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LESSON LXVIII.

AMES'S SPEECH.-[CONTINUED.]

WILL it be whispered, that the treaty has made me a new champion for the protection of the frontiers. It is known, that my voice, as well as vote, have been uniformly given in conformity with the ideas I have expressed. Protection is the right of the frontiers; it is our duty to give it.

Who will accuse me of wandering out of the subject? Who will say, that I exaggerate the tendencies of our measures? Will any one answer by a sneer, that all this is idle preaching? Will any one deny, that we are bound, and I would hope to good purpose, by the most solemn sanctions of duty, for the vote we give? Are despots alone to be reproached for unfeeling indifference to the tears and blood of their subjects?

Have the principles, on which you ground the reproach upon cabinets and kings, no practical influence, no binding force? Are they merely themes of idle declamation, introduced to decorate the morality of a newspaper essay, or to furnish pretty topics of harangue from the windows of the state-house? I trust it is neither too presumptuous nor too late to ask-Can you put the dearest interest of society to hazard, without guilt, and without remorse?

By rejecting the posts, we light the savage fires, we bind the victim. This day we undertake to render account to the widows and orphans whom our decision will make; to the wretches that will be roasted at the

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stake; to our country, and, I do not deem it too serious to say, to conscience and to God. We are answerable; and if duty be any thing more than a word of imposture, if conscience be not a bugbear, we are preparing to make ourselves as wretched as our country.

us.

There is no mistake in this case, there can be none: experience has already been the prophet of events, and the cries of our future victims have already reached The western inhabitants are not a silent and uncomplaining sacrifice. The voice of humanity issues from the shade of the wilderness: it exclaims, that while one hand is held up to reject this treaty, the other grasps a tomahawk. It summons our imagination to the scenes that will open. It is no great effort of the imagination to conceive that events so near are already begun. I can fancy that I listen to the yells of savage vengeance and the shrieks of torture: already they seem to sigh in the western wind; already they mingle with every echo from the mountains.

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LESSON LXIX.

THE GRAY FOREST EAGLE.

WITH storm daring pinion and sun-gazing eye, The gray forest eagle is king of the sky.

[wreath, From the crag-grasping fir-top where morn hangs its He views the mad waters white writhing beneath. A fitful red glaring, a rumbling jar,

Proclaim the storm demon still raging afar;

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The black cloud strides upward, the lightning more red,
And the roll of the thunder more deep and more dread,
A thick pall of darkness is cast o'er the air,

And on bounds the blast with a howl from its lair:
The lightning darts zig-zag and fork'd thro' the gloom,
And the bolt launches o'er with crash, rattle, and boom;
The gray forest eagle, where, where has he sped?
Does he shrink to his eyrie, or shiver with dread?
Does the glare blind his eye? Has the terrible blast
On the wing of the sky-king a fear-fetter cast?
No, no the brave eagle! he thinks not of fright;
The wrath of the tempest but rouses delight;
To the flash of the lightning his eye casts a gleam,
To the shriek of the wild blast he echoes his scream,
And with a front like a warrior that speeds to the fray,
And a clapping of pinions he's up and away?
Away, O, away soars the fearless and free!
What recks he the skies' strife?-its monarch is he!
The lightning darts round him, undaunted his sight;
The blast sweeps against him, unwaver'd his flight;
High upward, still upward, he wheels, till his form
Is lost in the black, scowling gloom of the storm.

LESSON LXX.

INFLUENCE OF SUPERIOR MINDS.

It belongs to cultivated men to construct, and put in motion, and direct the complex machinery of civil society. Who originated these free institutions,— the arteries through which the life-blood of our country's prosperity circulates? Who built and rocked the cradle of American liberty, and guarded the infant angel, until she walked forth in the vigor of a glorious maturity? Whom do we welcome to the helm of state, when the storm of faction beats, or dark clouds hang about the heavens? Who speak, trumpet-tongued, to a nation's ear, in behalf of a nation's rights? Who hold the scales of equity, measuring out a portion both to the just and the unjust? Are they men who have been nursed in the lap of ignorance, or are they not rather your great and cultivated minds-your Franklins and Madisons, and Adamses and your Kents, and Spencers, and Storys? And then again, who framed that social system, -if system it could be called,which exploded in the horrors of the French revolution; sporting with time-hallowed associations, and unsealing all the fountains of blood? Think you that ignorance was the presiding genius in that war of elements? Oh, no; the master spirits had many of them been known as standard bearers in the empire of letters; they partook at once of the strength of the angel, and the depravity of the fiend. And as it is in these opposite cases that I have mentioned, so it is always and

every where,-men with cultivated minds will ultimately have the power, whether they use it in the spirit of a lofty patriotism, or pervert it to do homage to faction, and tear society in pieces.

LESSON LXXI.

THE NATURE OF TRUE ELOQUENCE,

WHEN public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great interests are at stake, and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable in speech farther than it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness, are the qualities which produce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain.

Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire after it; they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force.

The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men, when their own lives, and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country, hang

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