Mazzini, Giusseppe - Continued

cannot rightly love your brethren of the cradle if you love not the common mother. Beyond the Alps, beyond the sea, are other peoples now fighting or preparing to fight the holy fight of independence, of nationality, of liberty; other peoples striving by different routes to reach the same goal,-improvement, association, and the foundation of an authority which shall put an end to moral anarchy and re-link earth to heaven; an authority which mankind may love and obey without remorse or shame. Unite with them; they will unite with you. Do not invoke their aid where your single arm will suffice to conquer; but say to them that the hour will shortly sound for a terrible struggle between right and blind force, and that in that hour you will ever be found with those who have raised the same banner as yourselves.

And love, young men, love and venerate the ideal. The ideal is the word of God. High above every country, high above humanity, is the country of the spirit, the city of the soul, in which all are brethren who believe in the inviolability of thought and in the dignity of our immortal soul; and the baptism of this fraternity is martyrdom. From that high sphere spring the principles which alone can redeem the peoples. Arise for the sake of these, and not from impatience of suffering or dread of evil. Anger, pride, ambition, and the desire of material prosperity, are arms common alike to the peoples and their oppressors, and even should you conquer with these to-day, you would fall again to-morrow; but principles belong to the peoples alone, and their oppressors can find no arms to oppose them. Adore enthusiasm, the dreams of the virgin soul, and the visions of early youth, for they are a perfume of paradise which the soul retains in issuing from the hands of its Creator. Respect above all things your conscience; have upon your lips the truth implanted by God in your hearts, and, while laboring in harmony, even with those who differ from you, in all that tends to the emancipation of our soil, yet ever bear your own banner erect and boldly promulgate your own faith.

Such words, young men, would the martyrs of Cosenza have spoken, had they been living amongst you; and here, where it may be that, invoked by our love, their holy spirits hover near

I call upon you to gather them up in your us, hearts and to make of them a treasure amid the storms that yet threaten you; storms which, with the name of our martyrs on your lips and their faith in your hearts, you will overcome.

God be with you, and bless Italy! (Complete. Text from the "World's Best Orations." Delivered at Milan in memory of the martyrs of Cosenza, July 25th, 1848.)

Meagher, Thomas Francis (Ireland, 1823-1867.)

« Abhor the Sword Stigmatize the Sword" - Be it in the defense, or be it in the assertion of a people's liberty, I hail the sword as a sacred weapon; and if, my lord, it has sometimes taken the shape of the serpent

and reddened the shroud of the oppressor with too deep a dye, like the anointed rod of the high priest, it has at other times, and as often, blossomed into celestial flowers to deck the freeman's brow.

Abhor the sword-stigmatize the sword! No, my lord, for in the passes of the Tyrol it cut to pieces the banner of the Bavarians, and through those cragged passes struck a path to fame for the peasant insurrectionists of Innsbruck.

Abhor the sword-stigmatize the sword! No, my lord, for at its blow a grand nation started from the waters of the Atlantic; and by its redeeming magic, and in the quivering of its crimson light, the crippled colony sprang into the attitude of a proud republic,-prosperous, limitless, and invincible.

The Curse of Dependence-A good government may, indeed, redress the grievances of an injured people, but a strong people alone can build up a great nation. To be strong, a people must be self-reliant, self-ruled, selfsustained. The dependence of one people upon another, even for the benefits of legislation, is the deepest source of national weakness. By an unnatural law, it exempts a people from their just duties - their just responsibilities. When you exempt a people from these duties, from these responsibilities, you generate in them a distrust in their own powers. Thus you enervate, if you do not utterly destroy, that spirit which a sense of these responsibilities is sure to inspire, and which the fulfillment of these duties never fails to invigorate. Where this spirit does not actuate, the country may be tranquil, it will not be prosperous. It may exist, it will not thrive. It may hold together, it will not advance. Peace it may enjoy,- for peace and freedom are compatible. But, my lord, it will neither accumulate wealth nor win a character; it will neither benefit mankind by the enterprise of its merchants, nor instruct mankind by the example of its states(1846.)

men.

Meredith, Sir W. (England.)

Government by the Gallows - Whether hanging ever did, or can, answer any good purpose, I doubt; but the cruel exhibition of every execution day is a proof that hanging carries no terror with it. The multiplicity of our hanging laws has produced these two things: frequency of condemnation, and frequent pardons. If we look to the executions themselves, what examples do they give? The thief dies either hardened or penitent. All that admiration and contempt of death with which heroes and martyrs inspire good men in a good cause, the abandoned villain feels, in seeing a desperado like himself meet death with intrepidity. The penitent thief, on the other hand, often makes the sober villain think that by robbery, forgery, or murder, he can relieve all his wants; and, if he be brought to justice, the punishment will be short and trifling, and the reward eternal.

Miller, Hugh (Scotland, 1802-1856.)

The Procession of Being-Never yet on Egyptian obelisk or Assyrian frieze,-where long lines of figures seem stalking across the granite, each charged with symbol and mystery, - have our Layards or Rawlinsons seen aught so extraordinary as that long procession of being which, starting out of the blank depths of the bygone eternity, is still defiling across the stage, and of which we ourselves form some of the passing figures.-(From his Edinburgh Address.)

The Sown Seeds of Life-He who keeps faith with all his humbler creatures,-who gives to even the bee and the dormouse the winter for which they prepare,-will to a certainty not break faith with man,- with man, alike the deputed lord of the present creation and the chosen heir of all the future. We have been looking abroad on the old geologic burying-grounds, and deciphering the strange inscriptions on their tombs; but there are other burying-grounds and other tombs,-solitary church-yards among the hills, where the dust of the martyrs lies, and tombs that rise over the ashes of the wise and good; nor are there wanting, on even the monuments of the perished races, frequent hieroglyphics, and symbols of high meaning, which darkly intimate to us that while their burial-yards contain but the débris of the past, we are to regard the others as charged with the sown seeds of the future. -(From his Edinburgh Address.)

Milton, John (England, 1608–1674.)

"An Eagle Mewing Her Mighty Youth »— For as in a body, when the blood is fresh, the spirits pure and vigorous, not only to vital, but to rational faculties, and those in the acutest, and the pertest operations of wit and subtlety, it argues in what good plight and constitution the body is, so when the cheerfulness of the people is so sprightly up, as that it has, not only wherewith to guard well its own freedom and safety, but to spare and to bestow upon the solidest and sublimest points of controversy and new invention, it betokens us not degenerated, nor drooping to a fatal decay, but casting off the old and wrinkled skin of corruption to outlive these pangs and wax young again, entering the glorious ways of truth and prosperous virtue destined to become great and honorable in these latter ages. Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks: methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unscaling her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms.-(From Areopagitica. A speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing.)

Mirabeau, Gabriel Honoré Riquetti, Comte de (France, 1749-1791.)

Educating Conscience a Duty-If it be contrary to morality to act against one's conscience, it is none the less so to form one's conscience after false and arbitrary principles. The obligation to form and enlighten one's conscience is anterior to the obligation to follow one's conscience. The greatest public calamities have been caused by men who believed they were obeying God, and saving their own souls.

Announcing the Death of Franklin Franklin is dead! Restored to the bosom of the Divinity is that genius which gave freedom to America, and rayed forth torrents of light upon Europe. The sage whom two worlds claim, the man whom the history of empires and the history of science alike contend for,occupied, it cannot be denied, a lofty rank among his species. Long enough have political cabinets signalized the death of those who were great in their funeral eulogies only. Long enough has the etiquette of courts prescribed hypocritical mournings. For their benefactors only should nations assume the emblem of grief; and the representatives of nations should commend only the heroes of humanity to public veneration.

We live under a form of government and in a state of society to which the world has never yet exhibited a parallel. Is it, then, nothing to be free? How many nations in the whole annals of humankind have proved themselves worthy of being so? Is it nothing that we are republicans? Were all men as enlightened, as brave, as proud as they ought to be, would they suffer themselves to be insulted with any other title? Is it nothing that so many independent sovereignties should be held together in such a confederacy as ours? What does history teach us of the difficulty of instituting and maintaining such a polity, and of the glory that, of consequence, ought to be given to those who enjoy its advantages in so much perfection and on so grand a scale? For can anything be more striking and sub lime than the idea of an imperial republic, spreading over an extent of territory more immense than the empire of the Cæsars in the accumulated conquests of a thousand years, without prefects, or proconsuls, or publicans founded in the maxims of common sense-employing within itself no arms but those of reason-and known to its subjects only by the blessings it bestows or perpetuates, yet capable of directing against a foreign foe all the energies of a military despotism, -a republic in which men are completely insignificant, and principles and laws exercise, throughout its vast dominion, a peaceful and irresistible sway, blending in one divine harmony such various habits and conflicting opinions, and mingling in its institutions the light of philosophy with all that is dazzling in the associations of heroic achieve

Mirabeau, Gabriel Honoré Riquetti, Comte de -Continued

ment, and extended domination, and deepseated and formidable power! - (Complete. French Assembly, June 9th, 1790.)

"And Yet You Deliberate!» - Vote, then, this subsidy extraordinary; and may it prove sufficient! Vote it inasmuch as whatever doubts you may entertain as to the means,- doubts vague and unenlightened,- you can have none as to the necessity, or as to our inability to provide, immediately, at least, -a substitute. Vote it, because the circumstances of the country admit of no evasion, and we shall be responsible for all delays. Beware of demanding more time! Misfortune accords it never. Why, gentlemen, it was but the other day, that, in reference to a ridiculous commotion at the Palais-Royal,-a Quixotic insurrection, which never had any importance save in the feeble imaginations or perverse designs of certain faithless men,-you heard these wild words: "Catiline is at the gates of Rome, and yet you deliberate!" And verily there was neither a Catiline nor a Rome; neither perils nor factions around you. But, to-day, bankruptcy, hideous bankruptcy, is there before you, and threatens to consume you, yourselves, your property, your honor,- and yet you delib

erate!

"From the Capitol to the Tarpeian Rock≫ -For eight days, now, it has been given out that those members of the National Assembly in favor of the provision requiring the concurrence of the royal will for the exercise of the right of peace and war are parricides of the public liberty. Rumors of perfidy, of corrup tion, have been bruited. Popular vengeance has been invoked to enforce the tyranny of opinion; and denunciations have been uttered, as if, on a subject involving one of the most delicate and difficult questions affecting the organization of society, persons could not dissent without a crime. What strange madness, what deplorable infatuation, is this, which thus incites against one another men whom, -let debate run never so high,- one common object, one indestructible sentiment of patriotism, ought always to bring together, always to reunite; but who thus substitute, alas! the irascibility of self-love for devotion to the public good, and give one another over, without compunction, to the hatred and distrust of the people!

And me, too,-me, but the other day, they would have borne in triumph;- and now they cry in the streets, "The great treason of the Count of Mirabeau!" I needed not this lesson to teach me how short the distance from the Capitol to the Tarpeian Rock!

Monroe, James (American, 1758-1831.)

The Monroe Doctrine-In the wars of the European powers in matters relating to themselves, we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy so to do. It is only

when our rights are invaded, or seriously men. aced, that we resent injuries, or make preparations for our defense. With the movements in this hemisphere, we are, of necessity, more immediately connected, and by causes which must be obvious to all enlightened and impartial observers. The political system of the Allied Powers is essentially different in this respect from that of America. This difference proceeds from that which exists in their respective governments; and to the defense of our own, which has been achieved by the loss of so much blood and treasure, and matured by the wisdom of their most enlightened citizens, and under which we have enjoyed unexampled felicity, this whole nation is devoted.

We owe it, therefore, to candor, and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those European powers, to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.

With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power, we have not interfered, and shall not interfere. But with the governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny by any European power, in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.- (From the message of December, 1823.)

Montalembert, Charles Forbes, Comte de (France, 1810-1870.)

Devotion to Principle-My life,- a man's life, is always, and especially to-day, a poor thing enough; but this poor thing, consecrated to a great and holy cause, may grow with it; and when a man has made to such a cause the sacrifice of his future, I believe that he ought to shrink from none of its consequences, none of its dangers.-(Chamber of Peers. 1831.)

Moody, Dwight L.

(American, 1837-1899.) Character-Oh, young man, character is worth more than money, character is worth more than anything else in this wide world. I would rather have it said of me in my old age than to have a monument of pure gold built over my dead body reaching from earth to heaven, I would rather have it said that "they could find no occasion against him except it be touching the law of his God," than to have all this world can give.— (1880.)

Morley, John (England, 1838-.)

Truth-Telling as an Art-Truth is quiet. Milton's phrase ever lingers in our minds as one of imperishable beauty, where he regrets that he is drawn by I know not what, from beholding the bright countenance of truth in

the quiet and still air of delightful studies. Moderation and judgment are more than the flash and the glitter even of the greatest genius. I hope that your professors of rhetoric will teach you to cultivate that golden art, the steadfast use of a language in which truth can be told; a speech that is strong by natural force, and not merely effective by declamation; an utterance without trick, without affectation, without mannerisms, and without any of that excessive ambition which overleaps itself as much in prose writing as it does in other things.

I hope that I have made it clear that we conceive the end of education on its literary side to be to make a man and not a cyclopædia, to make a citizen and not a book of elegant extracts. Literature does not end with knowledge of forms, with inventories of books and authors, with finding the key of rhythm, with the varying measure of the stanza, or the changes from the involved and sonorous periods of the seventeenth century down to the staccato of the nineteenth century, or all the rest of the technicalities of scholarship. Do not think I contemn these. They are all good things to know, but they are not ends in themselves. "The intelligent man," says Plato, "will prize those studies which result in his soul getting soberness, righteousness, and wisdom, and he will less value the others. » Literature is one of the instruments, and one of the most powerful instruments, for forming character, for giving us men and women armed with reason, braced by knowledge, clothed with steadfastness and courage, and inspired by that public spirit and public virtue of which it has been well said that they are the brightest ornaments of the mind of man. Bacon is right, as he generally is, when he bids us read, not to contradict and refute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and to consider. Yes, let us read to weigh and to consider. In the times before us that promise or threaten deep political, economical, and social controversy, what we need to do is to induce our people to weigh and consider. We want them to cultivate energy without impatience, activity without restlessness, inflexibility without ill-humor. I am not going to preach to you any artificial stoicism. I am not going to preach to you any indifference to money, or to the pleasures of social intercourse, or to the esteem and good-will of our neighbors, or to any other of the consolations and the necessities of life. But, after all, the thing that matters most, both for happiness and for duty, is that we should habitually live with wise thoughts and right feelings. Literature helps us more than other studies to this most blessed companionship of wise thoughts and right feelings, and so I have taken this opportunity of earnestly commending it to your interest and care. - (From his Mansion House Address, London, 1887. In the "World's Best Orations. »)

Morton, Oliver P. (American, 1823-1877.)

For Universal Suffrage-We are standing upon the broad platform of the Declaration of Independence, that "all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." We say that these rights are not given by laws; are not given by the Constitution; but they are the gift of God to every man born into the world. Oh, sir, how glorious is this great principle compared with the inhuman-I might say the heathenish-appeal to the prejudice of race against race; the endeavor further to excite the strong against the weak; the endeavor further to deprive the weak of their rights of protection against the strong.-(1868.)

Newman, John Henry, Cardinal (England, 1801-1890.)

Money and Self-Worship-Money is a sort of creation, and gives the acquirer even more than the possessor an imagination of his own power, and tends to make him idolize self. And if such be the effect of the pursuit of gain on an individual, doubtless it will be the same on a nation. Only let us consider the fact that we are a money-making people, with our Savior's declaration before us against wealth, and trust in wealth, and we shall have abundant matter for serious thought. O'Connell, Daniel (Ireland, 1775-1847.)

The Beauty of Ireland-Ireland, land of my forefathers, how my mind expands, and my spirit walks abroad in something of majesty, when I contemplate the high qualities, inestimable virtues, and true purity and piety and religious fidelity of the inhabitants of your green fields and productive mountains. Oh, what a scene surrounds us! It is not only the countless thousands of brave and active and peaceable and religious men that are here assembled, but Nature herself has written her character with the finest beauty in the verdant plains that surround us. Let any man run round the horizon with his eye, and tell me if created nature ever produced anything so green and so lovely, so undulating, so teeming with production. The richest harvests that any land can produce are those reaped in Ireland; and then here are the sweetest meadows, the greenest fields, the loftiest mountains, the purest streams, the noblest rivers, the most capacious harbors, and her water power is equal to turn the machinery of the whole world. Oh, my friends, it is a country worth fighting for-it is a country worth dying for; but above all, it is a country worth being tranquil, determined, submissive, and docile for.-(From the "World's Best Orations."

ple, and the adoption of every frivolity and of every vice that can excite hatred combined with ridicule, all, all this, and more, may be seen around us; and yet it is believed, it is expected, that this system is fated to be eternal. Gentlemen, we shall all weep the insane delusion; and, in the terrific moments of retaliation, you know not, you cannot know, how soon or how bitterly "the ingredients of your poisoned chalice may be commended to your own lips. »

Is there amongst you any one friend to freedom? Is there amongst you one man who esteems equal and impartial justice-who values the people's rights as the foundation of private happiness, and who considers life as no boon without liberty? Is there amongst you one friend to the constitution -one man who hates oppression? If there be, Mr. Magee appeals to his kindred mind, and expects an acquittal.

Otis, James (American, 1725-1783. )

For Liberty at Any Cost-Let the consequences be what they will, I am determined to proceed. The only principles of public conduct that are worthy of a gentleman or a man are to sacrifice estate, ease, health, and applause, and even life, to the sacred calls of his country.

These sentiments, in private life, make the good citizen; in public life, the patriot and the hero. I do not say that when brought to the test I shall be invincible. I pray God I may never be brought to the melancholy trial; but if ever I should, it will be then known how far I can reduce to practice principles which I know to be founded in truth. In the meantime I will proceed to the subject of this writ. -(On Writs of Assistance. Boston, February, 1761.)

Palmer, Benjamin W. (American, Contemporaneous.)

Lee and Washington What is that combination of influences, partly physical, partly intellectual, but somewhat more moral, which should make a particular country productive of men great over all others on earth, and to all ages of time? Ancient Greece, with her indented coast, inviting to maritime adventures, from her earliest period was the mother of heroes in war, of poets in song, of sculptors and artists, and stands up after the lapse of centuries the educator of mankind, living in the grandeur of her works and in the immortal productions of minds which modern civilization, with all its cultivation and refinement and science, never surpassed and scarcely equaled. And why, in the three hundred years of American history, it should be given to the Old Dominion to be the grandmother, not only of States, but of the men by whom states and empires are formed, it might be curious, were it possible for us to inquire. Unquestionably, Mr. President, there is in this problem the element of race; for he is blind to all the truths of history, to all the revelations of the

past, who does not recognize a select race as we recognize a select individual of a race, to make all history. But pretermitting all speculation of that sort, when Virginia unfolds the scroll of her immortal sons,—not because illustrious men did not precede him gathering in constellations and clusters, but because the name shines out through those constellations and clusters in all its peerless grandeur,-we read first the name of George Washington. And then, Mr. President, after the interval of three-quarters of a century, when your jealous eye has ranged down the record and traced the names that history will never let die, you come to the name - the only name in all the annals of history that can be named in the perilous connection-of Robert E. Lee, the second Washington. Well may old Virginia be proud of her twin sons, born almost a century apart, but shining like those binary stars which open their glory and shed their splendor on the darkness of the world. - (From an address delivered at a meeting of the citizens of New Orleans, October 15th, 1870, the funeral day of General Robert E. Lee.)

Parker, Theodore (American, 1810-1860.)

"A Man of the Largest Mold» - He was a great man, a man of the largest mold, a great body, and a great brain; he seemed made to last a hundred years. Since Socrates, there has seldom been a head so massive, so huge,— seldom such a face since the stormy features of Michael Angelo :

The hand that rounded Peter's dome,

And groined the aisles of Christian Rome — »

he who sculptured Day and Night into such beautiful forms, he looked them in his face before he chiseled them into stone. Dupuytren and Cuvier are said to be the only men in our day that have had a brain so vast. Since Charlemagne I think there has not been such a grand figure in all Christendom. A large man, decorous in dress, dignified in deportment, he walked as if he felt himself a king. Men from the country, who knew him not, stared at him as he passed through our streets. The coal-heavers and porters of London looked on him as one of the great forces of the globe; they recognized a native king. In the Senate of the United States he looked an emperor in that council. Even the majestic Calhoun seemed common compared with him. Clay looked vulgar, and Van Buren but a fox. What a mouth he had! It was a lion's mouth. Yet there was a sweet grandeur in his smile, and a woman's sweetness when he would. What a brow it was! What eyes! like charcoal fire in the bottom of a deep, dark well. His face was rugged with volcanic fires, great passions and great thoughts:

"The front of Jove himself;

An eye like Mars, to threaten and command. »

Divide the faculties, not bodily, into intellectual, moral, affectional, and religious; and