the speeches of Mr. Phillips appear, provement, we shall make an extract coming from the mouth of Demosthenes, from one of the most considerable or Cicero; Chatham, or Burke, or Fox, speeches made on that important ocor Sheridan, or Erskine; Henry, or casion. It is obviously impossible, Ames, or Hamilton, or Morris, or Bay- by so short a specimen as we are ard, or Dexter! What have the majesty obliged to give, to do justice to the and comprehension of their minds, the speaker; for there is so much logical simplicity of their language, the eleva- connexion and dependence throughout tion and grandeur of their views, and all these speeches, that to do them their utility of object, to do with the adequate justice we should give the fantastic sentimentality, or the prurient whole; and any American who reads imagination of Mr. Phillips? One would the whole, must find himself exhilaraas soon expect to hear the Macedonian ted by their wit, roused by their eloAlexander, or the Roman Cæsar, talk- quence, and enlightened by their arguing in the language of Chononhoton- ment, and, congratulating himself upon thologos, or Bombastes Furioso. We his citizenship, must feel an increased know of no more successful way of love and veneration for his country,-a opposing the influx of this false taste country, of which it may be said, as and spurious eloquence, than to hold Virgil says of Berecynthia, the mother up better examples, and fix the at- of godstention of the community, particularly of the younger candidates for oratorical honours, on those of their illustrious country men, who have by their elo "Felix prole virum . centum complexa nepotes, Omnes cœlicolas, omnes supera alta tenentes.?? The extract we shall make, is from quence and wisdom, more powerful the speech of Gouverneur Morris, of than the lyre of Amphion, established New-York, in the Senate. round our civil and political rights and Speaking of the balanced nature of privileges, ramparts of nobler materi- our government, and the importance of als and more enduring strength, than an independent judiciary as necessary the Theban wall, or Theban constitu- to preserve the equilibrium, he says : tion. The monuments of our American But away with all these derogatory sup eloquence have suffered, and their positions. The legislature may be trusted. number been diminished, for want of Our government is a system of salutary checks; one legislative branch is a check on care in reporting and collecting the the other. And should the violence of speeches of our great men; but there are some preserved, and few as they are, from them an estimate may be formed of the value of those which have been suffered to perish, as well as of the genius that produced them. Ex pede, Herculem.' Among these monuments, is the collection of speeches made in their talents and their virtue; of men advanthe Senate and House of Representa- ced in life, and of matured judgment. It aptives of the United States, on the Ju- peals to their understanding, to their integdiciary Bill,' in the year 1802, when rity, to their honour, to their love of fame, the two great political parties which their sense of shame. party spirit bear both of them away, the President, an officer high in honour, high in the public confidence, charged with weighty concerns, responsible to his own reputation, and to the world, stands ready to arrest their too impetuous course. This is our system. It makes no mad appeal to every mob in the country. It appeals to the sober sense of men selected from their fellow-citizens for If all these checks should prove insufficient, and alas! such is the at that time agitated the country, were condition of human nature, that I fear they more ably represented than at any will not be always sufficient, the constitution subsequent period. In order that we has given us one more; it has given us an inmay further exemplify our ideas of dependent judiciary. Before then that you violate that independence-Pause. There are the style of eloquence we would have state sovereignties, as well as the sovereignty our young countrymen study for im- of the general government. There are cases, too many cases, in which the interest of one is not considered as the interest of the other. Should these conflict, if the judiciary be gone, the question is no longer of law, but of force. This is a state of things which no honest and wise man can view without horror. Suppose, in the omnipotence of your legislative authority, you trench upon the rights of your fellow-citizens, by passing an unconstitutional law: If the judiciary department preserve its vigour, it will stop you short: Instead of a resort to arms, there will be a happier appeal to argument. Suppose a case still more impressive. The President is at the head of your armies. Let one of his generals, flushed with victory, and proud in command, presume to trample on the rights of your most insignificant citizen: Indignant of the wrong, he will demand the protection of your tribunals, and safe in the shadow of their wings, will laugh his oppres sor to scorn. The gentleman from Virginia has mentioned a great nation brought to the feet of one of her servants. But why is she in that situation? Is it not because popular opinion was called on to decide every thing, until those who wore bayonets decided for all the rest? Our situation is peculiar. At present our national compact can prevent a state from acting hostilely towards the general interest. But let this compact be destroyed, and each state becomes instantaneously vested with absolute sovereignty. Is there no instance of a similar situation to be found in history? Look at the states of Greece. They were once in a condition not unlike to that in which we should then stand. They treated the recommendations of their Amphictionic Council (which was more a meeting of ambassadors than a legislative assembly) as we did the resolutions of the old Congress. Are we wise? So were they. Are we valiant? They also were brave. Have we one common language, and are we united under one head? In this also there was a strong resemblance. But, by their divisions, they became at first victims to the ambition of Philip, and were at length swallowed up in the Roman empire. Are we to form an exception to the general principles of human nature, and to all the examples of history? And are the maxims of experience to become false, when applied to our fate? Some, indeed, flatter themselves, that our destiny will be like that of Rome. Such indeed it might be, if we had the same wise, but vile aristocracy, under whose guidance they became the masters of the world. But we have not that strong aristocratic arm, which can seize a wretched citizen, scourged almost to death by a remorseless creditor, turn him into the ranks, and bid him, as a soldier, bear our Eagles in triumph round the Do not The difficulty of extracting, and the wish to give variety to our selections, of eloquent and tasteful compositions, must be our excuse for not quoting from the other able speeches made on this occasion. We will, therefore, now offer an extract from the inaugural oration of His Excellency John Quincy Adams, our present minister at the court of St. James, delivered by him, at his installation as Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, in the University of Cambridge. In the course of a history of the progress of Rhetoric and Oratory, the learned Professor thus indulges the enthusiasm of a scholar : sacrifices of paganism to her three hundred thousand gods, amidst her sagacious and solemn consultations over the entrails of slaughtered brutes, on the flight of birds, and the feeding of fowls, it had never entered her imagination to call upon the pontiff, the haruspex, or the augur, for discourses to the. Maker, their fellow-mortals, and themselves. people, on the nature of their duties to their This was an idea, too august to be mingled with the absurd and ridiculous, or profligate and barbarous rites of her deplorable superkind are indebted to christianity; introduced stition. It is an institution, for which manby the Founder himself of this divine religion, and in every point of view worthy of its high original. Its effects have been to mankind; not in so high a degree as benesoften the tempers and purify the morals of volence could wish, but enough to call forth our strains of warmest gratitude to that good being, who provides us with the means of promoting our own felicity, and gives us power to stand, though leaving us free to fall. Here then is an unbounded and inexhaustible field for eloquence, never explored by the ancient orators; and here alone have the modern Europeans cultivated the art with much success. In vain should we enter the halls of justice, in vain should we listen to the debates of senates for strains of oratory, worthy of remembrance, beyond the duration of the occasion, which called them forth. like that of embalming bodies by aromatics, The art of embalming thought by oratory, would have perished, but for the exercises of religion. These alone have in the latter ages furnished discourses, which remind us, that eloquence is yet a faculty of the human mind. * * * * At the revival of letters in modern Europe, eloquence, together with her sister muses, awoke, and shook the poppies from her brow. But their torpors still tingled in her veins. In the interval her voice was gone; her favourite languages were extinct; her organs were no longer tuned to harmony, and her hearers could no longer understand her speech. The discordant jargon of feudal anarchy had banished the musical dialects, in which she had always delighted. The theatres of her former triumphs were either deserted, or they were filled with the babblers of sophistry and chicane. She shrunk intuitively from the forum; for the last object she remembered to have seen there was the head of her darling Cicero, planted upon the rostrum. She ascended the tribunals of justice; there she found her child, Persuasion, manacled and pinioned by the letter of the law; there she Sons of Harvard! You, who are ascending beheld an image of herself, stammering in with painful step and persevering toil the barbarous Latin, and struggling under the eminence of science, to prepare yourselves Jumber of a thousand volumes. Her heart for the various functions and employments fainted within her. She lost all confidence of the world before you, it cannot be neces in herself. Together with her irresistible sary to urge upon you the importance of the powers, she lost proportionably the conside- art, concerning which I am speaking. Is it ration of the world, until, instead of comprising the whole system of public education, she found herself excluded from the circle of sciences, and declared an outlaw from the realms of learning. She was not however doomed to eternal silence. With the progress of freedom and of liberal science, in various parts of modern Europe, she obtained access to mingle in the deliberations of their parliaments. With labour and difficulty she learned their languages, and lent her aid in giving them form and polish. But she has never recovered the graces of her former beauty, nor the energies of her ancient vigour. * * * * # Religion indeed has opened one new aveAue to the career of eloquence. Amidst the the purpose of your future life to minister in the temples of Almighty God, to be the messengers of heaven upon earth, to enlighten with the torch of eternal truth the path of your fellow-mortals to brighter worlds? Remember the reason, assigned for the appointment of Aaron to that ministry, which you purpose to assume upon yourself. I KNOW, THAT HE CAN SPEAK WELL; and, in this testimonial of Omnipotence, receive the injunction of your duty. Is it your intention to devote the labours of your maturity to the cause of justice; to defend the persons, the property, and the fame of your fellow citizens from the open assaults of violence, and the secret encroachments of fraud? Fill the fountains of your eloquence from inexhausti ble sources, that their streams, when they shall begin to flow, may themselves prove inexhaustible. Is there among you a youth, whose bosom burns with the fires of honourable ambition; who aspires to immortalize his name by the extent and importance of his services to his country; whose visions of futurity glow with the hope of presiding in her councils, of directing her affairs, of appearing to future ages on the rolls of fame, as her ornament and pride? Let him catch from the relics of cient oratory those unresisted powers, which mould the mind of man to the will of the speaker, and yield the guidance of a nation to the dominion of the voice. Under governments purely republican, where every citizen has a deep interest in the affairs of the nation, and in some form of public assembly or other, has the means and opportunity of delivering his opinions, and of communicating his sentiments by speech; where government itself has no arms but those of persuasion; where prejudice has not acquired an uncontrolled ascendency, and faction is yet confined within the barriers of peace; the voice of eloquence will not be heard in vain. March then with firm, with steady, with undeviating step, to the prize of your high calling. Gather fragrance from the whole paradise of science, and learn to destil from your lips all the honies of persuasion, Consecrate, above all, the faculties of your life to the cause of truth, of freedom, and of humanity. So sball your country ever gladden at the sound of your voice, and every talent, added to your accomplishments, become another blessing to mankind. From some of the sentiments in the second paragraph, we must beg leave, with deference, to dissent; but no one, we apprehend, can fail to admire the fine spirit of clasic lore which lives and breathes through the whole passage. The following extracts are from the pen of as fine a genius, as accomplished a scholar, and as good a man, as ever graced our schools, or consecrated his talents to the pulpit. They are from an Address, pronounced by the Rev. J. S. Buckminster, before the Society of . B. K. of Harvard College, Cambridge, on the Dangers and Duties of men of letters. Every where there are dangers and evils, of which some affect the intellectual improvement, and others are unfavourable to the moral worth of literary men. In this country, especially, it too often happens, that the young man, who is to live by his talents, and to make the most of the name of a scholar, is tempted to turn his literary credit to the quickest account, by early making himself of consequence to the people, or rather to some of their factions. From the moment that he is found yielding himself up to their service, or hunting after a popular favour, his time, his studies, and his powers, yet in their bloom, are all lost to learning Instead of giving his days and nights to the study of the profound masters of political wisdom, instead of patiently receiving the lessons of history and of practical philosophy, he prematurely takes a part in all the dissentions of the day. His leisure is wasted on the profligate productions of demagogues, and his curiosity bent on the minutia of local politics. The consequence is, that his mind is so much dissipated, or his passions disturb ed, that the quiet speculations of the scholar can no longer detain him. He hears at a distance the bustle of the Comitia-He rushes out of the grove of Egeria, and Numa and the muses call after him in vain. * * The infirmities of noble minds are often so consecrated by their greatness, that an unconscious imitation of their peculiarities, which are real defects, may sometimes be pardoned in their admirers. But to copy their vices, or to hunt in their works for those very lines, which, when dying, they would most wish to blot, is a different offence. I know of nothing in literature so unpardona. ble as this. He who poaches among the la bours of the learned only to find what there is polluted in their language, or licentious in their works; he who searches the biography of men of genius to find precedents for his follies, or palliations of his own stupid depravity, can be compared to nothing more through the gallery of antiques, and every strongly than to the man, who should walk day gaze upon the Apollo, the Venus, or the Laocoon, and yet, proh pudor! bring away an imagination impressed with nothing but the remembrance that they were naked. * # I should be unfaithful to myself and to the subject, if I should leave it without mentioning it as the most solemn of our obligations as scholars, to take care that we give no cur rency to error or sanction to vice. Unfortu nately, there is enough of corrupt literature in the world; and when the mind has once begun to make that its poison, which ought to be its medicine, I know not how the soul is to be recovered, except by the power God in his word. Scholars! I dare not say that the cause of religion depends upon the fidelity of the learned; but I do say, tha gratitude and every motive of virtue demand of you a reverence for the gospel. Pro.t tant Christianity has in former times give learning such support, as learning never ca repay. The history of Christendom bears receive such praise, and from us, he witness to this. The names of Erasmus, of can equal or surpass. of science, who rise up like a wall of fire Grotius, of Bacon, and a host of luminaries With the plan of the valedictory, around the cause of Christianity, will bear immethodical and desultory as it is, witness to this. They cry out in the language we do not intend to find much fault, às of Tully; O vitae dux! o virtutis indagatrix, the occasion did not, perhaps, demand, expultrixque vitiorum! quid non modo nos, sed omnino vita hominum sine te esse potuis- though it certainly would have permitset. Without this for the guide and termi- ted a more systematic discourse. Sysnus of your studies, you may "but go down tem, however, does not appear to chahell, with a great deal of wisdom." My racterize the mind, or the efforts of Mr. friends, infidelity has had one triumph in our days; and we have seen learning, as well as Sampson. He is, we think, better calvirtue, trampled under the hoofs of its infu- culated to produce effect by a succesriated steeds, let loose by the hand of impie- sion of animated sallies, than regular ty. Fanaticism, too, has had more than one and well-elaborated trains of thought. day of desolation; and its consequences have We do not deny him talents, but we think been such, as ought always to put learning on its guard. Remember, then, the place them active, rather than profound, and where we have been educated, and the pious apprehend he is happier in catching rebounty which has enriched it for our sakes! semblances, than in marking differenThink of the ancestors who have transmitted ces. He is much more imaginative to us our Christian liberties ! Nay, hear the than logical, and has more generosity of sentiment, and warmth of feeling, than justness of thought and compréhensiveness of views. voice of posterity, pleading with you for her peace, and beseeching you not to send down your names, stained with profligacy and irreligion. The faults of the production before We have not room for any further extracts, but these are sufficient to show us, however, appertain more to the the manly modes of thinking and speaking that distinguish wise and able men, when engaged on important subjects, and must forever cast into the shade the effeminate and tricked-out style of mo dern sentimentalists, whether at the bar or before popular assemblies. manner, than the matter; for the matter is, on the whole, very generally correct, while the manner is radically bad, and the language abounds with offences against taste. As a specimen of the former, in our opinion, the best in the address, we refer to the account Mr. We, perhaps, ought to apologize to Sampson gives of the truly great orator. the author of the "Valedictory," for There is some repugnance among the placing him by the side of such men, ideas even in this, but they appear to with whom, we are persuaded, his have arisen principally from a want of modesty would never allow him to com- patience in qualifying and finishing pare himself, even to his own disadvan- off his thoughts, if we may so say, tage. We can only say that we should and as it is the most striking passage not have done it, if we had not wished in the oration, we will copy most of it. to excite and fix on good models, the "The great orator,' says Mr. Sampattention of those among us, whose am- son," is the great man of real life, bition it may be to add their names to and [is] born for action. A daring spithe catalogue of those, who have con- rit, a decisive will, give impulse to the tributed by their eloquence to the glo- convictions of his mind. His argury of their country, while we were ments may be like the bow of Ulysses warning them against the bad taste of in the hands of common men, but in his that description of rhetoric of which own, impel the shaft to the feather in Mr. Sampson seems to think most high- the mark. The whole character of his ly, and which it appears to be his wish mind is vehement reason. His eloto imitate; nay, which, we think, if it quence is not the display 'of sentiment, were any object with Mr. Sampson to or the subtility of disputation, but the VoL. I, NO, IT |