to say, if you pronounce the awful sentence of guilty, that you have not given the verdict conscience commanded. If his countrymen condemn him, he will be ready to meet his fate with the faith of a Christian, and with the firmness of a man. The last accents of his lips will breathe a prayer for Ireland's happiness, Ireland's constitutional freedom. The dread moment that shall precede his mortal agonies will be consoled, if through his sufferings and his sacrifice some system of government shall arisewhich I aver has never existed-just, comprehensive, impartial, and, above all, consistent, which may conduct to wealth, prosperity, and greatness the country he has loved, not wise y, perhaps, but too well.

In no pitiful strains do I seek compassion for my client, even in a case of blood. I ask it solemnly, in the spirit of our free constitution, in accordance with the rooted principles of our common law. This is a cause between the subject and the crown, wherein these great principles might shine out in glorious perfection. A verdict of acquittal, in accordance with this divine doctrine, will not be a triumph over the law. When the sovereign seals, by her coronation oath, the great compact between the people and the crown, she swears to execute, in all her judgments, justice in mercy. That same justice you administer; no rigorous, remorseless, sanguinary code, but justice in mercy.

In nothing, though at an immeasurable distance still, do men on earth so nearly approach the attribute of the Almighty as in the administration of justice tempered with mercy, or dismal would be our fate. As you hope for mercy from the Great Judge, grant it this day! The awful issues of life and death are in your hands; do justice in mercy! The last faint murmur on your quivering lips will be for mercy, ere the immortal spirit shall wing its flight to, I trust, a better and brighter world! WHITESIDE.

9. VINDICATION FROM TREASON.

(Dolivered during the recent rebellion in Ireland.)

MY LORDS,-It is my intention to say a few words only. I desire that the last act of a proceeding which has occupied so much of the public time should be of short duration. Nor have I the indelicate wish to close the dreary ceremony of a State prosecution with a vain display of words. Did I fear that hereafter, when I shall be no more, the country I have tried to serve

would think ill of me, I might indeed avail myself of this solemn moment to vindicate my sentiments and my conduct. But I have no such fear. In speaking thus, accuse me not, my lords, of an indecorous presumption. To the efforts I have made in a just and a noble cause, I ascribe no vain importance; nor do I claim for those efforts any high reward. But it so happens, and it will ever happen so, that they who have tried to serve their country, no matter how weak the effort may have been, are sure to receive the thanks and blessings of its people. With my country, then, I leave my memory, my sentiments, my acts proudly feeling that they require no vindication from me this day. A jury of my countrymen, it is true, have found me guilty of the crime of which I stood indicted. For this I entertain not the slightest feeling of resentment towards them: influenced by the charge of the Lord Chief Justice, they could have found no other verdict. What of the charge? Any strong observation on it, I feel sincerely, would ill befit the solemnity of this scene; but I would earnestly beseech of you, my lord,—you who preside on that bench,-when the passions and the prejudices of this hour have passed away, to appeal to your own conscience, and ask of it, Was your charge as it ought to be impartial and indifferent between the subject and the crown? My lords, you may deem this language unbecoming in me, and perhaps it may seal my fate. But I am here to speak the truth, whatever it may cost. I am here to regret nothing I have ever done-to retract nothing I have ever said. I am here to crave with no lying lip the life I consecrate to the liberty of my country. Far from it: even here, here where the thief, the libertine, the murderer, have left their footprints in the dust, here on this spot, where the shadows of death surround me, and from which I see my early grave in an unanointed soil opened to receive me,-even here, encircled by these terrors, the hope which has beckoned me to the perilous sea upon which I have been wrecked, still consoles, animates, enraptures me. T. F. MEAGHER.

10. THE SAME.-PART SECOND.

No, I do not despair of my poor old country-her peace, her liberty, her glory. For that country I can do no more than bid her hope. To lift this island up, to make her a benefactor, instead of being the meanest beggar in the world; to

restore to her her native powers and her ancient constitution ;this has been my ambition, and this ambition has been my crime. Judged by the law of England, I know this crime entails the penalty of death; but the history of Ireland explains this crime and justifies it. Judged by that history, I am no criminal; you are no criminal; you are no criminal: I deserve no punishment; we deserve no punishment. Judged by that history, the treason of which I stand convicted loses all its guilt; is sanctified as a duty; will be ennobled as a sacrifice. With these sentiments, my lord, I await the sentence of the court-having done what I felt to be my duty, having spoken what I felt to be the truth, as I have done on every other occasion of my short career. I now bid farewell to the country of my birth, my passion, and my death, the country whose misfortunes have invoked my sympathies, whose factions I have sought to still, whose intellect I have prompted to a lofty aim, whose freedom has been my fatal dream. I offer to that country as a proof of the love I bear her, and the sincerity with which I thought, and spoke, and struggled for her freedom, the life of a young heart; and with that life all the hopes, the honors, the endearments, of an honorable home. Pronounce, then, my lords, the sentence which the law directs, and I will be prepared to hear it. I trust I shall be prepared to meet its execution. I hope to be able, with a pure heart, and a perfect composure, to appear before a higher tribunal— a tribunal where a Judge of infinite goodness, as well as of justice, will preside, and where, my lords, many, many of the judgments of this world will be reversed.

T. F. MEAGHER

11. THE INDIAN, AS HE WAS AND IS.

Nor many generations ago, where you now sit, circled with all that exalts and embellishes civilized life, the rank thistle nodded in the wind, and the wild fox dug his hole unscared. Here lived and loved another race of beings. Beneath the same sun that rolls over your heads, the Indian hunter pursued the panting deer; gazing on the same moon that smiles for you, the Indian lover wooed his dusky mate.

Here the wigwam-blaze beamed on the tender and helpless, the council-fire glared on the wise and daring. Now they dipped their noble limbs in your sedgy lakes, and now they

G. SPRAGUE.

WASHINGTON IRVING.

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paddled the light canoe along your rocky shores. Here they warred; the echoing whoop, the bloody grapple, the defying death-song, all were here; and when the tiger-strife was over, here curled the smoke of peace.

Here, too, they worshipped; and from many a dark bosom went up a pure prayer to the Great Spirit. He had not written his laws for them on tables of stone, but he had traced them on the tables of their hearts. The poor child of nature knew not the God of revelation, but the God of the universe he acknowledged in every thing around.

And all this has passed away. Across the ocean came a pilgrim bark, bearing the seeds of life and death. The former were sown for you; the latter sprang up in the path of the simple native. Two hundred years have changed the character of a great continent, and blotted forever from its face a whole peculiar people. Art has usurped the bowers of nature, and the anointed children of education have been too powerful for the tribes of the ignorant.

As a race, they have withered from the land. Their arrows are broken, their springs are dried up, their cabins are in the dust. Their council-fire has long since gone out on the shore, and their war-cry is fast dying to the untrodden West. Slowly and sadly they climb the distant mountains, and read their doom in the setting sun. They are shrinking before the mighty tide which is pressing them away; they must soon hear the roar of the last wave, which will settle over them forever.

G. SPRAGUE.

12. SORROW FOR THE DEAD.

(These parts may be spoken together or separately.)

SORROW for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal : every other affliction to forget; but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open: this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude. Where is the mother that would willingly forget the infant that perished like a blossom from her arms, though every recollection is a pang? where is the child that would willingly forget the most tender of parents, though to remember be but to lament? who, even in the hour of agony, would forget the friend over whom he mourns? who, even when the tomb is closing upon the remains of her he most loved, and he

feels his heart, as it were, crushed in the closing of its portal, would accept consolation that was to be bought by forgetfulness? No; the love which survives the tomb is one of the noblest attributes of the soul. If it has its woes, it has likewise its delights; and when the overwhelming burst of grief is calmed into the gentle tear of recollection, when the sudden anguish and the convulsive agony over the present ruins of all that we most loved, is softened away into pensive meditation on all that it was in the days of its loveliness, who would root out such a sorrow from the heart? Though it may sometimes throw a passing cloud even over the bright hour of gaiety, or spread a deeper sadness over the hour of gloom, yet who would exchange it even for the song of pleasure, or the burst of revelry? No; there is a voice from the tomb sweeter than song: there is a recollection of the dead to which we turn even from the charms of the living. Oh, the grave! the grave! It buries every error; covers every defect; extinguishes every resentment. From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections. Who can look down upon the grave even of an enemy, and not feel a compunctious throb, that ever he should have warred with the poor handful of earth that lies mouldering before him! WASHINGTON IRVING.

13. THE SAME.-PART SECOND.

THE grave of those we loved-what a place for meditation! There it is that we call up in long review the whole history of virtue and gentleness, and the thousand endearments lavished upon us almost unheeded in the daily intercourse of intimacy: there it is that we dwell upon the tenderness, the solemn, awful tenderness of the parting scene: the bed of death, with all its stifled griefs its noiseless attendance: its mute, watchful assiduities the last testimonies of expiring love: the feeble, fluttering, thrilling (Oh! how thrilling !) pressure of the hand: the last fond look of the glazing eye, turning upon us even from the threshold of existence the faint, faltering accents struggling in death to give one more assurance of affection!

Ay, go to the grave of buried love, and meditate! There settle the account with thy conscience for every past benefit unrequited, every past endearment unregarded, of that being who can never, never, never return to be soothed by thy contrition!