If it be proved against an alien, The party, 'gainst the which he doth contrive, Thou hast contrived against the very life Down, therefore, and beg mercy of the duke. Gra. Beg, that thou may'st have leave to hang thyself And yet, thy wealth being forfeit to the state, Thou hast not left the value of a cord; Therefore thou must be hanged at the state's charge. I pardon thee thy life before thou ask it. The other half comes to the general state. Merchant of Venice. 278.-ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. DANIEL WEBSTER. Unborn ages and visions of glory crowd upon my soul. the realization of all which, however, is in the hands and good pleasure of Almighty God; but under His.divine blessing, it will be dependent on the character and the virtues of ourselves, and our posterity. If classical history has been found to be, is now, and shall continue to be, the concomitant of free institutions, and of popular eloquence, what a field is opening to us for another Herodotus, another Thucydides, and another Livy! And let me say, gentlemen, that if we and our posterity shall be true to the Christian religion,-if we and they shall live always in the fear of God, and shall respect His commandments,—if we and they shall maintain just moral sentiments, and such conscientious convictions of duty as shall control the heart and life, we may have the highest hopes of the future fortunes of our country; and if we maintain those institutions of government and that political union, exceeding all praise as much as it exceeds all former examples of political associa tions, we may be sure of one thing-that, while our country furnishes materials for a thousand masters of the historic art, it will afford no topic for a Gibbon. It will have no Decline and Fall. It will go on prospering and to prosper. But, if we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us, that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity. Should that catastrophe happen, let us have no history! Let the horrible narrative never be written! Let its fate be like that of the lost books of Livy, which no human eye shall ever read; or the missing Pleiad, of which no man can ever know more than that it is lost, and lost forever! But, gentlemen, I will not take my leave of you in a tone of despondency. We may trust that Heaven will not forsake us, nor permit us to forsake ourselves. We must strengthen ourselves, and gird up our loins with new resolution; we must counsel each other; and, determined to sustain each other in the support of the Constitution, prepare to meet manfully, and united, whatever of difficulty or of danger, whatever of effort or of sacrifice, the providence of God may call upon us to meet. Are we of this generation so derelict, have we so little of the blood of our Revolutionary fathers coursing through our veins, that we cannot preserve what they achieved? The world will cry out "shame" upon us, if we show ourselves unworthy to be the descendants of those great and illustrious men, who fought for their liberty, and secured it to their posterity, by the Constitution of the United States. Gentlemen, inspiring auspices this day surround us and cheer us. It is the anniversary of the birth of Washington. We should know this, even if we had lost our calendars, for we should be reminded of it by the shouts of joy and gladness. The whole atmosphere is redolent of his name; hills and forests, rocks and rivers, echo and re-echo his praises. All the good, whether learned or unlearnéd, high or low, rich or poor, feel this day that there is one treasure common to them all, and that is the fame and character of Washington. They recount his deeds, ponder over his principles and teachings, and resolve to be more and more guided by them in the future. To the old and the young, to all born in the land, and to all whose love of liberty has brought them from foreign shores to make this the home of their adoption, the name of Wash ington is this day an exhilarating theme. Americans by birth are proud of his character, and exiles from foreign shores are eager to participate in admiration of him; and it is true that he is, this day, here, everywhere, all the world over, more an object of love and regard than on any day since his birth. Gentlemen, on Washington's principles, and under the guidance of his example, will we and our children uphold the Constitution. Under his military leadership our fathers conquered; and under the outspread banner of his political and constitutional principles, will we also conquer. To that standard we shall adhere, and uphold it through evil report and through good report. We will meet danger, we will meet death, if they come, in its protection; and we will struggle on, in daylight and in darkness, ay, in the thickest darkness, with all the storms which it may bring with it, till "Danger's troubled night is o'er, and the star of Peace return.” 279.-THE BIBLE AND THE ILIAD. FRANCIS WAYLAND. Of all the books with which, since the invention of writing, this world has been deluged, the number of those is very small which have produced any perceptible effect on the mass of human character. By far the greater part have been, even by their contemporaries, unnoticed and unknown. Not many a one has made its little mark upon the generation that produced it, though it sunk with that generation to utter forgetfulness. But, after the ceaseless toil of six thousand years, how few have been the works, the adamantine basis of whose reputation has stood unhurt among the fluctuations of time, and whose impressions can be traced through successive centuries, on the history of our species! When, however, such a work appears, its effects are absolutely incalculable; and such a work, you are aware, is the Iliad of Homer. Who can estimate the results produced by the incomparable efforts of a single mind? who can tell what Greece owes to this first-born of song? Her breathing marbles, her solemn temples, her unrivalled eloquence, and her matchless verse, all point us to that transcendent genius, who, by the very splendor of his own effulgence, woke the human intellect from the slumber of ages. It was Homer who gave laws to the artist; it was Homer who inspired the poet; it was Homer who thundered in the senate; and, more than all, it was Homer who was sung by the people; and hence a natior was cast into the mould of one mighty mind, and the land of the Iliad became the region of taste, the birthplace of the arts Nor was this influence confined within the limits of Greece Long after the sceptre of empire had passed westward, genius still held her court on the bank of the Ilyssus, and from the country of Homer gave laws to the world. The light, which the blind old man of Scio had kindled in Greece, shed its radiance over Italy; and thus did he awaken a second nation into intellectual existence. And we may form some idea of the power which this one work has at the present day exerted over the mind of man, by remarking, that "nation after nation, century after century, has been able to do little more than transpose his incidents, name anew his characters, and paraphrase his sentiments." But, considered simply as an intellectual production, whe will compare the poems of Homer with the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament? Where in the Iliad shall we find simplicity and pathos that shall vie with the narrative of Moses, or maxims of conduct to equal in wisdom the Proverbs of Solomon, or sublimity which does not fade away before the conceptions of Job or David, of Isaiah or St. John? But I cannot pursue this comparison. I feel that it is doing wrong to the mind which dictated the Iliad, and to those other mighty intellects on whom the light of the holy oracles never shone. Who that has read his poem has not observed how he strove in vain to give dignity to the mythology of his time? Who has not seen how the religion of his country, unable to support the flight of his imagination, sunk powerless beneath him? It is the unseen world where the master spirits of our race breathe freely, and are at home; and it is mournful to behold the intellect of Homer striving to free itself from the conceptions of materialism, and then sinking down in hopeless despair, to weave idle tales about Jupiter and Juno, Apollo and Diana. But the difficulties under which he labored are abundantly illustrated by the fact that the light which poured upon the human intellect taught other ages how unworthy was the religion of his day of the man who was compelled to use it. "It seems to me," says Longinus, "that Homer, when he ascribed dissensions, jealousies, tears, imprisonments, and other afflictions to his deities, hath, as much as was in his power, made the men of the Iliad gods, and the gods men.. To men, when afflicted, death is the termination of evils; but he hath made not only the nature, but the miseries, of the gods eternal." If, then, so great results have flowed from this one effort of a single mind, what may we not expect from the combined efforts of several, at least his equals in power over the human heart? If that one genius, though groping in the thick darkness of absurd idolatry, wrought so glorious a transformation in the character of his countrymen, what may we not look for from the universal dissemination of those writings, on whose authors was poured the full splendor of eternal truth? If unassisted human nature, spell-bound by childish mythology, has done so much, what may we hope for from the supernatural efforts of pre-eminent genius, which spake as it was moved by the Holy Spirit? 280,-THE EVERLASTING MEMORIAL. HORATIUS BONAR. Up and away, like the dew of the morning,, My name, and my place, and my tomb all forgotten, Gladly away from this toil would I hasten, Up to the crown that for me has been won; Up and away, like the odors of sunset, That sweeten the twilight as darkness comes on; And I but remembered by what I have done. Yes, like the fragrance that wanders in freshness, When the flowers that it came from are closed up and gone So would I be to this world's weary dwellers, Only remembered by what I have done. Needs there the praise of the love-written record, |