the evil, and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle. They augur misgovernment at a distance, and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.1 The last cause of this disobedient spirit in the colonies is hardly less powerful than the rest, as it is not merely moral, but laid deep in the natural constitution of things. Three thousand miles of ocean lie between you and them. No contrivance can prevent the effect of this distance in weakening government. Seas roll, and months pass, between the order and the execution; and the want of a speedy explanation of a single point is enough to defeat a whole system. You have, indeed, wingéd ministers2 of vengeance, who carry your bolts in their pounces to the remotest verge of the sea. But there a power steps in, that limits the arrogance of raging passions and furious elements, and says, So far shalt thou go, and no farther." 3 Who are you, that you should fret and rage, and bite the chains of nature? Nothing worse happens to you than does to all nations who have extensive empire; and it happens in all the forms into which empire can be thrown. In large bodies, the circulation of power must be less vigorous at the extremities. This is the immutable condition, the eternal law, of extensive and detached empire. From all these sources, a fiercer spirit of liberty has 1 snuff... breeze. A strong metaphor. 3 bolts...pounces: an allusion to the thunderbolts placed by the 2 wingéd ministers; i.e., the Greek artists in the talons of the British ships of war. eagle, the bird of Jove, grown up. It has grown with the growth of the people in your colonies, and increased with the increase of their wealth, a spirit, that unhappily meeting with an exercise of power in England, which, however lawful, is not reconcilable to any ideas of liberty, much less with theirs, has kindled this flame that is ready to consume us. EDMUND BURKE. 82.-Character of Lord Chatham. This keen analysis of the character of the elder Pitt, Lord Chatham (1708-78), was spoken in Parliament by Henry Grattan, one of the most eloquent orators in the British Parliament during the last century. The Secretary stood alone: modern degeneracy had not reached him. Original and unaccommodating, the features of his character had the hardihood of antiquity; his august mind overawed majesty; and one of his sovereigns 2 thought royalty so impaired in his presence that he conspired to remove him, in order to be relieved from his superiority. No state chicanery, no narrow system of vicious politics, no idle contest for ministerial victories, sunk him to the vulgar level of the great; but overbearing, persuasive, and impracticable, his object was England, his ambition was fame. Without dividing, he destroyed party; without corrupting, he made a venal age unanimous. 1 Secretary; i.e., who was British secretary of state in 1755. 2 one of his sovereigns; i.e., George the Third. 3 4 3 chi-cān'er-y, political trickery and corruption. 4 object, i.e., loved object. France sunk beneath him. With one hand he smote the house of Bourbon, and wielded in the other the democracy of England. The sight of his mind was infinite, and his schemes were to affect, not England, not the present. age only, but Europe and posterity. Wonderful were the means by which these schemes were accomplished: always seasonable; always adequate; the suggestions of an understanding animated by ardor, and enlightened by prophecy. The ordinary feelings which make life amiable and indolent-those sensations which soften and allure and vulgarize were unknown to him. No domestic difficulties, no domestic weakness, reached him; but aloof from the sordid occurrences of life, and unsullied by its intercourse, he came occasionally into our system to counsel and decide. A character so exalted, so strenuous, so various, so authoritative, astonished a corrupt age; and the treasury trembled at the name of PITT through all her classes of venality. Corruption imagined, indeed, that she found defects in this statesman, and talked much of the inconsistency of his glory, and much of the ruin of his victories; but the history of his country, and the calamities of the enemy, answered and refuted her. Nor were his political abilities his only talents. His eloquence was an era in the senate, peculiar and spontaneous. Familiarly expressing gigantic sentiments and instinctive wisdom, not like the torrent of Demosthenes, or the splendid conflagration of Tully,' it resembled sometimes the thunder, and sometimes the music of the spheres. Like 1 Tully; i.e., Cicero, whose full name was Marcus Tullius Cicero. 1 Murray he did not conduct the understanding through the painful subtlety of argumentation, nor was he, like Townsend, for ever on the rack of exertion; but rather lightened upon the subject, and reached the point by the flashings of his mind, which, like those of his eye, were felt, but could not be followed. Upon the whole, there was in this man something that could create, subvert, or reform; an understanding, a spirit, and an eloquence to summon mankind to society, or to break the bonds of slavery asunder, and rule the wildness of free minds with unbounded authority; something that could establish or overwhelm empire, and strike a blow in the world that should resound through its history. HENRY GRATTAN. 83.- Ossian's Address to the Sun.3 In 1762 a Scotchman named James Macpherson published a poem called "Fingal" as the translation of an original by a pretended Gaelic bard named Ossian. The work, though an invention, was founded on traditions gathered by Macpherson in the Highlands of Scotland. The book, which is written in a vague and misty style, was a favorite with Napoleon. O thou that rollest above, round as the shield of my fathers! whence are thy beams, O Sun? thy everlasting 1 Murray; i.e., Lord Mansfield, | excellent opportunity for practicing the great English judge. 2 Townsend; i.e., Charles Townsend, a distinguished member of Parliament in Chatham's time. 3 Elocution. This piece gives an the orotund voice. (See p. 23.) It should be spoken very slowly, very distinctly, and with all the volume of "pure tone" at the pupil's command. light? Thou comest forth in thy awful beauty: the stars hide themselves in the sky; the moon, cold and pale, sinks in the western wave. But thou thyself movest alone: who can be a companion of thy course? The oaks of the mountains fall, the mountains themselves decay with years, the ocean shrinks and grows again, the moon herself is lost in the heavens; but thou art for ever the same, rejoicing in the brightness of thy course. When the world is dark with tempests, when thunders roll and lightnings fly, thou lookest in thy beauty from the clouds, and laughest at the storm. But to Ossian thou lookest in vain; for he beholds thy beams no more, whether thy yellow hair flows on the eastern clouds, or thou tremblest at the gates of the west. But thou art perhaps, like me, for a season: thy years will have an end. Thou wilt sleep in thy clouds, careless of the voice of the morning. Exult, then, O Sun, in the strength of thy youth: age is dark and unlovely. It is like the glimmering light of the moon when it shines through broken clouds, and the mist is on the hills, the blast of the north is on the plains, the traveler shrinks in the midst of his journey. 84.- Soliloquy of a Young Lady. "Well!" exclaimed a young lady, just returned from school," my education is at last finished." Indeed, it would be strange if, after five years' hard application, anything |