Слике страница
PDF
ePub

day, and should never have occasion to conversc more with mankind, it were then no great matter (as far as respects the affairs of the world) if he spent his reputation all at once; or ventured it at one throw. But if he be to continue in the world, and would have the advantage of reputation while he is in it, let him make use of truth and sincerity in all his words and actions; for nothing but this will hold out to the end. All other arts may fail; but truth and integrity will carry a man through, and bear him out to the last.

TILLOTSON.

IV. A REFLECTION.

WHEN I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion dies within me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grief for those whom we must quickly follow. When I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contentions and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make an appearance together.

V. CRIME ITS OWN DETECTOR.

AGAINST the prisoner at the bar, as an individual, I cannot have the slightest prejudice. I would not do him the smallest injury or injustice. But I do not affect to be indifferent to the discovery and the punishment of this deep guilt. I cheerfully share in the opprobrium, how much soever it may be, which is cast on those who feel and manifest an anxious concern that all who had a part in planning, or a hand in executing, this deed of midnight assassination, may be brought to answer for their enor mous crime at the bar of public justice.

Gentlemen, this is a most extraordinary case. In some respects it has hardly a precedent anywhere— certainly none in our New England history. An aged man, without an enemy in the world, in his own house, and in his own bed, is made the victim of a butcherly murder, for mere pay. Deep sleep had fallen on the destined victim, and on all beneath his roof. A healthful old man, to whom sleep was sweet- the first sound slumbers of the night hold him in their soft but strong embrace.

[ocr errors]

The assassin enters through the window, already prepared, into an unoccupied apartment; with noiseless foot he paces the lonely hall, half lighted by the moon; he winds up the ascent of the stairs, and reaches the door of the chamber. Of this he moves the lock, by soft and continued pressure, till it turns on its hinges; and he enters and beholds his victim before him. The room was uncommonly light. The face of the innocent sleeper was turned from the murderer; and the beams of the moon,

of

resting on the gray locks of his aged temple, showed him where to strike. The fatal blow is given, and the victim passes, without a struggle or a motion, from the repose sleep to the repose of death! It is the assassin's purpose to make sure work; and he yet plies the dagger, though it was obvious that life had been destroyed by the blow of the bludgeon. IIe even raises the aged arm, that he may not fail in his aim at the heart, and replaces it again over the wounds of the poniard! To finish the picture, he explores the wrist for the pulse! he feels it, and ascertains that it beats no longer! It is accomplished! the deed is done! IIe retreats- retraces his steps to the window, passes through as he came in, and escapes. He has done the murder; no eye has seen him, no ear has heard him; the secret is his own, and he is safe!

--

Ah! gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake. Such a secret can be safe nowhere. The whole creation of God has neither nook nor corner, where the guilty can bestow it and say it is safe. Not to speak of that Eye which glances through all disguises, and beholds everything as in the splendor of noon,—such secrets of guilt are never safe; "murder will out." True it is that Providence hath so ordained, and doth so govern things, that those who break the great law of Heaven, by shedding man's blood, seldom succeed in avoiding discovery. Especially in a case exciting so much attention as this, discovery must and will come, sooner or later. A thousand eyes turn at once to explore every man, every thing, every circumstance, connected with the time and place; a thousand cars catch every whisper; a thousand excited minds intently dwell on the scene; shedding all their light, and ready to kindle the slightest circumstance

into a blaze of discovery. Meantime the guilty soul cannot keep its own secret. It is false to itself

[ocr errors]

or rather it feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be true to itself it labors under its guilty possession, and knows not what to do with it. The human heart was not made for the residence of such an inhabitant; it finds itself preyed on by a torment which it dares not acknowledge to God or man. A vulture is devouring it, and it asks no sympathy or assistance either from heaven or earth. The secret which the murderer possesses soon comes to possess him; and like the evil spirits of which we read, it overcomes him, and leads him whithersoever it will. He feels it beating at his heart, rising to his throat, and demanding disclosure. He thinks the whole world sees it in his face, reads it in his eyes, and almost hears its workings in the very silence of his thoughts. It has become his master ; · it betrays his discretion; it breaks down his courage; it conquers his prudence. When suspicions, from without, begin to embarrass him, and the net of circumstances to entangle him, the fatal secret struggles with still greater violence to burst forth. It must be confessed; it will be confessed; there is no refuge from confession but in suicide, and suicide is confession.

WEBSTER.

VI. DISCOVERIES OF GALILEO.

THERE are occasions in life in which a great mind lives years of rapt enjoyment in a moment. I can fancy the emotions of Galileo, when, first raising the newly

constructed telescope to the heavens, he saw fulfilled the grand prophecy of Copernicus, and beheld the planet. Venus crescent like the moon.

It was such another moment as that, when the immortal printers of Mentz and Strasburg received the first copy of the Bible into their hands, the work of their divine art; like that, when Columbus, through the gray dawn of the 12th of October, 1492, beheld the shores of San Salvador; like that, when the law of gravitation. first revealed itself to the intellect of Newton; like that, when Franklin saw, by the stiffening fibres of the hempen cord of his kite, that he held the lightning in his grasp; like that, when Leverrier received back from Berlin the tidings that the predicted planet was found.

Yes, noble Galileo, thou art right. "It DOES move." Bigots may make thee recant it, but it moves, nevertheless. Yes, the carth moves, and the planets move, and the mighty waters move, and the great sweeping tides of air move, and the empires of men move, and the world of thought moves, ever onward and upward, to higher facts and bolder theories. The Inquisition may seal thy lips, but they can no more stop the progress of the great truth propounded by Copernicus, and demonstrated by thee, than they can stop the revolving earth.

Close, now, venerable sage, that sightless, tearful cye; it has seen what man never before saw; it has seen enough. Hang up that poor little spy-glass; it has done its work. Not Herschel nor Rosse has, comparatively, done more. Franciscans and Dominicans deride thy discoveries now, but the time will come when, from two hundred observatories in Europe and America, the glorious artillery of science shall nightly assault the skies;

« ПретходнаНастави »