(no matter what you afterward do to me), or I abandon you to your fate. What, and is it ye who forsake me, for whose cause alone man dares to hurl against me the thunders of his God in this act of excommunication? Is it not for you that I am declared heretic and rebel? What are my imputed crimes? That I have made Rome, and asserted Italy to be free! That I have subdued the proud magnates who were the scourge both of Pope and people.

Do you you upbraid me with what I have dared and done for you? Men, with you I would have fought; for you I would have perished. You forsake yourselves in forsaking me; and, since I no longer rule over brave men, I resign my power to the tyrants you prefer. Seven months I have ruled over you, prosperous in commerce, stainless in justice, victorious in the field. I have shown you what Rome could be; and since I abdicate the government ye gave me, when I am gone strike for your own freedom! It matters nothing who is the chief of a brave and great people. Prove that Rome hath many a Rienzi, but of brighter fortunes.

Heed me: I ride with these faithful few through the quarter of the Colonna, before the fortress of your foe. Three times before that fortress shall my trumpet sound; if, at the third blast, ye come not, armed as befits you,-I say not all, but three, but two, but one hundred of ye,-I break my wand of office, and the world shall say one hundred and fifty robbers quelled the soul of Rome, and crushed her magistrate and her laws. -Rienzi.

CII. ORATORY.

It is absolutely necessary for the orator to keep one man in view amidst the multitude that surround him; and, while composing, to address himself to that one man, whose mistakes he laments, and whose foibles he discovers. This

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man is to him as the genius of Socrates, standing continually at his side, and by turns interrogating him or answering his questions. This is he whom the orator ought never to lose sight of, in writing, till he obtain a conquest over his prepossessions. The arguments which will be sufficiently persuasive to overcome his opposition, will equally control a large assembly.

The orator will derive still farther advantages from a numerous concourse of people, where all the impressions made at the time will convey the finest triumphs of the art by forming a species of action and re-action between the auditory and the speaker. It is in this sense that Cicero is right in saying, "That no man can be eloquent without a multitude to hear him."

The auditor came to hear a discourse; the orator attacks him, accuses him, makes him abashed; addresses him at one time as his confidant, at another as his mediator or his judge. See with what address he unvails his most concealed passions; with what penetration he shows him his most intimate thoughts; with what energy he annihilates his best framed excuses! The culprit repents. Profound attention, consternation, confusion, remorse,—all announce that the orator has penetrated, in his retired meditations, into the recesses of the heart. Then, provided no ill-timed sally of wit follow to blunt the strokes of Christian eloquence, there may be in the church two thousand auditors, yet there will be but one thought, but one opinion; and all those individuals united, form that ideal man whom the orator had in view while composing his discourse.

But, you may ask, where is this ideal man, composed of so many different traits, to be found, unless we describe some chimerical being? Where shall we find a phantom like this, singular but not outré, in which every individual may recognize himself, although it resembles not any one? Where shall we find him? In your own heart. Often retire there. Survey all its recesses. There you will trace

both the pleas for those passions which you will have to combat, and the source of those false reasonings which you must point out. To be eloquent, we must enter within ourselves. The first productions of a young orator are generally too far fetched. His mind, always on the stretch, is making continual efforts, without his ever venturing to commit himself to the simplicity of nature, until experience teaches him that, to arrive at the sublime, it is, in fact, less necessary to elevate his imagination than to be deeply impressed with his subject.

If you have studied the sacred books; if you have observed men; if you have attended to writers on morals, who serve you instead of historians; if you have become familiar with the language of orators, make trial of your eloquence upon yourself, become, so to speak, the auditor of your own discourses; and thus, by anticipating the effect which they ought to produce, you will easily delineate true characters; you will perceive that, notwithstanding the shades of difference which distinguish them, all men bear an interior resemblance to one another, and that their vices have a uniformity because they always proceed either from weakness or interest. In a word, your descriptions will not be indeterminate; and the more thoroughly you shall have examined what passes within your own breast, with more ability will you unfold the hearts of others.

-Maury.

CIII.-LIBERTY AND UNION.

I PROFESS, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the preservation of our federal union. It is to that union we owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our

country. That union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues, in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign influences these great interests immediately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings; and although our territory has stretched out wider and wider, and our population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, social, and personal happiness.

I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the union, to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counselor in the affairs of this government whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how the union should be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it shall be broken up and destroyed.

God

While the union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the vail. God grant that in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise. grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind. When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious union; on states dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now

known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as- -What is all this worth? Nor those other words of delusion and folly-Liberty first and union afterwards; but everywhere spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart— Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable! -Webster.

CIV. DEATH OF JOHN Q. ADAMS.

MR. SPEAKER: The mingled tones of sorrow, like the voice of many waters, have come unto us from a sister state, Massachusetts, weeping for her honored son. The state I have the honor in part to represent, once endured, with yours, a common suffering, battled for a common cause, and rejoiced in a common triumph. Surely, then, it is meet that in this the day of your affliction we should mingle our griefs.

When a great man falls, the nation mourns; when a patriarch is removed, the people weep. Ours, my associates, is no common bereavement. The chain which linked our hearts with the gifted spirits of former times has been suddenly snapped. The lips from which flowed those living and glorious truths that our fathers uttered are closed in death.

Yes, my friends, Death has been among us! He has not entered the humble cottage of some unknown, ignoble peasant; he has knocked audibly at the palace of a nation! His footstep has been heard in the halls of state! He has cloven down his victim in the midst of the councils of a