men he was in his own day reckoned. When the wit of Aristophanes was directed against him in the theatre, he was already among the most eminent, but his eminence seems to have been then recent. It was about the tenth or eleventh year of the Peloponnesian war, when he was six or seven and forty years of age, that, after the manner of the old comedy, he was offered to public derision upon the stage by his own name, as one of the persons of the drama, in the comedy of Aristophanes called The Clouds, which is yet extant.

Two or three and twenty years had elapsed since the first representation of The Clouds; the storms of conquest suffered from a foreign enemy, and of four revolutions in the civil government of the country, had passed; nearly three years had followed of that quiet which the revolution under Thrasybulus produced, and the act of amnesty should have confirmed, when a young man named Melitus went to the king-archon, and in the usual form delivered an information against Socrates, and bound himself to prosecute. The information ran thus: Melitus, son of Melitus, of the borough of Pitthos, declares these upon oath against Socrates, son of Sophroniscus, of the borough of Alopece: Socrates is guilty of reviling the gods whom the city acknowledges, and of preaching other new gods: moreover, he is guilty of corrupting the youth. Penalty, death.'

Xenophon begins his Memorials of his revered master with declaring his wonder how the Athenians could have been persuaded to condemn to death a man of such uncommonly clear innocence and exalted worth. Elian, though for authority he can bear no comparison with Xenophon, has nevertheless, I think, given the solution. Socrates,' he says, 'disliked the Athenian constitution; for he saw that democracy is tyrannical, and abounds with all the evils of absolute monarchy.' But though the political circumstances of the times made it necessary for contemporary writers to speak with caution, yet both Xenophon and Plato have declared enough to shew that the assertion of Ælian was well founded; and further proof, were it wanted, may be derived from another early writer, nearly contemporary, and deeply versed in the politics of his age, the orator Eschines. Indeed, though not stated in the indictment, yet it was urged against Socrates by his prosecutors before the court, that he was disaffected to the democracy; and in proof, they affirmed it to be notorious that he had ridiculed what the Athenian constitution prescribed, the appointment to magistracy by lot. Thus,' they said, 'he taught his numerous followers, youths of the principal families of the city, to despise the established government, and to be turbulent and seditious; and his success had been seen in the conduct of two of the most eminent, Alcibiades and Critias. Even the best things he converted to these ill purposes: from the most esteemed poets, and particularly from Homer, he selected passages to enforce his anti-democratical principles.'

Socrates, it appears, indeed, was not inclined to deny his disapprobation of the Athenian constitution. His defence itself, as it is reported by Plato, contains matter on which to found an accusation against him of disaffection to the sovereignty of the people, such as, under the jealous tyranny of the Athenian democracy, would sometimes subject a man to the penalties of high treason. You well know,' he says, 'Athenians, that had I engaged in public business, I should long

ago have perished without procuring any advantage either to you or to myself. Let not the truth offend you it is no peculiarity of your democracy, or of your national character; but wherever the people is sovereign, no man who shall dare honestly to oppose injustice—frequent and extravagant injustice—can avoid destruction.'

Without this proof, indeed, we might reasonably believe that though Socrates was a good and faithful subject of the Athenian government, and would promote no sedition, no political violence, yet he could not like the Athenian constitution. He wished for wholesome changes by gentle means; and it seems even to have been a principal object of the labours to which he dedicated himself, to infuse principles into the rising generation that might bring about the desirable change insensibly.

Melitus, who stood forward as his principal accuser, was, as Plato informs us, noway a man of any great consideration. His legal description gives some probability to the conjecture that his father was one of the commissioners sent to Lacedæmon from the moderate party, who opposed the ten successors of the thirty tyrants, while Thrasybulus held Piræus, and Pausanias was encamped before Athens. He was a poet, and stood forward as in a common cause of the poets, who esteemed the doctrine of Socrates injurious to their interest. Unsupported, his accusation would have been little formidable; but he seems to have been a mere instrument in the business. He was soon joined by Lycon, one of the most powerful speakers of his time. Lycon was the avowed patron of the rhetoricians, who, as well as the poets, thought their interest injured by the moral philosopher's doctrine. I know not that on any other occasion in Grecian history we have any account of this kind of party-interest operating; but from circumstances nearly analogous in our own country -if we substitute for poets the clergy, and for rhetoricians the lawyers-we may gather what might be the party-spirit, and what the weight of influence of the rhetoricians and poets in Athens. With Lycon, Anytus, a man scarcely second to any in the commonwealth in rank and general estimation, who had held high command with reputation in the Peloponnesian war, and had been the principal associate of Thrasybulus in the war against the thirty, and the restoration of the democracy, declared himself a supporter of the prosecution. Nothing in the accusation could, by any known law of Athens, affect the life of the accused. In England no man would be put upon trial on so vague a charge-no grand jury would listen to it. But in Athens, if the party was strong enough, it signified little what was the law. When Lycon and Anytus came forward, Socrates saw that his condemnation was already decided.

By the course of his life, however, and by the turn of his thoughts for many years, he had so prepared himself for all events, that, far from alarmed at the probability of his condemnation, he rather rejoiced at it, as at his age a fortunate occurrence. He was persuaded of the soul's immortality, and of the superintending providence of an all-good Deity, whose favour he had always been assiduously endeavouring to deserve. Men fear death, he said, as if unquestionably the greatest evil, and yet no man knows that it may not be the greatest good. If, indeed, great joys were in prospect, he might, and his friends for

him, with somewhat more reason, regret the event; but at his years, and with his scanty fortune-though he was happy enough at seventy still to preserve both body and mind in vigour-yet even his present gratifications must necessarily soon decay. To avoid, therefore, the evils of age, pain, sickness, decay of sight, decay of hearing, perhaps decay of understanding, by the easiest of deaths (for such the Athenian mode of execution-by a draught of hemlock-was reputed), cheered with the company of surrounding friends, could not be otherwise than a blessing.

Xenophon says that, by condescending to a little supplication, Socrates might easily have obtained his acquittal. No admonition or entreaty of his friends, however, could persuade him to such an unworthiness. On the contrary, when put upon his defence, he told the people that he did not plead for his own sake, but for theirs, wishing them to avoid the guilt of an unjust condemnation. It was usual for accused persons to bewail their apprehended lot, with tears to supplicate favour, and, by exhibiting their children upon the bema, to endeavour to excite pity. He thought it, he said, more respectful to the court, as well as more becoming himself, to omit all this; however aware that their sentiments were likely so far to differ from his that judgment would be given in anger for it.

Condemnation pronounced wrought no change upon him. He again addressed the court, declared his innocence of the matters laid against him, and observed that, even if every charge had been completely proved, still, all together did not, according to any known law, amount to a capital crime. But,' in conclusion he said, 'it is time to depart-I to die, you to live; but which for the greater good, God only knows.'

It was usual at Athens for execution very soon to follow condemnation - commonly on the morrow; but it happened that the condemnation of Socrates took place on the eve of the day appointed for the sacred ceremony of crowning the galley which carried the annual offerings to the gods worshipped at Delos, and immemorial tradition forbade all executions till the sacred vessel's return. Thus the death of Socrates was respited thirty days, while his friends had free access to him in the prison. During all that time he admirably supported his constancy. Means were concerted for his escape; the jailer was bribed, a vessel prepared, and a secure retreat in Thessaly provided. No arguments, no prayers, could persuade him to use the opportunity. He had always taught the duty of obedience to the laws, and he would not furnish an example of the breach of it. To no purpose it was urged that he had been unjustly condemned--he had always held that wrong did not justify wrong. He waited with perfect composure the return of the sacred vessel, reasoned on the immortality of the soul, the advantage of virtue, the happiness derived from having made it through life his pursuit, and with his friends about him, took the fatal cup and died.

Writers who after Xenophon and Plato have related the death of Socrates, seem to have held themselves bound to vie with those who preceded them in giving pathos to the story. The purpose here has been rather to render it intelligible-to shew its connection with the political history of Athens-to derive from it illustration of the political history. The magnanimity of Socrates, the principal efficient of the pathos, surely deserves admiration; yet it is not that in which he has most out

shone other men. The circumstances of Lord Russell's fate were far more trying. Socrates, we may reasonably suppose, would have borne Lord Russell's trial; bet with Bishop Burnet for his eulogist, instead of Plato ar} Xenophon, he would not have had his present splendid fame. The singular merit of Socrates lay in the purity and the usefulness of his manners and conversation; the clearness with which he saw and the steadiness with which he practised, in a blind and corrupt age, all moral duties; the disinterestedness and the zeal with which he devoted himself to the benefit of others; and the enlarged and warm benevolence, whence his supreme and almost only pleasure seems to have consisted in doing good. The purity of Christian morality, little enough, indeed, seen in practice, nevertheless is become so familiar in theory that it passes almost for obviers and even congenial to the human mind. Those only will justly estimate the merit of that near approach to it which Socrates made who will take the pains to gather -as they may from the writings of his contemporanes and predecessors-how little conception was entertained of it before his time; how dull to a just moral sense the human mind has really been: how slow the progress in the investigation of moral duties, even where not only great pains have been taken, but the greatest abilities zealously employed; and when discovered, how difficult it has been to establish them by proofs beyond controversy, or proofs even that should be generally admitted by the reason of men. It is through the light which Socrates diffused by his doctrine, enforced by his prac tice, with the advantage of having both the doctrine and the practice exhibited to highest advantage in the incomparable writings of disciples such as Xenophon and Plato, that his life forms an era in the history of Athens and of man.

See the Life of Mitford, prefixed to the seventh edition of his History (1838), by his brother Lord Redesdale, Lord Chancellor of Ireland. The Rev. John Mitford (1781-1859), who wrote poems and criticism and edited a dozen of the Aldine poets, was a kis man; he was an Oriel man, and held Benham and two other Suffolk livings. Miss Mitford was of another stock.

John Horne Tooke (1736-1812), known in literature as philologist, but notable rather for his political and social character, was the son of Mr Horne, a wealthy London poulterer; so that when asked by schoolfellows what his father was, he could answer, 'A Turkey merchant.' Well educated -first at Westminster, then at Eton, and afterwards at St John's College, Cambridge he took orders, but disliking the clerical profession, he studied law at the Middle Temple, took a living for a short time to please his father, and travelled in France and Italy as tutor to a son of Elwes the miser; but having cast off the clerical character in these Continental tours, he never resumed it. He became an active politician and supporter of John Wilkes, in praise of whom he wrote an anonymous pamphlet in 1765. When in 1768 Wilkes stood for Middlesex, 'Parson Horne' pledged his credit for the expenses, and said that ' in a cause so just and holy he would dye his black coat red.' George III. having from the throne in 1770 censured an address presented by the London city authorities, the latter waited upon the sovereign

with another 'humble address,' remonstrance, and petition, reiterating their request for the dissolution of Parliament and the dismissal of Ministers. They were again repulsed, the king saying that he would consider such a use of his prerogative as dangerous to the interests and constitution of the country. Horne Tooke, anticipating such a reception, suggested to his friend Beckford, the Lord Mayor, the idea of a reply to the sovereign--a measure unexampled in our history. When the Lord Mayor had retired from the royal presence, 'I saw Beckford,' said Tooke, 'just after he came from St James's. I asked him what he had said to the king; and he replied that he had been so confused, he scarcely knew what he had said. "But," cried I, "your speech must be sent to the papers; I'll write it for you." He did so; it was printed and circulated over the kingdom, and was ultimately engraved on the pedestal of Beckford's statue in Guildhall. This unspoken speech, famous as that of a parson who had bearded a king on his throne, is as follows:

MOST GRACIOUS SOVEREIGN-Will your majesty be pleased so far to condescend as to permit the mayor of your loyal city of London to declare in your royal presence, on behalf of his fellow-citizens, how much the bare apprehension of your majesty's displeasure would, at all times, affect their minds? The declaration of that displeasure has already filled them with inexpressible anxiety, and with the deepest affliction. Permit me, sire, to assure your majesty, that your majesty has not in all your dominions any subjects more faithful, more dutiful, or more affectionate to your majesty's person or family, or more ready to sacrifice their lives and fortunes in the maintenance of the true honour and dignity of your crown. We do, therefore, with the greatest humility and submission, most earnestly supplicate your majesty that you will not dismiss us from your presence without expressing a more favourable opinion of your faithful citizens, and without some comfort, without some prospect at least, of redress. Permit me, sire, further to observe that whoever has already dared, or shall hereafter endeavour, to alienate your majesty's affections from your loyal subjects in general, and from the city of London in particular, and to withdraw your confidence in and regard for your people, is an enemy to your majesty's person and family, a violator of the public peace, and a betrayer of our happy constitution as it was established at the glorious and necessary revolution.

Horne's subsequent quarrel with Wilkes and controversy with Junius are well known. He had ere this formally severed himself from the Church (1773), and again taken to the study of the law. His spirited opposition to an enclosure bill procured him favour and the prospect of a fortune (never fully realised) from a wealthy client, Mr Tooke of Purley (near Reading), whose surname he in 1782 assumed. Hence also the sub-title of his greatest work, Epea Pteroenta, or the Diversions of Purley. So early as 1778 Horne Tooke had addressed a Letter to Mr Dunning on the rudiments of grammar, and the principles there laid

down were followed up and treated at length in the Diversions, of which the first part appeared in 1786, and a second part in 1805. Wit, politics, metaphysics, etymology, and grammar are curiously mingled in this work. The aim (wholly fallacious) was to prove that all the parts of speech, including those which grammarians considered as expletives and unmeaning particles, may be resolved into nouns and verbs; and the author's knowledge of the Northern languages was no less highly commended than his liveliness and acuteness. Horne Tooke commenced the Diversions during an imprisonment in the King's Bench for promoting a subscription for the Americans barbarously murdered at Lexington by the king's soldiers in 1775;' and he was afterwards debarred from the Bar by the king's orders. In 1794 he was tried for high treason, being accused with Hardy, Thelwall, and others of conspiring and corresponding with the French Convention to overthrow the English constitution. His trial, to which the eloquence of Erskine, his counsel, gave something more than temporary importance, excited intense interest, lasted several days, and ended in acquittal. He twice stood unsuccessfully for Westminster; for a short time sat in Parliament as member for Old Sarum, but did not distinguish himself either as legislator or debater; and next year was excluded by a special Act preventing clerks in holy orders from sitting in Parliament. He spent his latter years in lettered retirement at Wimbledon, entertaining his friends. to Sunday dinners and quiet parties, and delighting them with his lively and all too varied conversation. His fortune he left to his natural children.

Words as Signs or Abbreviations. H.-I imagine that it is, in some measure, with the vehicle of our thoughts as with the vehicles for our bodies. Necessity produced both. The first carriage for men was no doubt invented to transport the bodies of those who from infirmity, or otherwise, could not move themselves: But should any one, desirous of understanding the purpose and meaning of all the parts of our modern elegant carriages, attempt to explain them upon this one principle alone, viz.-that they were necessary for conveyance - he would find himself wofully puzzled to account for the wheels, the seats, the springs, the blinds, the glasses, the lining, &c.; not to mention the mere ornamental parts of gilding, varnish, &c.

Abbreviations are the wheels of language, the wings of Mercury. And though we might be dragged along without them, it would be with much difficulty, very heavily and tediously.

There is nothing more admirable nor more useful than the invention of signs: at the same time there is nothing more productive of error when we neglect to observe their complication. Into what blunders, and consequently into what disputes and difficulties, might not the excellent art of Short-hand writing (practised almost exclusively by the English) lead foreign philosophers, who, not knowing that we had any other alphabet, should suppose each mark to be the sign of a single sound! If they were very laborious and very learned indeed, it is

likely they would write as many volumes on the subject, and with as much bitterness against each other, as Grammarians have done from the same sort of mistake concerning Language: until perhaps it should be suggested to them that there may be not only signs of sounds, but again, for the sake of abbreviation, signs of those signs, one under another in a continued progression.

B. I think I begin to comprehend you. You mean to say that the errors of Grammarians have arisen from supposing all words to be immediately either the signs of things or the signs of ideas: whereas in fact many words are merely abbreviations employed for despatch, and are the signs of other words. And that these are the artificial wings of Mercury, by means of which the Argus eyes of philosophy have been cheated.

H.-It is my meaning.

B.-Well, we can only judge of your opinion after we have heard how you maintain it. Proceed, and strip him of his wings. They seem easy enough to be taken off: for it strikes me now, after what you have said, that they are indeed put on in a peculiar manner, and do not, like those of other winged deities, make a part of his body. You have only to loose the strings from his feet, and take off his cap. Come-Let us see what sort of figure he will make without them.

H.-The first aim of Language was to communicate our thoughts; the second, to do it with despatch. (I mean intirely to disregard whatever additions or alterations have been made for the sake of beauty, or ornament, ease, gracefulness, or pleasure.) The difficulties and disputes concerning Language have arisen almost intirely from neglecting the consideration of the latter purpose of speech which, though subordinate to the former, is almost as necessary in the commerce of mankind, and has a much greater share in accounting for the different sorts of words. Words have been called winged; and they well deserve that name, when their abbreviations are compared with the progress which speech could make without these inventions; but compared with the rapidity of thought, they have not the smallest claim to that title. Philosophers have calculated the difference of velocity between sound and light but who will attempt to calculate the difference between speech and thought? What wonder then that the invention of all ages should have been upon the stretch to add such wings to their conversation as might enable it, if possible, to keep pace in some measure with their minds?-Hence chiefly the variety of words.

:

(From the Diversions, Chap. i.)

The interlocutors are H., the author, and B., his friend Dr Beadon, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester. See the Life by A. Stephens (1813), and Thorold Rogers's Historical Gleanings (2nd series, 1870).

Lord Thurlow (1732-1806), Lord Chancellor, was coarse in speech and manners, profane, and immoral; yet of him it was that Fox made the famous bon mot: No man was so wise as Thurlow looked.' Idle and insubordinate at school and college, he was sent down from Cambridge without a degree; but called to the Bar in 1754, he secured his greatest triumph by his speech in the Douglas Peerage Case (1769). A zealous supporter of Lord North, he won George III.'s good-will by upholding strongly his American policy, and became Lord Chancellor in 1778. He was at the

same time the secret and confidential adviser of the king, and the dictator of the House of Lords. Under Rockingham he undermined his colleagues; Fox and North compelled him to retire, and Pitt restored him. But when he again worked against his colleagues, Pitt told the king either he or Thurlow must retire, and the king at last assented to his dismissal (1792). He made one short speech that was 'superlatively great.' Its effect, both within the walls of Parliament and out of them, was prodigious. It gave Lord Thurlow an ascendency in the House which no Chancellor had ever possessed; it invested him in public opinion with a character of independence and honour; and this, though he was ever on the unpopular side in politics, made him always popular with the people. The Duke of Grafton, during a debate in the House of Lords, took occasion to reproach Thurlow with his plebeian extraction and his recent admission to the peerage. Thurlow rose from the woolsack, advanced slowly to the place from which the Chancellor generally addresses the House, then fixing on the Duke the look of Jove when he grasped the thunder, began in a loud voice:

'I am amazed at the attack the noble duke has made on me. Yes, my Lords,' considerably raising his voice, 'I am amazed at his Grace's speech. The noble duke cannot look before him, behind him, or on either side of him without seeing some noble peer who owes his seat in this House to successful exertions in the profession to which I belong. Does he not feel that it is as honourable to owe it to these as to being the accident of an accident? To all these noble Lords the language of the noble duke is as applicable and as insulting as it is to myself. But I don't fear to meet it single and alone. No one venerates the peerage more than I do; but, my Lords, I must say that the peerage solicited me, not I the peerage. Nay, more, I can say, and will say, that as a peer of parliament, as Speaker of this right honourable House, as Keeper of the Great Seal, as Guardian of his Majesty's Conscience, as Lord High Chancellor of England; nay, even in that character alone in which the noble duke would think it an affront to be considered as a man-I am at this moment as respectable -I beg leave to add, I am at this moment as much respected as the proudest peer I now look down upon.'

Lord Erskine (1750-1823) left a series of printed speeches which rank amongst the finest specimens we have of English forensic oratory. Thomas Erskine was the youngest son of the Earl of Buchan, and brother of Harry Erskine, the eloquent and witty Lord Advocate of Scotland. He served both in the navy and army, but threw up his commission in order to study law at Lincoln's Inn, took also a degree at Cambridge, and was called to the Bar in his twenty-eighth year. His first speech (1778), in defence of Captain Baillie, lieutenant-governor of Greenwich Hospital (charged with libel), at once put him above all his brethren of the Bar. Next year saw an equally successful defence of Admiral Lord Keppel, and

His

in 1781 he secured the acquittal of Lord George Gordon. In 1783 he entered Parliament as member for Portsmouth. The floor of the House of Commons, it has been said, is strewn with the wrecks of lawyers' reputations, and Erskine's appearances there were, comparatively, failures; he never became a great parliamentary orator. sympathy with the French Revolution led him to join the Friends of the People,' and to undertake the defence in many political prosecutions of 1793-94. His acceptance of a retainer from Tom Paine cost him his appointment as attorney to the Prince of Wales; his speeches for him and Frost, Hardy, and Horne Tooke were specially famous ; that for Hadfield (1800), indicted for shooting at George III., was a destructive analysis of the current theory of criminal responsibility in mental disease. In 1806 Erskine was raised to the peerage and the woolsack, but resigned next year, and gradually retired into private life, though he continued to mix in society, where his liveliness and wit, his vanity and eccentricities, rendered him a favourite. He died at Almondell in Linlithgowshire. In 1821 he had made a second marriage, this time at Gretna Green. He published a pamphlet on army abuses in 1772; a discussion of the war with France in 1797; a utopian political romance, Armata; a pamphlet in favour of the Greeks; and some poems. His decisions as Lord Chancellor were satirically styled the‘Apocrypha,' and added nothing to his fame. His reputation was solely forensic, and in this respect is unrivalled in the history of the English Bar. He was a zealous student of the best English literature, and knew most of Milton by heart. The following paragraphs are from Erskine's speech in defence of a publisher, Stockdale (9th December 1789), who had published a defence of Warren Hastings written by the Rev. John Logan (see page 529), and affirmed to constitute a libel on the House of Commons:

On the Law of Libel.

Gentlemen, the question you have therefore to try upon all this matter is extremely simple. It is neither more nor less than this: At a time when the charges against Mr Hastings were, by the implied consent of the Commons, in every hand and on every table-when, by their managers, the lightning of eloquence was incessantly consuming him, and flashing in the eyes of the public-when every man was with perfect impunity saying, and writing, and publishing just what he pleased of the supposed plunderer and devastator of nations-would it have been criminal in Mr Hastings himself to remind the public that he was a native of this free land, entitled to the common protection of her justice, and that he had a defence in his turn to offer to them, the outlines of which he implored them in the meantime to receive, as an antidote to the unlimited and unpunished poison in circulation against him? This is, without colour or exaggeration, the true question you are to decide. Because I assert, without the hazard of contradiction, that if Mr Hastings himself could have stood justified or excused in your eyes for publishing this

volume in his own defence, the author, if he wrote it bona fide to defend him, must stand equally excused and justified; and if the author be justified, the publisher cannot be criminal, unless you have evidence that it was published by him with a different spirit and intention from those in which it was written. The question, therefore, is correctly what I just now stated it to be-Could Mr Hastings have been condemned to infamy for writing this book?

Gentlemen, I tremble with indignation to be driven to put such a question in England. Shall it be endured that a subject of this country may be impeached by the Commons for the transactions of twenty years-that the accusation shall spread as wide as the region of lettersthat the accused shall stand, day after day and year after year, as a spectacle before the public, which shall be kept in a perpetual state of inflammation against him; yet that he shall not, without the severest penalties, be permitted to submit anything to the judgment of mankind in his defence? If this be law (which it is for

you to-day to decide), such a man has no trial. That great hall, built by our fathers for English justice, is no longer a court, but an altar; and an Englishman, instead of being judged in it by God and his country, is a victim and a sacrifice.

On the Government of India.

The unhappy people of India, feeble and effeminate as they are from the softness of their climate, and subdued and broken as they have been by the knavery and strength of civilisation, still occasionally start up in all the vigour and intelligence of insulted nature. To be governed at all, they must be governed by a rod of iron; and our empire in the East would long since have been lost to Great Britain if skill and military prowess had not united their efforts to support an authority which Heaven never gave, by means which it never can sanction.

Gentlemen, I think I can observe that you are touched with this way of considering the subject; and I can account for it. I have not been considering it through the cold medium of books, but have been speaking of man and his nature, and of human dominion, from what I have seen of them myself amongst reluctant nations submitting to our authority. I know what they feel, and how such feelings can alone be suppressed. I have heard them in my youth, from a naked savage in the indignant character of a prince surrounded by his subjects, addressing the governor of a British colony, holding a bundle of sticks in his hand, as the notes of his unlettered eloquence. 'Who is it?' said the jealous ruler over the desert, encroached upon by the restless foot of English adventure-who is it that causes this river to rise in the high mountains and empty itself into the ocean? Who is it that causes to blow the loud winds of winter, and that calms them again in the summer? Who is it that rears up the shade of those lofty forests, and blasts them with the quick lightning at his pleasure? The same Being who gave to you a country on the other side of the waters, and gave ours to us; and by this title we will defend it,' said the warrior, throwing down his tomahawk upon the ground, and raising the war-sound of his nation. These are the feelings of subjugated man all round the globe; and, depend upon it, nothing but fear will control where it is vain to look for affection. . .

...

It is the nature of everything that is great and useful,