A very few years pass away, and we hear of a new man, a Corsican lieutenant, the self-named "armed soldier of democracy," Napoleon. He ravages Austria, covers her land with blood, drives the northern Cæsar from his capital, and sleeps in his palace. Austria may now remember how her power trampled upon Poland. Did she not pay dear, very dear, for her California?

But has Prussia no atonement to make? You see this same Napoleon, the blind instrument of Providence, at work there. The thunders of his cannon at Jena proclaim the work of retribution for Poland's wrongs; and the successors of the Great Frederick, the drill-sergeant of Europe, are seen flying across the sandy plains that surround their capital, right glad if they may escape captivity and death.

But how fares it with the autocrat of Russia? Is he secure in his share of the spoils of Poland! No; suddenly we see six hundred thousand men marching to Moscow. Does his Vera Cruz protect him now? Far from it. Blood, slaughter, desolation, spread abroad over the land, and, finally, the conflagration of the old commercial metropolis of Russia closes the retribution she must pay for her share in the dismemberment of her weak and impotent neighbor.

scene.

A mind more prone to look for the judgments of Heaven in the doings of men than mine cannot fail in this to see the providence of God. When Moscow burned, it seemed as if the earth was lighted up, that nations might behold the As that mighty sea of fire gathered and heaved, and rolled upward, and yet higher, till its flames licked the stars and fired the whole heavens, it did seem as though the God of the nations was writing in characters of flame, on the front of his throne, that doom that shall fall upon the strong nation which tramples in scorn upon the weak.

And what fortune awaited him, the appointed executor of this work, when it was all done? He, too, conceived the idea that his "destiny" pointed onward to universal do

minion. France was too small; Europe, he thought, should bow down before him. But as soon as this idea took possession of his soul he, too, became powerless. Just there, while he witnessed the humiliation, and, doubtless, meditated the subjugation of Russia, He who holds the winds in his fist gathered the snows of the north, and blew them upon his six hundred thousand men. They died, they froze, they perished. And now the mighty Napoleon. . . . He has found" room at last. And France, she, too, has found" room." Her eagles now no longer scream along the banks of the Danube, the Po, and the Borysthenes. They have returned home to their old eyrie, between the Alps, the Rhine, and the Pyrenees.

So shall it be with yours. You may carry them to the loftiest peaks of the Cordilleras, they may wave in insolent triumph in the halls of the Montezumas, the armed men of Mexico may quail before them,- but the weakest hand in Mexico, uplifted in prayer to the God of justice, may call down against you a Power, in the presence of which the iron hearts of your warriors shall be turned into ashes!

57. HAMLET'S INSTRUCTIONS.-Shakspeare.

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town crier spoke my lines. And 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. Oh, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious, periwig-pated 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-shows and noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you avoid it.

Be not too tame either, 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 anything 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 his form and pressure. Now, this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskillful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. Oh, 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 Christian, pagan, or man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

218. Demonstrative and Diffusive. The following selections begin with median stress (§ 102) and orotund quality (§ 137); they end with terminal stress (§ 101) and the aspirated orotund (§ 138).

58. IGNORANCE IN OUR COUNTRY A CRIME.-Horace Mann.

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 veil of darkness between them and the world, but the lone prisoner lifts his iron-laden

arms to heaven in prayer that wé, the depositaries of freedom and of

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human hopes, may be faithful to our sacred trùst; - while, on the

other hand, the pensioned advocates of despotism stand, with listenslowly

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from our shores, to note the first breach of faith or act of perfidy

amongst 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 | thou

sand tongues along every mountain | and valley, on the other. to opposite f There is not a conflagration | kindled | here | by the ruthless hand of

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zenith. On each occurrence of a flagitious scene, whether it be an act of turbulence | and devastátion, or a deed of perfidy | or breach

of fàith, mõnarchs | point them out as fruits of the growth | and turn to ms RC W tr to C Ft on waist

omens of the fate of repùblics, and claim for themselves and their

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numbers; to look upon our vast | natural | resources, not as tempt

ers to ostentation and príde, but as a means to be convérted, by the

refining alchemy of education, into mental | and spiritual | trèasures; they supplicate us to seek for whatever complacency or self

satisfaction we are disposed to indulge, not in the extent of our

térritory, or in the products | of our sóil, but in the expansion | and

perpetuation of the means of human | happiness; they beseech us

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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 of our exertions and resources to the culture |

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voices assert the eternal | truth that, in a Republic, ignorance |

is a crìmê; and that private | immorality is not less an opprobrium

to the state than it is guilt | in the perpetrator.

59. CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON.-Charles Phillips.

Sir, it matters very little what immediate spot may have been the birthplace of such a man as Washington. No people can claim, no country can appropriate him. The boon. of Providence to the human race, his fame is eternity, and his residence creation. Though it was the defeat of our arms, and the disgrace of our policy, I almost bless the convulsion in which he had his origin. If the heavens thundered, and the earth rocked, yet, when the storm had past, how pure was the climate that it cleared! how bright in the brow of the firmament was the planet which it revealed to us!

In the production of Washington it does really appear as if Nature was endeavoring to improve upon herself, and that all the virtues of the ancient world were but so many studies preparatory to the patriot of the new. Individual instances, no doubt, there were, splendid exemplifications of some single qualification: Cæsar was merciful, Scipio was continent, Hannibal was patient; but it was reserved for Washington to blend them all in one, and, like the lovely masterpiece of the Grecian artist, to exhibit, in one glow of associated beauty, the pride of every model and the perfection of every master.

As a general, he marshaled the peasant into a veteran, and supplied, by discipline, the absence of experience; as a statesman, he enlarged the policy of the cabinet into the most comprehensive system of general advantage; and such was the wisdom of his views and the philosophy of his