SENATORIAL AND ORATORICAL.

LXXXVIII. ELOQUENCE.

WHAT Country ever offered a nobler theater for the display of eloquence than our own? From the primary assemblies of the people, where power is conferred, and may be retained, to the national legislature, where its highest attributes are deposited and exercised, all feel and acknowledge its influence.

The master spirits of our fatherland, they who guided the councils of England in her career of prosperity and glory, whose eloquence was the admiration of their contemporaries, as it will be of posterity, were deeply imbued with classical learning. They drank at the fountain, and not at the stream, and they led captive the public opinion of the empire, and asserted their dominion in the senate and the cabinet.

Not

Nor have we been wanting in contribution to the general stock of eloquence. In our legislative assemblies, at the bar, and in the pulpit, many examples are before us. less cheering in the rewards they offer than in the renown which follows them. If our lamps are lighted at the altar of ancient and modern learning, we may hope that a sacred fire will be kept burning to shed its influence upon our institutions and the duration of the Republic.

Habits of mental and moral discipline are the first great objects in any system of education, public or private. The

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value of education depends far less upon varied and extensive acquirements than upon the cultivation of the powers of thought, and the general regulation of the faculties of the understanding. That it is not the amount of knowledge, but the capacity to apply it, which promises success and usefulness in life, is a truth that can not be too often inculcated by instructors and recollected by pupils.

If youth are taught how to think, they will soon learn what to think. Exercise is not more necessary to a healthful state of the body than is the employment of the various faculties of the mind to mental efficiency. The practical sciences are as barren of useful products as the speculative where facts only are the objects of knowledge, unless the understanding is habituated to a continued process of examination and reflection.

No precocity of intellect, no promise of genius, no extent of knowledge, can be weighed in the scale with those acquisitions; but he who has been the object of such sedulous attention, and the subject of such a course of instruction, may enter upon the great duties of life with every prospect of an honorable and useful career. His armor is girded on for battle. However difficult the conjuncture in which he may be called upon to act, he is prepared for whatever may betide him.

-Lewis Cass.

LXXXIX.-IGNORANCE IN OUR COUNTRY A CRIME.

IN all the dungeons of the old world, where the strong champions of freedom are now pining in captivity beneath the remorseless power of the tyrant, the morning sun does not send a glimmering ray into their cells, nor does night draw a thicker vail of darkness between them and the world, but the lone prisoner lifts his iron-laden arms to heaven in prayer that we, the depositaries of freedom and

of human hopes, may be faithful to our sacred trust; while, on the other hand, the pensioned advocates of despotism stand, with listening ear, to catch the first sound of lawless violence that is wafted from our shores, to note the first breach of faith or act of perfidy among us, and to convert them into arguments against liberty and the rights of

man.

There is not a shout sent up by an insane mob, on this side of the Atlantic, but it is echoed by a thousand presses and by ten thousand tongues, along every mountain and valley, on the other. There is not a conflagration kindled here by the ruthless hand of violence, but its flame glares over all Europe, from horizon to zenith. On each occurrence of a flagitious scene, whether it be an act of turbulence and devastation, or a deed of perfidy or breach of faith, monarchs point them out as fruits of the growth and omens of the fate of republics, and claim for themselves and their heirs a further extension of the lease of despotism.

The experience of the ages that are past, the hopes of the ages that are yet to come, unite their voices in an appeal to us; they implore us to think more of the character of our people than of its numbers; to look upon our vast natural resources, not as tempters to ostentation and pride, but as a means to be converted, by the refining alchemy of education, into mental and spiritual treasures; they supplicate us to seek for whatever complacency or self-satisfaction we are disposed to indulge, not in the extent of our territory, or in the products of our soil, but in the expansion and perpetuation of the means of human happiness; they beseech us to exchange the luxuries of sense for the joys of charity, and thus give to the world the example of a nation whose wisdom increases with its prosperity, and whose virtues are equal to its power. For these ends they enjoin upon us a more earnest, a more universal, a more religious devotion to our exertions and resources, to the

culture of the youthful mind and heart of the nation. Their gathered voices assert the eternal truth, that, in a republic, ignorance is a crime; and that private immorality is not less an opprobrium to the state than it is guilt in the perpetrator. -H. Mann.

XC.-JUSTICE TO THE WHOLE COUNTRY.

I THINK, sir, the country calls upon us loudly and imperatively to settle this question. I think that the whole world is looking to see whether this great, popular government can get through such a crisis. We are the observed of all observers. It is not to be disputed or doubted that the eyes of all Christendom are upon us. We have stood through many trials. Can we stand through this, which takes so much the character of a sectional controversy? Can we stand that? There is no inquiring man in all Europe who does not ask himself that question every day, when he reads the intelligence of the morning. Can this country, with one set of interests at the South, and another set of interests at the North,--these interests supposed, but falsely supposed, to be at variance,—can this people see, what is so evident to the whole world beside, that this Union is their main hope and greatest benefit, and that their interests are entirely compatible? Can they see, and will they feel that their prosperity, their respectability among the nations of the earth, and their happiness at home, depend upon the maintenance of their Union and their Constitution? That is the question. I agree that local divisions are apt to overturn the understandings of men, and to excite a belligerent feeling between section and section. It is natural, in times of irritation, for one part of the country to say, if you do that I will do this, and so get up a feeling of hostility and defiance. Then comes belligerent legislation, and then an appeal to arms. The

question is, whether we have the true patriotism, the Americanism, necessary to carry us through such a trial. The whole world is looking towards us with extreme anxiety.

I

For myself, I propose, sir, to abide by the principles and the purposes which I have avowed. I shall stand by the Union, and by all who stand by it. I shall do justice to the whole country, according to the best of my ability, in all I say, and act for the good of the whole country in all I do. I mean to stand upon the Constitution. I need no other platform. I shall know but one country. The ends I aim at shall be my country's, my God's, and Truth's. I was born an American; I live an American; I shall die an American; and I intend to perform the duties incumbent upon me in that character to the end of my career. mean to do this, with absolute disregard of personal consequences. What are personal conseqences? What is the individual man, with all the good or evil that may betide him, in comparison with the good or evil which may befall a great country in a crisis like this, and in the midst of great transactions which concern that country's fate? Let the consequences be what they will, I am careless. No man can suffer too much, and no man can fall too soon, if he suffer, or if he fall, in defense of the liberties and constitution of his country. -Webster.

XCI.-OUR DUTIES TO THE REPUBLIC.

The Old World has already revealed to us, in its unsealed books, the beginning and end of all its own marvelous struggles in the cause of liberty. Greece, lovely Greece,

"The land of scholars and the nurse of arms,"

where sister republics, in fair procession, chanted the praises of liberty and the gods,-where and what is she? For two