XVIII.-BRUTUS ON THE DEATH OF LUCRETIA.

1.

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3.

PAYNE.

THUS, thus, my friends! fast as our breaking hearts
Permitted utterance, we have told our story:

And now, to say one word of the imposture

The mask necessity has made me wear.

When the ferocious malice of your king-

King! do I call him?-when the monster, Tarquin,

Slew, as most of you may well remember,
My father, Marcus, and my elder brother,

Envying at once their virtues and their wealth,
How could I hope a shelter from his power,

But in the false face I have worn so long?

Would you know why I summoned you together?
Ask ye what brings me here? Behold this dagger,
Clotted with gore! Behold that frozen corse!
See where the lost Lucretia sleeps in death!
She was the mark and model of the time,
The mold in which each female face was formed,
The very shrine and sacristy of virtue !

The worthiest of the worthy! not the nymph
Who met old Numa in his hallowed walks,
And whispered in his ear her strains divine,
Can I conceive beyond her!-the young choir
Of vestal virgins bent to her !-Such a mind,
Might have abashed the boldest libertine,
And turned desire to reverential love

5.

You all can witness when that she went forth

It was a holiday in Rome: old age.

Forgot its crutch; labor its task! all ran;

And mothers, turning to their daughters, cried

(6 There, there's Lucretia ! "-Now look ye where she lies,

That beauteous flower, that innocent sweet rose,

Torn up by ruthless violence-gone! gone!

Say-would you seek instructions! would you seek
What ye should do?-Ask ye yon conscious walls
Which saw his poisoned brother, saw the crime
Committed there, and they will cry, Revenge !—

Ask yonder senate-house, whose stones are purple
With human blood, and it will cry, Revenge!
Go to the tomb where lie his murdered wife,
And the poor queen who loved him as her son,
Their unappeased ghosts will shriek, Revenge!
The temples of the gods, the all-viewing heaven,-
The gods themselves-will justify the cry,

And swell the general sound-Revenge! Revenge!

XIX.-RICHARD II. ON THE VANITY OF POWER.

1. Or comfort no man speak:

SHAKSPEARE.

2.

Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.
Let's choose executors and talk of wills:
And yet not so-for what can we bequeath,
Save our depos-ed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives, and all are Bolingbroke's,
And nothing can we call our own, but death,
And that small model of our barren earth,
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.

For heaven's sake let us sit upon the ground,
And tell sad stories of the death of kings-
How some have been deposed, some slain in war;
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed;
All murdered-for within the hollow crown,
That rounds the mortal temples of a king,
Keeps death his court, and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp;
Allowing him a breath, a little scene

To monarchize, be feared and killed with looks;
Infusing him with self and vain conceit-
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable: and humored thus,
Comes at the last and with a little pin

Bores through his castle wall, and-farewell, king!

XX. THE PASSING OF THE RUBICON.

KNOWLES.

1. A GENTLEMAN, Mr. President, speaking of Cæsar's benevolent disposition, and of the reluctance with which he had entered into the civil war, observes, "How long did he pause upon the brink of the Rubicon?" How came he to the brink of that river! How dared he cross it! Shall private men respect the boundaries of private property, and shall a man pay no respect to the boundaries. of his country's rights? How dared he cross that river! Oh, but he paused upon the brink! He should have perished upon the brink ere he had crossed it! Why did he pause? Why does a man's heart palpitate when he is on the point of committing an unlawful deed? Why does the very murderer, his victim sleeping before him, and his glaring eye taking the measure of the blow, strike wide of the mortal part? Because of conscience! 'Twas that made Cæsar pause upon the brink of the Rubicon. Compassion! What compassion? The compassion of an assassin, that feels a momentary shudder as his weapon begins to cut!

2. Cæsar paused upon the brink of the Rubicon! What was the Rubicon? The boundary of Cæsar's province. From what did it separate his province ? From his country. Was that country a desert? No; it was cultivated and fertile, rich and populous! Its sons were men of genius, spirit, and generosity! Its daughters were lovely, susceptible, and chaste! Friendship was its inhabitant! Love was its inhabitant! Domestic affection All

What was

was its inhabitant! Liberty was its inhabitant! bounded by the stream of the Rubicon! Cæsar, that stood upon the bank of that stream? A traitor, bringing war and pestilence into the heart of that country. No wonder that he paused-no wonder if, his imagination wrought upon by his conscience, he had beheld blood instead of water, and heard groans instead of murmurs! No wonder, if some gorgon horror had turned

him into stone upon the spot! But, no!-he cried, "The die is cast!" He plunged!-he crossed!-and Rome was free no more!

XXI. THE UNION.

WEBSTER.

1. I PROFESS, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the preservation of our federal union. It is to that union, we owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that union, that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues, in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign influences, these great interests immediately awoke as from the dead, and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proof of its utility and its blessings; and, although our territory has stretched out wider and wider, and our population spread further and further, they have not outrun its protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, social, and personal happiness.

2. I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the union, to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty, when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of the government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how the union might best be preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people, when it shall be broken up and destroyed.

3. While the union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our chil dren. Beyond that, I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant, that in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise. God grant, that on my vision never may be opened what. lies behind. When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious union; on states dissevered, discordant, belligerent; our land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood!

4. Let my last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured, bearing, for its motto, no such miserable interrogatory as, What is all this worth? nor those other words of delusion and folly, Liberty first, and union afterward; but everywhere, spread all over, in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea, and over the land, and on every wind, and under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart-Liberty AND Union, now and forever; one and inseparable!

XXII.-EXTRACT FROM THE LAST SPEECH OF ROBERT EMMET.

1. I HAVE been charged with that importance in the efforts to emancipate my country, as to be considered the key-stone of the combination of Irishmen, or, as your lordship expressed it, "The life and blood of the conspiracy." You do me honor over-much: you have given to the subaltern all the credit of a superior. There are men engaged in this conspiracy, who are not only superior to me, but even to your own conceptions of yourself, my lord; men,