its own decay, and finally goes out in death, no night follows but it leaves the world all light, all on fire, from the potent contact of its own spirit.

10. Bacon died; but the human understanding, roused, by the touch of his miraculous wand, to a perception of the true philosophy, and the just mode of inquiring after truth, has kept on its course, successfully and gloriously. Newton died; yet the courses of the spheres are still known, and they yet move on in the orbits which he saw and described for them, in the infinity of space.

11. No two men now live, perhaps it may be doubted whether any two men have ever lived, in one age, who, more than those we now commemorate, have impressed their own sentiments, in regard to politics and government, on mankind; infused their own opinions more deeply into the opinions of others, or given a more lasting direction to the current of human thought. Their work doth not perish with them. The tree which they assisted to plant will flourish, although they water it and protect it no longer; for it has struck its roots deep; it has sent them to the very center; no storm, not of force to burst the orb, can overturn it; its branches spread wide; they stretch their protecting arms broader and broader; and its top is destined to reach the heavens.

12. We are not deceived. There is no delusion here. No age will come, in which the American Revolution will appear less than it is; one of the greatest events in human history. No age will come, in which it will cease to be seen and felt, on either continent, that a mighty step, a great advance, not only in American affairs, but in human affairs, was made on the fourth of July, 1776. And no age will come, we trust, so ignorant or so unjust, as not to see and acknowledge the

efficient agency of these we now honor, in producing that mo

mentous event.

33*

LESSON CXXXVI. ! 36

HAMLET'S SOLILOQUY ON LIFE AND DEATH.

SHAKSPEARE.

TO BE, or not to be? that is the question!
Whether 't is nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune;
Or, to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them! To die? to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: 't is a consummation
Devoutly to be wished! To die, to sleep:

To sleep? perchance to dream; ay, there's the rub;
For, in that sleep of death, what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause! There's the respect
Which makes calamity of so long life:

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
Which patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardles bear,
To groan and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death;
That undiscovered country from whose bourne
No traveler returns; puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of!
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

a So-lilo-quy; talking to one's self.

And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

1. MY LORDS: What have I to say, why sentence of death should not be pronounced on me, according to law? I have nothing to say that can alter your predetermination, nor that it will become me to say, with any view to the mitigation of that sentence which you are here to pronounce, and I must abide by. But I have that to say which interests me more than life, and which you have labored, (as was necessarily your office in the present circumstances of this oppressed country,) to destroy. I have much to say, why my reputation should be rescued from the load of false accusation and calumny which has been heaped upon it.

2. I do not imagine that, seated where you are, your minds can be so free from impurity, as to receive the least impression from what I am going to utter. I have no hopes that I can anchor my character in the breast of a court constituted and trammeled as this is. I only wish, and it is the utmost I expect, that your lordships may suffer it to float down your memories untainted by the foul breath of prejudice, until it find some more hospitable harbor to shelter it from the storm by which it is at present buffeted.

3. Were I only to suffer death, after being adjudged guilty by your tribunal, I should bow in silence, and meet the fate that awaits me without a murmur; but the sentence of law which delivers my body to the executioner, will, through the ministry of that law, labor in its own vindication, to consign

a Emmet (Robert;) an Irish patriot, tried and executed for treason.

my character to obloquy, for there must be guilt somewhere, whether in the sentence of the court or in the catastrophe, posterity must determine.

4. A man in my situation, my lords, has not only to encounter the difficulties of fortune, and the force of power over minds which it has corrupted or subjugated, but the difficul ties of established prejudice. The man dies, but his memory lives. That mine may not perish, that it may live in the respect of my countrymen, I seize upon this opportunity to vindicate myself from some of the charges alleged against

me.

5. When my spirit shall be wafted to a more friendly port; when my shade shall have joined the bands of those martyred heroes who have shed their blood on the scaffold and in the field, in defence of their country and virtue, this is my hope. I wish that my memory and name may animate those who survive me, while I look down with complacency on the destruction of that perfidiots government, which upholds its domination by blasphemy of the Most High; which displays its power over man as over the beasts of the forest; which sets man upon his brother, and lifts his hand, in the name of God, against the throat of his fellow who believes or doubts a little more or less than the government standard; a government which is steeled to barbarity by the cries of the orphans and the tears of the widows which its cruelty has made.

6. I swear by the throne of Heaven, before which I must shortly appear, by the blood of the murdered patriots, who have gone before me, that my conduct has been, through all this peril, and all my purposes, governed only by the convictions which I have uttered, and by no other view than that of the emancipation of my country from the superinhuman oppression under which she has so long, and too patiently, travailed; and that I confidently and assuredly hope (wild and chimerical as it may appear) there is still union and strength in Ireland to accomplish this noble enterprise.

7. Let no man dare, when I am dead, to charge me with dishonor; let no man attaint my memory by believing that I

could have engaged in any cause but that of my country's liberty and independence; or that I could have become the pliant minion of power in the oppression or the miseries of my countrymen. The proclamation of the provincial government speaks for cur views; no inference can be tortured from it to countenance barbarity or debasement at home, or subjec tion, humiliation, or treachery from abroad.

8. I would not have submitted to a foreign oppressor, for the same reason that I would resist the domestic tyrant; in the dignity of freedom, I would have fought upon the threshold of my country, and her enemy should enter only by passing over my lifeless corpse. Am I, who lived but for my country, and who have subjected myself to the vengeance of the jealous and watchful oppressor, and to the bondage of the grave, only to give my countrymen their rights; am I to be loaded with calumny, and not to be suffered to resent or repel it? No; God forbid!

9. If the spirits of the illustrious dead participate in the concerns and cares of those who are dear to them in this transitory life; O, ever dear and venerated shade of my departed father! look down with scrutiny on the conduct of your suffering son; and see if I have even for a moment deviated from those principles of morality and patriotism which it was your care to instill into my youthful mind, and for an adherence to which I am now to offer up my life!

10. My lords, you are impatient for the sacrifice; the blood which you seek is not congealed by the artificial terrors which surround your victim; it circulates warmly and unruffled, through the channels which God created for noble purposes, but which you are bent to destroy for purposes so grievous that they cry to heaven! Be yet patient! I have but a few words more to say. I am going to my silent grave; my lamp of life is nearly extinguished; my race is run; the grave opens to receive me, and I sink into its bosom.

11. I have but one request to ask at my departure from this world; it is the charity of its silence, Let no man write my epitaph; for, as no one who knows my motives dare now