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speaker or a writer, though his style is not equally open to the objection of sameness; but they resemble each other in one striking particular. Their written compositions read like orations, their orations sound like written compositions: with a slight change in the commencement and conclusion, the speech becomes a critical essay, or the critical essay a speech; and both, with all their undoubted excellence, remind us of those ingenious patent contrivances which are constructed with a peculiar view to this sort of metamorphosis-the walking-stick, for example, which does duty as a fishing-rod when the head and ferule are screwed off.*

One of the first productions which brought Mr. Everett into notice was a discourse delivered at an academical society in the presence of Lafayette in 1824. The personal appeal to the illustrious visitor is a failure, but the discourse contains some great truths finely stated. For example:-

Our country is called, as it is, practical; but this is the element for intellectual action. No strongly-marked and high-toned literature, poetry, eloquence, or ethics, ever appeared but in the pressure, the din, and crowd of great interests, great enterprises, and perilous risks, and dazzling rewards. Statesmen, and warriors, and poets, and orators, and artists, start up under one and the same excitement. They are all branches of one stock. They form, and cheer, and stimulate; and, what is worth all the rest, understand each other; and it is as truly the sentiment of the student in the recesses of his cell, as of the soldier in the ranks, which breathes in the exclamation

To all the sons of sense proclaim,

One glorious hour of crowded life
Is worth an age without a name.'

The ages of Pericles, of Augustus, of Leo, of Louis the Fourteenth, of Elizabeth, of Anne, pass in review before us as we dwell upon this splendid stanza of Sir Walter Scott's. All these in one sense might be termed revolutionary periods, for the minds of men had been violently upstirred, and society was still rocking from the consequences of the shock. But what has this to do with the present condition of the people of the United States, who are practical as the population of Birmingham are practical? -and the sole magnates of intellect that distinguished community has sent forth are Mr. Joseph Parkes, Mr. Attwood, and Mr. Muntz, who are only just fit to illustrate an age of brass. Mr. Macaulay has produced many a gorgeous piece of historical painting, which it expands the mind and charms the imagination to dwell upon, but he has produced nothing more impres

* A collection of Mr. Macaulay's writings has been recently published in America, apparently without his leave.

sive than Mr. Everett's description of the landing of the first settlers:

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,-poorly armed, 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 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 early limits of New England? Tell me, politician, how long did this shadow of a colony, on which your conventions and treaties had not smiled, languish on the distant coast? Student of history, compare for me the baffled projects, the deserted settlements, the abandoned adventurers, of other times, and find the parallel of this. Was it the winter's storm, beating upon the houseless heads of women and children; was it hard labour and spare meals; was it disease; was it the tomahawk; was it the deep malady of a blighted hope, a ruined enterprise, and a broken heart, aching in its last moments at the recollection of the loved and left beyond 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? 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, a reality so important, a promise yet to be fulfilled so glorious?'

Every orator before us has tried his hand at this topic, and put forth all his strength to heighten the contrast between the past and present condition of the colonies. But how ineffably inferior are all of them to Burke! The passage is familiar to the reader of taste; but as we shall have occasion to allude to it again, we think it best to save the trouble of reference :

Mr. Speaker, I cannot prevail on myself to hurry over this great consideration. It is good for us to be here. We stand where we have an immense view of what is, and what is past. Clouds, indeed, and darkness rest upon the future. Let us, however, before we descend from this noble eminence, reflect that this growth of our national prosperity has happened within the short period of the life of man. It has happened within sixty-eight years. There are those alive whose memory might touch the two extremities. For instance, my Lord Bathurst might remember all the stages of its progress. He was in 1704 of an age at least to be made to comprehend such things. . . . If, amidst these bright and happy scenes of domestic honour and prosperity, that angel should have drawn up the curtain, and unfolded the rising glories of his country, and whilst he was gazing with admiration on the then commercial grandeur of England, the genius should point out to him a

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little speck, scarce visible in the mass of the national interest, a small seminal principle, rather than a formed body, and should tell him,Young man, there is America-which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world. Whatever England has been growing to by a progressive increase of improvement, brought in by varieties of people, by succession of civilising conquests and civilising settlements in a series of seventeen hundred years, you shall see as much added to her by America in the course of a single life!" If this state of his country had been foretold to him, would it not require all the sanguine credulity of youth, and all the fervid glow of enthusiasm, to make him believe it? Fortunate man, he has lived to see it! Fortunate indeed, if he lives to see nothing that shall vary the prospect, and cloud the setting of his day.'

If the invitations to these annual spouting-matches were headed with this passage, or it were inscribed on a plain tablet on the traditional landing-place at Plymouth, we cannot help thinking that a great deal of useless trouble might be saved. How well it justifies the remark of Fox: 'I cannot bear this thing in anybody but Burke, and he cannot help it.'

Daniel Webster was born in 1782, the son of a New Hampshire farmer. Like the Dean of St. Patrick's, and many others besides, he showed no signs of talent in early youth, and it was contrary to the wishes of his family that he undertook the study of the law. He was called to the bar in 1805, and began the practice of his profession in a small village, but removed in 1807 to Portsmouth, the capital of the county, where he soon acquired . celebrity. He became a member of Congress in 1812, and distinguished himself by his exertions to place the currency of the United States on a sound footing. In 1816, his pecuniary means having been much straitened by the consequences of a fire, he removed to Boston, and gave up all his time to his profession. The experiment was attended with complete success, and in a very short period his practice equalled that of any member of the American bar.

Many of his law-arguments are good specimens of this kind of composition; but his speech on the prosecution of Knapp (tried for murder), from which Miss Martineau quotes largely, and with high commendation, appears to us more remarkable for affectation than force: e. g.

'The room was uncommonly open to the admission of light. The face of the innocent sleeper was turned from the murderer, and the beams of the moon, resting on the grey locks of his aged temple, showed him where to strike. The fatal blow is given! and the victim passes, without a struggle or a motion, from the repose of sleep to the repose of

death!

death! It is the assassin's purpose to make sure work; and he yet plies the dagger, though it was obvious that life had been destroyed by the blow of the bludgeon.- He even raises the aged arm, that he may not fail in his aim at the heart, and replaces it again over the wounds of the poniard! To finish the picture, he explores the wrist for the pulse! He feels for it, and ascertains that it beats no longer! It is accomplished. The deed is done. He retreats, retraces his steps to the window, passes out through it as he came in, and escapes. He has done the murder-no eye has seen him, no ear has heard him. The secret is his own, and it is safe!

Ah! gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake. Such a secret can be safe nowhere. The whole creation of God has neither nook nor corner, where the guilty can bestow it, and say it is safe. Not to speak of that eye which glances through all disguises, and beholds everything, as in the splendour of noon,-such secrets of guilt are never safe from detection, even by men. True it is, generally speaking, that "murder will out." True it is, that Providence hath so ordained, and doth so govern things, that those who break the great law of heaven, by shedding man's blood, seldom succeed in avoiding discovery. Especially, in a case exciting so much attention as this, discovery must come, and will come, sooner or later.'

Miss Martineau informs us that, on the eve of the trial, Mr. Webster asked whether there was anything remarkable about any of the jury. The answer was, that the foreman was a man of remarkably tender conscience, and Miss Martineau entertains no doubt that the concluding passage was intended for his especial benefit:

'A sense of duty pursues us ever. It is omnipresent like the Deity. If we take to ourselves the wings of the morning, and dwell in the utmost parts of the seas, duty performed, or duty violated, is still with us, for our happiness or our misery. If we say the darkness shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light our obligations are yet with us. We cannot escape their power, nor fly from their presence. They are with us in this life, will be with us at its close; and in that scene of inconceivable solemnity which lies yet further onward, we shall still find ourselves surrounded by the consciousness of duty to pain us wherever it has been violated, and to console us so far as God may have given us grace to perform it.'

We suspect that in general such considerations are as well suppressed in an address to a jury. If there be a delicate conscience it needs no stimulus to act-and a dull one will be more sensible to arguments of a more mundane sort. The late Rowland Hill understood human nature well. His chapel having been infested by pickpockets, he took occasion to remind the congregation that there was an all-seeing Providence, to whom all hearts were open and from whom no secrets were hid; but lest,' he added, there may be any present who are insensible to such reflections,

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I beg leave to state that there are also two Bow-street officers on the look-out.'

During the period of his retirement Mr. Webster found time to write for the North American Review an answer to an article of ours on the American law of debtor and creditor. (Q. R., May, 1819. We have no wish to revive the controversy, and shall therefore content ourselves with bearing willing testimony to the tone and taste of Mr. Webster's observations. Some of them may surprise such of our readers as are not aware that the most enlightened of the American statesmen are fully alive to the importance of the grand principle on which alone good government can be based in any country:

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If the property cannot retain the political power, the political power will draw after it the property. If orator Hunt and his fellow-labourers should, by any means, obtain more political influence in the counties, towns, and boroughs of England, than the Marquis of Buckingham, Lord Stafford, Lord Fitzwilliam, and the other noblemen and gentlemen of great landed estates, these estates would inevitably change hands. At least so it seems to us; and therefore, when Sir Francis Burdett, the Marquis of Tavistock, and other individuals of rank and fortune, propose to introduce into the government annual parliaments and universal suffrage, we can hardly forbear inquiring whether they are ready to agree that property should be as equally divided as political power; and if not, how they expect to sever things which to us appear to be intimately connected.'

Sir Francis Burdett has come to a different conclusion since the Reform Bill experiment, and so, we believe, have most of the other individuals of rank and fortune alluded to; but, unluckily, he is the only one amongst them who has had the manliness to act upon his convictions.

supposing all this to

At the end of seven years Mr. Webster had gained enough to justify his return to public life; and in January, 1823, he delivered one of the speeches which have done most towards the diffusion of his fame,-a speech in favour of the Greeks. The following passage is much and justly admired:'It may, in the next place, be asked, perhaps, be true, what can we do? Are we to go to war? Are we to interfere in the Greek cause, or any other European cause? Are we to endanger our pacific relations ?-Ño, certainly not. What, then, the question recurs, remains for us? If we will not endanger our own peace; if we will neither furnish armies nor navies to the cause which we think the just one, what is there within our power?

Sir, this reasoning mistakes the age. The time has been, indeed, when fleets, and armies, and subsidies, were the principal reliances even in the best cause. But, happily for mankind, there has arrived a great change in this respect. Moral causes come into consideration, in proportion as the progress of knowledge is advanced; and the public

opinion

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