and Company, Boston, publishers.
BY DANIEL WEBSTER
Sir, I shall not allow myself, on this occasion, I hope on no occasion,
to betray myself into any loss of temper; but if provoked, as I trust I
never shall be, into crimination and recrimination, the honorable
member may perhaps find that, in that contest, there will be blows to
take as well as to give; that others can state comparisons as
significant, at least, as his own, and that his impunity may possibly
demand of him whatever powers of taunt and sarcasm he may possess. I
commend him to a prudent husbandry of his resources.
But, sir, the Coalition! The Coalition! Aye, "the murdered Coalition!"
The gentleman asks if I were led or frighted into this debate by the
specter of the Coalition. "Was it the ghost of the murdered Coalition,"
he exclaims, "which haunted the member from Massachusetts; and which,
like the ghost of Banquo, would never down?" "The murdered Coalition!"
Sir, this charge of a coalition, in reference to the late
administration, is not original with the honorable member. It did not
spring up in the Senate. Whether as a fact, as an argument, or as an
embellishment, it is all borrowed. He adopts it, indeed, from a very
low origin, and a still lower present condition. It is one of the
thousand calumnies with which the press teemed during an excited
political canvass. It was a charge of which there was not only no proof
or probability, but which was in itself wholly impossible to be true.
No man of common information ever believed a syllable of it. Yet it was
of that class of falsehoods which, by continued repetition, through all
the organs of detraction and abuse, are capable of misleading those who
are already far misled, and of further fanning passion already kindling
into flame. Doubtless it served in its day, and in greater or less
degree, the end designed by it. Having done that, it has sunk into the
general mass of stale and loathed calumnies. It is the very cast-off
slough of a polluted and shameless press. Incapable of further
mischief, it lies in the sewer, lifeless and despised. It is not now,
sir, in the power of the honorable member to give it dignity or decency
by attempting to elevate it and to introduce it into the Senate. He
cannot change it from what it is, an object of general disgust and
scorn. On the contrary, the contact, if he choose to touch it, is more
likely to drag him down, down to the place where it lies itself.
IN HIS OWN DEFENSE
BY ROBERT EMMET
I am asked what I have to say why sentence of death should not be
pronounced on me, according to law.
I am charged with being an emissary of France. An emissary of France!
and for what end? It is alleged that I wish to sell the independence of
my country; and for what end? Was this the object of my ambition? And
is this the mode by which a tribunal of justice reconciles
contradictions? No; I am no emissary; and my ambition was to hold a
place among the deliverers of my country, not in power nor in profit,
but in the glory of the achievement. Sell my country's independence to
France! and for what? Was it for a change of masters? No, but for
ambition. O my country! was it personal ambition that could influence
me? Had it been the soul of my actions, could I not by my education and
fortune, by the rank and consideration of my family, have placed myself
amongst the proudest of your oppressors? My country was my idol! To it
I sacrificed every selfish, every endearing sentiment; and for it I now
offer up my life.
My lords, you are impatient for the sacrifice. Be yet patient! I have
but a few more words to say--I am going to my cold and silent grave--my
lamp of life is nearly extinguished--my race is run--the grave opens to
receive me, and I sink into its bosom. I have but one request to ask at
my departure from this world: it is--the charity of its silence. Let no
man write my epitaph; for, as no man who knows my motives dares now
vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them
and me rest in obscurity and peace, and my tomb remain uninscribed,
until other times and other men can do justice to my character. When my
country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not
till then, let my epitaph be written. I have done.
ON RESISTANCE TO GREAT BRITAIN
From a speech in the Provincial Convention, Virginia, March, 1775
BY PATRICK HENRY
I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be
not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible
motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy in this quarter of the
world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir,
she has none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for no other.
They are sent over to bind and to rivet upon us those chains which the
British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose
them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last
ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We
have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it
has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble
supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already
exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer.
Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm
which is now coming on. We have petitioned, we have remonstrated, we
have supplicated, we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and
have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the
ministry and parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our
remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our
supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned with
contempt from the foot of the throne. In vain, after all these things,
may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no
longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free, if we mean to preserve
inviolate these inestimable privileges for which we have been so long
contending; if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in
which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves
never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be
obtained, we must fight; I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to
arms, and to the God of Hosts, is all that is left us!
INVECTIVE AGAINST LOUIS BONAPARTE
From a reprint in "A Modern Reader and Speaker," by George Ridde,
Duffield and Company, New York, publishers.
BY VICTOR HUGO
I have entered the lists with the actual ruler of Europe, for it is
well for the world that I should exhibit the picture. Louis Bonaparte
is the intoxication of triumph. He is the incarnation of merry yet
savage despotism. He is the mad plenitude of power seeking for limits,
but finding them not, neither in men nor facts. Louis Bonaparte holds
France; and he who holds France holds the world. He is master of the
votes, master of consciences, master of the people; he names his
successor, does away with eternity, and places the future in a sealed
envelope. Thirty eager newspaper correspondents inform the world that
he has frowned, and every electric wire quivers if he raises his little
finger. Around him is heard the clanking of the saber and the roll of
the drum. He is seated in the shadow of the eagles, begirt by ramparts
and bayonets. Free people tremble and conceal their liberty lest he
should rob them of it. The great American Republic even hesitates
before him, and dares not withdraw her ambassador.
Europe awaits his invasion. He is able to do as he wishes, and he
dreams of impossibilities. Well, this master, this triumphant
conqueror, this vanquisher, this dictator, this emperor, this all-
powerful man, one lonely man, robbed and ruined, dares to rise up and
attack.
Yes, I attack Louis Napoleon; I attack him openly, before all the
world. I attack him before God and man. I attack him boldly and
recklessly for love of the people and for love of France. He is going
to be an emperor. Let him be one; but let him remember that, though you
may secure an empire, you cannot secure an easy conscience!
This is the man by whom France is governed! Governed, do I say?--
possessed in supreme and sovereign sway! And every day, and every
morning, by his decrees, by his messages, by all the incredible drivel
which he parades in the "Moniteur," this emigrant, who knows not
France, teaches France her lesson! and this ruffian tells France he has
saved her! And from whom? From herself! Before him, Providence
committed only follies; God was waiting for him to reduce everything to
order; at last he has come!
II
For thirty-six years there had been in France all sorts of pernicious
things,--the tribune, a vociferous thing; the press, an obstreperous
thing; thought, an insolent thing, and liberty, the most crying abuse
of all. But he came, and for the tribune he has substituted the Senate;
for the press, the censorship; for thought, imbecility; and for
liberty, the saber; and by the saber and the Senate, by imbecility and
censorship, France is saved. Saved, bravo! And from whom, I repeat?
From herself. For what was this France of ours, if you please? A horde
of marauders and thieves, of anarchists, assassins, and demagogues. She
had to be manacled, had this mad woman, France; and it is Monsieur
Louis Bonaparte who puts the handcuffs on her. Now she is in a dungeon,
on a diet of bread and water, punished, humiliated, garotted, safely
cared for. Be not disturbed; Monsieur Bonaparte, a policeman stationed
at the Élysée, is answerable for her to Europe. He makes it his
business to be so; this wretched France is in the straitjacket, and if
she stirs--Ah, what is this spectacle before our eyes? Is it a dream?
Is it a nightmare? On one side a nation, the first of nations, and on
the other, a man, the last of men; and this is what this man does to
this nation. What! he tramples her under his feet, he laughs in her
face, he mocks and taunts her, he disowns, insults, and flouts her!
What! he says, "I alone am worthy of consideration!" What! in this land
of France where none would dare to slap the face of his fellow, this
man can slap the face of the nation? Oh, the abominable shame of it
all! Every time that Monsieur Bonaparte spits, every face must be
wiped! And this can last! and you tell me it will last! No! No! by
every drop in every vein, no! It shall not last! Ah, if this did last,
it would be in very truth because there would no longer be a God in
heaven, nor a France on earth!
SHOWING THE PICTURE
MOUNT, THE DOGE OF VENICE!
From the play, "Foscari"
BY MARY RUSSELL MITFORD
_Doge_. What! didst thou never hear
Of the old prediction that was verified
When I became the Doge?
_Zeno_. An old prediction!
_Doge_. Some seventy years ago--it seems to me
As fresh as yesterday--being then a lad
No higher than my hand, idle as an heir,
And all made up of gay and truant sports,
I flew a kite, unmatched in shape or size,
Over the river--we were at our house
Upon the Brenta then; it soared aloft,
Driven by light vigorous breezes from the sea
Soared buoyantly, till the diminished toy
Grew smaller than the falcon when she stoops
To dart upon her prey. I sent for cord,
Servant on servant hurrying, till the kite
Shrank to the size of a beetle: still I called
For cord, and sent to summon father, mother,
My little sisters, my old halting nurse,--
I would have had the whole world to survey
Me and my wondrous kite. It still soared on,
And I stood bending back in ecstasy,
My eyes on that small point, clapping my hands,
And shouting, and half envying it the flight
That made it a companion of the stars,
When close beside me a deep voice exclaimed--
Aye, mount! mount! mount!--I started back, and saw
A tall and aged woman, one of the wild
Peculiar people whom wild Hungary sends
Roving through every land. She drew her cloak
About her, turned her black eyes up to Heaven,
And thus pursued: Aye, like his fortunes, mount,
The future Doge of Venice! And before
For very wonder any one could speak
She disappeared.
_Zeno_. Strange! Hast thou never seen
That woman since?
_Doge_. I never saw her more.
THE REVENGE
From "Tennyson's Poetical Works," published by Houghton Mifflin
Company, Boston.
BY ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
"Shall we fight or shall we fly?
Good Sir Richard, tell us now,
For to fight is but to die!
There'll be little of us left by the time this sun be set."
And Sir Richard said again: "We be all good Englishmen.
Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the devil,
For I never turned my back upon don or devil yet."
Sir Richard spoke and he laughed, and we roar'd a hurrah, and so
The little _Revenge_ ran on sheer into the heart of the foe,
With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below;
For half of their fleet to the right and half to the left were seen.
And the little _Revenge_ ran on thro' the long sea lane between.
And while now the great _San Philip_ hung above us like a cloud
Whence the thunderbolt will fall
Long and loud,
Four galleons drew away
From the Spanish fleet that day,
And two upon the larboard and two upon the starboard lay,
And the battle-thunder broke from them all.
And the sun went down, and the stars came out, far over the summer sea,
But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three.
Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons came,
Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-thunder and
flame;
Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and her
shame,
For some were sunk, and many were shatter'd, and so could fight us no
more--
God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the world before?
For he said: "Fight on! fight on!"
Tho' his vessel was all but a wreck;
And it chanced that, when half of the summer night was gone,
With a grisly wound to be dressed, he had left the deck,
But a bullet struck him that was dressing it suddenly dead,
And himself he was wounded again, in the side and the head,
And he said: "Fight on! Fight on!"
And the night went down, and the sun smiled out far over the summer
sea,
And the Spanish fleet with broken sides lay round us all in a ring;
But they dared not touch us again, for they feared that we still could
sting,
So they watched what the end would be.
And we had not fought them in vain,
But in perilous plight were we,
Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain
and half of the rest of us maimed for life
In the crash of the cannonades and the desperate strife;
And the sick men down in the hold were most of them stark and cold,
And the pikes were all broken and bent, and the powder was all of it
spent;
And the masts and the rigging were lying over the side;
But Sir Richard cried in his English pride,
"We have fought such a fight for a day and a night
As may never be fought again!
We have won great glory, my men!
And a day less or more
At sea or ashore,
We die--does it matter when?
Sink me the ship, Master Gunner--sink her, split her in twain!
Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!"
A VISION OF WAR
From a Memorial Day address, with the permission of C. P. Farrell, New
York, publisher and owner of the Ingersoll copyrighted books.
BY ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
The past rises before me like a dream. Again we are in the great
struggle for national life. We hear the sounds of preparation; the
music of boisterous drums; the silver voices of heroic bugles. We see
thousands of assemblages, and hear the appeals of orators. We see the
pale cheeks of women, and the flushed faces of men; and in those
assemblages we see all the dead whose dust we have covered with
flowers. We lose sight of them no more. We are with them when they
enlist in the great army of freedom. We see them part with those they
love. Some are walking for the last time in quiet, woody places with
the maidens they adore. We hear the whisperings and the sweet vows of
eternal love as they lingeringly part forever. Others are bending over
cradles, kissing babes that are asleep. Some are receiving the
blessings of old men. Some are parting with mothers who hold them and
press them to their hearts again and again and say nothing. Kisses and
tears, tears and kisses--divine mingling of agony and joy! And some are
talking with wives, and endeavoring with brave words, spoken in the old
tones, to drive from their hearts the awful fear. We see them part. We
see the wife standing in the door with the babe in her arms--standing
in the sunlight, sobbing. At the turn in the road a hand waves--she
answers by holding high in her loving arms the child. He is gone, and
forever.
We see them all as they march proudly away under the flaunting flags,
keeping time to the grand, wild music of war,--marching down the
streets of the great cities, through the towns and across the prairies,
down to the fields of glory, to do and to die for the eternal right.
A vision of the future rises:--
I see our country filled with happy homes, with firesides of content--
the foremost of all the earth.
I see a world where thrones have crumbled and kings are dust. The
aristocracy of idleness has perished from the earth.
I see a world without a slave. Man at last is free. Nature's forces
have by science been enslaved. Lightning and light, wind and wave,
frost and flame, and all the secret-subtle powers of earth and air are
the tireless toilers for the human race.
I see a world at peace, adorned with every form of art, with music's
myriad voices thrilled, while lips are rich with words of love and
truth; a world in which no exile sighs, no prisoner mourns; a world on
which the gibbet's shadow does not fall; a world where labor reaps its
full reward, where work and worth go hand in hand, where the poor girl
trying to win bread with the needle--the needle that has been called
"the asp for the breast of the poor"--is not driven to the desperate
choice of crime or death, of suicide or shame.
I see a world without the beggar's outstretched palm, the miser's
heartless, stony stare, the piteous wail of want, the livid lips of
lies, the cruel eyes of scorn.
I see a race without disease of flesh or brain,--shapely and fair,--the
married harmony of form and function,--and, as I look, life lengthens,
joy deepens, love canopies the earth; and over all, in the great dome,
shines the eternal star of human hope.
SUNSET NEAR JERUSALEM
From an article in the _Century Magazine_, June, 1906, with the
Permission of the Century Company and of the author.
BY CORWIN KNAPP LINSON
To our Northern eyes the intense brilliancy of the tropical and semi-
tropical sky comes as a revelation. Sometimes at noon it is painfully
dazzling; but the evening is a vision of prismatic light holding
carnival in the air, wherein Milton's "twilight gray" has no part.
Unless the sky is held in the relentless grip of a winter storm, the
Orient holds no gray in its evening tones; these are translucent and
glowing from the setting of the sun until the stars appear. In Greece
we are dreamers in that subtle atmosphere, and in Egypt visionaries
under the spell of an ethereal loveliness where the filigree patterning
of white dome and minaret and interlacing palm and feathery pepper tree
leaves little wonder in the mind that the ornamentation of their
architecture is so ravishing in its tracery.
Outside the walls of Jerusalem on the north there is a point on a knoll
which commands the venerable city that David took for his own. From
here you can watch the variable glow of color spread over the whole
breadth of country, from the ground at one's feet to the distant purple
hilltops of Bethlehem. The fluid air seems to swim, as if laden with
incense. The rocks underfoot are of all tones of lavender in shadow,
and of tender, warm gleams in the light, casting vivid violet shadows
athwart the mottled orange of the ground.
Down in the little valley just below us a tiny vineyard nestles in the
half-light; the gray road trails outside; and beyond rise the walls,
serene and stately, catching on their highest towers the last rays of
the sun.
The pointed shaft of the German church lifts a gray-green finger tipped
with rose into the ambient air. The sable dome of the Holy Sepulcher
yields a little to the subtle influence, and shows a softer and more
becoming purple.
All the unlovely traits and the squalor of the city are lost, so
delicately tender is the mass of buildings painted against the
background of distance.
It had been one of those days in March when the clouds of "the latter
rains" had been blowing from the west. As the day drew near its close,
the heavy mists assembled in great masses of ominous gray and blue,
golden-edged against the turquoise sky. With such speed did they move
that they seemed suddenly to leap from the horizon, and the vast dome
of the heaven became filled with weird, flying monsters racing
overhead. The violence of the wind tore the blue into fragments, so
that what only a moment since was a colossal weight of cloud
threatening to ingulf the universe, was now like a great host marshaled
in splendid array, flying banners of crimson, whose ranks were ever
changing, until they scattered in disordered flight across the face of
the sky.
As the lowering sun neared the horizon, the color grew more and more
vivid, until the whole heaven was aflame with a whirlwind of scarlet
and gold and crimson, of violet and blue and emerald, flecked with
copper and bronze and shreds of smoky clouds in shadow, a tempestuous
riot of color so wild and extraordinary as to hold one spellbound.
Had not David beheld a similar sky when he wrote:--
O Lord my God, thou art very great;
Thou art clothed with honor and majesty.
Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment:
Who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain:
Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters:
Who maketh the clouds his chariot:
Who walketh upon the wings of the wind:
Who maketh winds his messengers;
His ministers a flaming fire.
A RETURN IN TRIUMPH
From a speech before the New England Society of New York, December,
1886
BY T. DE WITT TALMAGE
I never so realized what this country was and is as on the day when I
first saw some of these gentlemen of the Army and Navy. It was when at
the close of the War our armies came back and marched in review before
the President's stand at Washington. I do not care whether a man was a
Republican or a Democrat, a Northern man or a Southern man, if he had
any emotion of nature, he could not look upon it without weeping. God
knew that the day was stupendous, and He cleared the heaven of cloud
and mist and chill, and sprung the blue sky as the triumphal arch for
the returning warriors to pass under. From Arlington Heights the spring
foliage shook out its welcome, as the hosts came over the hills, and
the sparkling waters of the Potomac tossed their gold to the feet of
the battalions as they came to the Long Bridge and in almost
interminable line passed over. The Capitol never seemed so majestic as
on that morning: snowy white, looking down upon the tides of men that
came surging down, billow after billow. Passing in silence, yet I heard
in every step the thunder of conflicts through which they had waded,
and seemed to see dripping from their smoke-blackened flags the blood
of our country's martyrs. For the best part of two days we stood and
watched the filing on of what seemed endless battalions, brigade after
brigade, division after division, host after host, rank beyond rank;
ever moving, ever passing; marching, marching; tramp, tramp, tramp--
thousands after thousands, battery front, arms shouldered, columns
solid, shoulder to shoulder, wheel to wheel, charger to charger,
nostril to nostril.