F BATTLE HYMN. ATHER of earth and heaven! I call thy name! One deeper prayer, 't was that no cloud might lower Now for the fight! Now for the cannon-peal! Forward-through blood, and toil, and cloud, and fire! ORATION AGAINST CATILINE. Cicero, the greatest of Roman orators, was born at Arpinum, 106 B. C., two hundred and sixteen years after the death of Demosthenes. Having taken part against Antony, after the assassination of Cæsar, Cicero was proscribed. He was murdered by a party of soldiers, headed by Popilius Lænas, whose life he had formerly saved by his eloquence; and his head and hands were publicly exhibited on the rostrum at Rome. He perished in his sixty-fourth year, 43 B. C. His writings are voluminous. As an orator, Cicero ranks next to Demosthenes: and his orations against Catiline and Verres are masterpieces of denunciatory eloquence. OW far, O Catiline, wilt thou abuse our patience. How long shalt thou baffle justice in thy mad career? To what extreme wilt thou carry thy audacity? Art thou nothing daunted by the nightly watch posted to secure the Palatium? Nothing, by the city guards? Nothing, by the rally of all good citizens? Nothing, by the assembling of the Senate in this fortified place? Nothing, by the averted looks of all here present? Seest thou not that all thy plots are exposed? — that thy wretched conspir acy is laid bare to every man's knowledge here in the Senate? that we are well aware of thy proceedings of last night; of the night before; -- the place of meeting, the company convoked, the measures concerted? Alas, the times! Alas, the public morals! The Senate understands all this. The consul sees it. Yet the traitor lives! Lives? Ay, truly, and confronts us here in council — takes part in our deliberations — and, with his measuring eye, marks out each man of us for slaughter! And we, all this while, strenuous that we are, think we have amply discharged our duty to the state, if we but shun this madman's sword and fury! Long since, O Catiline, ought the consul to have ordered thee to execution, and brought upon thy own head the ruin thou hast been meditating against others! There was that virtue once in Rome, that a wicked citizen was held more execrable than the deadliest foe. We have a law still, Catiline, for thee. Think not that we are powerless because forbearing. We have a decree --though it rests among our archives like a sword in its scabbard- - a decrec by which thy life would be made to pay the forfeit of thy crimes. And, should I order thee to be instantly seized and put to death, I make just doubt whether all good men would not think it done rather too late than any man too cruelly. But, for good reasons, I will yet defer the blow long since deserved. Then will I doom thee, when no man is found so lost, so wicked, nay, so like thyself, but shall confess that it was justly dealt. While there is one man that dares defend thee, live! But thou shalt live so beset, so surrounded, so scrutinized by the vigilant guards that I have placed around thee, that thou shalt not stir a foot against the republic without my knowledge. There shall be eyes to detect thy slightest movement, and ears to catch thy wariest whisper, of which thou shalt not dream. The darkness of night shall not cover thy treason—the walls of privacy shall not stifle its voice. Baffled on all sides, thy most secret counsels clear as noonday, what canst thou now have in view? Proceed, plot, conspire as thou wilt; there is nothing you can contrive, nothing you can propose, nothing you can attempt, which I shall not know, hear, and promptly understand. Thou shalt soon be made aware that I am even more active in providing for the preservation of the state than thou in plotting its destruction! ROBESPIERRE'S LAST SPEECH. The day after this speech-delivered July 28th, 1794, and addressed to an assembly bent on his destruction Robespierre was executed, at the early age of thirty-five, ander circumstances of accumulated horror. His fate is a warning to rulers who would cement even the best of governments with blood. Robespierre's character is still an enigma; some regarding him as an honest fanatic, and others as a crafty demagogue. Perhaps the traits of either predominated at times. "Destitute," says Lamartine, "of exterior graces, and of that gift of extemporaneous speaking which pours forth the unpremeditated inspirations of natural eloquence, Robespierre had taken so much pains with himself-he had meditated so much, written and erased so much— he had so often braved the inattention and the sarcasms of his audiences—1 - that, in the end, he succeeded in giving warmth and suppleness to his style, and in transforming his whole person, despite his stiff and meagre figure, his shrill voice, and abrupt gesticulation, into an engine of eloquence, of conviction, and of passion." HE enemies of the republic call me tyrant! Were I such, TH they would grovel at my feet. I should gorge them with gold—I should grant them impunity for their crimes—and they would be grateful. Were I such, the kings we have vanquished, far from denouncing Robespierre, would lend me their guilty support. There would be a covenant between them and me. Tyranny must have tools. But the enemies of tyranny-whither does their path tend? To the tomb, and to immortality! What tyrant is my protector? To what faction do I belong? Yourselves! What faction, since the beginning of the Revolution, has crushed and annihilated so many detected traitors? You - the people-our principles-are that faction! A faction to which I am devoted, and against which all the scoundrelism of the day is banded! The confirmation of the republic has been my object; and I know that the republic can be established only on the eternal basis of morality. Against me, and against those who hold kindred principles, the league is formed. My life? oh! my life, I abandon without a regret! I have seen the past; and I foresee the future. What friend of his country would wish to survive the moment when he could no longer serve it—when he could no longer defend innocence against oppression? Wherefore should I continue in an order of things where intrigue eternally triumphs over truth; where justice is mocked; where passions the most abject, or fears the most absurd, override the sacred interests of humanity? In witnessing the multitude of vices which the torrent of the Revolution has rolled in turbid communion with its civic virtues, I confess that I have sometimes feared that I . should be sullied in the eyes of posterity, by the impure neighborhood of unprincipled men, who had thrust themselves into association with the sincere friends of humanity; and I rejoice that these conspirators against my country have now, by their reckless rage, traced deep the line of demarcation between themselves and all true men. 66 Question history, and learn how all the defenders of liberty, in all times, have been overwhelmed by calumny. But their traducers died also. The good and the bad disappear alike from the earth; but in very different conditions. O Frenchmen! O my countrymen! let not your enemies, with their desolating doctrines, degrade your souls, and enervate your virtues! No, Chaumette, no! Death is not an eternal sleep!" Citizens! efface from the tomb that motto, graven by sacrilegious hands, which spreads over all nature a funeral crape, takes from oppressed innocence its support, and affronts the beneficent dispensation of death! Inscribe rather thereon these words: "Death is the commencement of immortality!" I leave to the oppressors of the people a terrible testament, which I proclaim with the independence befitting one whose career is so nearly ended; it is the awful truth" Thou shalt die!" LORD CHATHAM'S SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF In regard to this speech, we find in the diary of Josiah Quincy, Jr., the following memorandum: "Attended the debates in the House of Lords. Good fortune gave me one of the best places for hearing. Lord Chatham rose like Marcellus. His language, voice, and gesture were more pathetic than I ever saw or heard before, at the Bar or Senate. He seemed like an old Roman senator, rising with the dignity of age, yet speaking with the fire of youth." Dr. Franklin, who was also present at the debate, said of this speech that "he had seen, in the course of his life, sometimes eloquence without wisdom, and often wisdom without eloquence; in the present instance, he saw both united, and both, as he thought, in the highest degree possible." A MERICA, my Lords, cannot be reconciled to this country she ought not to be reconciled-till the troops of Britain are withdrawn. How can America trust you, with the bayonet at her breast? How can she suppose that you mean less than bondage or death? I therefore move that an address be presented to his Majesty, advising that immediate orders be despatched to General Gage, for removing his Majesty's forces from the town of Boston. The way must be immediately opened for reconciliation. It will soon be too late. An hour now lost in allaying ferments in America may produce years of calamity. Never will I desert, for a moment, the conduct of this weighty business. Unless nailed to my bed by the extremity of sickness, I will pursue it to the end. I will knock at the door of this sleeping and confounded Ministry, and will, if it be possible, rouse them to a sense of their danger. I contend not for indulgence, but for justice, to America. What is our right to persist in such cruel and vindictive acts against a loyal, respectable people? They say you have no right to tax them without their consent. They say truly. Representation and taxation must go together; they are inseparable. I therefore urge and conjure your lordships immediately to adopt this conciliating measure. If illegal violences have been, as it is said, committed in America, prepare the way — open the door of possibility for acknowledgment and satisfaction; but proceed not to such coercion - such proscription: cease your indiscriminate inflictions; amerce not thirty thousand; oppress not three millions; irritate them not to unappeasable rancor, for the fault of forty or fifty. Such severity of injustice must forever render incurable the wounds you have inflicted. What though you march from town to town, from province to province? What though you enforce a temporary and local submission; — how shall you secure the obedience of the country you leave behind you in your progress? - how grasp the dominion of eighteen hundred miles of continent, populous in numbers, strong in valor, liberty, and the means of resistance? The spirit which now resists your taxation in America, is the same which formerly opposed loans, benevolences, and shipmoney, in England; - the same spirit which called all England on its legs, and, by the Bill of Rights, vindicated the English Constitution; the same spirit which established the great fundamental essential maxim of your liberties, that no subject of England shall be taxed but by his own consent. This glorious Whig spirit animates three millions in America, who prefer povcrty, with liberty, to gilded chains and sordid affluence; and who will die in defence of their rights as men, as freemen. What shall oppose this spirit, aided by the congenial flame glowing in the breast of every Whig in England? ""Tis liberty to liberty |