20. Breathes there a man, with soul so dead, This is my own, my native land? Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd, "Lay of the Last Minstrel." 21. It was an eve of autumn's holiest mood. Its maker. Now and then the aged leaf SCOTT. Vesper looked forth From out her western hermitage, and smiled; ROBERT POLLOK. 22. She sleeps: her breathings are not heard The fragrant tresses are not stirred That lie upon her charmed heart. She sleeps: on either hand upswells A perfect form in perfect rest. "The Day Dream." TENNYSON. OROTUND 1. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It can not be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshaled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire after it,— they can not reach it. It comes, if it comes at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men, when their own lives, and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country hang on the decision of the hour. Then words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then patriotism is eloquent; then self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward to his object, this, this is eloquence; or, rather, it is something greater and higher than all eloquence: it is action,-noble, sublime, Godlike action. "The Eloquence of Adams." DANIEL WEBSTER. 2. O thou Eternal One! whose presence bright "God." Being above all beings! Mighty One, Whom none can comprehend, and none explore, 3. Suddenly the notes of the deep laboring organ burst upon the ear, falling with doubled and redoubled intensity, and rolling, as it were, huge billows of sound. How well do their volume and grandeur accord with this mighty building! With.what pomp do they swell through its vast vaults and breathe their awful harmony through those caves of death and make the silent sepulcher vocal! And now they rise in triumphant acclamation, heaving higher and higher their accordant notes, and piling sound on sound. And now they pause, and the soft voices of the choir break out into sweet gushes of melody; they soar aloft and warble along the roof, and seem to play about those lofty vaults like the pure airs of heaven. Again the pealing organ heaves its thrilling thunders, compressing air into music, and rolling it forth upon the soul. What long-drawn cadences! What solemn sweeping concords! It grows more and more dense and powerful,—it fills the vast pile, and seems to jar the very walls, the ear is stunned, the senses are overwhelmed. And now it is winding up in full jubilee, it is rising from earth to heaven; the very soul seems wrapt away and floating upward on this swelling tide of harmony. "Rip Van Winkle.” WASHINGTON IRVING. O now, forever, Farewell the tranquil mind! farewell content! Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump, Pride, pomp, and circumstances of glorious war! SHAKESPEARE. 5. Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain forever. The bones of her sons, falling in the great struggle for Independence, now lie mingled with the soil of every State from New England to Georgia; and there they will lie forever. And, Sir, where American Liberty raised its first voice, and where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives, in the strength of its manhood and full of its original spirit. If discord and disunion shall wound it, if party strife and blind ambition shall hawk at and tear it, if folly and madness, if uneasiness under salutary and necessary restraint, shall succeed in separating it from that Union by which alone its existence is made sure, it will stand in the end, by the side of that cradle in which its infancy was rocked; it will stretch forth its arm with whatever of vigor it may still retain over the friends who gather round it; and it will fall at last, if fall it must, amidst the proudest monuments of its own glory, and on the very spot of its origin. "Massachusetts and South Carolina." WEBSTER. 6. It took Rome three hundred years to die; and our death, if we perish, will be as much more terrific as our intelligence and free institutions have given to us more bone and sinew and vitality. May God hide me from the day when the dying agonies of my country shall begin! O thou beloved land, bound together by the ties of brotherhood, and common interest, and perils, live forever-one and undivided! LYMAN BEECHER. 7. Thy right hand, O Lord, is become glorious in power; thy right hand, O Lord, hath dashed in pieces the enemy, and in the greatness of thine excellency thou hast overthrown them that rose up against thee; thou sendest forth thy wrath which consumed them as stubble. And with the blast of thy nostrils the waters were gathered together; the floods stood upright as an heap, and the depths were congealed in the heart of the sea. "Exodus 15; 6, 7, 8." THE BIBLE. 8. The nation rises up at every stage of his coming; cities and states are his pallbearers, and the cannon beats the hours in solemn progression; dead, dead, dead, he yet speaketh. Is Washington dead? Is Hampden dead? Is David dead? Is any man that was ever fit to live dead? Disenthralled from flesh, and risen in the unobstructed sphere where passion never comes, he begins his illimitable work.. bells and bands Wail and weep Your sorrows, O people, are his peace; your and muffled drums sound triumph in his ear. here! Pass on! Ye winds that move over the mighty places of the West, chant his requiem! Ye people, behold a martyr whose blood, as so many articulate words, pleads for fidelity, for law, for liberty! "On the Death of Abraham Lincoln." 9. Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean—roll! BEECHER. When, for a moment, like a drop of rain, The armaments which thunderstrike the walls |