strength of intellect, and the mighty excitement produced by the conflict of gigantic minds. When that ancient palace of legislation was consumed, it was indeed a mournful sight. To all the English nation, and their colonies in every clime, a link in the chain of historic interest and thrilling associations was destroyed. A splendid new palace for Parliament is now rising on the same site. In accordance with the laws of mind, and with a wise respect for the distinguished dead, the commissioners of the realm have recently reported in respect thereto that, "as St. Stephen's Hall stands on the spot where the House of Commons was, during many centuries, in the habit of assembling, it should be adorned with statues of men who rose to eminence by the eloquence and abilities which they displayed in that house." But the great battle-field whereon our fathers met that Parliament in its most august display of oratorical talent, braved that great kingdom with all its consolidated strength, and won the day under the most fearful odds, yet remains. The heroes indeed are departed, but here before us is still open their scene of action. Death has claimed them, but war and wasting elements have spared the theatre of their stupendous struggle. We can go and meditate there, gazing at the places where they sat, the floor on which they stood, the windows through which the bright sun looked in smilingly upon their sublime transactions, and may touch the walls which seem yet to vibrate to the thunders of their eloquence. Long may those walls remain, the Mecca of a worship holier than the Saracen's; and when they shall have passed away, may the genius of American Art, harmonious with the Genius of Liberty, her best patron, and commemorative of her grandest work, here come, and in a worthy master-piece heave up a monument which shall perish only "When wrapped in fire the realms of ether glow, And heaven's last thunders shake the world below." Yes, the men of the Congress of '76 have passed away, but let us hope that the spirit they evoked, and which guided them to victory, is not yet become obsolete. Their laurels freshen in eternal bloom on their sepulchres. and their posthumous influence is busy everywhere disenthralling the world. May the flame kindled on the national altar in the first true Hall of Freedom, to illuminate and consecrate the Declaration of Independence in America, burn with inextinguishable splendor, quicken every tardy pulse with patriotic zeal, and blast to cin ders every fetter and every tyrant's accursed thret. CHAPTER II JAMES OTIS, ORATOR OF INTREPID PASSION THE planting of English colonies in America was the beginning of an influence which stopped not at their original boundaries. The world has witnessed its expansion. The human race has felt its power. To the world then-to the human race-belongs their influence, and in that their greatest glory. We are becoming a great nation, and already, perhaps, are accustomed to contemplate the Colonial period of our history as a juvenile era. But, in one sense, we nave had no national infancy. We have had no age of Darbarism, no gradual transition from an obscure antiquity, with much primitive degradation adhering to our career. America, visited by the Anglo-Saxon race, like the statue of Prometheus touched by heavenly fire, awoke in adult vigor. Her first cry was for freedom, and her first struggle won it. We began with the experience of sixty centuries. We laid our foundations in the results which accompanied and glorified the opening drama of a new world-the sternest battle ever fought by right against power. About the period of the first settlement of this coun try, the mental productions before the public in England, were of the highest excellence. The discussion of constitutional principles, and the fervid strife for toleration in religious matters, had called forth the most potent intellectual energies, and produced some of the profoundest works in divinity and politics, to be found in any age or tongue. As in the ancient republics, and as is the fact in every land where the mind of man is allowed freely to act and speak, the most eloquent writers and profoundest orators were on the side of liberty and the rights of the people. As instances and proofs of this, put Locke and Algernon Sidney by the side of Filmer and the other parasitical advocates of the divine right of kings. It is a wholesome lesson and a vigorous discipline, to read the leading authors of England who flourished between the accession of Charles the First and George of Hanover. The germs of great principles began to spring up abroad, but their first productive growth was in American soil. A great truth was first proclaimed by our hardy Colonists, which has since traversed oceans, and aroused continents. It is impossible to exaggerate its ultimate effects, not merely upon this western hemisphere, but upon the father-land and the remotest east. The first throbs of liberty here created the tremendous revolutions of Europe, the convulsive spasms of which still agitate the oppressed of all lands. The experiment which demonstrated the practicability of establishing a self-governing republic over a vast domain, is an example which it will be impossible for aristocracies, kings, and emperors either to resist or restrain It was an era of vast energy, a combination of phy. sical force and profound erudition, exemplified by the French in the prodigies which they executed while truly inspired by the genius of liberty. A little army, composed of soldiers and scholars, subdued cities and penetrated citadels, planted institutes and observatories, schools of agriculture, and all the arts of civilization, from the valley of the Rhine to the Delta of Egypt. But in the birth-place of that spirit, on the sublimer field of its primitive conflict and most glorious conquest, in the American colonies, the main force was mental rather than martial. Eloquence, then, was fervid, bold, and gigantic, like the Revolution it defended. Then, genius was hailed as a divine gift. No trammels were imposed upon imagination—no drag-chains crippled patriotic aspirations-no limit marked the boundaries up to which daring thought might go. It should be neither uninteresting nor unprofitable to glance back upon those times, and contemplate a few of the leading minds. In a sense equally elevated, and more relevant to ourselves than Milton expressed, let us— "To the famous orators repair, Those ancients, whose resistless eloquence Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece In considering the eloquence of the Colonial and Revolutionary period of our history, we shall find less variety in the works of the orators than in the orators themselves. So absorbed were the statesmen of those |