Jefferson, Theodorick Bland, Peyton Randolph, George Wythe, Carter Braxton, John Page, Edmund Randolph, James Monroe, John Marshall, James Barbour, Wm. B. Giles, Watkins Leigh, Chapman Johnson, John Randolph of Roanoke,— all these, with a hundred others, we might say a thousand who have become famous, drew their early inspiration from the fruitful source of the good old institution of William and Mary. Among those who still survive of the long and illustrious line, let us point alone to the "greatest Captain of the age:"-Winfield Scott belongs to the old institution.

We must bring our discursive and unconnected pages to a termination. We have not been able to make them more worthy of the attention of the reader. The thoughts, and memories which hover around the ruin of the old building, embarrass us, from their number and character. They throng upon us, and fill us, as they have doubtless filled many hundreds of persons, in view of the late calamity, with a longing sadness, a tender melancholy, as it were. Something, we feel, has passed away which can scarcely be replaced. The walls will doubtless rise anew-the college will mount like a new Phoenix from its ashes-and that it may be more useful, more famous, more widely popular than ever, we devoutly pray. But it can never be altogether the same. You may re-build the home of your childhood-you may replace the little wooden dwelling with the honeysuckle round the portico, and the moss on the eaves, by a palace of brown stone or marble filled with splendid decorations. But the new palace does not fill the place of the old cottage. The wellremembered furniture is gone-the armchair in which your father sat-the portrait of your mother or your sister-the

old family Bible, where births have been chronicled with joy, and burials with tears which fell down and blotted the sheet-all these have passed away, and the new splendour is almost painful to the eye. It was the hallowed association which made all so dear-and that is gone.

But let us not indulge our melancholy reflections too far. We shall endeavour to banish them, and to look upon the venerable institution simply in the light of what it has proved itself to be-a sound teacher of sound learning-and more still, of the most elevated spiritual truth. If newly founded, as we are sure it may be, these high avocations may be pursued by its professors with renewed. strength, and greater facilities than before. The progress of time works im provement in all things-and the generation of to-day know more than their fathers at least in some things. We see no reason why William and Mary may not take a new lease of a more vigorous life. The old town of Williamsburg is eminently adapted to the requisitions of a site for the halls of learning. It is quiet, sedate, untouched by the bustle and excitement of larger places--and of fers few facilities to dissipated youths, such as elsewhere might draw them off from their studies. A refined and elegant society-associations with the great names of the past, well calculated to expand and ennoble the heart of youth-a healthy site-these and numerous other advantages point to the old metropolis as a most favourable situation still, for an institute of the highest character and influence.

That the best hopes of its warmest friends may be more than realized in the effort, now being made, to found the old college anew, is the prayer of the present writer.

I.

JOHN B. GOUGH.

Whilst reading a morning paper at my hotel in Washington last winter, my eye ran over a notice that John B. Gough, the great Temperance Advocate, would lecture at eight o'clock, P. M., in the New Baptist Church. I at once resolved to hear a man who had filled Europe and America with his fame. Having wearied of the somewhat tedious notes of Congressional oratory, I longed to have my soul laved in those refreshing streams of eloquence which it was said poured irresistibly from the lips of this "Orator of Nature." I was eager to hear a man who, having spent but thirteen days of his life at school-who, possessing no advantages of early mental training-who, having passed the vigour of his youth and the most precious years of his manhood in brutal dissipation, yet possessed the power of delighting and fascinating the most cultivated audiences that ever assembled on this or the other side of the Atlantic.

I had never known a distinguished orator to come up to this reputation, and I desired to see if this remarkable speaker would prove an exception. Half an hour before the advertised time, I with difficulty obtained a seat in the spacious church, which I found filled with a most intellectual and intelligent looking audience. It was evident that the elite of the metropolis and the distingués of the nation were there. The President of the United States, members of the Cabinet, Senators, and Representatives, foreign Ministers, and dashing belles were scattered here and there in the crowd. Even gray-haired Judges of the Supreme Court had been attracted by the fame of Gough. Doffing their ermine and abandoning for awhile their search after "authorities," they had come out to feel the magic influence of eloquence. Near me sat one of the most venerable of the bench, I had seen him day after day in court, and

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meal after meal at my hotel, but had never known him to sacrifice his judicial dignity so far as to evince the slightest susceptibility to humour. He even then looked as if the "sponge of the law had absorbed all the natural juices of his nature." As Grace Greenwood would say, he seemed an "epitome of precedents, a bundle of technicalities."

I bad heard that Gough was a great mimic, that he would make you laugh whether you wished or not. I thought he would now have a test made of his powers, that if he could excite the risibles of my grave neighbour by his anecdotes, or touch his passions by his oratory, he could move any body of men and women that ever assembled to hear a speech. I had determined to make a thermometer of His Honour's face, concluding if the orator raised the mercury to 70° there it would be blood heat with the rest of the audience. At eight o'clock whilst the large crowd was on the qui vive to catch a first glimpse of the man whose reputation had drawn them through a winter's storm, ten or twelve men stepped upon the platform. Curiosity was on tiptoe. The "lion" was in the group, but seeing no mane and hearing no roar, it was not so easy to distinguish him from the rest.

Whilst some preliminary conversation was going on, I picked out a tall, wellformed, well-dressed gentleman, with classic head, and features just enough tinged with melancholy to be poetic, as the man who was so wonderfully endowed with the gifts of persuasion, and who was soon to thrill us with his peculiar eloquence. My imagination had pictured a sort of Apollo, and I selected that one of the group who most resembled in modesty and mien" this handsomest of fabulous deities. But when I saw a little, low, lean man, with long nose and small brow, dark eyes and sad face, (dressed as if the tailor had expected him to grow two sizes larger to fill his suit,) all my high-flown notions and ro

mantic expectations at once vanished before the stern reality. I was about as much "let down" as the disappointed Englishman, who, having heard of the fame of our great Chief Justice, first saw this Nestor of the bench measuring in the dust with his rival thrower of the Quoit.

The orator's manner in beginning his speech was not calculated to dissipate the prejudices excited by his indifferent looks. Standing out in the centre of the platform, (which was a large one,) he crossed his hands behind his back, and with a husky voice and languid, timid air, began to speak upon the disadvantages of discussing so thread-bare a subject as temperance. He had proceeded some ten or fifteen minutes in a tame, unimpassioned style, when becoming warmed by his subject, and his voice having worn away much of its tendency to hoarseness, he began to move back and forth upon the platform, invoking his head, hands, arms and body in the work of gesticulation, and personifying that kind of oratorical power which the great Athenian called action. Suddenly, like "Pallas full-armed from the brain of Jove," he burst forth in one of his grand passages of eloquence which startled and delighted his audience no less by the sublimity of its thoughts, than the gorgeous richness of its colouring. It was no vapid declamation, no school-boy flight. He did not shoot up into the sky with the fearless daring of the eagle without its strong pinions to sustain and direct his careering. But like that noble bird he rose on untiring wing to sport in fearless majesty among the lightnings of heaven or soar towards the sun. When he drew a picture of the human intellect in its highest development and full maturity, when he sketched its tremendous powers and God-like gifts, and followed it with the eye of his imagination as it swept in immense circles the entire universe of thought, and then painted with a "gloomy energy," as none but a master hand could paint, the terrific havoc made with that gigantic mind by the demon of intemperance, the coldest heart in that large crowd

kindled with the fire of his irresistible eloquence, and the dullest ear was "almost with listening ravished."

"His words seemed oracles

That pierced their bosoms; and each man would turn

And gaze in wonder on his neighbour's face,

That with the like dumb wonder answered him,

You could have heard

The beating of your pulses while he spoke."

This exhibition of oratory proved the speaker to possess that "o'er mastering strength of mind" which rouses the sensibilities of a strong nature, and brings a weak one into entire subjection. I felt as did Burke when listening to one of Sheridan's brilliant efforts, he exclaimed, "That is the true style; something between poetry and prose, and better than either." The severer taste of the critic might dissent from my decision, as Fox did from that of Burke, but reviewing a speech in your closet is one thing, and hearing it delivered from the lips of the orator, fervid with deep feeling and intense passion, is quite another. In the latter case you have not time or inclination to seek a redundancy of words, or complain of excess of decoration. You prefer rather to follow with "swelling and delicious admiration" the flowing periods of the orator's eloquence--leaving the cold work of criticism to other hands.

Just as Mr. Gough was closing one of his finest passages, I turned to my grave neighbour of the Supreme Court, expecting to be rebuked by the rigidity of his emotionless features for the youthful enthusiasm of my feelings. But imagine my surprise when I found that iron face lit up with a new splendour, and radiant with an unwonted animation. The flame which burned in the speaker's breast had kindle a blaze in his own. Turning to a friend he exclaimed, "That is splendid, sir." I concluded this was no small triumph for the speaker, and felt in it an ample apology for my warmest admiration. The orator having borne

us

along the creations of a fancy which seemed inspired indeed, having delighted us with the beautiful and sublime, now began to play upon the humorous vein of his audience. With consummate skill and in a moment's time he had us convulsed with uncontrollable laughter. Such a genuine laugh as followed his first anecdote, I never before heard. Although he has told his anecdotes a hundred times, yet he tells them with the gusto and freshness of a first narrative. He was too much for onr legal friend. He not only laughed, but laughed immoderately. "His Honour" was completely metamorphosed by the comic humour of Gough.

For two hours and a quarter this remarkable man held twelve hundred people enchained by his almost superhuman powers. Now they were fascinated by the magic of his eloquence, now they were captivated by the rich fertility of his fancy. At one moment they were moved to tears by the deep pathos of his appeals, at the next they were charmed at the excellence of his wit. Indeel, he had them as completely under his control as the serpent its unsuspecting victim. Gough has mastered the human heart as Ole Bull has mastered the violin, and he plays upon the feelings of the one as the musician does the strings of the other. Ancient fable tells us that if Apollo but touched a stone with his harp it became melodious with the sweetest sounds of that instrument. With like power this orator imparts to the feelings of his hearers the tones of his own. He excites in their bosoms the same emotions that animate his own breast. As Phillips says of Curran, "you weep, you laugh, you wonder at his bidding." There is perhaps no orator alive who can excite so great a number of passions in such quick succession, or who can throw such intensity of feeling into a minute's time. In telling one little story he touched upon almost every chord of the human heart. For the unfortunate but noble woman who has been brought from ease and affluence to misery and poverty by a drunken husband, he excites your love, sympathy and admiration. For the red

He puts into the mouth of the widow an appeal which, for moving eloquence and deep feeling, is not surpassed by the immortal prayer of the Hungarian exile in behalf of his down-trodden country. The pettifogger, flushed with the idea of "a case," is taken off with inimitable effect. His attitudinizing, when rising to address His Honour, the running of his hands through his hair to look intellectual, placing his fingers behind his vest to appear majestic, the buttoning and unbuttoning of his coat to exhibit his form in all its symmetrical proportions, are "done up" in a style peculiarly the orator's own. Such descriptions so prolific in drollery and humour, so withering in satire and rich in narrative, could not fail to amuse and enchain by turns his audience.

The orator assumes respectively each character, and so perfect are his personifications that you almost imagine the actors of the scene before you. Indeed, by a happy art he transfers to the platform before the audience the absent living and the dead, in all the “vivid reality of personal presence." We have seen it stated of some modern orator that so natural and well-drawn were his characters that a Hogarth or Reynolds, had they been present, could have painted his orations life-like upon the canvass. We are sure this is true of Gough's efforts. The creations of his genius seem tangible and material. His speeches are a beautifully varying panorama, passing in review before the audience, constantly increasing in interest and effect to the last and closing scene; whilst his perceptions of the ludicrous and humorous are acute and his mimicry inimitable.

Gough's great forte lies in his graphic and soul-stirring descriptions of terrific and pathetic scenes. It is in the exhibition of this power that he rises to the highest empyrean of impassioned eloquence. It is then that the electric spark, the "true mesmeric touch" of oratory is felt in all its witchery and fascination. With nervous boldness and impetuous fervency of spirit, an impassioned glow of feeling, and intensity of devotion to his subject, he bears down like a mountain torrent upon his hearers, carrying everything with an irresistible impulse before him. His pictures of the boy snatched from the burning house, whilst an agonized mother and assembled thousands hold their breath in anxious fear; the devoted sister bathing the deep cut scar upon a drunken brother's face; the wan and broken-hearted wife invoking Heaven's blessing upon her once cruel but now reformed husband; the arrival of the survivors of a shipwrecked vessel at the wharf at New York, and the deep stillness and death-like stare of the vast multitude as they look for some loved friend amid the ill-fated crew; the infatuated man who gives himself up to the rapids of Niagara, and moves swiftly and fearfully on to the whirling gulf below, all these are equal to the best touches of a Dickens or Scott, and are presented with a dramatic power which would have done credit to a Talma. Madame de Stael said, after witnessing one of the master pieces of the distinguished French tragedian, "He is the author himself come again to realize by his looks, his accents and his manners the person he meant to present to your imagination." So it is with Gough. He is the victim of rum standing before you, telling his sad story of misery and woe. Through him the drunkard holds up to the startled view of his audience the truthful mirror of his wretched life. His terror moving descriptions of delirium tremens, the more thrilling because the orator spoke from his own fearful experience, made the hearer suffer in sympathy with the unfortunate inebriate. He almost cries aloud in pity for the unfortunate sufferer, as he sees him vainly

attempting to resist the serpents and monsters that a diseased imagination has thickened about and around him. Men have declared themselves haunted in their sleep after listening to this fearfully terrific picture of a drunkard's suf ferings.

The success and enthusiasm which have followed Gough in his discussions of a trite and unpopular theme, before overflowing audiences in England and America, attest the high power of his eloquence. As a platform speaker, no man of this generation has achieved more splendid triumphs. Not even Prentiss, the Sheridan of the South, whose brilliant powers of oratory were the wonder of his time, ever attracted so great a multitude of people as this Whitefield of Temperance. The halls in which he speaks are always too small for his audience. Such is the anxiety to hear him, that long before the appointed hour every seat is filled. No wind is too fierce, no weather too bad, to keep back the throng. All orders and ranks, all politics and religions, come out to the feast served up by this wonderful dispenser of eloquence. After leaving Washington he spoke to six thousand auditors in the Maryland Institute, the largest hall in Baltimore, and even then hundreds were unable to get seats, although it was the worst night in March. So delighted were his audience, that they requested him to deliver the same lecture the following night. Not only has he electrified all classes of people in all parts of his own country, but he has made perhaps a deeper impression in foreign lands. In Great Britain, where popular or platform eloquence is ridiculed and derided as suited only to the vulgar taste of Republican masses, his triumph has been tremendous and complete. His tour through "Old England" was rather like the ovations paid by the ancients to a returning hero, for from every point, lords and ladies, patricians and plebeians, the humble tenant and the landed nobleman, rose up to do homage to his genius.

That the reader may know that I have not over estimated the opinion entertained of this American orator by our critical