was ever forged into the thunderbolts of war, her triumph will be grand enough without her setting fire to the stubble with which the folly of the Old World has girt its thrones. 4. No deeper humiliation could be asked for our foreign enemies than the spectacle of our triumph. If we have any legal claims against the accomplices of pirates, they will be presented, and they will be paid. If there are any uncomfortable precedents which have been introduced into international law, the jealous "Mistress of the Seas" must be prepared to face them in her own hour of trouble. 5. Had her failings but leaned to Freedom's side, had she but been true to her traditions, to her profes sions, to her pretended principles, where could she have found a truer ally than her own offspring, in the time of trial which is too probably preparing for her? "If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace!" No tardy repentance can efface the record of the past. We may forgive, but history is inexorable. 6. However our conflict may seem at first sight to do violence, in certain respects, to the principles of selfgovernment, everybody knows that it is a strife of dem ocratic against oligarchic institutions, of a progressive against a stationary civilization, of the rights of manhood against the claims of a class, of a national order representing the will of a people against a conspiracy organized by a sectional minority. 7. Just so far as the people of Europe understand the nature of our armed controversy, they will understand that we are pleading their cause. Nay, if the mass of our Southern brethern did but know it (as they one day will), we are pleading their cause just as much. The emancipation of industry has never taken effect in the South, and never can until labor ceases to be degrading. 8. The flame that sweeps our prairies is terrible, but it only scorches the surface. What has to be feared by all the governments based on smothered pauperism, tolerated ignorance, and organized degradation, is the subterranean fire which finds its vent in blazing craters, or breaks up all the ancient landmarks in earth-shattering convulsions. God forbid that we should invoke any such catastrophe even for those who have been hardest upon us in our bitter trial! 9. Yet so surely as American society founds itself upon the rights of civilized man, there is no permanent safety for any nation but in the progressive recognition. of the American principle. The right of governing a nation belongs to the people of the nation; and the urgent duty of those provisional governments which we call monarchies, empires, aristocracies, is to educate their people with a view to the final surrender of all power into their hands. 10. A little longer patience, a little more sacrifice, a little more vigorous, united action, on the part of the loyal States, and the American Union will behold herself mirrored in the Atlantic and the Pacific, the stateliest of earthly sovereignties; — not in her own aspiring language, but by the confession of her most envious rival, "predominating over all mankind." 11. No Tartar hordes pouring from the depths of Asia, no Northern barbarians swarming out of the hive of nations, no Saracens sweeping from their deserts to plant the Crescent over the symbol of Christendom, were more terrible to the principalities and powers that stood in their way, than the Great Republic, by the bare fact of its existence, will become to every government which does not hold its authority from the people. 10 L. THE RETURN FROM BATTLE. MRS. HEMANS. Io (pronounced e'o) is an interjection, common to both the Greek and Latin languages, and equivalent to our huzza! The CITTERN or CITHERN was a stringed musical instrument. In HEARTH ea has the sound it has in heart. See in Index, ERE, DORIAN, HEMANS. Delivery. This little poem affords a most favorable specimen of the fine lyrical powers of Mrs. Hemans. It should be delivered with a spirit and tenderness for which it would be difficult to lay down rules. I. Io! they come, they come! garlands for every shrine! With the offering of bright blood, they have ransomed hearth and tomb, Vineyard, and field, and flood; —Io! they come, they come! II. Sing it where olives wave, and by the glittering sea, And o'er cach hero's grave, sing, sing, the land is free! III. Io! thy son is come! Who murmured of the dead? Hush, boding voice! We know That many a shining head lies in its glory low. Breathe not those names to-day! They shall have their praise erelong, With a power all hearts to sway, in ever-burning song. But now shed flowers, pour wine, to hail the conquerors home; Bring wreaths for every shrine,-Io! they come, they come! LI. EMMETT'S LAST SPEECH. On the 23d of June, 1803, a rebellion against the government broke out in Dublin, in which Robert Emmett, at the time only twenty-three years of age, was a principal actor. It proved a failure. Emmett was arrested, having missed the opportunity of escape, it is said, by lingering to take leave of a daughter of Curran, the gifted orator, to whom he bore an attachment, which was reciprocated. On the 19th of September, 1803, Emmett was tried for high treason at the Sessions House, Dublin, before Lord Norbury, one of the Chief Judges of the King's Bench, and others; was found guilty, and executed the next day. Through his counsel, he had asked, at the trial, that the judgment of the court might be postponed until the next morning. This request was not granted. The clerk of the Crown read the indictment, and announced the verdict found, in the usual form. He then concluded thus: "What have you, therefore, now to say, why judgment of death and execution should not be awarded against you, according to law?" Standing forward in the dock, in front of the Bench, Emmett made an impromptu address, from which the following are extracts. At his execution, Emmett displayed great fortitude. As he was passing out of his cell, on his way to the gallows, he met the turnkey, who had become much attached to him. Being fettered, Emmett could not give his hand; so he kissed the poor fellow on the cheek, who, overcome by the mingled condescension and tenderness of the act, fell senseless at the feet of the youthful victim, and did not recover till the latter was no longer among the living. Pronounce AL-LY', GAL'LANT, Give the short sound to o in TRANSITORY. Delivery. The best rule that can be given for the delivery of this profoundly impassioned address is: Put yourself in the situation of the prisoner, enter into his feelings and convictions, see the scaffold frowning before you, rise to a self-sacrificing love of country, to a sublime defiance of unmerited obloquy and death, and then speak accordingly. 1. My Lords, it may be a part of the system of angry justice to bow a man's mind, by humiliation, to the purposed ignominy of the scaffold; but worse to me than the scaffold's shame, or the scaffold's terrors, would be the shame of such foul and unfounded imputations as have been laid against me in this court. You, my Lord, are a judge. I am the supposed culprit. I am a man,-you are a man also. By a revolution of power, we might change places, though we never could change characters. 2. If I stand at the bar of this court, and dare not vindicate my character, what a farce is your justice! If I stand at this bar, and dare not vindicate my character, how dare you calumniate it? Does the sentence of death, which your unhallowed policy inflicts on my body, also condemn my tongue to silence, and my reputation to reproach? Your executioner may abridge the period of my existence; but, while I exist, I shall not forbear to vindicate my character and motives from your aspersions. 3. As a man to whom fame is dearer than life, I will make the last use of that life in doing justice to that reputation which is to live after me, and which is the only legacy I can leave to those I honor and love, and for whom I am proud to perish. As men, my Lord, we must appear, on the great day, at one common tribunal; and it will then remain for the Searcher of all hearts to show, to a collective universe, which party are engaged in the most virtuous actions, or actuated by the purest motives,-my country's oppressors or —* 4. My Lord, shall a dying man be denied the legal privilege of exculpating himself, in the eyes of the community, of an undeserved reproach thrown upon him during his trial, by charging him with ambition,—with attempting to cast away, for a paltry consideration, the liberties of his country? Why, then, insult me? or, rather, why insult justice, in demanding of me why sentence of death should not be pronounced? 5. I know, my Lord, that form prescribes that you should ask the question; the form also presumes the right of answering! This, no doubt, may be dispensed with; and so might the whole ceremony of the trial, since sentence was already pronounced at the Castle† before your jury was impanneled. Your Lordships are but the priests of the oracle, and I submit to the sacrifice; but I insist on the whole of the forms. *Here Lord Norbury exclaimed, "Listen, Sir, to the sentence of the law." † Dublin Castle, where the government offices are. |