54. Character 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 5 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 10 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 15 a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of vol

canic 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, 20 their children, and their country hang on the decision

of the hour. Then words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked, and subdued, as in

the presence of higher qualities. Then, patriotism is 25 eloquent; then, self-devotion is eloquent. The clear

conception, out-running the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, inform

ing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, 30 right onward to his object—this, this is eloquence; or

rather it is something greater and higher than all eloquence, it is action, noble, sublime, godlike action.

Webster.

From the dark portals of the star chamber, and in the stern text of the acts of uniformity, the pilgrims received a commission, more efficient, than any that

All this pu

ever bore the royal seal. Their banishment to Hol5 land was fortunate ; the decline of their little company

in the strange land was fortunate ; the difficulties which they experienced in getting the royal consent to banish themselves to this wilderness were fortunate ;

all the tears and heartbreakings of that ever memo10 rable parting at Delfthaven, had the happiest influence

on the rising destinies of New England.
rified the ranks of the settlers These rough touches
of fortune brushed off the light, uncertain, selfish spir-

its. · They made it a grave, solemn, self-denying ex15 pedition, and required of those who engaged in it to be

so too. They cast a broad shadow of thought and seriousness over the cause, and if this sometimes deepened into melancholy and bitterness, can we find no apol

ogy for such a human weakness? 20 Their trials of wandering and exile, of the ocean,

the winter, the wilderness, and the savage foe, were the final assurances of success. It was these that put far away from our fathers' cause, all patrician softness,

all hereditary claims to preeminence. No effeminate 25 nobility crowded into the dark and austere ranks of

the pilgrims. No Carr nor Villiers would lead on the ill provided band of despised Puritans. No well endowed clergy were on the alert, to quit their cathedrals,

and set up a pompous hierarchy in the frozen wilder30 ness.

No craving governors were anxious to be sent over to our cheerless El Dorados of ice and of snow. No, they could not say they had encouraged, patronised, or helped the pilgrims; their own cares, their own

labours, their own councils, their own blood, contrived 35 all, achieved all, bore all, sealed all. They could not af

terwards fairly pretend to reap where they had not strewn ; and as our fathers reared this broad and solid fabric with pains and watchfulness, unaided, barely

tolerated, it did not fall when the favour, which had al40 ways been withholden, was changed into wrath; when

the arm which had never supported, was raised to destroy.

Methinks I see it now, that one solitary, adventurous vessel, the Mayflower of a forlorn hope, freighted with

45 the prospects of a future state, and bound across the unknown sea.

I behold it pursuing, with a thousand misgivings, the uncertain, the tedious voyage. Suns rise and set, and weeks, and months pass, and winter sur

prises them on the deep, but brings them not the sight 50 of the wished for shore. I see them now scantily sup

plied with provisions, crowded almost to suffocation in their illstored prison ;-delayed by calms, pursuing a circuitous route,--and now driven in fury before the raging tempest, on the high and giddy waves.

The aw55 ful voice of the storm howls through the rigging. The

labouring masts seem straining from their base ;--the dismal sound of the pumps is heard ;--the ship leaps, as it were, madly, from billow to billow ;-the ocean breaks,

and settles with ingulphing floods over the floating deck, 60 and beats with deadening, shivering weight, against the

staggered vessel.--I see them, escaped from these perils, pursuing their all but desperate undertaking, and landed at last, after a five months passage, on the ice clad

rocks of Plymouth,-weak and weary from the voyage, 65 ---poorly arıned, scantily provisioned, depending on the

charity of their ship-master for a draught of beer on board, drinking nothing but water on shore, --without shelter,--without means,-surrounded by hostile tribes.

Shut now the volume of history, and tell me, on any 70 principle of human probability, what shall be the fate of

this handful of adventurers.--Tell me, man of military science, in how many months were they all swept off by the thirty savage tribes, enumerated within the ear

ly limits of New England ? Tell me, politician, how 75 long did this shadow of a colony, on which your con

yond the sea; was it some, or all of these united, that hurried this forsaken company to their melancholy fate? -And is it possible that neither of these causes, that

not all combined, were able to blast this bud of hope ?90 Is it possible, that from a beginning so feeble, so frail,

so worthy, not so much of admiration as of pity, there has gone forth a progress so steady, a growth so wonderful, an expansion so ample, a reality so important, a promise, yet to be fulfilled, so glorious ? Everett.

56. The Progress of Poesy.
Woods, that wave o'er Delphi's steep;
Isles, that crown the Egean deep;
Fields, that cool Ilissus laves,

Or where Mæander's amber waves 5 In ling'ring lab'rinths creep,

How do your tuneful echoes languish,
Mute but to the voice of anguish!
Where each old poetic mountain,

Inspiration breath'd around;
10 Ev'ry shade and hallow'd fountain

Murmur'd deep a solemn sound :
Till the sad Nine, in Greece's evil hour,
Left their Parnassus for the Latian plains :

Alike they scorn the pomp of tyrant pow'r, 15 And coward vice, that revels in her chains.

When Latium had her lofty spirit lost,
They sought, O Albion ! next thy sea-encircled coast.

Far from the sun and summer gale,
In thy green lap was nature's darling laid,
20 What time, where lucid Avon stray'd,

To him the mighty mother did unveil
Her awful face; the dauntless child
Stretch'd forth his little arms and smil'd.

This pencil take, (she said,) whose colours clear 25 Richly paint the vernal year ;

Thine too these golden keys, immortal boy!
This can unlock the gates of joy ;
Of horror, that, and thrilling fears,
Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears.

30 Nor second he, that rode sublime

Upon the seraph wings of ecstacy,
The secrets of th' abyss to spy.
He pass'd the flaming bounds of space and time,

The living throne, the sapphire blaze, 35 Where angels tremble while they gaze,

He saw; but, blasted with excess of light,
Clos'd his eyes in endless night.
Behold, where Dryden's less presumptuous car

Wide o'er the fields of glory bear 40 Two coursers of ethereal race, With necks in thunder cloth’d, and long resounding pace.

Hark, his hands the lyre explore !
Bright-eyed fancy, hov’ring o’er,

Scatters from her pictur'd urn
45 Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.

But ah ! 'tis heard no more--
O lyre divine! what daring spirit
Wakes thee now? Though he inherit

Nor the pride nor ample pinion, 50 That the Theban eagle bear,

Sailing with supreme dominion
Through the azure deep of air :
Yet oft before his infant eyes would run

Such forms as glitter in the muse's ray, 55 With orient hues, unborrow'd of the sun ;

Yet shall he mount, and keep his distant way
Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate,
Beneath the good how far--but far above the great.

Gray.

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,

Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
5 Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air ;

Morn came, and went--and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation ; and all hearts