Before the Trosach's rugged jaws:
And here, the horse and spearmen pause,
While to explore the dangerous glen,
Dive through the pass the archer men.

3. At once, there rose so wild a yell
Within that dark and narrow dell,
As all the fiends from heaven that fell,
Had pealed the banner-cry of hell!
Forth from the pass, in tumult driven,
Like chaff before the wind of heaven,
The archery appear.

For life! for life! their flight they ply;
While shriek, and shout, and battle-cry,
And plaids and bonnets waving high,
And broad-swords flashing to the sky,
Are maddening in their rear.
Onward they drive in dreadful race,
Pursuers and pursued;

Before that tide of flight and chase,
How shall it keep its rooted place,
The spearmen's twilight wood?
"Down! down!" cried Mar, "your lances down!
Bear back both friend and foe!"
Like reeds before the tempest's frown,
That serried grove of lances brown
At once lay leveled low;

And closely shouldering side to side,
The bristling ranks the onset bide.
"We'll quell the savage mountaineer,
As their Tinchel* cows the game!
They come as fleet as mountain deer,
We'll drive them back as tame."

4. Bearing before them in their course
The relics of the archer force,

Like wave with crest of sparkling foam,
Right onward did Clan-Alpine come.
Above their tide, each broad-sword bright
Was brandishing like gleam of light,
Each targe was dark below;
And with the ocean's mighty swing,
When heaving to the tempest's wing,
They hurled them on the foe.

I heard the lance's shivering crash,
As when the whirlwind rends the ash;
I heard the broad-sword's deadly clang,
As if a hundred anvils rang;

But Moray wheeled his trereward rank
Of horsemen, on Clan-Alpine's flank;

A circle of hunters, who wholly surround a great space, and gradually nar

rowing, bring large numbers of deer together.

"My banner-man, advance!

I see," he cried, "their columns shake:
Now, gallants! for your ladies' sake,
Upon them with the lance!"

The horsemen dashed among the rout
As deer break through the broom;
Their steeds are stout, their swords are out,
They soon made +lightsome room.
Clan-Alpine's best are backward borne;
Where, where was Roderick then ?
One blast upon
his bugle-horn

Were worth a thousand men.

And refluent through the pass of fear,
The battle's tide was poured;
Vanished the Saxon's struggling spear,
Vanished the mountain sword.
As Bracklinn's +chasm, so black and steep
Receives her roaring linn,

As the dark caverns of the deep
Suck the wild whirlpool in,
So did the deep and darksome pass
Devour the battle's mingled mass;
None linger now upon the plain,
Save those who ne'er shall fight again.

WALTER SCOTT.

LESSON CXCII.

LORD BROUGHAM'S ELOQUENCE.

1. THERE sits upon the first bench on the speaker's left, a figure which seems as though it had hung over the lamp of study, till not only all the blood of life merely, but even the energy of life itself had been on the very verge of extinction; and yet, upon this apparently helpless figure, the eyes of the whole House are turned. During the time that the figure is slowly uncoiling itself to something like a vertical zigzag of stiffly jointed lines, every *cranny of the gallery is becoming wedged like the archstones of a vault, the quillmen in your rear are muttering their curses, and half a dozen heedless zealots on both sides, who were about to claim the floor, drop down as if the speaker had an air-gun concealed under his cloak.

2. After this bustle of preparation, and amid the silence which follows it, Henry Brougham takes a slow and hesitating step toward the table, where he stands crouched together, his shoulders pulled up, his head bent forward, and his upper lip and nostril agitated by a tremulous motion, as though he were afraid to utter

+

The

even a single sentence. His air and manner are very much like those of a field-preacher of olden times, when the purity of religion was preserved and propagated in the wilderness. tones of his voice are full and melodious; but they come forth slow, hesitating, and apparently with pain; so that you are left in doubt whether the intellectual power of the man may not be unable to master the subject, or his physical strength to give it

utterance.

3. His first sentences, or rather the first members of his sentences, (for you soon find, that with him a sentence is more extended, both in form and in substance, than the whole oration of other men,) come forth cold and irresolute, and withal apparently wide of the subject. Each of them is, indeed, profound and satisfactory in itself, evidently deduced from the most chosen materials, and containing the very essence of the subject, in exactly the most appropriate words. When a sufficient number of these propositions have been enunciated in a manner which carries the demonstration with it; when every auxiliary, that the range of human knowledge can furnish for the firm establishment of the +ultimate conclusion, has been pressed into service; when the whole array of political and moral truth has been put in order; it moves on to a conclusion, firm as a Macedonian phalanx, and irresistible as a bayonet charge of the mountaineers of the North.

4. One position having been carried with the appearance of weakness and irresolution, but with a reality of power and determination which makes itself to be felt in the certainty with which it commands your assent, the orator rises upon it both in body and mind, and wins a second by a more bold and brief attack. To a second, succeeds a third; to a third, a fourth; and so on, till the whole principle and the whole philosophy of the question have acknowledged their conqueror; till every man in the House is as irresistibly convinced of the truth, the abstract truth, as he is of his own existence; so that if Brougham were to pause even here, he would be entitled to take his station as the foremost master of

reason.

5. When he has thus laid the foundation in the utmost extent of philosophy, the profoundest depth of reason; when he has returned to it again, applying the line and the plummet, and feeling with the touch of a giant to ascertain that it is secure; when he has bound the understandings of his auditors in cords of argument, which they are equally indisposed and unable to break, he vaults upon the subdued basis, calls forth the passions from their inmost +recesses, and overtops and shakes the gaping members and the echoing House. That voice, which was so low and unpretending, now assumes the deepening roar and determined swell of the ocean.

That form, which at the beginning seemed to be sinking under its own weight, now looks as if it were nerved with steel, strung with brass, and immortal and unchangeable as the truths, which in the calmer words he uttered. That countenance, which aforetime bore the hue and coldness of stone, is now animated at every point and beaming in every feature, as though the mighty utterance were all +inadequate to the mighty spirit within; and those eyes, which, when he began, turned their blue and tranquil disks on you, as if supplicating your forbearance, now shoot forth their meteor fires, till all, upon whom they beam, kindle into admiration, and men of all parties wish in their hearts, that Brougham were of us." So concludes the second, the impassionate or declamatory part of the speech.

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one

6. When he has gained what you imagine to be the tacme of powerful speaking; when he appears to be looking round, as if to see, and sneer at, the adoration which he has commanded; his figure sinks down and recoils itself, and his voice falls to the most extraordinary whisper ever uttered by man. This singular + cadence, or rather drooping down of expression, of action, and of voice which Brougham possesses in greater perfection than any speaker I have ever heard, has a wonderful effect; and those low, solemn, and muttered words, which are perfectly audible, have a power in them that you can not resist. That crouching together of the body is no symptom of weakness, and that falling of the voice is no prelude either to fear or to humility; it is the bending of the wrestler, in order that he may twine his antagonist irresistibly in his grasp; the crouching of the tiger, in order that he may pounce with more terrible certainty on his prey; it is the signal, that Brougham is putting on his whole armor, and about to grasp the mightiest of his weapons.

+

7. In his argument, he has been clear and convincing; in his appeal to the passions, though somewhat haughty and hard, he has been successful; he is now about to set his superhuman shaft upon the string; he is to become dreadful in his invective. Woe be to that man upon whom that eye, erewhile so calm and blue, glares from the mysterious concealment of those puckered brows! Woe to the wight to whom those half-whispered words are a presage of what is on the wing!

8. In casting your eyes around the House, you will find more than one looking about with fearful apprehension, like the navigator in the Chinese seas, when he eyes the lurid calm in one point of the horizon, which tells him, that, ere the minute glass can be turned, the typhoon shall come in its gale of destruction from another; you would perceive one small man trembling and twittering, as little birds do when within hearing distance of rattlesnakes,

conscious of danger, yet deprived of even the means of self-protection, and courting destruction with the most piteous and frantic +imbecility; you would perceive a slender antagonist, clutching the back of the bench, with quivering talons, lest the coming tempest should sweep him away; or you would see the portly figure of the representative of the quorum of some fat county, delving both his fists into the cushion, fully resolved that if a man of his weight should be blown out of the house, he would yet secure his seat, by carrying it along with him.

9. It comes; the words, which were so low and muttered, become so loud, that the speaker absolutely drowns the cheering of his own party; and after he has peeled some helpless offender to the bones, and tossed about his remains through all the modes and forms of speech, the body of the orator, being subdued and beaten down by the energy of his own mind, sinks down, giving the house leisure to breathe, to cheer, and leaving you utterly confounded.

ANONYMOUS.

LESSON CXCIII.

THE QUARREL OF BRUTUS AND CASSIUS.

Cassius. That you have wronged me, doth appear in this; You have condemned and +noted Lucius Pella,

For taking bribes here of the Sardians;

Wherein my letters, praying on his side,

Because I knew the man, were slighted of.

Brutus. You wronged yourself, to write in such a case.
Cas. In such a time as this, it is not meet

That every nice offense should bear its comment.
Bru. Yet let me tell you, Cassius, you yourself
Are much condemned to have an itching palm;
To sell and mart your offices for gold

To undeservers.

Cas. I an itching palm?

+

You know that you are Brutus that speak this,

Or, by the gods, this speech were else your last.

Bru. The name of Cassius honors this corruption, And chastisement doth therefore hide its head.

Bru. Remember March, the Ides of March remember!
Did not great Julius bleed for justice' sake?
What villain touched his body, that did stab,
And not for justice? What, shall one of us,
That struck the foremost man in all this world,
But for supporting robbers; shall we now