How long didst thou think that his silence was slumber? When the wind waved his garment, how oft didst thou start? How many long days and long weeks didst thou number, Ere he faded before thee, the friend of thy heart? IV. When a prince to the fate of the peasant has yielded, And pages stand mute by the canopied pall: V. But meeter for thee, gentle lover of nature, To lay down thy head like the meek mountain lamb, And more stately thy couch, by this desert lake lying, Or all speculations the market holds forth, Is to buy Marcus up at the price he is worth, And then sell him for that which he sets on himself. CX. — THE PRIVILEGED CLASSES. MIRABEAU. We translate the following most eloquent passages from two of Mirabeau's addresses, one delivered February 3, 1789, the other published January 9, 1790. The first four paragraphs have reference to the refusal of certain magistrates of Rennes to obey the decrees of the National Assembly. The remainder of the extract is from an address to Mirabeau's constituents, in which he rebukes the nobility and clergy of Provence who had tried to prevent his election as a deputy to the National Assembly. He consequently hired a warehouse, and put up the sign "Mirabeau, woolen-draper," and was elected deputy from the third estate of Aix. His contemporaries speak of the effect of his eloquence as surprising and irresistible. Of See in Index, BRITTANY, CIMBRI, GRACCHI, MARIUS, MIRABEAU. Delivery. Irony, indignation, disdain are all to be expressed in this harangue, which belongs to the highest order of declamatory effort. Mirabeau it was said, "He trod the trib'une with the supreme authority of a master, and the imperial air of a king,” - and the style of the following remarks harmonizes with this description. In the French National Assembly, every speaker who formally addressed that body, instead of speaking from his seat, as in our legislative halls, ascended an elevated platform or pulpit, called a trib'une, from which he spoke. 1. WHEN, during our session yesterday, those words which you have taught Frenchmen to unlearn,-orders, privileges, fell on my ears; when a private corporation of one of the provinces of this empire spoke to you of the impossibility of consenting to the execution of your decrees, sanctioned by the king; when certain magistrates declared to you, that their conscience and their honor forbade their obedience to your laws, I said to myself, Are these, then, dethroned sovereigns, who, in a transport of imprudent but generous pride, are addressing successful usurpers? No; these are men, whose arrogant pretensions have too long been an insult to all ideas of social order; champions, even more interested than audacious, of a system which has cost France centuries of oppression, public and private, political and fiscal, feudal and judicial, and whose hope is to make us regret and revive that system. 2. The people of Brittany have sent among you sixtysix representatives, who assure you that the new constitution crowns all their wishes;-and here come eleven Judges of the province, who cannot consent that you should be the benefactors of their country. They have disobeyed your laws; and they pride themselves on their disobedience, and believe it will make their names honored by posterity. No, gentlemen, the remembrance of their folly will not pass to posterity. What avail their pigmy efforts to brace themselves against the progress of a revolution, the grandest and most glorious in the world's history, and one that must infallibly change the face of the globe and the lot of humanity? Strange presumption that would arrest liberty in its course, and roll back the destinies of a great nation! 3. It is not to antiquated transactions, it is not to musty treaties, wherein fraud combined with force to chain men to the car of certain haughty masters, — that the National Assembly have resorted, in their investigations into popular rights. The titles we offer are more imposing by far; ancient as time, sacred and imprescriptible as nature! What! Must the terms of the marriage contract of one Anne of Brittany make the people of that province slaves to the nobles till the consummation of the ages? 4. These refractory magistrates speak of the statutes which "immutably fix our powers of legislation." Immutably fix! O, how that word tears the veil from their innermost thoughts! How would they like to have abuses immutable upon the earth, and evil eternal! Indeed, what is lacking to their felicity but the perpetuity of that feudal scourge, which unhappily has lasted only six centuries? But it is in vain that they rage. All now is changed or changing. There is nothing im mutable save reason, save the sovereignty of the peo ple, -save the inviolability of its decrees! 5. In all countries, in all ages, have aristocrats implā cably pursued the friends of the people; and when, by I know not what combination of fortune, such a friend has uprisen from the very bosom of the aristocracy, it has been at him preeminently that they have struck, eager to inspire wider terror by the elevation of their victim. So perished the last of the Gracchi by the hands of the Patricians. But, mortally smitten, he flung dust toward heaven, calling the avenging gods to witness and from that dust sprang Ma'rius,- Marius, less illustrious for having exterminated the Cimbri than for having beaten down the despotism of the nobility in Rome. 6. But you, Commons, listen to one, who, unseduced by your applauses, yet cherishes them in his heart. Man is strong only by union; happy only by peace. Be firm, not obstinate; courageous, not turbulent; free, not undisciplined; prompt, not precipitate. Stop not except at difficulties of moment; and be then wholly inflexible. 7. For myself, who, in my public career, have had no other fear than that of wrong-doing,—who, girt with my conscience, and armed with my principles, would brave the universe, be sure that the empty clamors, the wrathful menaces, the injurious protestations, -all the convulsions, in a word, of expiring prejudices, shall not on me impose! What! shall he now pause in his civic course, who, first among all the men of France, emphatically proclaimed his opinions on national affairs, at a time when circumstances were much less propitious than now, and the task one of much greater peril? Never! No measure of outrages shall bear down my patience. I have been, I am, I shall be, even to the tomb, the man of the Public Liberty, the man of the Constitution. If to be such be to become the man of the people rather than of the nobles, then woe to the privileged orders! For privileges shall have an end, but the people are eternal! CXI. A MOTHER'S PORTRAIT. COWPER. The following lines were written by Cowper on the receipt of his mother's portrait, the gift of his cousin. They are full of pathos, and the poet's history confirms all the personal allusions to his own unhappiness. His mind, even in childhood, exhibited that gentleness, timidity, and diffidence, which ripened into such bitter fruit in his after life. Insanity developed itself, taking the form of religious melancholy, and he was confined for eighteen months to a lunatic asylum. See in Index, REVERY, Elysian, Cowper. Delivery. This should be in a middle pitch, with gentle force, rather slow time, and tender expression. I. O THAT those lips had language! Life has passed II. Faithful remembrancer of one so dear, O welcome guest, though unexpected here! But gladly, as the precept were her own: A momentary dream, that thou art she. III. My mother! when I learned that thou wast dead, Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed? |