page of the history of this country affords, suffer your liber ties to be ravished from you by lawless force, or cajoled away by flattery and fraud. CXLVI.-ON THE BOSTON MASSACRE. JOSEPH WARREN. APPROACH We then the melancholy walk of death. Hither let me call the gay companion; here let me drop a farewell tear upon that body which so late he saw vigorous and warm with social mirth; hither let me lead the tender mother to weep over her beloved son-come, widowed mourner, here satiate thy grief; behold thy murdered husband gasping on the ground, and to complete the pompous show of wretchedness, bring in each hand thy infant children to bewail their father's fate-take heed, ye orphan babes, lest, whilst your streaming eyes are fixed upou the ghastly corpse, your feet slide on the stones bespattered with your father's brains! Enough; this tragedy need not be heightened by an infant weltering in the blood of him that gave it birth. Nature reluctant, shrinks already from the view, and the chilled blood rolls slowly backward to its fountain. We wildly stare about, and with amazement ask, who spread this ruin about us? What wretch has dared deface the image of his God? Has haughty France or cruel Spain sent forth her myrmidons? Has the grim savage rushed again from the far distant wilderness; or does some fiend, fierce from the depth of hell, with all the rancorous malice which the apostate damned can feel, twang her destructive bow, and hurl her deadly arrows at our breasts? No, none of these-but, how astonishing! it is the hand of Britain that inflicts the wound! The arms of George, our rightful king, have been employed to shed that blood, when justice, or the honor of his crown, had called his subjects to the field. But pity, grief, astonishment, with all the soft movements of the soul, must now give way to stronger passions. Say, fellow-citizens, what dreadful thought now swells your heavy bosoms; you fly to arms-sharp indignation flashes from each eye--revenge gnashes her iron teeth--death grins MEN WHO NEVER DIE. 197 a hideous smile, secure to drench his greedy jaws in human gore whilst hovering furies darken all the air! But stop, my bold adventurous countrymen; stain not your weapons with the blood of Britons. Attend to reason's voice; humanity puts in her claim, and sues to be again admitted to her wonted seat, the bosom of the brave. Revenge is far beneath the noble mind. Many, perhaps, compelled to rauk among the vile assassins, do from their inmost souls, detest the barbarous action. The winged death, shot from your arms, may chance to pierce some breast that bleeds already for your injured country. CXLVII.-MEN WHO NEVER DIE. EDWARD EVERETT. WE dismiss them not to the chambers of forgetfulness and death. What we admired, and prized, and venerated in them, can never be forgotten. I had almost said that they are now beginning to live; to live that life of unimpaired. influence, of unclouded fame, of unmingled happiness, for which their talents and services were destined. Such men do not, cannot die. To be cold and breathless; to feel not and speak not; this is not the end of existence to the men who have breathed their spirits into the institutions of their country, who have stamped their characters on the pillars of the age, who have poured their hearts' blood into the channels of the public prosperity. Tell me, ye who tread the sods of yon sacred height, is Warren dead? Can you not still see him, not pale and prostrate, the blood of his gallant heart pouring out of his ghastly wound, but moving resplendent over the field of honor, with the rose of heaven upon his cheek, and the fire of liberty in his eye? Tell me, ye who make your pious pilgrimage to the shades of Vernon, is Washington indeed shut up in that cold and narrow house? That which made these men, and men like these, cannot die. The hand that traced the charter of independence is, indeed, motionless; the eloquent lips that sustained it are hushed; but the lofty spirits that conceived, resolved, and maintained it, and which alone, to such men, "make it life to live," these cannot expire ; "These shall resist the empire of decay, CXLVIII.-LITERARY POSITION OF AMERICA. JOSEPH STORY. We To us, Americans, nothing, indeed, can, or ought to be indifferent, that respects the cause of science and literature. We have taken a stand among the nations of the earth, and have successfully asserted our claim to political equality. We possess an enviable elevation, so far as concerns the structure of our government, our political policy, and the moral energy of our institutions. If we are not without rivals in these respects, we are hardly behind any, even in the general estimate of foreign nations themselves. But our claims are far more extensive. We assert an equality of voice and vote in the republic of letters, and assume for ourselves the right to decide on the merits of others, as well as to vindicate our own. These are lofty pretensions, which are never conceded without proofs, and are severely scrutinized, and slowly admitted by the grave judges in the tribunal of letters. have not placed ourselves as humble aspirants, seeking our way to higher rewards under the guardianship of experienced guides. We ask admission into the temple of fame, as joint heirs of the inheritance, capable in the manhood of our strength of maintaining our title. We contend for prizes with nations whose intellectual glory has received the homage of centuries. France, Italy, Germany, England, can point to the past for monuments of their genius and skill, and to the present with the undismayed confidence of veterans. It is not for us to retire from the ground which we have chosen to occupy, nor to shut our eyes against the difficulties of maintaining it. It is not by a few vain boasts, or vainer self-complacency, or rash daring, that we are to win our way to the first literary distinction. We must do as others have done before us. We must serve in the hard school of discipline; we must invigorate our powers by the studies of other times. We must guide our footsteps by those stars which have shone, and still continue to shine, with inextinguishable light in the WHEN WAR SHALL BE NO MORE. 199 firmament of learning. Nor have we any reason for despondency. There is that in American character which has never yet been found unequal to its purpose. There is that in American enterprise, which shrinks not, and faints not, and fails not in its labors. We may say with honest pride, "Man is the nobler growth our realms supply, And souls are ripened in our northern sky." We may not then shrink from a rigorous examination of our own deficiencies in science and literature. If we have but a just sense of our wants, we have gained half the victory. If we but face our difficulties, they will fly before us. We have solid claims upon the affection and respect of mankind. Let us not jeopard them by a false shame, or an ostentatious pride. CXLIX.--WHEN WAR SHALL BE NO MORE. ANONYMOUS. DEATH shall hereafter work alone and single-handed, unaided by his most terrible auxiliary. The world shall repose in quiet. Far down the vista of futurity the tribes of human kind are seen mingling in fraternal harmony, wondering and shuddering as they read of former brutality, and exulting at their own more fortunate lot. They turn their grateful eyes upon us. Their countenances are not suffused with tears, nor streaked with kindred blood. We hear their voices; they are not swelling with tones of general wailing and despair. We look at their smiling fields, undevastated by the hand of rapine; they are waving with yellow harvests, or toaded with golden fruits; and their sunny pastures are filled with quiet herds, which have never known the wanton ravage of war. We turn to the peaceful homes where our infancy has been cradled; they stand undespoiled by the hand of the destroyer. The scenes where we indulged our childish sports have never been profaned by hostile feet; and the tall groves, where we performed our feats of school-boy dexterity, have never been desecrated to obtain the implements of human destruction. Then our thoughts extend and embrace the land of our birth, the institutions and laws we so much venerate, and something whispers us they shall endure forever; that all time shall witness their increasing perfection ; that all nations shall copy from its example, and derive interminable benefits from its influence; for war, the destroyer of every valuable institution, the great and sole cause of all national ruin, is soon to be seen no more forever. CL. A PICTURE OF TERROR. THOMAS C. UPHAM. AT the dreadful period of the French Revolution, it was found that the glittering sword of war could strike upward, as well as downward; among the high and the mighty, as well as among the poor and powerless peasants. The scythe fell upon the neck of princes; those who had been clothed in purple and fine linen, were arrayed in beggar's rags and ate their crumbs in a dungeon; the innocent children died with the guilty fathers; delicate women, the delight of their friends and the ruling star of palaces, were smitten by the hand of the destroyer, and bowed their heads in blood. And there were beheld the hundred guillotines, the horrid invention of the fusillades, the drownings in the Loire, the dreadful devastations of La Vendee, the gathering of armies on the plains of Italy, the bridge of Lodi, and the battle of Ma rengo. These were the beginnings of terrors, the opening of the incipient seal; but the end was not yet. For twenty successive years, the apocalypse of the book of war opened itself from one end of Europe to the other, and on the ocean as well as on the land, in the thunders and fires which at once shook, and enlightened, and awed the world, of the Nile and Trafalgar, of Jena and Austerlitz, together with the dashing of throne against throne, and of nation against nation. At length the white horse of death" was seen taking his way through the centre of Europe, and power was given him to kill with the sword and with hunger; and he was followed by "the beasts of the earth," an army of five hundred soldiers, and they were all offered up as victims on the frozen fields of Russia; and the Kremlin, and the ancient and mighty city of Moscow, were burnt upon their funeral pyre. The 66 |