torture. Already they seem to sigh in the west wind-already they mingle with every echo from the mountains.'

In order to make the resemblance to Burke more complete, the speaker steals a second feather from his wing:

'For when the fiery vapours of the war lowered in the skirts of our horizon, all our wishes were concentred in this one, that we might escape the desolation of the storm. This treaty, like a rainbow on the edge of the cloud, marked to our eyes the space where it was raging, and afforded, at the same time, the sure prognostic of fair weather. If we reject it, the vivid colours will grow pale, it will be a baleful meteor portending tempest and war.'

This is not exactly the famous Hyder-Ali image, but it is an obvious and rather clumsy imitation of it. A compliment was paid him at the conclusion of this speech, similar to that paid by Pitt to Sheridan at the conclusion of his famous Begum speech." A member of the opposite party objected to taking a vote at that time, as they had been carried away by the impulse of oratory.

Ill health compelled him to retire into private life, but he viewed the progress of ultra-democratic opinions with ever-deepening interest and alarm, and continued to write a great deal on public matters down to his death in 1808. He was a man of warm devotional feelings, and is reported to have said, I will hazard the assertion that no man ever did or ever will become truly eloquent, without being a constant reader of the Bible, and an admirer of the purity and sublimity of its language.'

We should have said more of Mr. Ames on this occasion, had we not given an article in a former Number to his political essays. They were collected and published the year after his death, in America; and a selection from them was printed here, in 1835, under this title: The Influence of Democracy on Liberty, Property, and the Happiness of Society, considered, by an American.' The appearance of that most remarkable volume was opportune; and it supplied us with some specimens of profound reasoning and terse energetic eloquence, which, we should hope, our readers are not likely to have forgotten. †

John Quincy Adams, the son of the orator of the revolutionary congress, was bred to the bar, and his name occurs once or twice in the Reports of the decisions of the supreme court; but he quitted this career for diplomacy, and filled the situation of minister at various foreign courts successively. The rest of his time was actively devoted to general politics, and in 1825 he was elected President. His studies have been as multifarious as his avocations: he affects to know (and really does know almost)

Let those who judge of speeches by the reported passages account for the praises lavished by cotemporaries, without one dissenting voice, on this speech of Sheridan's. + See Quart. Rev., vol. liii, p. 548.

everything:

everything his speeches are profusely interspersed with literary allusions, and no description of subject is rejected as alien to his pursuits. Whenever a Philosophic Society or learned Institution required an inaugural address, he was ready with one: when an eulogy was to be pronounced on Lafayette, he was selected by congress to pronounce it; and his anniversary orations are numberless. The only specimens to be found in Mr. Willison's fivevolume collection are his inaugural address as President in 1825 -a manly, statesmanlike, and spirited appeal-and an oration delivered at Plymouth, New England, Dec. 22, 1802, at the anniversary commemoration of the landing of the first settlers, commonly called the Pilgrims, at that place. One grand object on these occasions is to vindicate the purity of North American descent:

"the

The founders of your race are not handed down to you, like the father of the Roman people, as the sucklings of a wolf. You are not descended from a nauseous compound of fanaticism and sensuality, whose only argument was the sword, and whose only paradise was a brothel. No Gothic scourge of God; no Vandal pest of nations; no fabled fugitive from the flames of Troy; no bastard Norman tyrant appears among the list of worthies who first landed on the rock which your veneration has preserved as a lasting monument of their achievement. The great actors of the day we now solemnise were illustrious by their intrepid valour, no less than by their Christian graces; but the clarion of conquest has not blazoned forth their names to all the winds of Heaven. Their glory has not been wafted over oceans of blood to the remotest regions of the Earth. They have not erected to themselves colossal statues upon pedestals of human bones, to provoke and insult the tardy hand of heavenly retribution. But theirs was better fortitude of patience and heroic martyrdom." Theirs was the gentle temper of Christian kindness; the rigorous observance of reciprocal justice; the unconquerable soul of conscious integrity. Worldly fame has been parsimonious of her favour to the memory of those generous champions. Their numbers were small; their stations in life obscure; the object of their enterprise unostentatious; the theatre of their exploits remote: how could they possibly be favourites of worldly fame? That common crier, whose existence is only known by the assemblage of multitudes: that pander of wealth and greatness, so eager to haunt the palaces of fortune, and so fastidious to the houseless dignity of virtue that parasite of pride, ever scornful to meekness, and ever obsequious to insolent power: that heedless trumpeter, whose ears are deaf to modest merit, and whose eyes are blind to bloodless, distant excellence.'

:

When, amongst other grounds of complaint against the English army for burning Washington, it was urged that the national records had been destroyed, the Courier' newspaper replied, that this part of the mischief might be easily repaired by presenting congress with a complete copy of The Newgate Calendar;'

and

and when a Virginian fine gentleman was once boasting of his family jewels, he was thrown into a frenzy by an English traveller, who inquired whether he meant the irons in which his ancestor made his escape. These are jokes addressed to popular ignorance; but at the same time it might be as well to avoid invidious contrasts, since even English refugees for conscience' sake can hardly be better born than Englishmen, and the population of North America has certainly received considerable additions from a class described by Barrington, the famous pickpocket, in a prologue spoken in New South Wales:

True patriots we; for, be it understood,

We left our country for our country's good.'*

Mr. Adams continues

'Preserve, in all their purity, refine, if possible, from all their alloy, those virtues which we this day commemorate as the ornament of our forefathers. Adhere to them with inflexible resolution, as to the horns of the altar; instil them with unwearied perseverance into the minds of your children; bind your souls and theirs to the national union as the chords of life are centred in the heart, and you shall soar with rapid and steady wing to the summit of human glory. Nearly a century ago one of those rare minds to whom it is given to discern future greatness in its seminal principles, upon contemplating the situation of this continent, pronounced in a vein of poetic inspiration,

Westward the Star of empire takes its way.'

Let us all unite in ardent supplications to the Founder of nations and the Builder of worlds, that what then was prophecy may continue unfolding into history-that the dearest hopes of the human race may not be extinguished in disappointment, and that the last may prove the noblest empire of time.'

The line of verse is taken from a stanza by Bishop Berkeley: "Westward the course of empire takes its way.

The four first acts already past,

A fifth shall close the drama with the day.

Time's noblest offspring is the last."

How lamentably the thought is impaired in the citation by the change of a word! Still this is the purest piece of rhetorical composition we have hitherto discovered in the progress of this inquiry.

We should do Mr. Adams injustice were we not to add that he possesses higher merits than occasional force or felicity of style. His political views are almost uniformly broad and enlightened; and his speech on the affair of Texas has been pronounced by good judges to be altogether the most statesman

* Mr. Barrington was finally transported for a most successful attendance at a drawing-room of Queen Charlotte's in the character of an Irish bishop; the lawn sleeves were found crammed full with stars and diamonds. He rose subsequently to be stage-manager and high sheriff at Botany Bay.

like ever delivered in North America. His voice, now broken by age, was once clear and musical, and his look and manner are remarkably impressive. Commemorative discourses are usually delivered in a church or meeting-house, and the venerable ex-president, addressing a large audience from the pulpit with all the animation of his youth, might form as good a subject for a picture as John Knox.

Josiah Quincy is the son of a Boston patriot bearing the same names, who died in 1775, but was considered to have sufficient claims on the gratitude of his countrymen to justify a Life by his son; though, be it observed, this is a tribute which has become very common, and is not always, as in the present instance, justified by circumstances and the real merits of the man. Josiah, fils, though we believe bred to the bar, has paid more attention to literature than law. He is reckoned an excellent classic, and has filled the post of president of Harward university for several years. He is a productive composer of anniversary harangues; but his two best speeches were made as a member of congress. In 1808 he spoke in support of a resolution to resist the edicts of the belligerent powers, which had the effect of restricting the commerce of the United States:

'Gentlemen exclaim, Great Britain "smites us on one cheek ;" and what does administration? It turns the other also. Gentlemen say, Great Britain is a robber; she "takes our cloak ;" and what say administration? "Let her take our coat also." France and Great Britain require you to relinquish a part of your commerce, and you yield it entirely. Sir, this conduct may be the way to dignity and honour in another world, but it will never secure safety and independence in this. . . . . But I shall be told, "this may lead to war." I ask, “ are we now at peace?" Certainly not, unless retiring from insult be peace; unless shrinking under the lash be peace. The surest way to prevent war is not to fear it. The idea that nothing on earth is so dreadful as war is inculcated too studiously among us. Disgrace is worse. Abandonment of essential rights is worse.'

We cannot venture to say that the following passage is in strict accordance with modern English taste; but we are quite sure that, had an Irish orator uttered it, his cotemporaries would have applauded and his biographers recorded it :

'But it has been asked in debate, "will not Massachusetts, the cradle of liberty, submit to such privations?" An embargo liberty was never cradled in Massachusetts. Our liberty was not so much a mountain as a sea-nymph. She was free as air. She could swim, or she could run. The ocean was her cradle. Our fathers met her as she came, like the goddess of beauty, from the waves. They caught her as she was sporting on the beach. They courted her whilst she was spreading her nets upon the rocks. But an embargo liberty; a handcuffed liberty; a liberty in fetters; a liberty traversing between the four sides of a prison and beat

ing her head against the walls, is none of our offspring. We abjure the monster. Its parentage is all inland.'

Yet let us do justice to Ireland. Grattan's personification was immeasurably superior: Short-lived, indeed, was Irish independence. I sat by her cradle,-I followed her hearse.'

The subject of Mr. Quincy's other great speech was the admission of Louisiana into the Union. His exordium (too long to quote) is admirable, though suddenly broken off by an appeal to the Chair. One of Lord Chatham's favourite modes of arresting attention was to say something startling for the express purpose of provoking a call to order; and we incline to think that Mr. Quincy had laid a trap for an interruption with the same view; for it is stated to us, on good authority, that he invariably learns his speeches by heart, though he, notwithstanding, contrives to deliver them with the required energy. This is one of the most difficult attainments in oratory; for, to do it well, it is necessary to reproduce the same state of thought and feeling under which the oration was composed. Unluckily the writer is more apt to feel like the litigant who complained to Lysias that the speech provided for him read well enough the first and second time, but sounded rather flat the third and fourth. The audience,' replied Lysias, are only to hear it once.' To put themselves as nearly as possible on a level with the audience in this respect, the practice of the best speakers is to meditate the subject thoroughly, fill their minds with arguments and illustrations, select and arrange the best topics, and trust to the excitement of the moment for the language and the tone.

6

William Wirt, the biographer of Patrick Henry, has done more than enough, according to American notions, to earn a biographer for himself. He was born in Maryland in 1772, and, after a successful forensic career, was made Attorney-General to the United States, under the presidency of Monroe. He is known in literature by a series of essays, called 'The British Spy,' written with a clearness, spirit, and facility, which, independently of extraneous evidence, would lead to the conclusion that he was calculated to excel in oratory. The fact, however, is satisfactorily established by his reported speeches, one of which has attained a high degree of celebrity-his speech against Aaron Burr, prosecuted in 1807 for treason in preparing the means of a military expedition against Mexico, a territory of the King of Spain, with whom the United States were at peace.

The following satirical sketch of his opponent's style (Mr. Wickham) may serve to exemplify his command of language: 'I will treat that gentleman with candour. If I misrepresent him, it will not be intentionally. I will not follow the example which he has set me on a very recent occasion. I will not complain of flowers and

graces