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is there set down that Cicero, by an industry that never tired, acquired his stores of learning; that it was by constant labor that the thunders of Grecian eloquence were taught to roll from lips that stammered up to manhood, and Socrates, and Plato, and Archimedes, and such as they, were never idle. They are all described in the records of their glory as men of incredible industry, of singular diligence. And in more modern times it has not been otherwise. Think you that Newton came from the hand of his Creator a genius so much mightier than all who had gone before him, as the effects which he produced exceeded those of any other age? Do you believe that our own Frankin was formed by nature alone to sport with the thunders, and make the lightning the plaything of his leisure? He had learned that nature is to be subdued only by obeying her laws; and only by a careful study did he learn them, obey them, and make them his servants. Bacon will be remembered till there is no more need of philosophy, and Franklin and Newton will live, in the gratitude of the world, till the last lightnings shall have played through the heavens, and they be rolled together as a scroll. And this enduring fame was the reward of lives of incredible laborious industry, in the pursuit of useful knowledge.

ERASTUS C. BENEDICT.

81. A GOOD BOOK.

As good almost kill a man as kill a book: who kills a man, kills a reasonable creature: God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself: kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. It is true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse. We should be wary, therefore, what persecutions we raise against the living labors of public men: how we spill that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored up in books; since we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed; sometimes a martyrdom; and, if it extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at that ethereal and sift essence, the breath of reason itself: slays an immortality rather than a life.

JOHN MII,TON.

82. TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD.

THOUGH all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to doubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter? who knows not that Truth is strong, next to the Almighty? She needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings, to make her victorious; those are the shifts and defences that error uses against her power. Give her but room, and do not bind her when she sleeps; for then she speaks not true, but then rather she turns herself into all shapes, except her own, and perhaps tunes her voice according to the time, until she be adjured into her own likeness.

JOHN MILTON.

83. THE INSTITUTIONS OF ENGLAND.

If you are convinced that the habits of a country must be formed by its institutions, and if you are also convinced that our institutions are superior to those of other countries, let us determine to cling to our native government.

All the excitement that accompanies mighty changes, is now beginning quietly to settle; the influence, the disturbing influence of those changes, is gradually lessening; the dazzling illusions of "glorious days" are dissipated; and we are now permitted to see things in their true colors. The convictions, the feelings, the affections of the people are gravitating towards their old centre, in which sit enthroned respect for property, love of rational freedom, and attachment to long-established and prescriptive authority.

Yes; from these walls a spirit shall go forth, that shall survive when this edifice shall be, like an unsubstantial pageant, faded. That spirit shall survive by the remembrance of this day, spreading a contagious influence into every part of the empire, animating the desponding and encouraging the brave.

It shall go forth exulting in, but not abusing, its strength. It shall go forth, remembering, in the days of its prosperity, the pledges it gave in the time of its depression. It shall go forth, uniting a disposition to correct abuses, to redress grievances. It shall go forth, uniting the disposition to improve, with the resc

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lution to maintain and defend, by that spirit of unbought affection which is the chief defence of nations.

Our ancient constitution shall survive at last, protecting the rich from spoliation, and the poor from oppression. No tawdry emblems of revolution shall float over its ruin.

"The flag, that for a thousand years

Has braved the battle and the breeze,"

shall still float over the ramparts. And that faith, and those national establishments intended for its protection, as they exist respectively in the three branches of the United Kingdom-those establishments which kings have sworn to protect, and to the maintenance of which the national honor is pledged, as essential parts of a great national compact, shall survive; and the religion which we profess, the offspring of free inquiry, shall find, in the diffusion of sound knowledge, new sources of strength; and great as may be the storm of adversity to which it may be exposed, it shall come out proved and fortified by the trial, and remain rooted deeply in the convictions, the feelings, and affections of the people.

ROBERT PEEL.

84. THE IRISH DISTURBANCE BILL

I Do not rise to fawn or cringe to this house; I do not rise to supplicate you to be merciful towards the nation to which I belong towards a nation which, though subject to England, yet is distinct from it. It is a distinct nation: it has been treated as such by this country, as may be proved by history, and by seven hundred years of tyranny. I call upon this house, as you value the liberty of England, not to allow the present nefarious bill to pass. In it are involved the liberties of England, the liberty of the press, and of every other institution dear to Englishmen.

Against the bill I protest in the name of the Irish people, and in the face of heaven. I treat with scorn the puny and pitiful assertions that grievances are not to be complained of, that our redress is not to be agitated; for, in such cases, remonstrances cannot be too strong, agitation cannot be too violent, to show to the world with what injustice our fair claims are met, and under what tyranny the people suffer.

There are two frightful clauses in this bill. The one which

does away with trial by jury, and which I have called upon you to baptize you call it a court-martial,- -a mere nickname; I stigmatize it as a revolutionary tribunal. What, in the name of heaven, is it, if it is not a revolutionary tribunal? It annihilates the trial by jury; it drives the judge from his bench,—the man who, from experience, could weigh the nice and delicate points of a case,-who could discriminate between the straightforward testimony and the suborned evidence, who could see, plainly and readily, the justice or injustice of the accusation. It turns out this man who is free, unshackled, unprejudiced,-who has no previous opinions to control the clear exercise of his duty. You do away with that which is more sacred than the throne itself; that for which your king reigns, your lords deliberate, your commons assemble.

If ever I doubted before of the success of our agitation for repeal, this bill, this infamous bill, the way in which it has been received by the house, the manner in which its opponents have been treated, the personalities to which they have been subjected, the yells with which one of them has this night been greeted, all these things dissipate my doubts, and tell me of its complete and early triumph. Do you think those yells will be forgotten? Do you suppose their echo will not reach the plains of my injured and insulted country; that they will not be whispered in her green valleys, and heard from her lofty hills? Oh! they will be heard there: yes, and they will not be forgotten. The youth of Ireland will bound with indignation; they will say, We are eight millions; and you treat us thus, as though we were no more to your country than the isle of Guernsey or of Jersey !"

I have done my duty; I stand acquitted to my conscience and my country: I have opposed this measure throughout; and I now protest against it as harsh, oppressive, uncalled for, unjust, as establishing an infamous precedent by retaliating crime against crime; as tyrannous, cruelly and vindictively tyrannous.

DANIEL O'CONNELL.

85. THE MISERIES OF IRELAND.

ENGLISHMEN, look at Ireland! what do you behold?—a beautiful country, with wonderful agricultural and commercial advantages, the link between America and Europe,—the natural

resting-place of trade, in its way to either hemisphere; indented with havens, watered by deep and numerous rivers, with a fortunate climate, and a soil teeming with easy fertility, and inhabited by a bold, intrepid, and—with all their faults—a generous and enthusiastic people.

Such is natural Ireland: what is artificial Ireland? Such is Ireland, as God made her: what is Ireland, as England made her?

This fine country is laden with a population the most miserable in Europe. Your domestic swine are better housed than the people. Harvests, the most abundant, are reaped by men with starvation in their faces; famine covers a fruitful soil; and disease inhales a pure atmosphere: all the great commercial facilities of the country are lost; the deep rivers, that should circulate opulence, and turn the machinery of a thousand manufactures, flow to the ocean without wafting a boat or turning a wheel; and the wave breaks in solitude in the silent magnificence of deserted and shipless harbors.

Instead of being a source of wealth and revenue to the empire, Ireland cannot defray her own expenses, or pay a single tax. Instead of being a bulwark and fortress, she debilitates, exhausts, and endangers England, and offers an allurement to the speculators in universal ruin.

The great mass of her enormous population is alienated and dissociated from the state; the influence of the constituted and legitimate authorities is gone; a strange, anomalous, and unexampled kind of government has sprung up from the public passions, and exercises a despotic sway over the great mass of the community; while the class inferior in numbers, but accustomed to authority, and infuriated at its loss, are thrown into formidable reaction. The most ferocious passions rage from one extremity of the country to the other. Hundreds and thousands of men, arrayed with badges, gather in the south; and the smaller factions, with discipline and arms, are marshalled in the north. The country is strewed with the materials of civil commotion, and seems like one vast magazine of powder, which a spark might ignite into an explosion that would shake the whole fabric of civil society into ruin, and of which England would perhaps never recover from the shock.

SHIEL.