true peace is to be restored? Sir, no man should expect it. What is the situation of Mexico at this moment?

She lies at your feet, bleeding, exhausted, panting. Do you wish to trample upon this enemy already in the dust? Do you wish

to crush the last remains of her vitality? I hope not, sir; but even if you do, you need not send this additional force.

CXXX.-THE EMBARGO.

JOSIAH QUINCY.

WHEN I enter on the subject of the Embargo, I am struck with wonder at the very threshold. I know not with what words to express my astonishment. At the time I departed from Massachusetts, if there was an impression, which I thought universal, it was, that, at the commencement of this session, an end would be put to this measure. The opinion was not so much, that it would be terminated, as that it was then at an end. Sir, the prevailing sentiment, according to my apprehension, was stronger than this-even that the pressure was so great, that it could not possibly be endured; that it would soon be absolutely insupportable. And this opinion, as I then had reason to believe, was not confined to any one class, or description, or party; that even those who were friends of the existing administration, and unwilling to abandon it, were yet satisfied, that a sufficient trial had been given to this measure. With these impressions I arrived in this city. I hear the incantations of the great enchanter. I feel his spell. I see the legislative machinery begin to move. The scene opens. And I am commanded to forget all my recollections, to disbelieve the evidence of my senses, to contradict what I have seen and heard, and felt. I hear, that all this discontent is mere party clamor-electioneering artifice; that the people of New England are able and willing to endure this Embargo for an indefinite, unlimited period; some say for six months; some a year; some two years. The gentleman from North Carolina told us, that he preferred three years of embargo to a war. And the gentleman from Virginia said expressly, that he hoped we should never allow our vessels to go upon the ocean again, until the orders and decrees of the belligerents were rescinded; in plain English,

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until France and Great Britain should, in their great condescension, permit. Good heavens! Mr. Chairman, are men mad? Is this House touched with that insanity, which is the neverfailing precursor of the intention of Heaven to destroy? The people of New England, after eleven months' deprivation of the ocean, to be commanded still longer to abandon it, for an undefined period; to hold their inalienable rights at the tenure of the will of Britain or of Bonaparte! A people, commercial in all respects, in all their relations, in all their hopes, in all their recollections of the past, in all their prospects of the future; a people, whose first love was the ocean, the choice of their childhood, the approbation of their manly years, the most precious inheritance of their fathers, in the midst of their success, in the moment of the most exquisite perception of commercial prosperity, to be commanded to abandon it, not for a time limited, but for a time unlimited; not until they can be prepared to defend themselves there (for that is not pretended), but until their rivals recede from it; not until their necessities require, but until foreign nations permit! I am lost in astonishment, Mr. Chairman. I have not words to express the matchless absurdity of this attempt. I have no tongue to express the swift and headlong destruction, which a blind perseverance in such a system must bring upon this nation.

CXXXI.-SORROW FOR THE DEAD

WASHINGTON IRVING.

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 our 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. 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 even he should have warred with the poor handful of earth that lies mouldering before him!

From

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 attendants; its mute, watchful assiduities; the last testimonies of expiring love; the feeble, faltering, 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! Aye, 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!

If thou art a child, and hast ever added a sorrow to the soul, or a furrow to the silvered brow of an affectionate parent; if thou art a husband, and hast ever caused the fond bosom that ventured its whole happiness in thy arms to doubt

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one moment of thy kindness or thy truth; if thou art a friend, and hast ever wronged in thought, word or deed, the spirit that generously confided in thee; if thou art a lover, and hast ever given one unmerited pang to that true heart that now lies cold and still beneath thy feet; then be sure that every unkind look, every ungracious word, every ungentle action, will come thronging back upon thy memory, and knocking dolefully at thy soul; then be sure that thou wilt lie down sorrowing and repentant on the grave, and utter the unheard groan, and pour the unavailing tear; more deep, more bitter, because unheard and unavailing.

Then weave the chaplet of flowers, and strew the beauties of nature about the grave; console thy broken spirit, if thou canst, with these tender, yet futile tributes of regret; but take warning by the bitterness of this thy contrite affliction over the dead, and be more faithful and affectionate in thy discharge of thy duties to the living.

CXXXII-PRICE OF LIBERTY.

HENRY GILES.

LIBERTY has directly occasioned a vast amount of suffering; liberty of country, liberty of conscience, liberty of person. It has cost much endurance; it has been bought with a great price. Trace it along the line of centuries; mark the prisons where captives for it pined; mark the graves to which victims for it went down despairing; mark the fields whereon its heroes battled; mark the seas whereon they fought; mark the exile to which they fled; mark the burned spots where those who would not resist evil, gave up the ghost in torture, to vindicate the integrity of their souls; add then open sufferings to those that have found no record; imagine, if you can, the whole; then you have the price, only in part, of liberty; for liberty has cost more than all these. Is it value for the price? Consult, if you are able, the purchaser who paid it; awaken from the prisons those who perished in them; arouse from the graves the weary and broken-hearted by oppression; call from the fields of blood, the myriads who chose death rather than bonds; invoke from the caverns of the deep, those whom the ocean swallowed in braving the

invader; summon back from exile those who sank unseen in savage wilds. Pray for those to come once more to earth, who bore testimony to the truth in agony; you will have a host of witnesses which no man can number, who all, aforetime, and through manifold affliction, maintained, even unto death, the cause of liberty. Inquire if they repent; ask them if the boon which they have given us, was worth the suffering with which they bought it; ask, also, the speakers who proclaimed freedom, the thinkers who made laws for it, and the reformers who purified it, if the object for which they toiled, was worth the labor which they spent. That it was,

all will exclaim with triumphant voice; that it was, will come with one glad consent, with one sublime amen, from this glorious company of apostles, this goodly fellowship of prophets, this noble army of martyrs.

CXXXIII.-HOW TO GAIN AN HONORED NAME.

ALBERT BARNES.

You will ask me what field is open in this land where an honorable reputation may now be gained? To this question, which a noble-hearted and ingenuous youth would ask, I would reply by saying, that in this country, at least, the whole field is still open. The measure of military reputation is indeed filled up, and the world will look hereafter with fewer smiles on the blood-stained hero than in days that are past. The time is coming, also, and is near at hand, when a man who attempts to defend his reputation by shedding the blood of another, will only exclude himself from all the expressions of approval and of confidence among men. Reputation is not to be gained, that will be of value, by brilliant verse, that shall unsettle the foundations of faith and hope; that shall fill the soul with misanthropy, or that shall corrupt the heart by foul and offensive images. Sickening night-shades enough of this kind have already been culled, and twisted around the brows of those great in title or in talent. The sentiment has gone forth, not to be recalled, that he who is to be held in lasting, grateful remembrance, must base his claims on true virtue; on tried patriotism; on a generous