gathering up the broken fragments of his image ;-as one listens to the tale of a dream twice-told; as one catches the roar of the ocean in the ripple of a rivu; -as one sees the blaze of noon in the first glimmer of twilight. let There is one objection, however, on which I would for a moment dwell, because it has a commanding influence over many minds, and is clothed with a specious importance. It is often said, that there have been eminent men and eminent writers, to whom the ancient languages were unknown,-inen who have risen by the force of their own talents, and writers who have written with a purity and ease which hold them up as models for imitation. On the other hand, it is as often said, that scholars do not always compose either with ease or chasteness; that their diction is sometimes loose and harsh, and sometimes ponderous and affected. Be it so I am not disposed to call in question the accuracy of either statement. But I would, nevertheless, say that the presence of classical learning was not the cause of the faults of the one class, nor the absence of it the cause of the excellence of the other. And I would put this fact, as an answer to all such reasonings, that there is not a single language of modern Europe, in which literature has made. any considerable advances, which is not directly of Roman origin, or has not incorporated into its very structure many, very many, of the idioms and peculiarities of the ancient tongues. The English language affords a strong illustration of the truth of this remark: it abounds with words and meanings drawn from clas sical sources. 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 imbedded in the very elements of classical learning. The literature of England is, in an em+ phatic 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 humble, because it faded in the presence of Roman and Grecian genius. It is no exaggeration to declare, that he who proposes to abolish classical studies, proposes to render, in a great measure, inert and unedifying the mass of English literature for three centuries; to rob us of much of the glory of the past, and much of the instruction of future ages; to blind us to excellences which few may hope to equal and none to surpass; to annihilate associations which are interwoven with our best sentiments, and give to distant times and countries a presence and reality, as if they were; in fact, our own. 1 EXTRACT FROM EMMET'S SPEECH BEFORE SENTENCE OF DEATH BEING PASSED ON HIM. 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. 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 trammelled 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. 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 my character to obloquy-for there must be guilt somewhere: whether in the sentence of the Court, or in the catastrophe, posterity must determine. 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 difficulties 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. 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 perfidious 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. 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. 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 provisional government speaks for our views; no inference can be tortured from it to countenance barbarity or debasement at home, or subjection, humiliation, or treachery from abroad. 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 ! If the spirits of the illustrious dead participate in M |