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ORATORICAL EXTRACTS.

AGAINST THE CHARGE OF BRITISH PREDILECTION. RANDOLPH, (1811.)

AGAINST Whom are these charges of British predilection brought? Against men, who, in the war of the Revolution, were in the councils of the nation, or fighting the battles of your country. It is insufferable it cannot be borne. It must and ought, with severity to be put down in this house, and out of it to meet the lie direct! Strange, that we should have no objection to any other people or government, civilized or savage, in the whole world! The great Autocrat of all the Russias receives the homage of our high consideration. The Dey of Algiers and his divan of pirates, are very civil good sort of people, with whom we find no difficulty in maintaining the relations of peace and amity. Turks, Jews, and Infidels, Melimelli or the Little Turtle; barbarians and savages of every clime and every color, are welcome to our arms. With chiefs of banditti, negro or mulatto, we can treat and can trade. Name, however, but England, and all our antipathies are up in arms against her. Against

whom? Against those whose blood runs in our veins; in common with whom we claim Shakspeare, and Newton, and Chatham, for our countrymen; whose form of government is the freest on earth, our own only excepted; from whom every valuable principle of our own institutions has been borrowed-representation-trial by jury-voting the supplies-writ of habeas corpus-our whole civil and criminal jurisprudence ;-against our fellow-Protestants, identified in blood, in language, in religion with ourselves! In what school did the worthies of our land, the Washingtons, Henrys, Hancocks, Franklins, Rutledges of America, learn those principles of civil liberty, which were so nobly asserted by their wisdom and their valor? American resistance to British usurpation has not been more warmly cherished by these great men and their compatriots-by Washington, Hancock and Henry-than by Chatham, and his illustrious associates in the British Parliament. It ought to be remembered, too, that the heart of the English people was with us in our struggle. It was a selfish and corrupt ministry, and their servile tools, to whom we were not more opposed than they were. I trust that none such may ever exist among us; for tools will never be wanting to subserve the purposes, however ruinous or wicked, of kings and ministers of state. I acknowledge the influence of a Shakspeare and a Milton upon my imagination, of a Locke upon my understanding, of a Sydney upon my political principles, of a Chatham upon qualities, which, would to God, I possessed in common with that illustrious

man! and of a Tillotson, a Sherlock, and a Porteus, upon my religious principles and convictions. This is a British influence which I can never shake off!

THE ADVANTAGES OF CLASSICAL LEARNING. STORY.

I

THE importance of classical learning to professional education is so obvious, that the surprise is, that it could ever have become matter of disputation. speak not of its power in refining the taste, in disciplining the judgment, in invigorating the understanding, or in warming the heart with elevated sentiments; but of its power of direct, positive, necessary instruction. Until the eighteenth century, the mass of science, in its principal branches, was deposited in the dead languages, and much of it still reposes there. To be ignorant of these languages is to shut out the lights of former times, or to examine them only through the glimmerings of inadequate translations. What should we say of the jurist who never aspired to learn the maxims of law and equity which adorn the Roman codes? What of the physician who could deliberately surrender all the knowledge heaped up, for so many centuries, in the Latinity of continental Europe? What of the minister of religion who should choose not to study the Scriptures in the ori ental tongue, and should be content to trust his faith and his hopes, for time and for eternity, to the dimness of translations which may reflect the literal import,

but rarely can reflect, with unbroken force, the beautiful spirit of the text? Shall he, whose vocation it is "to allure to brighter worlds, and lead the way," be himself the blind leader of the blind? Shall he proclaim the doctrines of salvation, who knows not and cares not, whether he preaches an idle gloss or the genuine text of revelation? If a theologian may not pass his life in collating the various readings, he may and ought to aspire to that criticism which illustrates religion by all the resources of human learning— which studies the manners and institutions of the age and country in which Christianity was first promulgated-which kindles an enthusiasm for its precepts by familiarity with the persuasive language of Him who poured out his blessings on the innocent, and of Him at whose impressive appeal Felix trembled.

I pass over all consideration of the written treasures of antiquity which have survived the wreck of empires and dynasties-of instrumental trophies and triumphal arches-of palaces of princes and temples of the gods. I pass over all consideration of those admired compositions in which wisdom speaks as with a voice from heaven; of those sublime efforts of poetical genius, which still freshen, as they pass from age to age, with undying vigor; of those finished histories which still enlighten and instruct governments in their duty and their destiny; of those matchless orations which roused nations to arms and chained senates to the chariot wheels of all-conquering eloquence. These all may now be read in our vernacular tongue. Aye; as one remembers the face of a dead friend, by

gathering up the broken fragments of his image ;—as one listens to the tale of a dream twice-told;- as one catches the roar of the ocean in the ripple of a rivulet ;-as one sees the blaze of noon in the first glimmer of twilight.

There is one objection, however, on which I would for a moment dwell, because it has a commanding influence over many minds, and is clothed with a specious importance. It is often said, that there have been eminent men and eminent writers, to whom the ancient languages were unknown,-men who have risen by the force of their own talents, and writers who have written with a purity and ease which hold them up as models for imitation. On the other hand, it is as often said, that scholars do not always compose either with ease or chasteness; that their diction is sometimes loose and harsh, and sometimes ponderous and affected. Be it so: I am not disposed to call in question the accuracy of either statement. But I would, nevertheless, say that the presence of classical learning was not the cause of the faults of the one class, nor the absence of it the cause of the excellence of the other. And I would put this fact, as an answer to all such reasonings, that there is not a single language of modern Europe, in which literature has made any considerable advances, which is not directly of Roman origin, or has not incorporated into its very structure many, very many, of the idioms and peculiarities of the ancient tongues. The English language affords a strong illustration of the truth of this remark: it abounds with words and meanings drawn from clas

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