Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

No more shall nation against nation rise*,
Nor ardent warriors meet with hateful eyes,
Nor fields with gleaming steel be cover'd o'er,
The brazen trumpets kindle rage no more;
Bat useless lances into scythes shall bend,
And the broad falchion in a ploughshare end.
Then palaces shall rise; the joyful son +
Shall finish what his short-liv'd sire begun;
Their vines a shadow to their race shall yield,
And the same hand that sow'd shall reap the field.
The swain in barren deserts with surprise
Sees lilies spring, and sudden verdure rise,
And starts amidst the thirsty wilds to hear
New falls of water murm'ring in his ear.
On rifted rocks, the dragon's late abodes,
The green reed trembles, and the bulrush nods.
Waste sandy vallies, once perplex'd with thorn§,
The spiry fir and shapely box adorn;

The leafless shrubs the flow'ring palms succeed,
And od❜rous myrtle to the noisome weed.

The lambs with wolves shall graze the verdant mead },
And boys in flow'ry bands the tiger lead;
The steer and lion at one crib shall meet,

And harmless serpents lick the pilgrim's feet.
The smiling infant in his hand shall take
The crested basilisk and speckled snake;

Pleas'd the green lustre of his scales survey,

And with their forky tongue and pointless sting shall play.

Rise, crown'd with light, imperial Salem rise ¶;
Exalt thy tow❜ry head, and lift thy eyes!

See, a long race thy spacious courts adorn**;

See future sons and daughters yet unborn,

Cap. 2. v. 1.

Cap. 35. v. 1, 7.

+ Cap. 65. v. 21, 22.

Cap. 60. v. 1.

Cap. 41. v. 19. & cap. 55. v. 13.

Cap. 11. v. 6, 7, 8.

** Cap. 60. v, 4.

In crowding ranks on ev'ry side arise,
Demanding life, impatient for the skies!
See barb'rous nations at thy gates attend*,
Walk in thy light, and in thy temple bend;

See thy bright altars throng'd with prostrate kings,
And heap'd with products of Sabæan springst!
For thee Idume's spicy forests blow,

And seeds of gold in Ophir's mountains glow.
See heav'n its sparkling portals wide display,
And break upon thee in a flood of day!
No more the rising sun shall gild the morn‡,
Nor ev'ning Cynthia fill her silver horn;
But lost, dissolv'd in thy superior rays,
One tide of glory, one unclouded blaze,
O'erflow thy courts: the Light Himself shall shine
Reveal'd, and God's eternal day be thine!

The seas shall waste, the skies in smoke decay §,
Rocks fall to dust, and mountains melt away;
But fix'd His word, His saving power remains,
Thy realm for ever lasts, thy own Messiah reigns.

T

DECLAMATION.

abest facundis gratia dictis.

Eloquent words a graceful manner want.

OVID.

MOST foreign writers who have given any charac

ter of the English nation, whatever vices they ascribe to it, allow, in general, that the people are naturally modest. It proceeds perhaps from this our na tional virtue, that our orators are observed to make

* Cap. 60. v. 3.

+ Ib. v. 6.

Cap. 60. v. 19, 20.
Cap. 51. v. 6. & cap. 54. v. 10.

use of less gesture or action than those of other coun tries. Our preachers stand stock-still in the pulpit, and will not so much as move a finger to set off the best sermons in the world. We meet with the same speaking statues at our bars, and in all public places of debate. Our words flow from us in a smooth continued stream, without those strainings of the voice, motions of the body, and majesty of the hand, which are so much celebrated in the orators of Greece and Rome. We can talk of life and death in cold blood, and keep our temper in a discourse which turns upon every thing that is dear to us. Though our zeal breaks out in the finest tropes and figures, it is not able to stir a limb about us. I have heard it observed more than once by those who have seen Italy, that an untravelled Englishman cannot relish all the beauties of Italian pictures, because the postures which are expressed in them are often such as are peculiar to that country. One who has not seen an Italian in the pulpit, will not know what to make of that noble gesture in Raphael's picture of St. Paul preaching at Athens, where the Apostle is represented as lifting up both his arms, and pouring out the thunder of his rhetoric armidst an audience of pagan philosophers.

It is certain that proper gestures and vehement exertions of the voice cannot be too much studied by a public orator. They are a kind of comment to what he utters, and enforce every thing he says, with weak hearers, better than the strongest argument he can make use of. They keep the audience awake, and fix their attention to what is delivered to them, at the same time that they show the speaker is in earnest, and affected himself with what he so passionately recom. mends to others. Violent gesture and vociferation naturally shake the hearts of the ignorant, and fill them with a kind of religious horror. Nothing is more frequent than to see women weep and tremble at the sight of a moving preacher, though he is placed quite out of their hearing; as in England we very frequently

see people lulled asleep with solid and elaborate discourses of piety, who would be warmed and transported out of themselves by the bellowings and distortions of enthusiasm.

If nonsense, when accompanied with such an emotion of voice and body, has such an influence on men's minds, what might we not expect from many of those admirable discourses which are printed in our tongue, were they delivered with a becoming fervour, and with the most agreeable graces of voice and gesture?

We are told, that the great Latin orator very much impaired his health by this laterum contentio, this vehemence of action, with which he used to deliver himself. The Greek orator was likewise so very famous for this particular in rhetoric, that one of his antagonists, whom he had banished from Athens, reading over the oration which had procured his banishment, and seeing his friends admire it, could not forbear asking them, if they were so much affected by the bare reading of it, how much more they would have been alarmed, had they heard him actually throwing out such a storm of eloquence?

How cold and dead a figure, in comparison of these two great men, does an orator ofter. make at the British bar, holding up his head with the most insipid serenity, and stroking the sides of a long wig that reaches down to his middle? The truth of it is, there is often nothing more ridiculous than the gestures of an English speaker; you see some of them running their hands into their pockets as far as ever they can thrust them, and others looking with great attention on a piece of paper that has nothing written in it; you may see many a smart rhetorician turning his hat in his hands, moulding it into several different cocks, examining sometimes the lining of it, and sometimes the button, during the whole course of his harangue. A deaf man would think he was cheapening a beaver, when perhaps he is talking of the fate of the British nation. I remember, when I was a young man, and

used to frequent Westminster-Hall, there was a counsellor who never pleaded without a piece of pack. thread in his hand, which he used to twist about a thumb, or a finger, all the while he was speaking: the wags of those days used to call it the thread of his discourse, for he was not able to utter a word without it. One of his clients, who was more merry than wise, stole it from him one day in the midst of his pleading; but he had better have let it alone, for he lost his cause by his jest.

I believe every one will agree, that we ought either to lay aside all kinds of gesture, (which seems to be very suitable to the genius of our nation) or at least to make use of such only as are graceful and expressive. 0.

RELIGIOUS HOPE.

Ἐν ελπίσιν χρη τις σοφές εχειν βιον.

EURIPID.

The wise with hope support the pains of life.

THE time present seldom affords sufficient employment to the mind of man. Objects of pain or pleasure, love or admiration, do not lie thick enough together in life to keep the soul in constant action, and supply an immediate exercise to its faculties. In or der, therefore, to remedy this defect, that the mind may not want business, but always have materials for thinking, she is endowed with certain powers, that can recal what is passed, and anticipate what is to come.

That wonderful faculty, which we call the memory, is perpetually looking back, when we have nothing present to entertain us. It is like those repositories in several animals, that are filled with stores of their former food, on which they may ruminate when their present pasture fails.

« AnteriorContinuar »