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EXERCISE XLVI.-DIALOGUE FROM THE TRIUMPH OF LUCCA." Miss Landon.

Scene, the Senate-house: Speakers,-Gonsalvi, Castruccio,* Nobles,
Attendants;-the Senators in session: to them enters Gonsalvi.
[See remarks introductory to EXERCISE XXX.]

Gon. Henceforward Florence claims your fealty ;t
She will secure you in all ancient rights,
Immunity, and privilege: her sword
Will stand between ye and your enemies.
For this, a yearly tribute must be paid
Of twenty thousand florins.

Noble. Our treasury's low, my lord.

Gon.

And so is ours,

Exhausted by the late vexatious war,

Noble. Urged by the Count Castruccio, not ourselves.
Gon. It must be paid.—

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The goldsmiths round our market-place are rich :
The citizens, too, better being poor,

As more obedient, right that they should pay
The penalty of their rebellious spirit.

Gon. [Rising.]

I leave you till to-morrow, when I bring
The treaty ready for your signatures,

And will receive your homage and your oaths. [Exit.]

Noble. Homage and tribute!—these are bitter words,-
Less bitter than the Castrucani'st sway!

To day must fix his fate.

Several Nobles. Death!

What is his doom?

Noble. The noise approaches! look ye to your swords,
Delay is fatal:-let Castruccio die!

[While yet speaking, Castruccio enters armed and attended,-having been rescued by the people.]

* Pronounced Castroocho :-ch as in church.

The Senate of Lucca, actuated by envy of the patriot chief Castruccio, had imprisoned him, and proposed submission to the sway of the Florentines, their enemies.

Pronounced Castroocânee's.

Cas.

Not yet, not by your hand! Thanks, gentlemen,
For an indifferent lodging. I have learned
That prisons tenanted with thoughts of death,
Are not a punishment to order lightly;

Therefore ye shall not fill my vacant place.

Noble. The game is yours.-I, for one, ask not mercy.
And therefore worthier to have unasked.

Cas.

Ye do mistake me, signors: all my thoughts
To you are grateful ones. But for your rash
And ill-advised attempt, I had not known
How true the love on which my power is built,-
How strong the cause the people trust with me!

Gon. [Re-entering.]

I must demand some escort; for the streets

Are filled with people, and unwillingly

Would I shed blood.-What! Castruccio here?

Cas. Ready to give the Count Gonsalvi* audience,
And ask, what are the terms he brings from Florence?
Gon. With these, the representatives of Lucca,t
I have arranged our treaty.

Cas.

Cas.

On what terms?

Gon. That ye submit yourselves, and pledge your faith,
True vassals unto Florence; and each year
Remit your tribute,-twenty thousand florins!
Tribute and homage!-Can they sink so low,
Men who have met ye bravely in the field?
Now hear me, Count Gonsalvi: Lucca rather
Would see her walls dismantled, than consent
To yield such base submission.

Gon. These are her chiefs;—in their consent she yields.
Cas. You see that they are silent.--By my voice
Does Lucca speak: she would be glad of peace,
An equal, sure and honourable peace :-
To terms like these, she has but one reply-defiance
Gon. Florence will teach you better in the field!

Cas.

--

This to your conqueror? not three weeks have passed
Since, in the field we met. I think you found
More service from your spurs than from your swords.
*Pronounced Gonzalvee.

Pronounced Lookka.

Gon

Cas.

'T was an unlucky chance of war.

Not so, my lord; there was a higher cause,—
The right against the wrong. Your army came,
A mercenary and a selfish band,

Some urged by false ambition, some for spoil.
No noble motive, noble impulse gave,

Ye were aggressors, and ye fought like such,
I tell you, Count, with not a third
your numbers
I chased your flying hosts within your gates.
Gon. I came not for a boast but for an answer,-
War or submission?

Cas.

War or submission! sad such choice and stern:
Vast is the suffering-great the wrong of war!
But, and all Lucca speaketh in the words,-
Rather we take the suffering; and the wrong
Rests on the oppressor's head, than we submit:
Not while one hand can strike on Lucca's side,
Not while one stone is left on Lucca's walls,
Will Lucca stoop beneath a foreign yoke.
Ye only fight for conquest or for spoil:

We for our homes, our rights, our ancient walls!
The sword is drawn.-God be the judge between us

Gon. Have ye no other answer?

Cas. None ;-Cesario is your escort to the gates.

Gon. I take your answer.-War, then, to the death!—[Exit.]
Noble. Are ye not rash in this? how weak our state,
Compared with Florence!

Cas. Twice have we met them in the open field,
Each time they fled before us. Oh! my friends,
If I
may call ye
such, we are not weak
Who have our swords, and urge a war

Just in the sight of Heaven. Our weakness lies
In our dissensions, in the small base aims
That disunite us from the common cause.
Lucca were strong, had Lucca but one heart;
Why should ye be mine enemies? I seek
Yours in the general good. I stand between
Ye and a people whom ye would oppress.
Know ye not, love has stronger rule than fear?
A country, filled with tyrants and with slaves,
What waits upon her history?—crime and shame'

But the free state, where rank is knit

By general blessings, freedom shared by all,
There is prosperity,--there those great names
Whose glory lingers though themselves be gone.
It is not you I serve, it is your country! [Applause.]

Noble. [Aside.]

Cas.

Nobles.

see that we must yield, or seem to yield :He's master now.

And for this base submission

To your hereditary enemies,

There is no yoke so galling as the yoke of
Foreign invaders, placed upon your neck.
The heavy and the arbitrary sway
That ye would fix upon your countrymen,
Would soon be on yourselves.-Lucca is free :-
To keep her so is trusted to your swords!
I march to meet the Florentines to-morrow;
Will ye not follow me, for Lucca's sake?
We will.

:

EXERCISE XLVII.—EULOGY OF WASHINGTON.-Lord Brougham. [See remarks introductory to EXERCISE XX.]

In Washington, we truly behold a marvellous contrast to almost every one of the endowments and vices of Bonaparte, so well fitted to excite a mingled admiration, and sorrow, and abhorrence. With none of that brilliant genius which dazzles ordinary minds;-with not even any remarkable quickness of apprehension,-with knowledge less than almost all persons in the middle ranks, and many well educated of the humbler classes possess; this eminent person is presented to our observation, clothed in attributes as modest, as unpretending, as little calculated to strike or astonish, as if he had passed, unknown, through some secluded region of private life.

But he had a judgment sure and sound; a steadiness of ` mind which never suffered any passion, not even any feeling, to ruffle its calm; a strength of understanding which worked, rather than forced, its way, through all obstacles; removing or avoiding rather than overleaping them. His courage, whether in battle or in council, was as perfect as might be expected from this pure and steady temper of soul.

A perfectly just man, with a thoroughly firm resolution

never to be misled by others, any more than by others overawed; never to be seduced or betrayed, or hurried away by his own weakness or self-delusions, any more than by other men's arts; nor even to be disheartened by the most complicated difficulties, any more than to be spoiled upon the giddy heights of fortune;-such was this great man,whether we regard him sustaining, alone, the whole weight of campaigns all but desperate, or gloriously terminating a just warfare by his resources and courage,-presiding over the jarring elements of political council, alike deaf to the storms of all extremes, or directing the formation of a new government, for a great people, the first time that so vast an experiment had ever been tried by man; or, finally, retiring from the Supreme Power to which his virtue had raised him over the nation he had created, and whose destinies he had guided as long as his aid was required;-retiring from the veneration of all parties, of all nations, of all mankind, in order that the rights of men might be conserved, and that his example might never be appealed to by vulgar tyrants.

This is the consummate glory of the great American;-a triumphant warrior where the most sanguine had a right to despair; a successful ruler in all the difficulties of a course wholly untried; but a warrior, whose sword only left its sheath when the first law of our nature commanded it to be drawn; and a ruler, who, having tasted of supreme power, gently and unostentatiously desired that the cup might pass from him, nor would suffer more to wet his lips, than the most solemn and sacred duty to his country and his God required!

To his latest breath did this great patriot maintain the noble character of a captain the patron of peace, and a statesman the friend of justice. Dying, he bequeathed to his heirs the sword which he had worn in the war of liberty, charging them 'never to take it from the scabbard, but in selfdefence, or in defence of their country and her freedom; and commanding them, that, when it should thus be drawn, they should never sheath it nor give it up, but prefer falling with it in their hands to the relinquishment thereof,'-words, the majesty and simple eloquence of which, are not surpassed in the oratory of Athens and Rome.

It will be the duty of the historian and the sage, in all ages, to omit no occasion of cominemorating this illustrious man; and, till time shall be no more, will a test of the

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