The evening came, yet there the people stood, The beating of your pulses while he spoke. 2. SOLILOQUY OF VAN ARTEVELDE.-Henry Taylor. Say that I fall not in this enterprise, Still must my life be full of hazardous turns, Make fast the doors; heap wood upon the fire; But what is this? Do I not see, or do I dream I see, O! yes, The dweller in the mountains, on whose ear And leave myself no choice of vantage-ground, 3. INNOCENCE. Whence learned she this? O, she was innocent! The fledge-dove knows the prowlers of the air, DRAMATIC EXTRACTS. 4. TITUS BEFORE JERUSALEM. Rev. H. H. Milman. It must be And yet it moves me, Romans! it confounds The counsel of my firm philosophy, That Ruin's merciless ploughshare must pass o'er, And barren salt EI be sown on yon proud city. As on this olive-crowned hill we stand, To the blue heavens! There bright and sumptuous palaces There towers of war that frown in massy strength; While over all hangs the rich purple eve, As conscious of its being her last farewell Of light and glory to that fated city. And, as our clouds of battle, dust, and smoke, Finding itself a solemn sanctuary In the profound of heaven! It stands before us 5. THE DUKE ARANZA TO JULIANA. John Tobin. I'll have no glittering gewgaws stuck about you, Nor cumbrous silk, that, with its rustling sound, Can see her beauty in! Thus modestly attired, 385 No deeper rubies than compose thy lips, 1. WHO is the man that, in addition to the disgraces and mischiefs of our army, has dared to authorize and associate to our arms the tomahawk and scalping-knife of the savage?—to call into civilized alliance the wild and inhuman savage of the woods; to delegate to the merciless Indian the defence of disputed rights; and to wage the horrors of his barbarous war against our brethren? My Lords, these enormities cry aloud for redress and punishment; but, atrocious as they are, they have found a defender in this House. "It is perfectly justifiable," says a noble Lord, to use all the means that God and Nature put into our hands." I am astonished, shocked, to hear such principles confessed, - to hear them avowed in this House, or even in this country; principles equally unconstitutional, inhuman, and unchristian! 66 2. My Lords, I did not intend to have trespassed again upon your attention; but I cannot repress my indignation - I feel myself impelled by every duty to proclaim it. As members of this House, as men, as Christians, we are called upon to protest' against the barbarous proposition. "That God and Nature put into our hands!" -What ideas that noble Lord may entertain of God and Nature, I know not; but I know that such abominable principles are equally abhorrent to religion and to humanity. What! attribute the sacred sanction of God and Nature to the massacres of the Indian scalping-knife, -to the cannibal savage, torturing, murdering, devouring, drinking the blood of his mangled victims! Such horrible notions shock every precept of religion, revealed or natural; every sentiment of honor, every generous feeling of humanity! - 3. These abominable principles, and this more abominable avowal of them, demand most decisive indignation! I call upon that Right Reverend Bench, those holy ministers of the Gospel, and pious pastors of our Church; I con-jure' them to join in CHATHAM ON THE AMERICAN WAR. 387 the holy work, and to vindicate the religion of their God! I appeal to the wisdom and the law of this learned Bench, to defend and support the justice of their country! I call upon the Bishops to interpose the unsullied sanctity of their lawn, upon the judges to interpose the purity of their ermine, to save us from this pollution! I call upon the honor of your Lordships, to reverence the dignity of your ancestors, and to maintain your own! I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country, to vindicate the national character! I invoke the genius of the Constitution! From the tapestry that adorns these walls, the immortal ancestor of the noble Lord frowns with indignation at the disgrace of his country! 4. Turn forth into our settlements, among our ancient connections, friends and relations, the merciless cannibal, thirsting for the blood of man, woman, and child? Send forth the infidel savage? Against whom? Against your brethren! To lay waste their country, to desolate their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name, with these horrible hounds of savage war! Spain armed herself with blood-hounds to extir'pate the wretched natives of America; and we improve on the inhuman example of even Spanish cruelty; -we turn loose these savages, these fiendish hounds, against our brethren and countrymen in America, of the same language, laws, liberties, and religion, endeared to us by every tie that should sanctify humanity! 5. My Lords, this awful subject, so important to our honor, our Constitution, and our religion, demands the most solemn and effectual inquiry. And I again call upon your Lordships, and the united powers of the State, to examine it thoroughly and decisively, and to stamp upon it an indelible stigma of the public abhorrence. And I again implore those holy prelates of our religion to do away those iniquities from among us. Let them perform a lustration; let them purify this House and this country from this sin. My Lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more; but my feelings and my indignation were too strong to have said less. I could not have slept this night in my bed, or have reposed my head on my pillow, without giving this vent to my eternal abhorrence of such preposterous and enormous principles. It 6. This, my Lords, is a perilous and tremendous moment. is no time for adulation. The smoothness of flattery cannot save us, in this rugged and awful crisis. It is now necessary to inWe must, if pos struct the Throne, in the language of TRUTH. sible, dispel the delusion and darkness which envelop it; and display, in its full danger and genuine colors, the ruin which is brought to our doors. Can Ministers still presume to expect support in their infatuation? Can Parliament be so dead to its dignity and duty as to be thus deluded into the loss of the one and the violation of the other; as to give an unlimited support to measures which have heaped disgrace and misfortune upon us; measures which have reduced this late flourishing empire to ruin and contempt? But yesterday, and England might have stood against the world: now, none so poor to do her reverence! 7. France, my Lords, has insulted you. She has encouraged and sustained America; and, whether America be wrong or right, the dignity of this country ought to spurn at the officious insult of French interference. Can even our Ministers sustain a more humiliating disgrace? Do they dare to resent it? Do they presume even to hint a vindication of their honor, and the dignity of the State, by requiring the dismissal of the plenipotentiaries of America? The People, whom they affected to call contemptible rebels, but whose growing power has at last obtained the name of enemies, — the People with whom they have engaged this country in war, and against whom they now command our implicit support in every measure of desperate hostility, — this People, despised as rebels, or acknowledged as enemies, are abetted against you, supplied with every military store, their interests consulted, and their Ambassadors entertained, by your invěterate enemy, and our Ministers dare not interpose with dignity or effect! 8. My Lords, this ruinous and ignominious situation, where we cannot act with success nor suffer with honor, calls upon us to remonstrate in the strongest and loudest language of truth, to rescue the ear of Majesty from the delusions which surround it. You cannot, I venture to say it, you CANNOT conquer America. What is your present situation there? We do not know the worst; but we know that in three campaigns we have done nothing and suffered much. You may swell every expense, and strain every effort, still more extravagantly; accumulate every assistance you can beg or borrow; traffic and barter with every little pitiful German Prince, that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign country: your efforts are forever vain and im'potent, -doubly so from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates to an incurable resentment the minds of your enemies, to overrun them with the sordid sons of rapine and of plunder, devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty! If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms!- never! never! never! |