of the General Government, civil, military, and naval, together with the authorities of Washington, Georgetown, and Alexandria, with multitudes of citizens and strangers, assembled in the President’s house.  La Fayette entered the great hall in silence, leaning on the Marshal of the District, and one of the sons of the President.  Mr. Adams then with evident emotion, but with much dignity and firmness, addressed him in the following terms:—­

“General la Fayette:  It has been the good fortune of many of my fellow-citizens, during the course of the year now elapsed, upon your arrival at their respective places of abode to greet you with the welcome of the nation.  The less pleasing task now devolves upon me, of bidding you, in the name of the nation, adieu!

“It were no longer seasonable, and would be superfluous, to recapitulate the remarkable incidents of your early life—­incidents which associated your name, fortunes, and reputation, in imperishable connection with the independence and history of the North American Union.

“The part which you performed at that important juncture was marked with characters so peculiar, that, realizing the fairest fable of antiquity, its parallel could scarcely be found in the authentic records of human history.

“You deliberately and perseveringly preferred toil, danger, the endurance of every hardship, and privation of every comfort, in defence of a holy cause, to inglorious ease, and the allurements of rank, affluence, and unrestrained youth, at the most splendid and fascinating court of Europe.

“That this choice was not less wise than magnanimous, the sanction of half a century, and the gratulations of unnumbered voices, all unable to express the gratitude of the heart, with which your visit to this hemisphere has been welcomed, afford ample demonstration.

“When the contest of freedom, to which you had repaired as a voluntary champion, had closed, by the complete triumph of her cause in this country of your adoption, you returned to fulfil the duties of the philanthropist and patriot, in the land of your nativity.  There, in a consistent and undeviating career of forty years, you have maintained, through every vicissitude of alternate success and disappointment, the same glorious cause to which the first years of your active life had been devoted, the improvement of the moral and political condition of man.

“Throughout that long succession of time, the people of the United States, for whom and with whom you have fought the battles of liberty, have been living in the full possession of its fruits; one of the happiest among the family of nations.  Spreading in population; enlarging in territory; acting and suffering according to the condition of their nature; and laying the foundations of the greatest, and, we humbly hope, the most beneficent power, that ever regulated the concerns of man upon earth.