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8. Let us teach that the world of matter in which we live, in all its vast variety of form, is influential in the production, support, and happiness of our own life; and that it is passing strange, that with minds endowed with a capacity to study that influence and measurably direct it, we should yield uninquiringly to its action, as if it were capricious accident, or blind destiny.

9. Shall we not excite some interest, when we appeal to the public, to learn that science which teaches the mechanism of our own wonderfully and fearfully fashioned frames, and that other science which teaches the vastly more complicated and delicate structure of our immortal minds? Who would not follow with delight, that science which elevates our thoughts to the heavens, and teaches us the magnitude, forms, distances, revolutions, and laws, of the globes that fill the concave space above us?

10. And who, with thoughts thus gradually conducted through the range of the material universe, would not receive with humility, yet with delight, the teachings of that spirit of divine truth, which exalts us to the study of the character and attributes of that glorious and beneficent Being, whose single volition called it all into existence.

11. Let us teach the people all this; and let us show them, that while we sit contentedly in comparative ignorance, the arts are waiting to instruct us how to reduce the weary labors of life; philosophy, how to avoid its errors and misfortunes; eloquence, poetry, and music, to cheer its way and refine our affections; and that religion is most efficient when she combines and profits by all these instructions, to conduct us to happiness in a future state.

12. Above all, let us inculcate, that the great and beneficent Being who created us and this material universe, has established between each of us, and every part of it cognizable by our minds, relations more or less intimate.

13. That he has impressed not more on the globes that roll through the infinitude of space, than on the pebble that lies beneath our feet; not more on the wind and lightning, than the etherial mind of man; and not more on the human soul, than the dimly lighted instinct of the glow-worm, or the insect visible only by microscopic aid," laws that determine their organization, their duration, time, place, circumstance, and action; that for our security, improvement, and happi

ness, he has subjected those laws to our keen investigation and perpetual discovery; and that vast as is the range of that discovery, so vast, and more extended than we can describe, or can yet be conceived, is knowledge; and to attain all this knowledge-is EDUCATION."

The above extract is from Governor William H. Seward's Discourse on Education, delivered at Westfield, Chautauque county, N. Y., July 26, 1837. Its distinguished author feels, as well as manifests, a deep and thrilling interest in elevating the standard of education. He believes with the great and good men by whom our government was organized, that it, "cannot live but as it is sustained by the virtue and intelligence of the people." Mr. Seward agrees in opinion with Napoleon Bonaparte, that "the only true conquests, and those which leave no regrets, are those which we obtain over ignorance." He was elected Governor of the state of New-York in the year 1838. It will be perceived, that his excellency assumes the position, that, although we are ever learning, we are never able to learn all "that is desirable to be known." The governor's position is correct. The world is a school, in which all mankind are pupils. At no period of our lives can we, with propriety, say, our education is finished. Under all the circumstances of life, we seem, as Sir Isaac Newton says, "like children picking up a shell here and there on the shore of the great ocean of truth," Governor Seward was reëlected in 1840.

13. HAMLET'S INSTRUCTION TO THE PLAYERS.-Shakspeare..

1. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus: but use all gently; for, in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, WHIRLWIND of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.

2. O, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious periwigpated fellow, tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the GROUNDLINGS, who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb show and noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it outHerods Herod. Pray you avoid it.

3. But not too tame, neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor; suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature; for any thing so overdone is from the purpose

of playing; whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature; scorn, her own image; and the very age and body of the time, its form and pressure.

4. Now this, overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve, the censure of which one, must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others.

5. O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christians, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made men well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

Shakspeare, the master of the heart, and the great and unrivalled delineator of human character, was born at Stratford, on the Avon in 1564. It has been justly said of him, that "he exhausted worlds, and then imagined new." By the power of his genius, he demands and obtains our belief, even for what is singular. As observed in the Encyclopædia: "Not only are his human characters inexhaustible, even in conception, but he opens the gates of the magic world, calls up the midnight ghosts, exhibits witches, and fills the air with sportive fairies, and sylphs, and deformed monsters; and although such beings exist only in imagination, he extorts the conviction, that they did actually exist, they would conduct themselves as he represents." Hamlet's advice to the players is very judicious, and all public speakers should be governed by it. It is a good piece for recitation. But let it not be supposed, that so far as the voice may be concerned, reading is any thing more or less, "than speaking at sight, by the assistance of letters."

14. TELL'S ADDRESS TO THE MOUNTAINS.-Knowles.

1. Ye crags and peaks, I'm with you once again!
I hold to you the hands you first beheld,
To show they still are free. Methinks I hear
A spirit in your echoes answer me,
And bid your tenant welcome to his home
Again! O, sacred forms, how proud you look!
How high you lift your heads into the sky!
How huge you are! how mighty and how free!

2. Ye are the things that tower, that shine-whose smile
Makes glad whose frown is terrible-whose forms,
Robed or unrobed, do all the impress wear
Of awe divine. Ye guards of liberty!
I'm with you once again!—I call to you
With all my voice! I hold my hands to you
To show they still are free. I rush to you,
As though I could embrace you!

Tell's address is from the play of "William Tell," written by James Sheridan Knowles. Tell was an illustrious Swiss patriot. In the year 1307, he aroused his fellow-citizens to throw off the yoke of Austrian bondage, and to establish the independence of their country. The above address, being the language of exultation, should be given on a very high key, and with great animation and power. It is a favorite piece with elocutionists and students in oratory.

15. ADDRESS TO THE SUN.-Ossian.

1. O, thou that rollest above, round as the shield of my fathers! Whence are thy beams, O sun! thy everlasting light? Thou comest forth in thy awful beauty; the stars hide themselves in the sky; the moon, cold and pale, sinks in the western wave.

2. But thou, thyself, movest alone: who can be a companion of thy course? The oaks of the mountains fall; the mountains themselves decay with years; the ocean shrinks and grows again; the moon herself is lost in heaven; but thou art for ever the same, rejoicing in the brightness of thy course.

3. When the world is dark with tempests; when thunder rolls, and lightning flies, thou lookest in thy beauty from the clouds and laughest at the storm. But to Ossian, thou lookest in vain; for he beholds thy beams no more; whether thy yellow hairs flow on the eastern clouds, or thou tremblest at the gates of the west.

4. But thou art, perhaps, like me, for a season; thy years will have an end. Thou shalt sleep in the clouds, careless of the voice of the morning. Exult, then, O sun! in the strength of thy youth!

5. Age is dark and unlovely; it is like the glimmering light of the moon, when it shines through broken clouds, and

ne mist is on the hills; the blast of the north is on the plain; the traveller shrinks in the midst of his journey.

Ossian, whose beautiful and sublime address to the sun is here inserted, was a Caledonian, and is supposed to have been the son of Fingal. It is presumed that he flourished in the fourth century, from which period to the present time, his writings have commanded the admiration of the world. His effusions have been the delight of men highly distinguished for their talents, among whom may be mentioned Napoleon Bonaparte. At the time Ossian made this magnificent apostrophe to the sun, he was blind, to which circumstance he alludes, when he says: "For he beholds thy beams no more." Homer and Milton were also blind when they wrote some of their best pieces. It seems, that in proportion as physical light was excluded from the three great poets, eyes of genius were planted in their minds. The sun is the first material object to which man ever bowed in worship. It both discovers and conceals the glory of its great Creator, who alone is entitled to our adoration. Ossian's cotemporaries doubtless worshipped the sun; but it appears that he, at least, doubted the propriety of doing it, as he calls in question its eternity. It is, however, believed that Ossian paid more homage to the sun, than to any other object; and, therefore, his address to it may be regarded as a prayer, emanating from the heart of a blind and aged man. Its elocution requires slow time, somewhat of a low key, and long quantity. It is one of the most exquisite productions in our language; and, when properly read or recited, appeals powerfully to the sympathetic feelings of our nature. The author is aware the question is not settled with certainty, that Ossian really existed, or if he did, that he actually wrote the poems attributed to him,

16. RIENZI'S ADDRESS TO THE ROMANS.-Miss Mitford.

1. I come not here to talk. You know too well
The story of our thraldom. We are slaves!
The bright sun rises to his course, and lights
A race of slaves! He sets, and his last beam
Falls on a slave; not such as swept along
By the full tide of power, the conqueror led
To crimson glory and undying fame;
But base, ignoble slaves-slaves to a horde
Of petty tyrants, feudal despots, lords,
Rich in some dozen paltry villages

2.

Strong in some hundred spearmen-only great
In that strange spell-a name.

Each hour, dark fraud,
Or open rapine, or protected murder,

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