dled over in the course of vulgar, trite, and transitory events. Nothing but some of those great revolutions, that break the traditionary chain of human memory, and alter the very face of nature itself, can possibly obscure it. My lords, we are all elevated to a degree of importance by it; the meanest of us will, by means of it, more or less, become the concern of posterity-if we are yet to hope for such a thing, in the present state of the world, as a recording, retrospective, civilized posterity: but this is in the hand of the great Disposer of events; it is not ours to settle how it shall be. My lords, your house yet stands; it stands as a great edifice; but let me say, it stands in the midst of ruins-in the midst of the ruins that have been made by the greatest moral earthquake that ever convulsed or shattered this globe of ours. My lords, it has pleased Providence to place us in such a state, that we appear every moment to be upon the verge of some great mutations. There is one thing, and one thing only, which defies all mutation, that which existed before the world, and will survive the fabric of the world itself-I mean justice: that justice which, emanating from Divinity, has a place in the breast of every one of us, given us for our guide with regard to ourselves and with regard to others, and which will stand after this globe is burned to ashes, our advocate or our accuser before the great Judge, when He comes to call upon us for the tenor of a well-spent life.

My lords, if you must fall, may you so fall! but if you stand-and stand I trust you will-together with the fortune of this ancient monarchy-together with the ancient laws and liberties of this great and illustrious kingdom-may you stand as unimpeached in honor as in power; may you stand, not as a substitute for virtue, but as an ornament of virtue, as a security for virtue; may you stand long, and long stand the terror of tyrants; may you stand the refuge of afflicted nations; may you stand a sacred temple, for the perpetual residence of an inviolable justice.

Ex. CLXVI.-THE INFLUENCE OF ATHENS.

MACAULAY.

ALL the triumphs of truth and genius over prejudice and power, in every country and in every age, have been the triumphs of Athens. Whenever a few great minds have made

a stand against violence and fraud, in the cause of liberty and reason, there has been her spirit in the midst of them; inspiring, encouraging, and consoling;-by the lonely lamp of Erasmus; by the restless bed of Pascal; in the tribune of Mirabeau; in the cell of Galileo; on the scaffold of Sidney. But who shall estimate her influence on private happiness? Who shall say how many thousands have been made wiser, happier, and better, by those pursuits in which she has taught mankind to engage; to how many the studies which took their rise from her have been wealth in poverty,-liberty in bondage, health in sickness,-society in solitude. Her power is indeed manifested at the bar; in the senate; in the field of battle; in the schools of philosophy. But these are not her glory. Wherever literature consoles sorrow, or assuages pain,-wherever it brings gladness to eyes which fail with wakefulness and tears, and wake for the dark house and the long sleep, there is exhibited, in its noblest form, the immortal influence of Athens.

The dervise, in the Arabian tale, did not hesitate to abandon to his comrade the camels with their load of jewels and gold, while he retained the casket of that mysterious juice, which enabled him to behold at one glance all the hidden riches of the universe. Surely it is no exaggeration to say, that no external advantage is to be compared with that purification of the intellectual eye, which gives us to contemplate the infinite wealth of the mental world; all the hoarded treasures of the primeval dynasties, all the shapeless ore of the yet unexplored mines. This is the gift of Athens to man. Her freedom and her power have for more than twenty centuries been annihilated; her people have degenerated into timid slaves; her language into a barbarous jargon; her temples have been given up to the successive depredations of Romans, Turks, and Scotchmen; but her intellectual empire is imperishable. And, when those who have rivaled her greatness, shall have shared her fate: when civilization and knowledge shall have fixed their abode in distant continents; when the scepter shall have passed away from England; when, perhaps, travelers from distant regions shall in vain labor to decipher on some moldering pedestal the name of our proudest chief; shall hear savage hymns chanted to some mis-shapen idol over the ruined dome of our proudest temple: and shall see a single naked fisherman wash his nets in the river of the ten thousand masts,-her influence and her glory would still survive,-fresh in eternal youth, exempt from

mutability and decay, immortal as the intellectual principle from which they derived their origin, and over which they exercise their control.

Ex. CLXVII.—ARNOLD WINKELRIED.

JAMES MONTGOMERY

"MAKE way for liberty!" he cried ;-
Made way for liberty, and died!
In arms the Austrian phalanx stood,
A living wall, a human wood!-
A wall, where every conscious stone
Seemed to its kindred thousands grown;
A rampart all assaults to bear,

Till time to dust their frames should wear;
A wood, like that enchanted grove
In which with fiends Rinaldo strove,
Where every silent tree possessed
A spirit prisoned in its breast,
Which the first stroke of coming strife
Would startle into hideous life;
So dense, so still the Austrians stood,
A living wall, a human wood!
Impregnable their front appears,
All horrent with projected spears,

Whose polished points before them shine,
From flank to flank one brilliant line,
Bright as the breakers' splendors run

Along the billows, to the sun.

Opposed to these a hovering band

Contended for their native land;

Peasants, whose new-found strength had broke
From manly necks the ignoble yoke,
And forged their fetters into swords,
On equal terms to fight their lords;
And what insurgent rage had gained,
In many a mortal fray maintained:
Marshaled, once more, at freedom's call,
They came to conquer or to fall,—
When he who conquered, he who fell,
Was deemed a dead or living Tell !--

Such virtue had that patriot breathed,
So to the soil his soul bequeathed,
That wheresoe'er his arrows flew,
Heroes in his own likeness grew,
And warriors sprang from every sod
Which his awakening footstep trod.

And now the work of life and death
Hung on the passing of a breath:
The fire of conflict burned within,-
The battle trembled to begin.

Yet, while the Austrians held their ground,
Point for attack was nowhere found;
Where'er the impatient Switzers gazed,
The unbroken line of lances blazed;
The line 't were suicide to meet,
And perish at their tyrants' feet :—
How could they rest within their graves,
And leave their homes, the homes of slaves?
Would they not feel their children tread
With clanging chains above their head?
It must not be :-this day, this hour,
Annihilates the oppressor's power.
All Switzerland is in the field;-
She will not fly,-she can not yield ;—
She must not fall: her better fate
Here gives her an immortal date.

Few were the numbers she could boast;
But every freeman was a host,
And felt as though himself were he
On whose sole arm hung victory.
It did depend on one, indeed;
Behold him,-Arnold Winkelried !
There sounds not to the trump of fame
The echo of a nobler name.

Unmarked he stood amid the throng,
In rumination deep and long,

Till you might see, with sudden grace,
The very thought come o'er his face,
And by the motion of his form
Anticipate the bursting storm;

And by the uplifting of his brow

Tell where the bolt would strike, and how. But 't was no sooner thought than done,

The field was in a moment won:

"Make way for liberty!" he cried,
Then ran with arms extended wide,
As if his dearest friend to clasp ;—
Ten spears he swept within his grasp
"Make way for liberty!" he cried:
Their keen points met from side to side;—
He bowed amongst them like a tree,
And thus made way for liberty.
Swift to the breach his comrades fly:
"Make way for liberty," they cry,
And through the Austrian phalanx dart,
As rushed the spears through Arnold's heart;
While, instantaneous as his fall,

Rout, ruin, panic, scattered all:

An earthquake could not overthrow
A city with a surer blow.

;

Thus Switzerland again was free
Thus death made way for liberty!

Ex. CLXVIII.—JUSTICE.

SHERIDAN.

MR. HASTINGS, in the magnificent paragraph which con cludes this communication, says, "I hope it will not be a departure from official language to say, that the majesty of justice ought not to be approached without solicitation. She ought not to descend to inflame or provoke, but to withhold her judgment, until she is called on to determine." But, my lords, do you, the judges of this land, and the expounders of its rightful laws, do you approve of this mockery, and call it the character of justice, which takes the form of right to excite wrong? No, my lords, justice is not this halt and miserable object; it is not the ineffective bauble of an Indian pagod; it is not the portentous phantom of despair; it is nou like any fabled monster, formed in the eclipse of reason, and found in some unhallowed grove of superstitious darkness, and political dismay! No, my lords. In the happy reverse of all this, I turn from the disgusting caricature to the real image! Justice I have now before me, august and pure! the abstract idea of all that would be perfect in the spirits and the aspirings of men! where the mind rises, where the heart expands; where the countenance is ever placid and benign; where her favorite attitude is to stoop to the unfortunate; to