Dark-heaving;-boundless, endless, and sublime- The image of Eternity-the throne Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy Speech on the Overtures of Bonaparte. CHARLES JAMES FOX. Where, then, sir, is this war, which on every side is pregnant with such horrors, to be carried? Where is it to stop? One campaign is successful to you; another to them; and, in this way, animated by the vindictive passions of revenge, hatred, and rancor, which are infinitely more flagitious, even, than those of ambition and the thirst of power, you may go on forever; as, with such black incentives, I see no end to human misery. And all this without an intelligible motive. All this because you may gain a better peace a year or two hence! So that we are called upon to go on merely, as a speculation! We must keep Bonaparte for some time longer at war, as a state of probation! Gracious God! sir, is war a state of probation? Is peace a rash system? Is it dangerous for nations to live in amity with each other? Are your vigilance, your policy, your common powers of observation, to be extinguished by putting an end to the horrors of war? Can not this state of probation be as well undergone without adding to the catalogue of human sufferings? "But we must pause!" What! must the bowels of Great Britain be torn out-her best blood be spilled-her treasure wasted that you may make an experiment? Put yourselves, oh! that you would put yourselves in the field of battle, and learn to judge of the sort of horrors that you excite! In former wars, a man might, at least, have some feeling, some interest, that served to balance, in his mind, the impressions which a scene of carnage and of death must inflict. If a man had been present at the battle of Blenheim, for instance, and had inquired the motive of the battle, there was not a soldier engaged who could not have satisfied his curiosity, and even, perhaps, allayed his feelings. They were fighting, they knew, to repress the uncontrolled ambition of the Grand Monarch. But, if a man were present now at a field of slaughter, and were to inquire for what they were fighting-"Fighting!” would be the answer; "they are not fighting; they are pausing." "Why is that man expiring? Why is the other writhing with agony? What means this implacable fury?" The answer must be,-"You are quite wrong, sir; you deceive yourself they are not fighting-do not disturb them-they are merely pausing! "This man is not expiring with agony-that man is not dead he is only pausing! Lord help you, sir! they are not angry with one another; they have now no cause of quarrel, but their country thinks there should be a pause! All that you see, sir, is nothing like fighting-there is no harm, nor bloodshed in it whatever: it is nothing more than a political pause! It is merely to try an experiment-to see whether Bonaparte will not behave himself better than heretofore; and, in the meantime, we have agreed to a pause in pure friendship!" And is this the way, sir, that you are to show yourselves the advocates of order? You take up a system calculated to uncivilize the world to destroy order-to trample on religion -to stifle, in the heart, not merely the generosity of noble sentiment, but the affections of social nature; and, in the prosecution of this system, you spread terror and devastation all around you. A Tragedy. T. D. TALMAGE. How many acts are there in a tragedy? Five, I believe. Act I.-Young man starting from home. Parents and sisters weeping to see him go. Wagon passing over the hill. Farewell kiss thrown back. Act II.-Marriage altar. Bright White veil trailing through the aisle. lights. Full organ. Prayer and congratulations, and exclamations of "How well she looks!" Act III.-Midnight. Woman waiting for staggering steps. Old garments stuck into broken window panes. Many marks of hardship on the face. Biting the nails of bloodless fingers. Neglect, cruelty, disgrace. Act IV. Three graves in a very dark place. Grave of a child, who died from want of medicine; grave of husband and father, who died of dissipation; grave of wife and mother, who died of a broken heart. Plenty of weeds but no flowers! Oh! what a blasted heath, with three graves! Act V.-A destroyed soul's eternity. No light; no music; no hope! Despair coiling around the heart with unutterable anguish. Blackness of darkness forever! Woe! woe! woe! I cannot bear longer to look. I close my eyes at this last act of the tragedy. Napoleon Bonaparte. CHARLES PHILLIPS. He is fallen! We may now pause before that splendid prodigy, which towered amongst us like some ancient ruin, whose frown terrified the glance its magnificence attracted. Grand, gloomy, and peculiar, he sat upon the throne, a sceptered hermit, wrapped in the solitude of his own originality. A mind bold, independent, and decisive a will, despotic in its dictates-an energy that distanced expedition, and a conscience pliable to every touch of interest, marked the outline of this extraordinary character-the most extraordinary, perhaps, that, in the annals of the world, ever rose, or reigned, or fell. Flung into life in the midst of a Revolution that quickened every energy of a people who acknowledged no superior, he commenced his course a stranger by birth and a scholar by charity. With no friend but his sword, and no fortune but his talents, he rushed into the lists where rank and genius had arrayed themselves; and competition fled from him as from the glance of destiny. He knew no motive but interest-he acknowledged no criterion but success-he worshiped no God but ambition; and with an Eastern devotion he knelt at the altar of his idolatry. Subsidiary to this, there was no creed that he did not profess-there was no opinion that he did not promulgate. In the hope of a dynasty, he upheld the Crescent; for the sake of a divorce, he bowed before the Cross; the orphan of St. Louis, he became the adopted child of the Republic; and, with a parricidal ingratitude, on the ruins both of the crown and the tribune, he reared the throne of his despotism. A professed Catholic, he imprisoned the Pope; a pretended patriot, he impoverished the country; and under the name of Brutus, he grasped without remorse, and wore without shame, the diadem of the Cæsars! The gaoler of the press, he affected the patronage of letters; the proscriber of books, he encouraged philosophy; the persecutor of authors, and the murderer of printers, he yet pretended to the patronage of learning. Such a medley of contradictions, and at the same time such an individual consistency, were never united in the same character. A royalist, a republican, and an emperor-a Mahometan, a Catholic, and a patron of the Synagogue-a traitor and a tyrant—a Christian and an Infidel-he was, through all his vicissitudes, the same stern, impatient, inflexible original-the same mysterious, incomprehensible self-the man without a model, and without a shadow. His fall, like his life, baffled all speculation. In short, his whole history was like a dream to the world; and no man can tell how or why he was awakened from the reverie. Supposed Speech of John Adams. DANIEL WEBSTER. "Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote. It is true, indeed, that in the beginning we aimed not at independence. But there's a divinity that shapes our ends. The injustice of England has driven us to arms; and, blinded to her own interest, for our good, she has obstinately persisted, till independence is now within our grasp. We have but to reach forth to it, and it is ours. Why, then, should we defer the declaration? Is any man so weak as now to hope for a reconciliation with England, which shall leave either safety to the country and its liberties, or safety to his own life and his own honor? Are not you, sir, who sit in that chair-is not he, our venerable colleague near you-are you not both already the proscribed and predestined objects of punishment and of vengeance? Cut off from all hope of royal clemency, what are you, what can you be, while the power of England remains, |