Produced by W. B. Jenness

ENTERED ACCORDING TO ACT OF CONGRESS, IN THE YEAR 1865, BY

JOHN D. PHILBRICK,

IN THE CLERK'S OFFICE

OF THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS.

RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:

STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY

H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY.

PREFACE.

The design of this book is twofold,—to meet the present demand for new selections suited to the spirit of the hour, and also to furnish a choice collection of standard pieces for elocutionary exercises on which time has set its lasting seal. In the execution of this design no pains have been spared in selecting and preparing the best pieces, both new and old.

The extracts from recent productions, numbering about one hundred, by more than fifty different authors, are now for the first time presented in a Speaker. They are for the most part the eloquent utterances of our best orators and poets, inspired by the present national crisis, and are therefore "all compact of the passing hour," breathing "the fine sweet spirit of nationality,—the nationality of America." They give expression to the emotions excited, the hopes inspired, and the duties imposed by this stormy and perilous period. They afford brilliant illustrations of the statesmanship of the crisis. Sumner exposes the origin and mainspring of the rebellion, Douglass strips off its pretext, Everett paints its crime, Boutwell boldly proclaims its remedy in emancipation, and Banks pronounces a benediction on the first act of reconstruction on the solid basis of freedom to all. They furnish also an epitome of the convict of arms. Bryant utters the rallying cry to the people, Whittier responds in the united voice of the North, Holmes sounds the grand charge, Pierpont gives the command "Forward!" Longfellow and Boker immortalize the unconquerable heroism of our braves on sea and land, and Andrew and Beecher speak in tender accents the gratitude of loyal hearts to our fallen heroes.

These new pieces will for a time receive the preference over old ones, and some of them will survive the period which called them forth. But to insure for the work, if possible, a permanent value as a Standard Speaker for students of common schools, higher seminaries and colleges, the greater part of the selections, nearly three hundred in number, have been chosen from those of acknowledged excellence, and of unquestionable merit as exercises for recitation and declamation. This department comprises every variety of style necessary in elocutionary culture.

Another important feature of the collection is the introduction of those masterpieces of oratory—long excluded from books of this class, though now rendered appropriate by the new phase of public opinion,which advocate the inalienable rights of man, and denounce the crime of human bondage. Aware of the deep and lasting power which pieces used for declamation exert in moulding the ideas and opinions of the young, it has been my aim to admit only such productions as inculcate the noblest and purest sentiments, teaching patriotism, loyalty, and justice, and bring the youthful heart with ambition to be useful, and with heroic devotion to duty.

The text of the extracts has been made to conform to that of the most authentic editions of the works of their authors. Some pieces which have heretofore been presented in a mutilated form, are here restored to their original completeness. Where compression or abridgment has been necessary, it has been executed with caution, and with strict regard to the sentiments and ideas of the authors. Fully convinced that elaborate treatises on elocution more appropriately form separate publications, nothing of the kind has been included in this volume. A summary of practical suggestions to teachers and students was thought to form a more useful introduction. For the sake of artistic beauty in the page, as well as for the convenience of the student, the notes and explanatory remarks necessary for the proper understanding of the pieces, have been thrown together at the end of the volume, and so arranged that reference to them can be easily made.

This work, the preparation of which has been a recreation rather than a labor—an agreeable diversion from the daily routine of a laborious office,—is the embodiment of the experience and observation of twenty-five years, with reference to this description of literature. It originated in a desire to contribute something to the furtherance of the right education of the young men of my country, and the extent to which it promotes this object, will in my estimation, be the measure of its success.

Boston, July 4, 1864.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON DECLAMATION.

It is not my purpose to present here a theory of elocution, or a systematic treatise on the art of speaking. My object will be accomplished if I succeed in furnishing a summary of practical suggestions and hints on the subject of declamation which shall prove useful both to student and to such teachers as have not made the study of elocution a specialty.

That a correct and impressive elocution is a desirable attainment, few will venture to deny. In my judgment it is the crowning grace of a liberal education. To the highest success in those professions which involve public speaking, it is, of course, indispensable. No person, whatever is to be his destination in life, who aspires to a respectable education and to mingle in good society, can afford to dispense with this accomplishment. If a young man means to succeed in life and attain distinction and influence, he should spare no pains in the cultivation of the faculty of speech. The culture of his vocal organs should keep pace with the culture of his mental powers. While acquiring a knowledge of literature and science, he should also form the habit of speaking his vernacular with propriety, grace, ease, and elegance, sparing no effort to acquire what has been aptly called "the music of the phrase; that clear, flowing, and decided sound of the whole sentence, which embraces both tone and accent, and which is only to be learned from the precept and example of an accomplished teacher."

As a means of acquiring an appropriate, effective, and graceful elocution for the purposes of conversation, reading, and public speaking, the exercise of declamation, when properly conducted, cannot be too highly valued. It must be confessed, however that the practice of declaiming as managed in some institutions, is comparatively useless, if not positively injurious. Hence arises the prejudice against it which exists in some quarters. And it is not surprising that the results of declamation should be unsatisfactory, considering the defective methods of conducting it, which are still prevalent in not a few places. What can be expected of declamation which consists in repeating on the stage a few pieces,—injudiciously selected and imperfectly committed,—without previous or accompanying vocal training? The remarks of Dr. Rush, on this topic, though made more than a quarter of a century ago, are still to some extent applicable. "Go to some, may I say all, of our colleges and universities, and observe how the art of speaking is not taught. See a boy of but fifteen treats sent upon the stage, pale and choking with apprehension, in an attempt to do that, without instruction, which he came purposely to learn; and furnishing amusement to his classmates, by a pardonable awkwardness, which should be punished in the person of his pretending but neglectful preceptor with little less than scourging. Then visit a conservatory of music; observe there the orderly tasks, the masterly discipline, the unwearied superintendence and the incessant toil to produce accomplishment of voice; and afterward do not be surprised that the pulpit, the senate, the bar, and the chair of the medical professorship are filled with such abominable drawlers, mouthers, mumblers, clutterers, squeakers, chanters, and mongers in monotony; nor that the schools of singing are constantly sending abroad those great instances of vocal wonder, who draw forth the intelligent curiosity and produce the crowning delight and approbation of the prince and the sage."

This eminent writer's great work on the Philosophy of the Human Voice has done much to correct the evil which he so graphically described. There are now some schools and colleges to be found in which elocution is taught with much skill and success. Among the disciples of Dr. Rush who have most successfully cultivated the art of elocution in America, the foremost place belongs to Professor William Russell, whose valuable and protracted labors in this department of education, both as an author and a practical instructor, merit the highest commendation.

As the first of my recommendations, I would, at the outset, strenuously insist on the importance of systematic vocal culture, which implies the training of the ear to perceive the various qualities and modifications of vocal expression, and the training of the voice to produce them. All the different functions of the voice employed in speech should be analytically exemplified by the teacher, and practised by the pupil, in the reading or recitation of short passages in which they are well illustrated, such as may be found in any good manual of elocution. This kind of teaching is to elocution what practice upon the scale is to music, and what the practice of the eye upon the harmony and contrast of colors is to painting.

This course of training naturally divides itself into two departments:—first that which is mechanical; and, secondly, that which relates to the expression of thought and emotion.

I. THAT WHICH IS MECHANICAL.

BREATHING. The human voice is a musical instrument, an organ of exquisite contrivance and adaptation of parts. Breath being the material of its sound, vocal training should begin with the function of breathing. Vigorous respiration is as essential to good elocution as it is to good health. To secure this it is necessary, in the first place, to attend to the posture, taking care to give the utmost freedom, expansion, and capacity to the chest, and then to exercise and develop all the muscles employed in respiration, so that they may be habitually used with energy and power, both in the inhalation and expulsion of the breath. Whenever the voice is to be used in speaking, reading, singing, or animated conversation, the pupil should be required to assume the proper position, and to bring into exercise the whole muscular apparatus of the vocal organs, including the muscles of the abdomen, of the back, of the ribs, and of the chest. Elocutionary exercises, especially that of declamation, thus practised with a due regard to the function of breathing, become highly beneficial in a hygienic point of view, imparting health and vigor to the whole physical system. The want of this kind of training is the cause of much of the bronchial disease with which clergymen and other public speakers are afflicted. In the excellent work on Elocution, by Russell and Murdock, the following exercises in breathing are prescribed and explained:—"Attitude of the body and position of the organs; deep breathing; diffusive or tranquil breathing; expulsive or forcible breathing; explosive or abrupt breathing; sighing; sobbing; gasping; and panting."

Experience has proved that the respiratory organs are susceptible of a high degree of development, and it is well known that the strength of the voice depends on the capacity, health, and action of those organs. It is therefore of paramount importance that elocutionary culture should be based on the mechanical function of respiration. And while the elocutionist trains his pupils in such breathing exercises as are above named, he is at the same time giving the very best part of physical education; for the amount of vital power, as well as the amount of vocal power, depends upon the health and vigor of the respiratory process. Few are aware how much may be effected by these exercises, judiciously practiced, in those constitutions where the chest is narrow, indicating a tendency to pulmonary disease. In all such cases, regularly repeated deep inspirations are of the highest value. It should be observed that these exercises are best performed in the open air, or, at least, in a well-ventilated room, the windows being open for the time. But no directions however wise or minute, can supersede the necessity of a competent teacher in this branch of physical and vocal training, and I cannot dismiss this topic without expressing my high appreciation of the value of the labors of that great master of the science of vocal culture, Prof. Lewis B. Monroe, of Boston, who is probably unsurpassed in this, or any other country, as a practical teacher of the mechanism and physiology of speech. Already the benefit of his instruction in this department of education is widely felt, and I omit no opportunity to advise teachers to avail themselves of a longer or shorter course of his admirable training. For if there is any accomplishment which a teacher should be unwilling to forego, it is that, of skill in elocution.

ARTICULATION. A good articulation consists in giving to each letter its appropriate sound, and to each syllable and word an accurate, forcible, and distinct utterance, according to an approved standard of pronunciation.

This is what constitutes the basis of all good delivery. It has been well said that good articulation is to the ear what a fair hand or a clear type is to the eye. Austin's often-quoted description of a good articulation must not be omitted here. "In just articulation, the words are not to be hurried over, nor precipitated syllable over syllable; nor as it were melted together into a mass of confusion. They should be neither abridged nor prolonged, nor swallowed, nor forced; they should not be trailed, nor drawled, nor let to slip out carelessly, so as to drop unfinished. They are to be delivered out from the lips as beautiful coins newly issued from the mint, deeply and accurately impressed, perfectly finished, neatly struck by the proper organs, distinct, in due succession, and of due weight." Good articulation is not only necessary to the speaker, as a condition of being heard and understood, but it is a positive beauty of delivery, for the elementary sounds of speech, when properly uttered, are in themselves both agreeable and impressive. For the attainment of this desirable accomplishment, three classes of exercises are necessary. 1. Upon the separate elementary sounds of the language, both vowels and consonants; 2. Upon their various combinations, both such as constitute syllables and such as do not, and especially the more difficult combinations of consonants; and, 3. Upon words; spelling them by sounds, that is, uttering the elementary sounds separately, and then the whole word.

Respecting these exercises, Dr. Rush observes:—"When the elements are pronounced singly, they may receive a concentration of organic effort, which gives them a clearness of sound, and a definiteness of outline, if I may so speak, at their extremes, that make a fine preparation for a distinct and forcible pronunciation of the compounds of speech." By elementary sounds is here meant the forty-two sounds of the language which are represented by the twenty-six letters of the alphabet. They are represented in the following

TABLE OF ELEMENTARY SOUNDS.

VOWELS.

1. e, eve. 7. a, arm. 13. o, move. 2. i, in. 8. a, all. 14. u, full. 3. a, ale. 9, o, on. 15. u, tune. 4. e, end. 10. e, err. 16. i, isle. 5. a, air. 11. o, own. 17. oi, oil. 6. a, and. 12. u, un. 18. ou, our.

CONSONANTS.

1. p, rope. 9. th, bath. 17. ch, etch. 2. b, robe. 10. th, bath. 18. dg,(j) edge. 3. f, safe. 11. s, buss. 19. sh, rash. 4. v, save. 12. z, buzz. 20. g,(zh) rouge. 5. m, seem. 13. l, feel. 21. k, rack. 6. w, way. 14. r, fear. 22. g, rag. 7. t, feet. 15. n, seen. 23. ng, sing. 8. d, feed. 16. y, yea. 24. h, hay.

Pronounce the word eve, for example, slowly and distinctly, observing the sounds which compose the word, and the movements of the organs in producing them. Then enunciate singly the sound which the letter standing on the left has in the word. When a distinct idea of each sound has been acquired, the practice on the separate elements may be continued without pronouncing the words. I have heard these sounds given with distinctness by children five or six years of age. Indeed they should always be taught with the alphabet.

The next step in articulation proceeds with the combinations of the elementary sounds. The most common combinations of consonantal sounds in pairs are those represented in the following

TABLE OF COMBINED CONSONANTS.

pl lf zm zn kr vd rth bl lv mp ln pr zd nth fl lt mf rn rp gd thz vl ld mt nt rb bz thr tl ls md nd rf vz thn dl lz mz ns rv dz lch sl lk pn nz rt gz rch zl lg fn pr rd nk nch kl lm vn br rz ks ndg(j) gl ln tn fr rk kt shr lp rm dn tr rg st ndg lb sm sn dr bd sp ndz

When the simpler combinations have become familiar, the more difficult, consisting of three or four consonants, should be practised upon. Finally, words should be pronounced simply as words, giving attention solely to the articulation. Not that the first steps are expected to be perfect before the succeeding ones are attempted, but that attention should be given to only one thing at a time, a grand maxim in education, when rightly understood. These exercises should be commenced with the first steps in reading, and continued until the articulation is perfected, and the student has acquired facility as well as precision, grace as well as force, and distinctness and ease have been united and permanently secured.

I would not be understood to affirm that the mode here pointed out is the only one by which a good articulation can be acquired. If a child is brought up among persons whose articulation is good, and if, from the earliest years, he is trained to speak with deliberation and distinctness, he will in most cases have a good articulation for conversational purposes, without special drilling on the elements.

II. THAT WHICH RELATES TO THE EXPRESSION OF THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS, INCLUDING THE QUALITIES AND MANAGEMENT OF THE VOICE.

This branch of vocal gymnastics comprises, first the appropriate discipline of the voice for its formation and development, by strengthening it, by extending its compass, and by improving its quality so as to render it full, sonorous, and agreeable; and, secondly, the training of the voice in those modifications which are used in the expressions of thought and feeling, including all that variety of management which appears in the delivery of a good speaker.

STRENGTH. To secure the requisite strength of voice should be our first aim in a course of vocal culture. So important was this element of elocutionary training considered by the Athenians, that they had a class of teachers who were wholly devoted to it as a specialty. The zeal and perseverance of Demosthenes in correcting the natural deficiencies of his voice, have passed into a proverb. How he was accustomed to run up the steepest hills, and to declaim on the sea-shore, when the waves were violently agitated, in order to acquire strength of voice and force of utterance is known to every school-boy.

If strength of voice is of paramount importance to the speaker, it is also an element which is very susceptible of cultivation. Professor Russell says,—"The fact is familiar to instructors in elocution, that persons commencing practice [in vocal gymnastics] with a very weak and inadequate voice, attain, in a few weeks, a perfect command of the utmost degrees of force." As has already been intimated, the strength of the voice depends directly upon the condition and use of the respiratory organs, including the larynx, and indirectly upon the general health and vigor of the whole physical system. The volume of breath which can be inhaled, and the force with which it can be expelled determine the degree of energy with which vocal sounds are uttered. This fact affords a clear indication of the proper mode of developing the strength of the voice. It is evident that the exercises which have for their object the strengthening of the voice, should also be adapted to develop and perfect the process of breathing. The student should be frequently trained in set exercises in loud exclamations, pronouncing with great force the separate vowel sounds, single words, and whole sentences, and at the same time taking care to bring into vigorous action, all the muscular apparatus of respiration. Shouting, calling, and loud vociferation, in the open air, both while standing, and while walking or running, are, with due caution, effective means of acquiring vigor of utterance. Children when at play are instinctively given to vociferation, which should be permitted, whenever practicable. One of the most remarkable examples of the extent to which the power of voice may be developed, is that of the Rev. Mr. Whitefield, the celebrated itinerant preacher. Having listened to his preaching in the open air, in Philadelphia, on a certain occasion, Dr. Franklin found by computation, that he might well be heard by more than thirty thousand auditors. It is said that the habit of speaking gave to the utterance of Garrick so wonderful an energy, that even his under-key was distinctly audible to ten thousand people. Dr. Porter sums up this matter thus :—"The public speaker needs a powerful voice; the quantity of voice which he can employ, at least can employ with safety, depends on his strength of lungs; and this again depends on a sound state of general health. If he neglects this, all other precautions will be useless."

COMPASS. When a person is engaged in earnest conversation, his voice spontaneously adopts a certain key or pitch. This is called the natural or middle key, and it varies in different persons. Pitt's voice, it is said, was a full tenor, and Fox's a treble. When a speaker is incapable of loud and forcible utterance on both high and low notes, his voice is said to be wanting in compass. Webster's voice was remarkable for the extent of its compass, ranging with the utmost ease, from the highest to the lowest notes, required by a spirited and diversified delivery; and such was said to be the versatility of Whitefield's vocal power, that he could imitate the tones of a female, or the infant voice, at one time, and at another, strike his hearers with awe, by the thunder of his under-key.

The want of compass is more frequently the result of bad habits of speaking and imperfect training than of incapacity of the vocal organs. Mr. Murdock, the well-known actor and elocutionist, tells us that, by appropriate vocal training, he gained, within the space of some months, to such an extent, in power and depth of voice, as to add to its previous range a full octave; and this improvement was made at a period after he supposed himself nearly broken down in health and voice, by over-exertion on the stage.

A command of the low notes is essential to the fullest effect of impressive eloquence. The strongest and deepest emotions can be expressed only by a full, deep-toned utterance. Speaking on one key, with only slight variations, either above or below it, is perhaps the most common, and, at the same time, the most injurious fault both of declaimers and of public speakers.

As a means of acquiring compass of voice, the student should pronounce with great force the vowel sounds on both the highest and lowest notes he can reach. This elementary drill should be followed by practice in reading and declaiming selections requiring the extreme notes of the compass. For practice on the low notes, passages should be selected expressing deep solemnity, awe, horror, melancholy, or deep grief. The following fine simile affords an excellent example for practice on the low notes:—

"So when an angel, by divine command,
With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,
Such as of late o'er pale Brittania passed,
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;
And, pleased th' Almighty's orders to perform,
Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm."

The development of the top of the voice requires practice upon passages expressing brisk, gay, and joyous emotions, and the extremes of pain, fear, and grief. The following examples may serve as illustrations:

Last came Joy's ecstatic trial:
He, with viny crown advancing,
First to the lively pipe his hand addressed:
But soon he saw the brisk, awakening viol,
Whose sweet entrancing voice he loved the best.
They would have thought, who heard the strain,
They saw, in Tempé's vale, her native maids,
Amidst the festal-sounding shades,
To some unlearned minstrel dancing;
While, as his flying fingers kissed the strings,
Love framed with Mirth a gay fantastic round.
Strike—till the last armed foe expires;
Strike—for your altars and your fires;
Strike—for the green graves of your sires,—
God.—and your native land!

QUALITY. A voice may possess the properties we have considered, strength and compass, and yet be very far from perfection. It may be neither loud, nor round, nor clear, nor full, nor sweet. While on the other hand, it may be hollow, or aspirated, or guttural, or nasal, or possibly it may be afflicted with a combination of these faults. As one of the most important conditions of success in the cultivation of the voice, it is necessary that the student should acquire a distinct conception of the qualities and characteristics of a good voice, as a standard, a beau-ideal, which he may strive to reach. This must be derived mainly from the illustrations of the teacher, or from listening to the speaking of an accomplished orator. No mere description is adequate to convey it to the learner without the aid of the living voice. And yet, such a quaint and charming description of both the negative and positive qualities of a good voice, as the following, from a colloquy between Professor Wilson and the Ettrick Shepherd, is worth studying:—

NORTH. (Professor Wilson)

"James, I love to hear your voice. An Esquimaux would feel himself getting civilized under it for there's sense in the very sound. A man's character speaks in his voice, even more than in his words. These he may utter by rote, but his 'voice is the man for a' that,' and betrays or divulges his peculiar nature. Do you like my voice, James? I hope you do."

Shepherd. (James Hogg.)

"I wad ha'e kent it, Mr. North, on the tower o' Babel, on the day o' the great hubbub. I think Socrates maun ha'e had just sic a voice—ye canna weel ca 't sweet, for it is ower intellectual for that—ye canna ca 't saft, for even in its aigh notes there's a sort o' birr, a sort o' dirl that betokens power—ye canna ca 't hairsh, for angry as ye may be at times, it's aye in tune frae the fineness o' your ear for music—ye canna ca 't sherp, for it's aye sae nat'ral—and flett it cud never be, gin you were even gi'en ower by the doctors. It's maist the only voice I ever heard, that I can say is at ance persuawsive and commanding—you micht fear 't, but you maun love 't; and there's no a voice in all his Majesty's dominions, better framed by nature to hold communion with friend or foe."

The quality of voice to which I would here call special attention is called pure tone, which in its perfection, accompanied with strength and compass, comprises nearly all the requisites of a good voice. "True utterance and pure tone," says Professor Russell, "employ the whole apparatus of voice, in one consentaneous act, combining in one perfect sphere of sound, if it may be so expressed, the depth of effect produced by the resonance of the chest, the force and firmness imparted by the due compression of the throat, the clear, ringing property, caused by the due proportion of nasal effect, and the softening and sweetening influence of the head and mouth."

The orotund quality which is so effective in impassioned utterance, and in the expression of deep, forcible, and sublime emotions, is nothing more than pure tone increased in extent of volume, and in intensity of force. This modification of pure tone is very full, very rounds very smooth, and very highly resonant or ringing. It is what Dr. Rush regarded as the highest perfection of speech-voice, and as the natural language of the highest species of emotion. Volume and energy are its distinguishing characteristics. The piece from Webster on page 160, is a good illustration of its use.

In cultivating purity of tone, it is necessary, in the first place, to ascertain the elements of impurity, and their causes and remedies. To this negative process must be added the positive, namely—attention to the due and proportionate development of all the vocal organs. Depth is increased by the expansion of the pharynx; roundness and volume are promoted by the enlargement of the oral cavity, especially its back part; and smoothness is the result of the free vibration of the vocal chords, while resonance is produced by the proper expansion of the chest.

MODULATION. This has reference, not to the qualities of the voice itself, but to its management in delivery. It includes those modifications and variations which are requisite for the expression of thoughts and feelings, and are therefore denominated by some elocutionists, the elements of expression, in distinction from the elements of utterance, which we have already considered under the preceding heads. The principal expressive modifications of the voice, are pitch, force, rate, pause, and infection. The voice should be exercised on these elements separately, till each can be produced in all its varieties and degrees. The middle pitch, or key-note, is that of common discourse, but by practice it may be rendered effective in public speaking. Neglect to cultivate and develop the power of speaking on this key, often leads speakers to adopt the high, shouting note, which is heard so commonly, and with so much disapprobation, at exhibitions of declamation. Every one can speak on a high key, although without training few can do it pleasingly; but command over the low notes of the voice is a rare accomplishment, and an unequivocal characteristic of the finished speaker. It is well to pay some attention to the very high and very low notes, not so much for their own utility in public speaking as for the purpose of giving strength and firmness to the notes which are intermediate between the natural pitch and either extreme, and which are designated as simply high and low, without any qualifying term. After accustoming the ear and voice to the different notes, the student should learn to make sudden transitions from one key to another.

FORCE. The principal degrees of force requiring attention, are three: the moderate, the declamatory, and the impassioned. The degrees lower than moderate are, the suppressed and the subdued; and those higher than impassioned are, shouting and calling. But these are not very important in practical delivery.

RATE has reference to the kinds of movement in delivery, including the rapid, the moderate, and the slow. Mrs. Siddon's primary rule for good reading was, "Take Time." Excessive rapidity of utterance is, undoubtedly, a very prevalent fault, both in speaking and in conversation. Deliberate speech is usually a characteristic of culture and good-breeding. This excellence is greatly promoted by giving due quantity, or prolongation of sound, to the vowels.

PAUSES. Besides the pauses required by the syntactical structure of the sentence, and denoted by grammatical punctuation, there are the pauses of passion, and the pauses at the termination of the clusters into which words are grouped in good speaking.

The pauses of emotion occur in impassioned delivery. They usually consist in lengthening the stops indicated by the punctuation marks, especially those of the points of exclamation and interrogation, and the dash. Pauses of this description constitute one of the most importent of the elements of emphatic expression, and yet they are, by many speakers, altogether neglected, or so abridged as to destroy their effect. The young student is particularly apt to disregard them.

The pauses which mark the grouping of words according to the sense, and afford rests for taking breath, should generally be introduced before the nominative, if it consists of several words, or if it is one important word; before and after an intermediate clause; before the relative; before and after clauses introduced by prepositions; before conjunctions; and before the infinitive mood, if any words intervene betwixt it and the word governing it.

INFLECTIONS. The two chief inflections or slides are the raising and the falling. The voice, when properly managed, usually rises or falls on each emphatic syllable. These upward and downward movements of the voice are what we mean by inflections. The student should practice on them till he can inflect with ease and in a full sonorous voice. Persons who are deficient in tune do not readily perceive the difference between the rising slide and loudness of voice, or the falling and softness. It is a very useful exercise to pronounce the long vowel sounds giving to each first the rising then the falling slide. The prolongation of these sounds is most profitably connected with the slides, the voice being thus strengthened in its whole range of compass, and, at the same time, accustomed to utter the musical sounds of speech with due quantity. In inflecting the vowels, the voice, in order to rise, begins low; and, in order to fall, it begins high.

The rising and falling slides combined form the circumflex, or wave, which is a very impressive and significant modification of the voice. It is chiefly used in sarcasm, raillery, irony, wit, and humor. It well deserves careful study and practice.

THE MONOTONE, is the repetition of nearly the same tone on successive syllables, resembling the repeated strokes of the bell. This element belongs to very grave delivery, especially where emotions of awe, sublimity, grandeur, and vastness are expressed, and is peculiarly adapted to devotional exercises. The following example well illustrates its use:

"He bowed the heavens also, and came down; and darkness was under his feet,—And he rode upon a cherub and did fly; yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness his secret place; his pavilion round about him were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies."

In practical delivery, the elements of expression are never used independently of each other, two or three being always combined, even in the utterance of the shortest passage. The perfection of vocal training, therefore, requires a command, not merely of each individual modification of the voice, but of all their numerous combinations. The following example requires the union of declamatory force, low pitch, slow rate, monotone, and orotund quality:—

"High on a throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth of Ormus. and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand,
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,
Satan exalted sat."

What has been said thus far, relates wholly to preparatory training in the elements of elocution. I have dwelt upon this theoretical department of my subject, because of its transcendent importance. But I do not mean to imply, in anything that has been presented, that the pupil should be confined exclusively to this disciplinary drill, for a long period, without attempting practical exercises in reading and declamation. On the contrary, I would recommend that this practice on the vocal and expressive elements be carried forward together with practice in speaking pieces. Exercises in vocal gymnastics, such as I have now indicated, should be commenced with the first stages of education, and continued, with gradations adapted to the age and progress of the pupil, through the whole course of instruction, whether longer or shorter. The value of thorough elementary training is well illustrated by the following anecdote respecting the education of the ear and the singing voice:—

"Porpora, one of the most illustrious masters of Italy, having conceived a friendship for a young pupil, exacted from him the promise that he would persevere with constancy in the course which he should mark out for him. The master then noted upon a single page of ruled paper, the diatonic and chromatic scales, ascending and descending; the intervals of third, fourth, fifth, &c. This eternal page occupied master and pupil until the sixth year, when the master added some lessons in articulation and declamation. At the end of this year, the pupil, who still supposed himself in the elements, was much surprised when Porpora said to him, 'Go, my son, you have nothing more to learn; you are the first singer of Italy, and of the world.' The master had spoken the truth, for this singer was Caffarelli, the greatest singer of the eighteenth century."

EXPRESSION

This term is used here, not in its limited and technical meaning, but in its largest sense, as a convenient one to denote the practical application of the principles of vocal culture which I have recommended. We will suppose the student to be thoroughly trained in enunciation, that his utterance is distinct and his pronunciation is correct, and that his voice is fully developed and well modulated. The question now arises, How is he to be guided in the right use of his powers of speech in the delivery of a given piece? On this point there is a wide difference of opinion among writers on elocution. On the one hand there are those who contend that, in the delivery of every sentence, the application of emphasis, pause, pitch, inflection, &c., should be governed by definite rules. In accordance with this theory, they have formed complex systems of elocutionary rules, for the guidance of pupils in reading aloud and in declamation. On the other hand, there are authorities of eminence, who regard all specific rules for the management of the voice in speaking as not merely useless, but positively injurious. Most prominent among the latter class is Archbishop Whately who, in speaking of the method of teaching expressive delivery by rules, says:—"Such a plan not only directs us into a circuitous and difficult path, towards an object which may be reached by a shorter and straighter, but also in most instances completely fails of that very object, and even produces oftener than not, effects the very reverse of what was designed." Reprobating very emphatically all systematic attention to elocution as an art, this eminent author advocates what he calls the natural manner of speaking, for the attainment of which he prescribes the rule, "not only to pay no studied attention to the voice, but studiously to withdraw the thoughts from it, and to dwell as intently as possible on the sense, trusting to nature to suggest spontaneously the proper emphasis and tones."

The true course seems to me to lie midway between these two opposite extremes. While it is useless to attempt to reduce to exact system all the modifications of voice to be employed in the delivery of both plain and allegorical language, still there are many important elocutionary rules and principles which are eminently useful for the guidance of the student. Because Walker fell into the error of attempting to carry his principles too far, and perplexed the student with an endless list of rules, it does not follow that all rules should be disregarded. His rules for inflections are, no doubt, too complex and artificial for ordinary instruction in elocution, but those found in the works of Dr. Porter and Professor Russell are calculated to afford important aid; and Professor Mark Bailey, in his Introduction to "Hillard's Sixth Reader," has still further simplified the subject. The following principles which he lays down for regulating the inflections are at once comprehensive and practical.

"The 'rising' and 'falling' slides separate the great mass of ideas into two distinct classes; the first comprising all the subordinate, or incomplete, or, as we prefer to name them, the negative ideas; the second comprising all the principal, or complete, or, as we call them, the positive ideas.

"The most important parts of what is spoken or written, are those which affirm something positively, such as the facts and truths asserted, the principles, sentiments, and actions enjoined, with the illustrations, and reasons, and appeals, which enforce them. All these may properly be grouped into one class, because they all should have the same kind of slide in reading. This class we call 'positive ideas.'

"So all the other ideas which do not affirm or enjoin anything positively, which are circumstantial and incomplete, or in open contrast with the positive, all these ideas may be properly grouped into another single class because they all should have the same kind of slide. This class we call 'negative ideas.'

"Positive ideas should have the falling slide; Negative ideas should have the rising slide.

"All sincere and earnest, or, in other words, all upright and downright ideas demand the straight, or upright and downright slides.

"All ideas which are not sincere or earnest, but are used in jest, or irony, in ridicule, sarcasm, or mockery, in insinuation or double-meaning, demand the crooked or circumflex slides."

These rules taken in connection with the accompanying brief but clear and precise explanation of the meaning attached to the words positive and negative, constitute the most admirable generalization that I have met with in elocutionary works of more recent date than that of Dr. Rush. And, indeed, Professor Bailey's whole treatment of that part of elocution now under consideration, is the best illustration I can name of the middle course which I recommend. Avoiding alike the ultra "artificial" system of Walker and the ultra "natural" system of Whately, he combines in his instruction the excellencies of both, without their faults. He is both philosophical in his theory, and practical in its application. He attempts only what is practicable. He insists on analysis, but his analysis is at once simple and comprehensive. He classes the different kinds of composition with respect to the emotions, as follows,—1. Unemotional; 2. Bold; 3. Animated or joyous; 4. Subdued or pathetic; 5. Noble; 6. Grave; 7. Ludicrous or sarcastic, 8. Impassioned,—and then indicates the modifications of voice appropriate for each.

Now such a course of training based on such principles, especially if pursued under a competent instructor, cannot fail to be highly beneficial. Experience has proved it. Whately is evidently in error in wholly proscribing attention to the voice in speaking. In learning to dance, the pupil must pay attention to the motions of his limbs, but when practice has made the movements familiar, his mind is withdrawn from them. They then become natural. Just so will the student of elocution. In his disciplinary exercises he must attend to his voice. He must become accustomed to the correct application of tones and inflections in the delivery of passages which illustrate them. But when he comes to practical delivery, then the mind should be withdrawn from the manner of utterance, and concentrated intensely upon the matter,—the thoughts and feelings to be expressed. In private rehearsals, the management of the voice will be a very prominent object of attention. Declamation is a sort of transition stage, or intermediate exercise between private rehearsal and practical delivery at the bar, in the pulpit, or on the platform, and will require more or less attention to the voice, in proportion to the progress already made by the pupil. Judicious practice will gradually carry him to that point where he will wholly cease to think of his manner, and become entirely absorbed in his subject. He then becomes natural. But even the most accomplished orator must occasionally give some thought to his voice. When he rises to address an audience in a new place he must consider the circumstances,—the capacity of the apartment, the nature and temper of his auditors, &c., and pitch his voice accordingly. In other words, the speaker must on all occasions give a general attention to his voice,—sufficient, at least, to adapt it to the requirements of the position in which he is placed, modifying it in the progress of the discourse, as the necessity of the case demands. If the matter of his discourse is very familiar, the skilful speaker may greatly augment the effectiveness of his delivery by more particular attention to the manner, while he will seem wholly absorbed in the spirit and sense of what he utters.

GESTURE.

The limited space allotted to this introduction will not permit a full discussion of this topic, and I must content myself with presenting a few general observations concerning it.

The little child, in the unconscious freedom of childhood, before his actions and manners have been modified by the restraints of artificial life, affords the best model of gesture. His instinct prompts him to that visible expression of his thoughts and feelings

"Which we are toiling all our lives to find."

And it may be assumed as a general fact that external expression, unless repressed by habit or design, usually corresponds with internal emotion. The great desideratum in gesture is to make the visible expression in delivery harmonize with the audible, or, as Shakspeare has it, to "suit the action to the word, and the word to the action."

Professor Russell, in his excellent analysis of this subject says, "The true speaker must have a true manner; and of the five great attributes of genuine expression in attitude and action, TRUTH stands first, followed by FIRMNESS, FORCE, FREEDOM, and PROPRIETY. GRACE, which is sometimes added as a sixth, is, in all true manly eloquence, but another name for the symmetry which flows from appropriateness; and, in masculine expression, should never be a distinct object of attention."

In order to speak well, the orator must be able to stand well, that is, he should assume a firm but easy and graceful attitude, the weight of the body resting principally on one foot. The distance between the feet should be such as to give both firmness and freedom to the position One foot should be in advance of the other, the toes being turned outward. The attitude should vary with the thoughts and emotions expressed. Unemotional thoughts require an attitude of repose, the body resting on the retired foot. Bold and impassioned language requires the reverse of this. The body is thrown forward, resting on the foot advanced. In turning from side to side, the toes should be kept apart and the heels together.

The principal feature of bodily action consists in the proper use of the hands. "Have not," says Quintilion, "our hand's the power of exciting, of restraining, of beseeching, of testifying approbation, admiration, and shame? Do they not, in pointing out places and persons, discharge the duty of adverbs and pronouns? So amidst the great diversity of tongues-pervading all nations and peoples, the language of the hands appears to be a language common to all men." We stretch forth and clasp the hands when we importunately entreat, sue, beseech, supplicate, or ask mercy. To put forth the right hand spread open is the gesture of bounty, liberality, and a free heart; and thus we reward, and bestow gifts. Placing with vehemence the right fist in the left palm is a gesture commonly used to mock, chide, insult, reproach, and rebuke. To beckon with the raised hand is a universal sign of craving audience and entreating a favorable silence. To wave the hand from us, the palm outward, is the gesture of repulsion, aversion, dismissal. To shake the fist at one signifies anger and defiance and threatening. The hands are clasped or wrung in deep sorrow, and outstretched with the palms inward to indicate welcoming, approving, and receiving. In shame, the hand is placed before the eyes; in earnestness and ardor, the hands reach forward; in joy, they are thrown up, widely apart; in exultation and triumph, the right hand is waved above the head.

"In the rhetorical actions of the hand, the happy medium ought to be observed; for the action of the hand should be full of dignity and magnanimous resolution, making it a liberal index of the mind." A French writer admirably remarks that we should move the arms because we are animated, but not try to appear animated by moving the arms.

The countenance, especially the eye, should be made to speak as well as the tongue. It is said of Chatham, that such was the power of his eye, that he very often cowed down an antagonist in the midst of his speech, and threw him into confusion. It is through the eye, scarcely less than through the tones of voice, that intercourse of soul is carried on between the speaker and hearers. To secure this intercourse the speaker should let his soul beam from his eye. Nor should he fail to look at his hearers, if he would have his hearers look at him. Among the faults to be avoided in the management of the eye, Dr. Porter notices particularly that unmeaning look which the eye "bent on vacuity" has, resembling the inexpressive glare of the glass eye of a wax figure; that indefinite sweep of the eye which ranges from one side to the other of an assembly, resting nowhere; and that tremulous, roving cast of the eye, and winking of the eyelid, which is in direct contrast to an open, collected, manly expression of the face.

Among the faults of action to be noticed are:—1. Want of action; 2. Want of expression of countenance; 3. A stiff, or a careless, attitude; 4. Want of appropriateness; 5. Excess of motions of the hands and arms; 6. Too great violence of action; 7. Too great complexity; 8. A mechanical uniformity; 9. Tardiness, the action following the utterances when it should accompany it, or slightly precede it.

It must not be supposed that it is necessary for the pupil to receive training in a technical system of gesticulation before he commences his exercises in declamation. If the student designs to qualify himself to be a professor of elocution, he will need to study the laws of gesture in "Austin's Chironomia," and be instructed in their application by a skillful teacher. But this course is neither practicable nor necessary for the mass of students. Instruction in this department should generally be of a negative nature, and occupy itself mainly in the correction of faults. When the pupil commences his exercises in declamation, the less said about action the better. Freedom is the first thing to be secured, and, to attain this end, few directions should be given and few criticisms be made, at the outset. When the speaker has acquired some confidence, and freedom of action, his faults may be gradually pointed out, and his attention called to some general principles of gesture, such as have been presented respecting the language of the hands. Pupils should be taught to observe accurately the action of accomplished orators, not with the view to imitating their peculiarities, but to learn their method of producing effect by means of attitude and gesture.

DECLAMATION.

Declamation should be attended to in all grades of educational institutions, from the primary school to the college, and every pupil should be required to take his turn in the performance of the exercise. It would be highly beneficial, if well taught. The reason why so many teachers have no taste for it, is because they have not taken pains to qualify themselves to teach it. Want of time is sometimes offered as an excuse for neglecting it. But if a part of the time which is devoted to teaching reading, were appropriately to declamation, the progress in reading itself would be more rapid, to say nothing of other advantages which would result from this course. I cannot too earnestly urge upon every teacher the importance of qualifying himself for teaching well both reading and declamation, There is no accomplishment which more effectively promotes the success of the teacher than that of elocutionary culture,—a good voice skillfully managed in conversation and in teaching. Without special attention to the subject, teachers are apt to acquire certain characteristic faults of voice, such as nasality, sharpness, harshness, and thinness of tone, of which they are quite unconscious. Whereas, by constant attention to the manner of using the voice, since they are in constant practice, it might be perfected in its modulation. For want of culture in the elocutionary art, many teachers are greatly deceived, thinking their pupils read and declaim well when they do not.

In the management of declamation much care should be taken in the selection of the pieces. It is best for the pupil, in the first place, after proper advice, to exercise his own taste in the selection of his piece, which should then be submitted to the teacher for approval. If the selection is very appropriate, the pupil should be commended and told why the piece is considered suitable. If the selection presented is not suitable, the pupil should be informed on what ground it is objected to, so as to aid his judgment in another attempt. If the pupil has made proper effort without success, he should be assisted by the teacher. It is very important that the selection should be suited to the capacity and progress of the pupil. Beginners should take simple pieces, and not be allowed, as is sometimes the case, to murder a passage from Paradise Lost, or Macbeth. Sometimes a fault is committed on the part of the teacher, by permitting a pupil to confine his selections to one favorite class. I have observed in certain schools, that one particular boy would always appear in a comic piece, another in a tragic, and so on. It would be better for the teacher to require each pupil to speak a variety of pieces, so as to secure a more general and comprehensive culture than would result from practice on a single class of selections.

The choice of the piece should be determined upon a considerable period previous to the day appointed for the public performance of the stage, so as to afford ample time for preparation. The piece should be accurately committed to memory, without the variation of a syllable. It should be made familiar, so that in the delivery no effort will be required in recalling it. The young pupil should be instructed in the best method of learning his piece. It will generally be found best to take one sentence at a time. The teacher's chief work consists in attending to individual private rehearsals. The rehearsal should be a drill. The piece should be analyzed more or less minutely, the allusions and difficult points being explained. It should be the first aim to make the pupil understand it, not only in its general spirit and scope, but in its particular ideas. His attention should then be turned to the emotions which it expresses. Let it be remembered that the paramount object should be to make the pupil understand the meaning and feel the spirit of the piece. If he is timid and diffident he should be encouraged. Tell him that even Daniel Webster could not make a declamation at the first attempt; but that he did not despair; he did not cease his efforts; he persevered and succeeded.

After the rehearsal, the pupil should have time to practice by himself and apply and confirm the instruction received from his teacher. It must be impressed upon his mind that if he would attain excellence he must practice, practice, practice. He must be made to understand that the repetition of a piece three or four times is no adequate preparation, and that it is necessary to go over with it twenty, thirty, or fifty times, if he would excel, and take a high rank.

When the declamation takes place, excepting on public occasions, the criticisms ought to be made immediately after the performance of each speaker. The faults of the diffident should be mildly criticized. It is very important to call attention to points of special excellence in any performance. It should be remembered that judicious commendation is a most powerful stimulant to exertion.

The most difficult task in teaching declamation is to develop that indescribable fervor, that unaffected earnestness of manner which always captivates the hearers, and wins the highest marks at an exhibition for prizes. There will always be one speaker in a school who excels all the rest in this quality. The teacher should point out the peculiar excellence of this speaker, and show wherein it differs from loudness of voice, and violence of actions and affected passion. Let it be remembered that the perfection of declamation consists in delivering the piece as though it were real speaking. The speaker must "put himself in imagination, so completely into the situation of him whom he personages, and adopt for the moment, so perfectly, all the sentiments and views of that character, as to express himself exactly as such a person would have done, in the supposed situation." Give the speaker every other quality—let his enunciation, his modulation of voice, and his action be faultless, and yet without earnestness, real earnestness,—not the semblance of it, not boisterous vociferation, not convulsive gesticulation, but genuine emotion felt in the heart, carrying the conviction to the hearers that the sentiments uttered are real, the spontaneous, irrepressible outpouring of the thought and feeling of the speaker,—without this sovereign, crowning quality, he cannot be said to speak with eloquence. To bring out and develop this highest quality of delivery, requires the highest skill in the teacher. Unless the teacher possesses some degree of this quality himself he cannot develop it in his pupils.

The best immediate preparation for speaking is rest. I have often noticed that speakers at exhibitions have in many cases failed to do themselves justice from sheer exhaustion. A day or two of repose previous to speaking, enables the speaker to bring to the performance that vigor of the faculties which is indispensable to the highest success, Webster told the Senate, and truly, no doubt, that he slept soundly on the night previous to the delivery of his second speech on Foote's resolution, which is considered his greatest parliamentary effort. It is well for the speaker to remember what Mr. Everett said in allusion to this fact: "So the great Condé slept on the eve of the battle of Rocroi, so Alexander slept on the eve of the battle of Arbela, and so they awoke to deeds of immortal fame."

The best training cannot make good readers and good speakers of all pupils, but it can do much. And it is a fact worthy of observation that those who are most sceptical as to the possibilities of elocutionary culture, are invariably those who are themselves unskillful teachers in this branch.

BOOK FIRST.

STANDARD SELECTIONS

FOR

RECITATION AND DECLAMATION

IN PROSE AND POETRY.

BOOK FIRST.

STANDARD SELECTIONS.

PROSE.

I. THE NOBLE PURPOSES OF ELOQUENCE.

If we consider the noble purposes to which Eloquence may be made subservient, we at once perceive its prodigious import ance to the best interests of mankind. The greatest masters of the art have concurred, upon the greatest occasions of its display, in pronouncing that its estimation depends on the virtuous and rational use made of it.

It is but reciting the common praises of the Art of Persuasion, to remind you how sacred truths may be most ardently promulgated at the altar—the cause of oppressed innocence be most woefully defended—the march of wicked rulers be most triumphantly resisted—defiance the most terrible be hurled at the oppressor's head. In great convulsions of public affairs, or in bringing about salutary changes, every one confesses how important an ally eloquence must be. But in peaceful times, when the progress of events is slow and even as the silent and unheeded pace of time, and the jars of a mighty tumult in foreign and domestic concerns can no longer be heard, then, too, she flourishes—protectress of liberty—patroness of improvement—guardian of all the blessings that can be showered upon the mass of human kind;—nor is her form ever seen but on ground consecrated to free institutions.

To me, calmly revolving these things, such pursuits seem far more noble objects of ambition than any upon which the vulgar herd of busy men lavish prodigal their restless exertions. To diffuse useful information, to further intellectual refinement, sure forerunner of moral improvement,—to hasten the coming of the bright day when the dawn of general knowledge shall chase away the lazy, lingering class, even from the base of the great social pyramid;—this indeed is a high calling, in which the most splendid talents and consummate virtue may well press onward, eager to bear a part. Lord Brougham.

II.

ROLLA TO THE PERUVIANS.

My brave associates—partners of my toil, my feelings, and my fame! Can Rolla's words add vigor to the virtuous energies which inspire your hearts?—No! You have judged, as I have, the foulness of the crafty plea, by which these bold invaders would delude you. Your generous spirit has compared, as mine has, the motives which, in a war like this, can animate their minds and ours.

They, by a strange frenzy driven, fight for power, for plunder, and extended rule;—we, for our country, our altars, and our homes. They follow an adventurer whom they fear, and obey a power which they hate;—we serve a monarch whom we love,—a God whom we adore. Wherever they move in anger, desolation tracks their progress. Wherever they pause in amity, affliction mourns their friendship.

They boast they come but to improve our state, enlarge our thoughts, and free us from the yoke of error! Yes;—they will give enlightened freedom to our minds, who are themselves the slaves of passion, avarice, and pride. They offer us their protection! Yes, such protections as vultures give to lambs,—covering and devouring them! They call on us to barter all the good we have inherited and proved, for the desperate chance of something better, which they promise!

Be our plain answer this: The throne we honor is the People's choice,—the laws we reverence are our brave fathers' legacy,—the faith we follow teaches us to live in bonds of charity with all mankind, and die with hope of bliss beyond the grave. Tell your invaders this; and tell them too, we seek no change; and, least of all, such change as they would bring us! R. B. Sheridan.

III.

INVECTIVE AGAINST WARREN HASTINGS.

If, my Lords, a stranger had at this time gone into the province of Oude, ignorant of what had happened since the death of Sujah Dowlah—that prince who with a savage heart had still great lines of character, and who, with all his ferocity in war, had, with a cultivating hand, preserved to his country the wealth which it derived from benignant skies and a prolific soil—if, ignorant of all that had happened in the short interval, and observing the wide and general devastation of fields unclothed and brown; of vegetation burned up and extinguished; of villages depopulated and in ruins; of temples unroofed and perishing; of reservoirs broken down and dry, this stranger should ask, "what has thus laid waste this beautiful and opulent land; what monstrous madness has ravaged with wide-spread war; what desolating foreign foe; what civil discords; what disputed succession; what religious zeal; what fabled monster has stalked abroad, and, with malice and mortal enmity to man, withered by the grasp of death every growth of nature and humanity, all means of delight, and each original, simple principle of bare existence?" the answer would have been, not one of these causes! No wars have ravaged these lands and depopulated these villages! No desolating foreign foe! No domestic broils! No disputed succession! No religious super-serviceable zeal! No poisonous monster! No affliction of Providence, which, while it scourged us, cut off the sources of resuscitation! No! This damp of death is the mere effusion of British amity! We sink under the pressure of their support! We writhe under their perfidious gripe! They have embraced us with their protecting arms, and lo! these are the fruits of their alliance!

What then, my Lords, shall we bear to be told that, under such circumstances, the exasperated feelings of a whole people, thus spurred on to clamor and resistance, were excited by the poor and feeble influence of the Begums? After hearing the description given by an eye-witness of the paroxysm of fever and delirium into which despair threw the natives when on the banks of the polluted Ganges, panting for breath, they tore more widely open the lips of their gaping wounds, to accelerate their dissolution; and while their blood was issuing, presented their ghastly eyes to heaven, breathing their last and fervent prayer that the dry earth might not be suffered to drink their blood, but that it might rise up to the throne of God, and rouse the eternal Providence to avenge the wrongs of their country,—will it be said that all this was brought about by the incantations of these Begums in their secluded Zenana; or that they could inspire this enthusiasm and this despair into the breasts of a people who felt no grievance, and had suffered no torture?

What motive, then, could have such influence in their bosom? What motive! That which nature, the common parent, plants in the bosom of man; and which, though it may be less active in the Indian than in the Englishman, is still congenial with, and makes a part of his being. That feeling which tells him that man was never made to be the property of man; but that, when in the pride and insolence of power, one human creature dares to tyrannize over another, it is a power usurped, and resistance is a duty. That principle which tells him that resistance to power usurped is not merely a duty which he owes to himself and to his neighbor, but a duty which he owes to his God, in asserting and maintaining the rank which he gave him in his creation—that God, who, where he gives the form of man, whatever may be the complexion, gives also the feelings and the rights of man. That principle which neither the rudeness of ignorance can stifle, nor the enervation of refinement extinguish! That principle which makes it base for a man to suffer when he ought to act; which, tending to preserve to the species the original designations of Providence, spurns at the arrogant distinctions of man, and indicates the independent quality of his race. R. B. Sheridan.

IV.

THE BIBLE THE BEST CLASSIC

The Bible is the only book which God has ever sent, and the only one he ever will send into the world. All other books are frail and transient as time, since they are only the registers of time; but the Bible is as durable as eternity, for its pages contain the records of eternity. All other books are weak and imperfect, like their author, man; but the Bible is a transcript of infinite power and perfection. Every other volume is limited in its usefulness and influence; but the Bible came forth conquering and to conquer,—rejoicing as a giant to run his course,—and like the sun, "there is nothing hid from the heat thereof." The Bible only, of all the myriads of books the world has seen, is equally important and interesting to all mankind. Its tidings, whether of peace or of woe, are the same to the poor, the ignorant, and the weak as to the rich, the wise, and the powerful.

Among the most remarkable of its attributes, is justice; for it looks with impartial eyes on kings and on slaves, on the hero and the soldier, on philosophers and peasants, on the eloquent and the dumb. From all, it exacts the same obedience to its commandments: to the good, it promises the fruits of his labors; to the evil, the reward of his hands. Nor are the purity and holiness, the wisdom, benevolence, and truth of the Scriptures less conspicuous than their justice. In sublimity and beauty, in the descriptive and pathetic, in dignity and simplicity of narrative, in power and comprehensiveness, in depth and variety of thought, in purity and elevation of sentiment, the most enthusiastic admirers of the heathen classics have conceded their inferiority to the Scriptures.

The Bible, indeed, is the only universal classic, the classic of all mankind, of every age and country of time and eternity; more humble and simple than the primer of a child, more grand and magnificent than the epic and the oration, the ode and the dramas when genius, with his chariot of fire, and his horses of ire, ascends in whirlwind into the heaven of his own invention. It is the best classic the world has ever seen, the noblest that has ever honored and dignified the language of mortals!

If you boast that the Aristotles and the Platos, and the Tullies of the classic age, "dipped their pens in intellect," the sacred authors dipped theirs in inspiration. If those were the "secretaries of nature," these were the secretaries of the very Author of nature. If Greece and Rome have gathered into their cabinet of curiosities the pearls of heathen poetry and eloquence, the diamonds of pagan history and philosophy, God himself has treasured up in the Scriptures, the poetry and eloquence, the philosophy and history of sacred law-givers, of prophets and apostles, of saints, evangelists, and martyrs. In vain you may seek for the pure and simple light of universal truth in the Augustan ages of antiquity. In the Bible only, is the poet's wish fulfilled,— "And like the sun be all one boundless eye." T. S. Grimké.

V.

WHAT WE OWE TO THE SWORD.

To the question, "What have the People ever gained but by Revolution?" I answer, boldly, If by revolution be understood the law of the sword, Liberty has lost far more than she ever gained by it. The sword was the destroyer of the Lycian Confederacy and the Achæan League. The sword alternately enslaved and disenthralled Thebes and Athens, Sparta, Syracuse, and Corinth. The sword of Rome conquered every other free State, and finished the murder of Liberty in the ancient world, by destroying herself. What but the sword, in modern times, annihilated the Republics of Italy, the Hanseatic Towns, and the primitive independence of Ireland, Wales, and Scotland? What but the sword partitioned Poland, assassinated the rising liberty of Spain, banished the Huguenots from France, and made Cromwell the master, not the servant, of the People? And what but the sword of Republican France destroyed the independence of half of Europe, deluged the continent with tears, devoured its millions upon millions, and closed the long catalogue of guilt, by founding and defending to the last, the most powerful, selfish, and insatiable of military despotisms?

The sword, indeed, delivered Greece from the Persian invader, expelled the Tarquins from Rome, emancipated Switzerland and Holland, restored the Prince to his throne, and brought Charles to the scaffold. And the sword redeemed the pledge of the Congress of '76 when they plighted to each other "their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor." And yet, what would the redemption of that pledge have availed towards the establishment of our present government, if the spirit of American institutions had not been both the birthright and the birth-blessing of the Colonies? The Indians, the French, the Spaniards, and even England herself, warred in vain against a people, born and bred in the household, at the domestic altar of Liberty herself They had never been slaves, for they were born free. The sword was a herald to proclaim their freedom, but it neither created nor preserved it. A century and a half had already beheld them free in infancy, free in youth, free in early manhood. Theirs was already the spirit of American institutions; the spirit of Christian freedom of a temperate, regulated freedom, of a rational civil obedience. For such a people the sword, the law of violence, did and could do nothing but sever the bonds which bound her colonial wards to their unnatural guardian. They redeemed their pledge, sword in hand; but the sword left them as it found them, unchanged in character, freemen in thought and in deed, instinct with the immortal spirit of American institutions. T. S Grimké.

VI.

DUTY OF LITERARY MEN TO THEIR COUNTRY.

We cannot honor our country with too deep a reverence; we cannot love her with an affection too pure and fervent; we cannot serve her with an energy of purpose or a faithfulness of zeal too steadfast and ardent. And what is our country? It is not the East, with her hills and her valleys, with her countless sails and the rocky ramparts of her shores. It is not the North, with her thousand villages, and her harvest-home, with her frontiers of the lake and the ocean. It is not the West, with her forrest-sea and her inland-isles, with her luxuriant expanses, clothed in the verdant corn, with her beautiful Ohio and her majestic Missouri. Nor is it yet the South, opulent in the mimic snow of the cotton, in the rich plantations of the rustling cane, and in the golden robes of the rice-field. What are these but the sister families of one greater, better, holier family,—our country?

I come not here to speak the dialect, or to give the counsels of the patriot-statesman. But I come, a patriot scholar, to vindicate the rights and to plead for the interests of American Literature. And be assured, that we cannot, as patriot-scholars, think too highly of that country, or sacrifice too much for her. And let us never forget, let us rather remember with a religious awe,—that the union of these States is indispensable to our literature, as it is to our national independence and civil liberties,—to our prosperity, happiness, and improvement.

If, indeed, we desire to behold a literature like that which has sculptured with so much energy of expression, which has painted so faithfully and vividly, the crimes, the vices, the follies of ancient and modern Europe;—if we desire that our land should furnish for the orator and the novelist, for the painter and the poet, age after age, the wild and romantic scenery of war; the glittering march of armies, and the revelry of the camp; the shrieks and blasphemies, and all the horrors of the battle-field; the desolation of the harvest, and the burning cottage; the storm, the sack, and the ruin of cities;—if we desire to unchain the furious passions of jealousy and selfishness, of hatred, revenge, and ambition, those lions that now sleep harmless in their den;—if we desire that the lake, the river, the ocean, should blush with the blood of brothers; that the winds should waft from the land to the sea, from the sea to the land, the roar and the smoke of battle, that the very mountain-tops should become altars for the sacrifice of brothers;—if we desire that these, and such as these,—the elements, to an incredible extent, of the literature of the Old World,—should be the elements of our literature; then, but then only, let us hurl from its pedestal the majestic statue of our Union, and scatter its fragments over all our land.

But, if we covet for our country the noblest, purest, loveliest literature the world has ever seen,—such a literature as shall honor God, and bless mankind,—a literature, whose smiles might play upon an angel's face, whose tears "would not stain an angel's cheek,"—then let us cling to the Union of these State's with a patriot's love, with a scholar's enthusiasm, with a Christian's hope.

In her heavenly character, as a holocaust self-sacrificed to God; at the
height of her glory, as the ornament of a free, educated, peaceful
Christian people, American Literature will find that THE INTELLECTUAL
SPIRIT IS HER VERY TREE OF LIFE, AND THE UNION HER GARDEN OF PARADISE.
T. S. Grimké.

VII.

AMERICA'S OBLIGATIONS TO ENGLAND.

The honorable member has asked—"And now will these Americans, children planted by our care, nourished up by our indulgence and protected by our arms,—will they grudge to attribute their mite?" They planted by your care! No; your oppressions planted them in America! They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated and inhospitable country, where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which human nature is liable; and, among others, to the cruelties of a savage foe the most subtle, and I will take upon me to say the most formidable, of any people upon the face of the earth; and yet, actuated by principles of true English liberty our American brethren met all the hardships with pleasure, compared with those they steered in their own country from the hands of those that should have been their friends.

They nourished by your indulgence! They grew by your neglect of them! As soon as you began to care about them, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule them, in one department and another, who were, perhaps, the deputies of deputies to some members of this House, sent to spy out their liberties, to misrepresent their actions, and to prey upon them;—men whose behavior, on many occasions, has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them; men promoted to the highest seats of justice,—some who, to my knowledge, were glad by going to a foreign country, to escape being brought to the bar of a court of justice in their own.

They protected by your arms! They have nobly taken up arms in your defence;—have exerted a valor, amid their constant and laborious industry, for the defence of a country whose frontier was drenched in blood, while its interior parts yielded all its little savings to your emolument. And, believe me,—remember I this day told you so,—that same spirit of freedom which actuated that people at first will accompany them still; but prudence forbids me to explain myself further.

Heaven knows I do not at this time speak from motives of party heat. What I deliver are the genuine sentiments of my heart. However superior to me, in general knowledge and experience, the respectable body of this House may be, yet I claim to know more of America than most of you, having seen that country and been conversant with its affairs. The people, I believe, are as truly loyal as any subjects the king has; but they are a people jealous of their liberties, and who, if those liberties should ever be violated, will vindicate them to the last drop of their blood. Isaac Barré.

VIII.

WEBSTER'S PLEA FOR DARTMOUTH COLLEGE.

The Supreme Court of the United States held its session that winter in a mean apartment of moderate size—the Capitol not having been built after its destruction in 1814. The audience, when the case came on, was therefore small, consisting chiefly of legal men, the élite of the profession throughout the country. Mr. Webster entered upon his argument in the calm tone of easy and dignified conversation. His matter was so completely at his command that he scarcely looked at his brief, but went on for more than four hours with a statement so luminous, and a chain of reasoning so easy to be understood, and yet approaching so nearly to absolute demonstration, that he seemed to carry with him every man of his audience without the slightest effort or weariness on either side. It was hardly eloquence, in the strict sense of the term; it was pure reason. Now and then, for a sentence or two, his eye flashed and his voice swelled into a bolder note, as he uttered some emphatic thought; but he instantly fell back into the tone of earnest conversation, which ran throughout the great body of his speech.

The argument ended. Mr. Webster stood for some moments silent before the court, while every eye was fixed intently upon him. At length, addressing the chief justice, Marshall, he proceeded thus:—

"This, Sir, is my case! It is the case, not merely of that humble institution, it is the case of every college in our land. It is more. It is the case of every eleemosynary institution throughout the country,—of all those great charities founded by the piety of our ancestors to alleviate human misery; and scatter blessings along the pathway of life. It is more! It is, in some sense, the case of every man among us who has property of which he may be stripped; for the question is simply this: Shall our State legislatures be allowed to take that which is not their own, to turn it from its original use, and apply it to such ends or purposes as they, in their discretion, shall see fit?

"Sir, you may destroy this little institution; it is weak; it is in your hands! I know it is one of the lesser lights in the literary horizon of our country. You may put it out. But if you do so, you must carry through your work! You must extinguish one after another, all those great lights of science which, for more than a century, have thrown their radiance over our land!

"It is, Sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet, there are those who love it——."

Here the feelings which he had thus far succeeded in keeping down, broke forth. His lips quivered; his firm cheeks trembled with emotion; his eyes were filled with tears, his voice choked, and he seemed struggling to the utmost simply to gain that mastery over himself which might save him from an unmanly burst of feeling. I will not attempt to give you the few broken words of tenderness in which he went on to speak of his attachment to the college. The whole seemed to be mingled throughout with the recollections of father, mother, brother, and all the trials and privations through which he had made his way into life. Every one saw that it was wholly unpremeditated, a pressure on his heart, which sought relief in words and tears.

The court-room during these two or three minutes presented an extraordinary spectacle. Chief Justice Marshall, with his tall and gaunt figure, bent over as if to catch the slightest whisper, the deep furrows of his cheek expanded with emotion, and eyes suffused with tears. Mr. Justice Washington at his side,—with his small and emaciated frame, and countenance more like marble than I ever saw on any other human being,—leaning forward with an eager, troubled look; and the remainder of the court, at the two extremities, pressing, as it were, toward a single point, while the audience below were wrapping themselves round in closer folds beneath the bench to catch each look and every movement of the speaker's face. If a painter could give us the scene on canvas,—those forms and countenances, and Daniel Webster as he then stood in the midst,—it would be one of the most touching pictures in the history of eloquence. One thing it taught me, that the pathetic depends not merely on the words uttered, but still more on the estimate we put upon him who utters them. There was not one among the strong-minded men of that assembly who could think it unmanly to weep, when he saw standing before him the man who had made such an argument, melted into the tenderness of a child.

Mr. Webster had now recovered his composure, and fixing his keen eye on the Chief Justice, said in that deep tone with which he sometimes thrilled the heart of an audience,—

"Sir, I know not how others feel, (glancing at the opponents of the college before him,) but, for myself when I see my Alma Mater surrounded, like Caesar in the senate-house, by those who are reiterating stab upon stab, I would not, for my right hand, have her turn to me, and say Et tu quoque, mi fili! And thou, too, my son!"

He sat down. There was a deathlike stillness throughout the room for some moments; every one seemed to be slowly recovering himself and coming gradually back to his ordinary range of thought and feeling. C. A. Goodrich.

IX.

THE FOUNDERS OF BOSTON.

On this occasion, it is proper to speak of the founders of Our city, and of their glory. Now in its true acceptation, the term glory expresses the splendor which emanates from virtue, in the act of producing general and permanent good. Right conceptions, then, of the glory of our ancestors, are to be obtained only by analyzing their virtues. These virtues, indeed, are not seen charactered in breathing bronze, or in living marble. Our ancestors have left no Corinthian temples on our hills, no Gothic cathedrals on our plains, no proud pyramid, no storied obelisk, in our cities. But mind is there. Sagacious enterprise is there. An active, vigorous, intelligent, moral population throng our cities, and predominate in our fields;—men, patient of labor, submissive to law, respectful to authority, regardful of right, faithful to liberty. These are the monuments of our ancestors. They stand immutable and immortal, in the social, moral, and intellectual condition of their descendants. They exist in the spirit which their precepts instilled, and their example implanted.

It was to this spot, during twelve successive years, that the real body of those just settlers emigrated. In this place, they either fixed permanently their abode, or took their departure from it, for the coast or the interior. Whatever honor devolves on this metropolis, from the events connected with its first settlement, is not solitary or exclusive; it is shared with Massachusetts; with New England; in some sense, with the whole United States. For what part of this wide empire, be it sea or shore, lake or river, mountain or valley, have the descendants of the first settlers of New England not traversed; what depth of forest not penetrated? what danger of nature or man not defied? Where is the cultivated field, in redeeming which from the wilderness, their vigor has not been displayed? Where, amid unsubdued nature, by the side of the first log-hut of the settler, does the school-house stand, and the church-spire rise, unless the sons of New England are there? Where does improvement advance, under the active energy of willing hearts and ready hands, prostrating the moss-covered monarch of the wood, and from their ashes, amid their charred roots, bidding the green sward and the waving harvest to unspring, and the spirit of the fathers of New England is not seen, hovering and shedding around the benign influences of sound, social, moral, and religious institutions, stronger and more enduring than knotted oak or tempered steel? The swelling tide of their descendants has spread upon our coasts, ascended our rivers, taken possession of our plains. Already it encircles our lakes. At this hour, the rushing noise of the advancing wave startles the wild beast in his lair among the prairies of the West. Soon it shall be seen climbing the Rocky Mountains, and, as it dashes over their cliffs, shall be hailed by the dwellers on the Pacific, as the harbinger of the coming blessings of safety, liberty, and truth. Pres. Quincy.

X.

THE AMERICAN SAILOR.

Look to your history—that part of it which the world knows by heart,—and you will find on its brightest page the glorious achievements of the American sailor. Whatever his country has done to disgrace him, and break his spirit, he has never disgraced her;—he has always been ready to serve her; he always has served her faithfully and effectually. He has often been weighed in the balance, and never found wanting. The only fault ever found with him is, that he sometimes fights ahead of his orders. The world has no match for him, man for man; and he asks no odds, and he cares for no odds, when the cause of humanity or the glory of his country calls him to fight.

Who, in the darkest days of our Revolution, carried your flag into the very chops of the British Channel, bearded the lion in his den, and woke the echoes of old Albion's hills by the thunders of his cannon, and the shouts of his triumph? It was the American sailor. And the names of John Paul Jones, and the Bon Homme Richard, will go down the annals of time forever. Who struck the first blow that humbled the Barbary flag—which, for a hundred years, had been the terror of Christendom,—drove it from the Mediterranean, and put an end to the infamous tribute it had been accustomed to extort? It was the American sailor, and the name of Decatur and his gallant companions will be as lasting as monumental brass.

In the year 1812, when your arms on shore were covered by disaster,—when Winchester had been defeated, when the army of the Northwest had surrendered, and when the feeling of despondency hung like a cloud over the land,—who first relit the fires of national glory, and made the welkin ring with the shouts of victory? It was the American sailor. And the names of Hull and the Constitution will be remembered as long as we have left anything worth remembering.

The wand of British invincibility was broken when the flag of the Guerrière came down. That one event was worth more to the Republic than all the money which has ever been expended for the navy. Since that day the navy has had no stain upon its escutcheon, but has been cherished as your pride and glory. And the American sailor has established a reputation throughout the world,—in peace and in war, in storm and in battle,—for heroism and prowess unsurpassed. He shrinks from no danger, he dreads no foe, he yields to no superior. No shoals are too dangerous, no seas too boisterous, no climate too rigorous for him. The burning sun of the tropic cannot make him effeminate, nor can the eternal winter of the polar seas paralyze his energies. R. F. Stockton.

XI.

MORALITY, THE FOUNDATION OF NATIONAL GREATNESS.

When we look forward to the probable growth of this country; when we think of the millions of human beings who are to spread over our present territory; of the career of improvement and glory open to this new people; of the impulse which free institutions, if prosperous, may be expected to give to philosophy, religion, science, literature, and arts; of the vast field in which the experiment is to be made, of what the unfettered powers of man may achieve; of the bright page of history which our fathers have filled, and of the advantages under which their toils and virtues have placed us for carrying on their work;—when we think of all this, can we help, for a moment, surrendering ourselves to bright visions of our country's glory before which all the glories of the past are to fade away?

Is it presumption to say that, if just to ourselves and all nations, we shall be felt through this whole continent, that we shall spread our language, institutions, and civilization, through a wider space than any nation has yet filled with a like beneficent influence? And are we prepared to barter these hopes, this sublime moral empire, for conquests by force? Are we prepared to sink to the level of unprincipled nations, to content ourselves with a vulgar, guilty greatness, to adopt in our youth maxims and ends which must brand our future with sordidness, aggression, and shame? This country cannot, without peculiar infamy, run the common race of national rapacity. Our origin, institutions, and position are peculiar, and all favor an upright honorable course.

Why cannot we rise to noble conceptions of our destiny? Why do we not feel, that our work as a nation is to carry freedom, religion, science, and a noble form of human nature over this continent? And why do we not remember, that to diffuse these blessings we must first cherish them in our own borders; and that whatever deeply and permanently corrupts us, will make our spreading influence a curse, not a blessing, to this new world? I am not prophet enough to read our fate. I believe, indeed, that we are to make our futurity for ourselves. I believe, that a nation's destiny lies in its character, in the principles which govern its policy, and bear rule in the hearts of its citizens. I take my stand on God's moral and eternal law. A nation, renouncing and defying this, cannot be free, cannot be great. W. E. Channing.

XII.

INTEMPERANCE.

Among the evils of intemperance, much importance is given to the poverty of which it is the cause. But this evil, great as it is, is yet light, in comparison with the essential evil of intemperance. What matters it, that a man be poor, if he carry into his poverty the spirit, energy, reason, and virtues of a man? What matters it, that a man must, for a few years, live on bread and water? How many of the richest are reduced, by disease, to a worse condition than this? Honest, virtuous, noble-minded poverty, is comparatively a light evil. The ancient philosopher chose it, as a condition of virtue. It has been the lot of many a Christian.

The poverty of the intemperate man owes its great misery to its cause. He who makes himself a beggar, by having made himself a brute, is miserable indeed. He who has no solace, who has only agonizing recollections and harrowing remorse, as he looks on his cold hearth, his scanty table, his ragged children, has indeed to bear a crushing weight of woe. That he suffers, is a light thing. That he has brought on himself this suffering by the voluntary extinction of his reason, that is the terrible thought, the intolerable curse.

Intemperance is to be pitied and abhorred for its own sake, much more than for its outward consequences. These owe their chief bitterness to their criminal source. We speak of the miseries which the drunkard carries to his family. But take away his own brutality, and how lightened would be these miseries! We talk of his wife and children in rags. Let the rags continue; but suppose them to be the effects of an innocent cause. Suppose his wife and children bound to him by a strong love, which a life of labor for their support, and of unlearned kindness has awakened; suppose them to know that his toils for their welfare had broken down his frame; suppose him able to say, "We are poor in this world's goods, but rich in affection and religious trust. I am going from you; but I leave you to the Father of the fatherless, and to the widow's God." Suppose this; and how changed these rags!—how changed the cold, naked room! The heart's warmth can do much to withstand the winter's cold;—and there is hope, there is honor, in this virtuous indigence.

What breaks the heart of the drunkard's wife? It is not that he is poor, but that he is a drunkard. Instead of that bloated face, now distorted with passion, now robbed of every gleam of intelligence, if the wife could look on an affectionate countenance, which had, for years, been the interpreter of a well-principled mind and faithful heart, what an overwhelming load would be lifted from her! It is a husband, whose touch is polluting, whose infirmities are the witness of his guilt, who has blighted all her hopes, who has proved false to the vow which made her his; it is such a husband who makes home a hell,—not one whom toil and disease and Providence have cast on the care of wife and children.

We look too much at the consequences of vice,—too little at the vice itself. It is vice which is the chief weight of what we call its consequences,—vice, which is the bitterness in the cup of human woe. W. E. Channing.

XIII.

INCONSISTENT EXPECTATIONS.

This world may be considered as a great mart of commerce, where fortune exposes to our view various commodities,—riches, ease, tranquillity, fame, integrity, knowledge. Everything is marked at a settled price,—our time, our labor, our ingenuity, is so much ready money, which we are to lay out to the best advantage. Examine, compare, choose, reject; but stand to your own judgment, and do not, like children, when you have purchased one thing, repine that you do not possess another which you did not purchase.

Such is the force of well-regulated industry that a steady and vigorous exertion of our faculties, directed to one end, will generally insure success. Would you, for instance, be rich? Do you think that single point worth the sacrifice of everything else? You may then be rich. Thousands have become so, from the lowest beginnings, by toil, and patient diligence, and attention to the minutest articles of expense and profit. But you must give up the pleasures of leisure, of mental ease, of a free, unsuspicious temper. If you preserve your integrity, it must be a coarse-spun and vulgar honesty. Those high and lofty notions of morals which you brought with you from the schools, must be considerably lowered, and mixed with the baser alloy of a jealous and worldly-minded prudence. You must learn to do hard, lf not unjust things; and as for the nice embarrassments of a delicate and ingenuous spirit, it is necessary to get rid of them as fast as possible. You must shut your heart against the Muses, and be content to feed your understanding with plain household truths. In short, you must not attempt to enlarge your ideas, or polish your taste, or refine your sentiments, but must keep on in one beaten track, without turning aside either to the right or to the left. "But you say, I cannot submit to drudgery like this; I feel a spirit above it." 'Tis well, be above it then; only do not repine that you are not rich.

Is knowledge the pearl of price in your estimation? That, toy may be purchased by steady application, and long solitary study and reflection. Bestow these, and you shall be learned. "But," says the man of letters, "what a hardship is it, that many an illiterate fellow, who cannot construe the motto of the arms on his coach, shall raise a fortune and make a figure, while I have little more than the common conveniences of life!" Was it, then, to raise a fortune, that you consumed the sprightly hours of youth in study and retirement? Was it to be rich that you grew pale over the midnight lamp, and distilled the sweetness from the Greek and Roman springs? You have then mistaken your path, and ill employed your industry. "What reward have I then, for all my labor?" What reward! A large, comprehensive soul, well purged from vulgar fears, and perturbations, and prejudices; able to comprehend and interpret the works of man,—of God; a rich, flourishing, cultivated mind, furnished with inexhaustible stores of entertainment and reflection; a perpetual spring of fresh ideas, and the conscious dignity of superior intelligence. Good Heaven! What other reward can you ask besides!

"But is it not some reproach upon the economy of Providence, that such a one, who is a mean, dirty fellow, should have amassed wealth enough to buy half a nation?" Not in the least. He made himself a mean, dirty fellow for that very end. He has paid his health, his conscience, his liberty for it; and will you envy him his bargain? Will you hang your head and blush in his presence, because he outshines you in equipage and show? Lift up your brow with a noble confidence, and say to yourself "I have not these things, it is true; but it is because I have not sought, because I have not desired them; it is because I possess something better. I have chosen my lot; I am content and satisfied." The characteristic mark of a great and noble mind is to choose some high and worthy object, and pursue that object through life. Mrs. Barbauld.

XIV.

THE PATRIOT'S SWORD VINDICATED.

But my Lord, I dissented from the resolutions before us, for other reasons. I dissented from them, because I felt that my giving them my assent, I should have pledged myself to the unqualified repudiation of physical force in all countries, at all times, and under every circumstance. This I could not do. For, my Lord, I do not abhor the use of arms in the vindication of national rights. There are times, when arms will alone suffice, and when political ameliorations call for a drop of blood, and many thousand drops of blood. Opinion, I admit, will operate against opinion. But, as the honorable member for Kilkenny has observed, force must be used against force. The soldier is proof against an argument, but he is not proof against a bullet The man that will listen to reason, let him be reasoned with. But it is the weaponed arm of the patriot that can alone prevail against battalioned despotism.

Then, my Lord, I do not condemn the use of arms as immoral, nor do I conceive it profane to say that the King of Heaven—the Lord of Hosts! the God of Battles!—bestows his benediction upon those who unsheathe the sword in the hour of a nation's peril. From that evening, on which, in the valley of Bethulia, he nerved the arm of the Jewish girl to smite the drunken tyrant in his tent, down to our day in which he has blessed the insurgent chivalry of the Belgian priest, his almighty hand hath ever been stretched forth from his Throne of Light, to consecrate the flag of freedom—to bless the patriot's sword! Be it in the defense, or be it in the assertion of a people's liberty, I hail the sword as a sacred weapon; and if, my Lord, it has sometimes taken the shape of the serpent and reddened the shroud of the oppressor with too deep a dye, like the anointed rod of the High Priest, it has at other times, and as often, blossomed into celestial flowers to deck the freeman's brow.

Abhor the sword—stigmatize the sword? No, my Lord, for, in the passes of the Tyrol, it cut to pieces the banner of the Bavarian, and, through those cragged passes, struck a path to fame for the present insurrectionist of Inspruck!

Abhor the sword—stigmatize the sword? No, my Lord; for at its blow, a giant nation started from the waters of the Atlantic, and by its redeeming magic, and in the quivering of its crimson light, the crippled Colony sprang into the attitude of a proud Republic—prosperous, limitless, and invincible!

Abhor the sword—stigmatize the sword? No, my Lord; for it swept the Dutch marauders out of the fine old towns of Belgium—scourged them back to their own phlegmatic swamps—and knocked their flag and scepter, their laws and bayonets into the sluggish waters of the Scheldt.

My Lord, I learned that it was the right of a nation to govern herself—not in this hall, but upon the ramparts of Antwerp. This, the first article of a nation's creed, I learned upon those ramparts, where freedom was justly estimated, and the possession of the precious gift was purchased by the effusion of generous blood.

My Lord, I honor the Belgians, I admire the Belgians, I love the Belgians for their enthusiasm, their courage, their success; and I, for one, will not stigmatize, for I do not abhor the means by which they obtained a citizen king, a chamber of deputies. T. F. Meagher.

XV.

ON BEING FOUND GUILTY OF TREASON.

A jury of my countrymen have found me guilty of the crime for which I stood indicted. For this I entertain not the slightest feeling of resentment towards them. Influenced, as they must have been, by the charge of the lord chief justice, they could have found no other verdict. What of that charge? Any strong observations on it I feel sincerely would ill befit the solemnity of this scene; but I would earnestly beseech of you, my Lord,—you who preside on that bench,—when the passions and prejudices of this hour have passed away, to appeal to your own conscience, and to ask of it, was your charge as it ought to have been, impartial and indifferent between the subject and the crown?

My Lords, you may deem this language unbecoming in me, and perhaps it will seal my fate. But I am here to speak the truth, whatever it may cost; I am here to regret nothing I have ever done—to retract nothing I have ever said. I am here to crave, with no lying lip the life I consecrate to the liberty of my country. Far from it, even here—here, where the thief the libertine, the murderer, have left their footprints in the dust; here on this spot, where the shadows of death surround me, and from which I see my early grave in an appointed soil opened to receive me—even here, encircled by these terrors, the hope which has beckoned me to the perilous sea upon which I have been wrecked still consoles, animates, enraptures me.

No; I do not despair of my poor old country—her peace, her liberty, her glory. For that country I can do no more than bid her hope. To lift this island up,—to make her a benefactor to humanity, instead of being the meanest beggar in the world; to restore her to her native powers and her ancient constitution,—this has been my ambition, and this ambition has been my crime. Judged by the law of England, I know this crime entails the penalty of death; but the history of Ireland explains this crime, and justifies it. Judged by that history, I am no criminal, I deserve no punishment. Judged by that history the treason of which I stand convicted loses all its guilt, is sanctioned as a duty, will be ennobled as a sacrifice. With these sentiments, my Lord, I await the sentence of the court.

Having done what I felt to be my duty,—having spoken what I felt to be the truth, as I have done on every other occasion of my short career,—I now bid farewell to the country of my birth, my passion, and my death; the country whose misfortunes have invoked my sympathies; whose factions I have sought to still; whose intellect I have prompted to a lofty aim; whose freedom has been my fatal dream. I offer to that country, as a proof of the love I bear her, and the sincerity with which I thought and spoke and struggled for her freedom, the life of a young heart, and with that life all the hopes, the honors the endearments, of a happy and an honored home. Pronounce, then, my Lords, the sentence which the laws direct, and I will be prepared to hear it. I trust I shall be prepared to meet its execution. I hope to be able, with a pure heart and perfect composure, to appear before a higher tribunal—a tribunal where a judge of infinite goodness as well as of justice will preside, and where, my Lords, many, many of the judgments of this world will be reversed. T. F. Meagher.

XVI.

ADDRESS TO THE AMERICAN TROOPS BEFORE THE BATTLE OF LONG ISLAND.

The time is now near at hand, which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of a brave resistance or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or to die. Our own, our country's honor, calls upon us for a vigorous and manly exertion; and, if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Let us, then, rely on the goodness of our cause and the aid of the Supreme Being, in whose hands victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble actions. The eyes of all our countrymen are now upon us; and we shall have their blessings and praises, if happily we are the instrument of saving them from the tyranny meditated against them. Let us, therefore, animate and encourage each other, and allow the whole world that a freeman contending for liberty on his own ground, is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.

Liberty, property, life, and honor, are all at stake. Upon your courage and conduct rest the hopes of our bleeding and insulted country. Our wives, children, and parents expect safety from us only; and they have every reason to believe that Heaven will crown with success so just a cause. The enemy will endeavor to intimidate by show and appearance; but remember they have been repulsed on various occasions by a few brave Americans. Their cause is bad,—their men are conscious of it; and, if opposed with firmness and coolness on their first onset, with our advantage of works, and knowledge of the ground, the victory is most assuredly ours. Every good soldier will be silent and attentive, wait for orders, and reserve his fire until he is sure of doing execution. Washington.

XVII.

CHARACTER OF CHATHAM.

The secretary stood alone; modern degeneracy had not reached him. Original and unaccommodating, the features of his character had the hardihood of antiquity. His august mind overawed majesty; and one of his sovereigns thought royalty so impaired in his presence, that he conspired to remove him, in order to be relieved from his superiority. No state chicanery, no narrow system of vicious polities, no idle contest for ministerial victories, sunk him to the vulgar level of the great; but, overbearing, persuasive, and impracticable, his object was England, his ambition was fame.

Without dividing, he destroyed party; without corrupting, he made a venal age unanimous. France sunk beneath him. With one hand he smote the house of Bourbon, and wielded in the other the democracy of England. The sight of his mind was infinite; and his schemes were to affect, not England, not the present age only, but Europe and posterity. Wonderful were the means by which these schemes were accomplished,—always seasonable, always adequate, the suggestions of an understanding animated by ardor, and enlightened by prophecy.

The ordinary feelings which make life amiable and indolent, were unknown to him. No domestic difficulties, no domestic weakness, reached him; but, aloof from the sordid occurrences of life, and unsullied by its intercourse, he came occasionally into our system, to counsel, and to decide. A character so exalted, so strenuous, so various, so authoritative, astonished a corrupt age; and the treasury trembled at the name of Chatham, through all her classes of venality. Corruption imagined, indeed, that she had found defects in this statesman, and talked much of the inconsistency of his glory and much of the ruin of his victories; but the history of his country, and the calamities of the enemy, answered and refuted her.

Nor were his political abilities his only talents; his eloquence was an era in the senate, peculiar and spontaneous, familiarly expressing gigantic sentiments and instinctive wisdom; not like the torrent of Demosthenes, or the splendid conflagration of Tully; it resembled sometimes the thunder, and sometimes the music of the spheres. He did not, like Murray, conduct the understanding through the painful subtlety of argumentation; nor was he, like Townshend, forever on the rack of exertion; but rather lightened upon the subject, and reached the point by the flashings of the mind, which, like those of his eye, were felt, but could not be followed. Upon the whole, there was in this man something that would create, subvert, or reform; an understanding, a spirit, and an eloquence, to summon mankind to society, or to break the bonds of slavery asunder; something to rule the wilderness of free minds with unbounded authority; something that could establish, or overwhelm empire, and strike a blow in the world, that should resound through the universe. H. Grattan.

XVIII.

THE PRESS AND THE UNION.

It were good for us to remember that nothing which tends, however distantly, however imperceptibly, to hold these States together, is beneath the notice of a considerate patriotism. It were good to remember that some of the institutions and devices by which former confederacies have been preserved, our circumstances wholly forbid us to employ. The tribes of Israel and Judah came up three times a year to the holy and beautiful city, and united in prayer and praise and sacrifice, in listening to that thrilling poetry, in swelling that matchless song, which celebrated the triumphs of their fathers by the Red Sea, at the fords of Jordan, and on the high places of the field of Barak's victory. But we have no feast of the Passover, or of the Tabernacles, or of the Commemoration. The States of Greece erected temples of the gods by a common contribution, and worshiped in them. They consulted the same oracle; they celebrated the same national festival: mingled their deliberations in the same amphictyonic and subordinate assemblies, and sat together upon the free benches to hear their glorious history read aloud, in the prose of Heroditus, the poetry of Homer and of Pindar. We have built no national temples but the Capitol; we consult no common oracle but the Constitution. We can meet together to celebrate no national festival. But the thousand tongues of the press—clearer far than the silver trumpet of the jubilee,—louder than the voice of the herald at the games,—may speak and do speak to the whole people, without calling them from their homes or interrupting them in their employments. Happy if they should speak, and the people should hear, those things which pertain at least to their temporal and national salvation! R. Choate.

XIX.

AMERICAN LITERATURE AND THE UNION.

In leaving this subject, I cannot help suggesting, at the hazard of being thought whimsical, that a literature of such writings as these, embodying the romance of the whole revolutionary and ante-revolutionary history of the United States, might do something to perpetuate the Union itself. The influence of a rich literature of passion and fancy upon society must not be denied merely because you cannot measure it by the yard or detect it by the barometer. Poems and romances which shall be read in every parlor, by every fireside, in every school-house, behind every counter, in every printing-office, in every lawyer's office, at every weekly evening club, in all the States of this confederacy, must do something, along with more palpable if not more powerful agents, towards moulding and fixing that final, grand, complex result,—the national character. A keen, well instructed judge of such things said, if he might write the ballads of a people, he cared little who made its laws. Let me say, if a hundred men of genius would extract such a body of romantic literature from our early history as Scott has extracted from the history of England and Scotland, and as Homer extracted from that of Greece, it perhaps would not be so alarming if demagogues should preach, or governors practice, or executives tolerate nullification. Such a literature would be a common property of all the States,—a treasure of common ancestral recollections,—more noble and richer than our thousand million acres of public land; and, unlike that land, it would be indivisible. It would be as the opening of a great fountain for the healing of the nations. It would turn back our thoughts from these recent and overrated diversities of interest,—these controversies about negro-cloth, coarse-wooled sheep, and cotton bagging,—to the day when our fathers walked hand in hand together through the valley of the Shadow of Death in the War of Independence. Reminded of our fathers, we should remember that we are brethren. The exclusiveness of State pride,—the narrow selfishness of a mere local policy and the small jealousies of vulgar minds, would be merged in an expanded comprehensive, constitutional sentiment of old, family, fraternal regard. It would reässemble, as it were, the people of America in one vast congregation. It would rehearse in their hearing all things which God had done for them in the old time; it would proclaim the law once more; and then it would bid them join in that grandest and most affecting solemnity,—a national anthem of thanksgiving for the deliverance, of honor for the dead, of proud prediction for the future! R. Choate.

XX.

THE LOVE OF READING.

Let the case of a busy lawyer testify to the priceless value of the love of reading. He comes home, his temples throbbing, his nerves shattered, from a trial of a week; surprised and alarmed by the charge of the judge, and pale with anxiety about the verdict of the next morning, not at all satisfied with what he has done himself, though he does not yet see how he could have improved it; recalling with dread and self-disparagement, if not with envy, the brilliant effort of his antagonist, and tormenting himself with the vain wish that he could have replied to it,—and altogether a very miserable subject, and in as unfavorable a condition to accept comfort from a wife and children as poor Christian in the first three pages of the "Pilgrim's Progress." With a superhuman effort he opens his book, and in the twinkling of an eye he is looking into the full "orb of Homeric or Miltonic song;" or he stands in the crowd—breathless, yet swayed as forests or the sea by winds—hearing and to judge the pleadings for the crown; or the philosophy which soothed Cicero or Boethius in their afflictions, in exile, prison, and the contemplation of death, breathes over his petty cares like the sweet south; or Pope or Horace laughs him into good humor; or he walks with Æneas and the Sibyl in the mild light of the world of the laurelled dead; and the court-house is as completely forgotten as the dreams of a pre-adamite life. Well may he prize that endeared charm, so effectual and safe, without which the brain had long ago been chilled by paralysis, or set on fire of insanity! R. Choate.

XXI.

ELOQUENCE OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

Men heard that eloquence in 1776, in that manifold and mighty appeal by the genius and wisdom of that new America, to persuade the people to take on the name of nation, and begin its life. By how many pens and tongues that great pleading was conducted; through how many months before the date of the actual Declaration, it went on, day after day; in how many forms, before how many assemblies, from the village newspaper, the more careful pamphlet, the private conversation, the town-meeting, the legislative bodies of particular colonies, up to the hall of the immortal old Congress, and the master intelligences of lion heart and eagle eye, that ennobled it,—all this you know. But the leader in that great argument was John Adams, of Massachusetts. He, by concession of all men, was the orator of that Revolution,—the Revolution in which a nation was born. Other and renowned names, by written or spoken eloquence, coöperated effectively, splendidly, to the grand result,—Samuel Adams, Samuel Chase, Jefferson, Henry James Otis in an earlier stage. Each of these, and a hundred more, within circles of influence wider or narrower, sent forth, scattering broadcast, the seed of life in the ready virgin soil. Each brought some specialty of gift to the work: Jefferson, the magic of style, and the habit and the power of delicious dalliance with those large, fair ideas of freedom and equality, so dear to man, so irresistible in that day; Henry, the indescribable and lost spell of the speech of the emotions, which fills the eye, chills the blood, turns the cheek pale,—the lyric phase of eloquence, the "fire-water," as Lamartine has said, of the Revolution, instilling into the sense and the soul the sweet madness of battle; Samuel Chase, the tones of anger, confidence, and pride, and the art to inspire them. John Adams's eloquence alone seemed to have met every demand of the time; as a question of right, as a question of prudence, as a question of immediate opportunity, as a question of feeling, as a question of conscience, as a question of historical and durable and innocent glory, he knew it all through and through; and in that mighty debate, which, beginning in Congress as far back as March or February; 1776, had its close on the second and on the fourth of July, he presented it in all its aspects, to every passion and affection,—to the burning sense of wrong, exasperated at length beyond control by the shedding of blood; to grief, anger, self-respect; to the desire of happiness and of safety; to the sense of moral obligation, commanding that the duties of life are more than life; to courage, which fears God, and knows no other fear; to the craving of the colonial heart, of all hearts, for the reality and the ideal of country, and which cannot be filled unless the dear native land comes to be breathed on by the grace, clad in the robes, armed with the thunders, admitted an equal to the assembly of the nations; to that large and heroical ambition which would build States: that imperial philanthropy which would open to liberty an asylum here, and give to the sick heart, hard fare, fettered conscience of the children of the Old World, healing, plenty, and freedom to worship God,—to these passions, and these ideas, he presented the appeal for months, day after day, until, on the third of July, 1776, he could record the result, writing thus to his wife: "Yesterday the greatest question was decided which ever was debated in America; and a greater, perhaps, never was, nor will be, among men."

Of that series of spoken eloquence all is perished; not one reported sentence has come down to us. The voice through which the rising spirit of a young nation sounded out its dream of life is hushed. The great spokesman, of an age unto an age, is dead.

And yet, of those lost words is not our whole America one immortal record and reporter? Do ye not read them, deep cut, defying the tooth of time, on all the marble of our greatness? How they blaze on the pillars of our Union! How is their deep sense unfolded and interpreted by every passing hour! How do they come to life, and grow audible, as it were, in the brightening rays of the light he foresaw, as the fabled invisible heart gave out its music to the morning!

Yes, in one sense, they are perished. No parchment manuscript, no embalming printed page, no certain traditions of living or dead, have kept them. Yet, from out and from off all things around us,—our laughing harvests, our songs of labor, our commerce on all the seas, our secure homes, our school-houses and churches, our happy people, our radiant and stainless flag,—how they come pealing, pealing, Independence now, and Independence forever! R. Choate.

XXII.

TRIBUTE TO WEBSTER.

They say he was ambitious! Yes, as Ames said of Hamilton, "there is no doubt that he desired glory; and that, feeling his own force, he longed to deck his brow with the wreath of immortality." But I believe he would have yielded his arm, his frame to be burned, before he would have sought to grasp the highest prize of earth by any means, by any organization, by any tactics, by any speech, which in the least degree endangered the harmony of the system.

They say, too, he loved New England! He did love New Hampshire—that old granite world—the crystal hills, gray and cloud-topped; the river, whose murmur lulled his cradle; the old hearthstone; the grave of father and mother. He loved Massachusetts, which adopted and honored him—that sounding sea-shore, that charmed elm-tree seat, that reclaimed farm, that choice herd, that smell of earth, that dear library, those dearer friends; but the "sphere of his duties was his true country." Dearly he loved you, for he was grateful for the open arms with which you welcomed the stranger and sent him onwards and upwards.

But when the crisis came, and the winds were let lose, and that sea of March "wrought and was tempestuous," then you saw that he knew even you only as you were, American citizens; then you saw him rise to the true nature and stature of American citizenship; then you read on his brow only what he thought of the whole Republic; then you saw him fold the robes of his habitual patriotism around him, and counsel for all—for all. So, then, he served you—"to be pleased with his service was your affair, not his."

And now what would he do, what would he be if he were here to-day? I do not presume to know. But what a loss we have in him! I have read that in some hard battle, when the tide was running against him, and his ranks were breaking, some one in the agony of a, need of generalship exclaimed, "Oh for an hour of Dundee!" So say I, Oh for an hour of Webster now! Oh for one more roll of that thunder inimitable! One more peal of that clarion! One more grave and bold counsel of moderation! One more throb of American feeling! One more Farewell Address! And then might he ascend unhindered to the bosom of his Father and his God. R. Choate.

XXIII.

THE FRUITS OF SKILFUL LABOR AND CULTIVATED INTELLECT.

Perhaps as striking an illustration on a large scale as could be desired, of the connection between the best directed and most skilful labor and the most cultivated and most powerful intellect, is afforded by the case of England. British industry as a whole, is among the most splendid and extraordinary things in the history of man. When you consider how small a work-bench it has to occupy altogether, a little stormy island bathed in almost perpetual fogs, without silk, or cotton, or vineyards, or sunshine, and then look at that agriculture, so scientific and so rewarded, that vast net-work of internal intercommunication, the docks, merchant-ships, men-of-war, the trade encompassing the globe, the flag on which the sun never sets,—when you look, above all, at that vast body of useful and manly art, not directed, like the industry of France,—the industry of vanity,—to making pier-glasses and air-balloons and gobelin tapestry and mirrors, to arranging processions and chiselling silver and twisting gold into filigrees, but to clothing the people, to the manufacture of woolen, cotton, and linen cloth, of railroads and chain-cables and canals and anchors and achromatic telescopes, and chronometers to keep the time at sea,—when you think of the vast aggregate mass of their manufacturing and mechanical production, which no statistics can ex-press, and to find a market for which she is planting colonies under every constellation, and by intimidation, by diplomacy, is knocking at the door of every market-house upon the earth,—it is really difficult to restrain our admiration of such a display of energy, labor, and genius, winning bloodless and innocent triumphs everywhere, giving to the age we live in the name of the age of the industry of the people. Now, the striking and the instructive fact is, that exactly in that island workshop, by this very race of artisans, of coal-heavers and woollen manufacturers of machinists and blacksmiths and ship-carpenters, there has been produced and embodied forever, in words that will outlast the mountains as well as the pyramids, a literature which, take it for all in all, is the richest, most profound, most instructive, combining more spirituality with more common sense, springing from more capacious souls, conveying in better wisdom, more conformable to the truth in man, in nature, and in human life, than the literature of any nation that ever existed. That same race, side by side with the unparalleled growth of its industry produces Shakspeare, Milton, Bacon, and Newton, all four at the summit of human thought,—and then, just below these unapproachable fixed lights, a whole firmament of glories, lesser than they, as all created intelligence must be, yet in whose superior rays the age of Augustus, of Leo X., of Louis XIV., all but the age of Pericles, the culture of Greece, pale and fade. And yet the literature of England is not the only, scarcely the most splendid, fruit or form of the mental power and the energetic character of England. That same race, along with their indus try, along with their literature, has built up a jurisprudence which is for substance our law to-day,—has constructed the largest mercantile and war navy, and the largest commercial empire with its pillars encircling the globe, that men ever saw,—has gained greater victories on sea and land than any power in the world,—has erected the smallest spot to the most imperial ascendency recorded in history. The administrative triumphs of her intellect are as conspicuous as her imaginative and her speculative triumphs.

Such is mental power. Mark its union with labor and with all greatness; deduce the law; learn the lesson; see how you, too, may grow great. Such an industry as that of England demanded such an intellect as that of England. Sic vobis etian itur ad astra! That way to you, also, glory lies! R. Choate.

XXIV.

THE EMPIRE OF MIND.

Knowledge is power as well as fame. Think of that subtle, all-embracing, plastic, mysterious, irresistible thing called public opinion, the god of this lower world, and consider what a State, or a cluster of States, of marked and acknowledged literary and intellectual lead might do to color and shape that opinion to their will. Consider how winged are words; how electrical, light-like the speed of thought; how awful human sympathy. Consider how soon a wise, a beautiful thought uttered here,—a sentiment of liberty perhaps, or word of succor to the oppressed, of exhortations to duty, to patriotism, to glory, the refutation of a sophism, the unfolding of a truth for which the nation may be better,—how soon a word fitly or wisely spoken here is read on the Upper Mississippi and beneath the orange-groves of Florida, all through the unequalled valley; how vast an audience it gains, into how many bosoms it has access, on how much good soil the seed may rest and spring to life, how easily and fast the fine spirit of truth and beauty goes all abroad upon the face of the world.

There is an influence which I would rather see Massachusetts exert on her sisters of this Union, than see her furnish a President every twelve years or command a majority on any division in Congress; and that is such an influence as Athens exerted on the taste and opinion first of Greece, then of Rome, then of the universal modern world; such as she will exert while the race of man exists. This, of all the kinds of empire, was most grateful and innocent and glorious and immortal. This was won by no bargain, by no fraud, by no war of the Peloponnesus, by the shedding of no human blood. It would rest on admiration of the beautiful, the good, the true, in art, in poetry, in thought; and it would last while the emotions, its object, were left in a human soul. It would turn the eye of America hitherwards with love, gratitude and tears, such as those with which we turn to the walk of Socrates beneath the plane-tree, now sere, the summer hour of Cicero, the prison into which philosophy descended to console the spirit of Boethius,— that room through whose opened window came into the ear of Scott, as he died, the murmur of the gentle Tweed,—love, gratitude, and tears, such as we all yield to those whose immortal wisdom, whose divine verse, whose eloquence of heaven, whose scenes of many-colored life, have held up the show of things to the insatiate desires of the mind, have taught us how to live and how to die! Herein were power, herein were influence, herein were security. Even in the madness of civil war it might survive for refuge and defence! R. Choate.

XXV.

THE CITY OF OUR LIBERTY.

But now that our service of commemoration is ended, let us go hence and meditate on all that it has taught us. You see how long the holy and beautiful city of our liberty and our power has been in building, and by how many hands, and at what cost. You see the towering and steadfast height to which it has gone up, and how its turrets and spires gleam in the rising and setting sun. You stand among the graces of some—your townsmen, your fathers by blood, whose names you bear, whose portraits hang up in your homes, of whose memory you are justly proud—who helped in their day to sink those walls deep in their beds, where neither frost nor earthquake might heave them,—to raise aloft those great arches of stone,—to send up those turrets and spires into the sky. It was theirs to build; remember it is yours, under Providence, to keep the city,—to keep it from the sword of the invader,—to keep it from licentiousness and crime and irreligion, and all that would make it unsafe or unfit to live in,—to keep it from the fires of faction, of civil strife, of party spirit, that might burn up in a day the slow work of a thousand years of glory. Happy, if we shall so perform our duty that they who centuries hence shall dwell among our graces may be able to remember, on some such day as this, in one common service of grateful commemoration, their fathers of the first and the second age of America,—those who through martyrdom and tempest and battle sought liberty, and made her their own,—and those whom neither ease nor luxury, nor the fear of man, nor the worship of man, could prevail on to barter her away! R. Choate.

XXVI.

SPECIMEN OF THE ELOQUENCE OF JAMES OTIS.

England may as well dam up the wafers of the Nile with bulrushes as to fetter the step of Freedom, more proud and firm in this youthful land than where she treads the sequestered glens of Scotland, or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of Switzerland. Arbitrary principles, like those against which we now contend, have cost one king of England his life, another his crown; and they may yet cost a third his most flourishing colonies.

We are two millions—one fifth fighting men. We are bold and vigorous, and we call no man master. To the nation, from whom we are proud to derive our origin, we ever were, and we ever will be, ready to yield unforced assistance; but it must not, and it never can be extorted.

Some have sneeringly asked, "Are the Americans too poor to pay a few pounds on stamped paper?" No! America, thanks to God and herself is rich. But the right to take ten pounds, implies the right to take a thousand; and what must be the wealth that avarice, aided by power, cannot exhaust? True, the spectre is now small; but the shadow he casts before him is huge enough to darken all this fair land. Others, in sentimental style, talk of the immense debt of gratitude which we owe to England. And what is the amount of this debt? Why, truly, it is the same that the young lion owes to the dam, which has brought it forth on the solitude of the mountain, or left it amid the winds and storms of the desert.

We plunged into the wave with the great charter of freedom in our teeth, because the fagot and the torch were behind us. We have waked this New World from its savage lethargy; forests have been prostrated in our path; towns and cities have grown up suddenly as the flowers of the tropics, and the fires in our autumnal woods are scarcely more rapid than the increase of our wealth and population. And do we owe all this to the kind succor of the mother-country? No! We owe it to the tyranny that drove us from her, to the pelting storms which invigorated our helpless infancy.

But perhaps others will say, "We ask no money from your gratitude—we only demand that you should pay your own expenses." And who, I pray, is to judge of their necessity? Why, the king—(and with all due reverence to his sacred majesty, he understands the real wants of his distant subjects as little as he does the language of the Choctaws.) Who is to judge concerning the frequency of these demands? The ministry. Who is to judge whether the money is properly expended? The cabinet behind the throne. In every instance, those who take are to judge for those who pay. If this system is suffered to go into operation, we shall have reason to esteem it a great privilege, that rain and dew do not depend upon parliament; otherwise they would soon be taxed and dried.

But, thanks to God, there is freedom enough left upon earth to resist such monstrous injustice. The flame of liberty is extinguished in Greece and Rome, but the light of its glowing embers is still bright and strong on the shores of America. Actuated by its sacred influence, we will resist unto death. But we will not countenance anarchy and misrule. The wrongs that a desperate community have heaped upon their enemies, shall be amply and speedily repaired. Still, it may be well for some proud men to remember that a fire is lighted in these colonies which one breath of their king may kindle into such fury that the blood of all England cannot extinguish it. Mrs. M. L. Child.

XXVII.

WEBSTER IN THE DARTMOUTH COLLEGE CASE.

The Dartmouth College case forms an important era in Mr, Webster's life His argument in that case stands out among his other arguments, as his speech in reply to Mr. Hayne, among his other speeches. No better argument has been spoken in the English tongue in the memory of any living man, nor is the child that is born to-day likely to live to hear a better. Its learning is ample but not ostentatious; its logic irresistible; its eloquence vigorous and lofty. Judge Story often spoke with great animation of the effect he then produced upon the court "For the first hour," said he, "we listened to him with perfect astonishment; for the second hour, with perfect delight; and for the third hour with perfect conviction." It is not too much to say that he entered the court on that day a comparatively unknown name, and left it with no rival but Pinkney. All the words he spoke on that occasion have not been recorded. When he had exhausted the resources of learning and logic, his mind passed naturally and simply into a strain of feeling not common to the place. Old recollections and early associations came over him, and the vision of his youth rose up.

The genius of the institution where he was nurtured seemed standing by his side in weeds of mourning, with a countenance of sorrow. With suffused eyes, and faltering voice, he broke into an unpremeditated strain of emotion, so strong and so deep, that all who heard him were borne along with it. Heart answered to heart as he spoke, and, when he ceased, the silence and tears of the impassive bench, as well as of the excited audience were a tribute to the truth and power of the feeling by which he had been inspired. G. S. Hillard.

XXVIII.

THE AMBITION OF WEBSTER.

Mr. Webster was an ambitious man. He desired the highest office in the gift of the people. But on this subject, as on all others, there was no concealment in his nature. And ambition is not a weakness unless it be disproportional to the capacity. To have more ambition than ability is to be at once weak and unhappy. With him it was a noble passion, because it rested upon noble powers. He was a man cast in a heroic mould. His thoughts, his wishes, his passions, his aspirations, were all on a grander scale than those of other men. Unexercised capacity is always a source of rusting discontent. The height to which men may rise is in proportion to the upward force of their genius, and they will never be calm till they have attained their predestined elevation. Lord Bacon says, "as in nature things move violently to their place and calmly in their place, so virtue in ambition is violent, in authority, settled and calm." Mr. Webster had a giant's brain and a giant's heart, and he wanted a giant's work. He found repose in those strong conflicts and great duties which crush the weak and madden the sensitive. He thought that, if he were elevated to the highest place, he should so administer the government as to make the country honored abroad, and great and happy at home. He thought, too, that he could do something to make us more truly one people. This, above everything else, was his ambition. And we, who knew him better than others, felt that it was a prophetic ambition, and we honored and trusted him accordingly. G. S. Hillard.

XXIX.

THE DANGER OF EXCLUSIVE DEVOTION TO BUSINESS.

This is a world of inflexible compensations. Nothing is ever given away, but everything is bought and paid for. If, by exclusive and absolute surrender of ourselves to material pursuits, we materialize the mind, we lose that class of satisfactions of which the mind is the region and the source. A young man in business, for instance, begins to feel the exhilarating glow of success, and deliberately determines to abandon himself to its delirious whirl. He says to himself, I will think of nothing but business till I shall have made so much money, and then I will begin a new life. I will gather round me books and pictures and friends. I will have knowledge, taste, and cultivation,—the perfume of scholarship, and winning speech, and graceful manners. I will see foreign countries, and converse with accomplished men. I will drink deep of the fountains of classic lore. Philosophy shall guide me, history shall instruct, and poetry shall charm me. Science shall open to me her world of wonders. I shall remember my present life of drudgery as one recalls a troubled dream when the morning has dawned.

He keeps his self-registered vow. He bends his thoughts downward and nails them to the dust. Every power, every affection, every taste, except those which his particular occupa tion calls into play, is left to starve. Over the gates of his mind he writes in letters which he who runs may read, "No admittance except on business." In time he reaches the goal of his hopes; but now insulted Nature begins to claim her revenge. That which was once unnatural is now natural to him. The enforced constraint has become a rigid deformity. The spring of his mind is broken. He can no longer lift his mind from the ground. Books and knowledge and wise discourse, and the amenities of it, and the cordial of friendship, are like words in a strange tongue. To the hard, smooth surface of his soul, nothing genial, graceful, or winning will cling; he cannot even purge his voice of its fawning tone, or pluck from his face the mean, money-getting mask which the child does not look at without ceasing to smile. Amid the graces and ornaments of wealths, he is like a blind man in a picture-gallery. That which he has done he must continue to do. He must accumulate riches which he cannot enjoy and contemplate the dreary prospect of growing old without anything to make age venerable or attractive; for age without wisdom and without knowledge is the winter's cold without the winter's fire G. S. Hillard.

XXX.

SPEECH OF PATRICK HENRY, IN THE CONVENTION OF DELEGATES OF VIRGINIA, MARCH, 1775.

Mr. President, It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in the great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those, who having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth, to know the worst, and to provide for it.

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know, what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry, for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House. Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss! Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations, which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation! Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled, that force must be called in to win back our love! Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation,—the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministers have been so long forging.

And what have we to oppose to them?—Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer on the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light, of which if is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned,—we have remonstrated,—we have supplicated,—we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical bands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned from the foot of the throne.

In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free,—if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending,—if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of or contest shall be obtained,—we must fight; I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us!

XXXI.

THE SAME CONCLUDED.

They tell us, sir, that we are weak,—unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed; and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot?

Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us.

The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone,—it is to the active, the vigilant, the brave. Besides sir we have no election! If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat,—but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged. Their clanking may be heard in the plains of Boston. The war is inevitable,—and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come.

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry peace! peace!—but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field. Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Heaven!—I know not what course others may take, but as for me,—give me liberty, or give me death!

XXXII.

REPLY TO THE DUKE OF GRAFTON.

My Lords, I am amazed; yes, my Lords, I am amazed at his Grace's speech. The noble Duke cannot look before him, behind him, or on either side of him, without seeing some noble peer who owes his seat in this House to his successful exertion in the profession to which I belong. Does he not feel that it is as honorable to owe it to these, as to being the accident of an accident? To all these noble Lords, the language of the noble Duke is as applicable and insulting as it is to myself But I do not fear to meet it single and alone. No one venerates the peerage more than I do; but, my Lords, I must say, that the peerage solicited me, not I the peerage.

Nay, more; I can say and will say that as a Peer of Parliament, as a
Speaker of this right honorable House, as Keeper of the Great Seal, as
Guardian of his Majesty's conscience, as Lord High Chancellor of
England,-nay, even in that character alone, in which the noble Duke would
think it an affront to be considered but which character none can deny
me,—as a MAN,—I am, at this moment, as respectable,—I beg to leave add,
I am as much respected,—as the proudest peer I now look down upon.
Lord Thurlow.

XXXIII.

THE PROSPECTS OF CALIFORNIA.

Judging from the past, what have we not a right to expect in the future. The world has never witnessed anything equal or similar to our career hitherto. Scarcely two years ago California was almost an unoccupied wild. With the exception of a præsidium, a mission a pueblo, or a lonely ranch, scattered here and there, at tiresome distances, there was nothing to show that the uniform stillness had ever been broken by the footsteps of civilized man. The agricultural richness of her valley remained unimproved; and the wealth of a world lay entombed in the bosom of her solitary mountains, and on the banks of her unexplored streams. Behold the contrast! The hand of agriculture is now busy in every fertile valley and its toils are remunerated with rewards which in no other portion of the world can be credited. Enterprise has pierced every hill, for hidden treasure, and has heaped up enormous gains. Cities and villages dot the surface of the whole State. Steamers dart along our rivers, and innumerable vessels spread their white wings over our bays. Not Constantinople, upon which the wealth of imperial Rome was lavished,—not St. Petersburg, to found which the arbitrary Czar sacrificed thousands of his subjects, would rival, in rapidity of growth, the fair city which lies before me. Our state is a marvel to ourselves, and a miracle to the rest of the world. Nor is the influence of California confined within her own borders. Mexico, and the islands nestled in the embrace of the Pacific, have felt the quickening breath of her enterprise. With her golden wand, she has touched the prostrate corpse of South American industry, and it has sprung up in the freshness of life. She has caused the hum of busy life to be heard in the wilderness "where rolls the Oregon," and but recently heard no sound, "save its own dashings." Even the wall of Chinese exclusiveness has been broken down, and the children of the sun have come forth to view the splendor of her achievements.

But, flattering as has been the past, satisfactory as is the present, it is but a foretaste of the future. It is a trite saying, that we live in an age of great events. Nothing can be more true. But the greatest of all events of the present age is at hand. It needs not the gift of prophecy to predict, that the course of the world's trade is destined soon to be changed. But a few years can elapse before the commerce of Asia and the islands of the Pacific, instead of pursuing the ocean track, by way of Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope, or even taking the shorter route of the Isthmus of Darien, or the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, will enter the Golden Gate of California, and deposit its riches in our own city. Hence, on bars of iron, and propelled by steam, it will ascend the mountains and traverse the desert; and having again reached the confines of civilization, will be distributed, through a thousand channels, to every portion of the Union and of Europe. New York will then become what London now is,-the great central point of exchange, the heart of trade, the force of whose contraction and expansion will be felt throughout every artery of the commercial world; and San Francisco will then stand the second city of America. Is this visionary? Twenty years will determine.

The world is interested in our success; for a fresh field is opened to its commerce, and a new avenue to the civilization and progress of the human race. Let us, then, endeavor to realize the hopes of Americans, and the expectations of the world. Let us not only be united amongst ourselves, for our own local welfare, but let us strive to cement the common bonds of brother-hood of the whole Union. In our relations to the Federal Government, let us know no South, no North, no East, no West. Wherever American liberty flourishes, let that be our common country! Wherever the American banner waves, let that be our home! Nathaniel Bennett.

XXXIV.

IN PROSPECT OF WAR

Go forth, defenders of your country, accompanied with every auspicious omen; advance with alacrity into the field, when God himself musters the hosts to war. Religion is too much interested in your success not to lend you her aid. She will shed over your enterprise her selectest influence. While you are engaged in the field, many will repair to the closet, many to the sanctuary; the faithful of every name will employ that prayer which has power with God; the feeble hands which are unequal to any other weapon, will grasp the sword of the Spirit; and from myriad of humble, contrite hearts, the voice of intercession, supplication, and weeping, will mingle, in its ascent to heaven, with the shouts of battle and the shock of arms.

While you have everything to fear from the success of the enemy, you have every means of preventing that success; so that it is next to impossible for victory not to crown your exertions The extent of your resources, under God, is equal to the justice of your cause. But, should Providence determine otherwise,—should you fall in this struggle, should the nation fall,—you will have the satisfaction (the purest allotted to man), of having performed your part; your names will be enrolled with the most illustrious dead, while posterity, to the end of time, as often as they revolve the events of this period (and they will incessantly revolve them), will turn to you a reverential eye, while they mourn over the freedom which is entombed in your sepulchre.

I cannot but imagine the virtuous heroes, legislators, and patriots of every age and country, are bending from their elevated seats to witness this contest, as if they were incapable, till it be brought to a favorable issue, of enjoying their eternal repose. Enjoy that repose, illustrious immortals! Your mantle fell when you ascended; and thousands, inflamed with your spirit, and impatient to tread in your steps, are ready to swear by Him that sitteth on the throne, and liveth forever and ever, that they will protect freedom in her last asylum, and never desert her cause, which you sustained by your labors, and cemented with your blood! Robert Hall.

XXXV.

THE AMERICAN INDIANS.

If the Indians had the vices of savage life, they had the virtues also. They were true to their country, their friends, and their homes. If they forgave not injury, neither did they forget kindness. If their vengeance was terrible, their fidelity and generosity were unconquerable also. Their love, like their hate, stopped not on this side of the grave. But where are they? Where are the villages, and warriors, and youth? The sachems and the tribes? The hunters and their families? They have perished. They are consumed. The wasting pestilence has not alone done the mighty work. No,—nor famine, nor war. There has been a mightier power, a moral canker, which hath eaten into their heart-cores,—a plague which the touch of the white man communicated,—a poison, which betrayed them into a lingering ruin. The winds of the Atlantic fan not a single region which they may now call their own. Already the last feeble remnants of the race are preparing for their journey beyond the Mississippi. I see them leave their miserable homes,—the aged, the helpless, the women, and the warriors, "few and faint, yet fearless still." The ashes are cold on their native hearths. The smoke no longed curls round their lowly cabins. They move on with a slow, unsteady step. The white man is upon their heels, for terror or dispatch; but they heed him not. They turn to take a last look of their deserted villages. They cast a last glance upon the graves of their fathers They shed no tears; they utter no cries; they heave no groans. There is something in their hearts which passes speech. There is something in their looks, not of vengeance or submission, but of hard necessity, which stifles both; which chokes all utterance; which has no aim or method. It is courage absorbed in despair. They linger but for a moment. Their look is onward. They have passed the fatal stream. It shall never be repassed by them,—no, never. Yet there lies not between us and them an impassible gulf. They know and feel, that for them there is still one remove farther, not distant, nor unseen. It is the general burying-ground of their race. J. Story.

XXXVI.

CLASSICAL LEARNING.

The importance of classical learning to professional education is so obvious, that the surprise is, that it could ever have become matter of disputation. I speak not of its power in reining the taste, in disciplining the judgment, in invigorating the understanding, or in warming the heart with elevated sentiments; but of its power of direct, positive, necessary instruction. There is not a single nation from the north to the south of Europe, from the bleak shores of the Baltic to the bright plains of immortal Italy, whose literature is not embedded in the very elements of classical learning. The literature of England is, in an emphatic sense, the production of her scholars; of men who have cultivated letters in her universities, and colleges, and grammar-schools; of men who thought any life too short, chiefly because it left some relic of antiquity unmastered, and any other fame too humble, because it faded in the presence of Roman and Grecian genius.

He who studies English literature without the lights of classical learning, loses half the charms of its sentiments and style, of its force and feelings, of its delicate touches, of its delightful allusions, of its illustrative associations. Who that reads the poetry of Gray, does not feel that it is the refinement of classical taste which gives such inexpressible vividness and transparency to his diction? Who that reads the concentrated sense and melodious versification of Dryden and Pope, does not perceive in them the disciples of the old school, whose genius was inflamed by the heroic verse, the terse satire, and the playful wit of antiquity? Who that meditates over the strains of Milton does not feel that he drank deep at