The American Union Speaker Part 47

Cromwell, I did not think to shed a tear In all my miseries; but thou hast forced me Out of thy honest truth, to play the woman.

Let's dry our eyes: and thus far hear me, Cromwell; And, when I am forgotten, as I shall be, And sleep in dull cold marble, where no mention Of me more must be heard of,--say, I taught thee,-- Say, Wolsey,--that once trod the ways of glory, And sounded all the depths and shoals of honor,-- Found thee away, out of his wreck, to rise in; A sure and safe one, though thy master missed it.-- Mark but my fall, and that which ruined me!

Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition!

By that sin fell the angels: how can man, then, The image of his Maker, hope to win by 't?

Love thyself last; cherish those hearts that hate thee: Corruption wins not more than honesty; Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace, To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not.

Let all the ends thou aim'st at, be thy country's, Thy G.o.d's, and truth's; then if thou fallest, O Cromwell, Thou fallest a blessed martyr! Serve the king; And--Prithee, lead me in: There, take an inventory of all I have, To the last penny; 't is the king's; my robe, And my integrity to Heaven, is all I dare now call mine own. O Cromwell, Cromwell!

Had I but served my G.o.d with half the zeal I served my king, He would not, in mine age, Have left me naked to mine enemies!

Shakespeare.

CCXLIX.

GRIFFITH'S DESCRIPTION OF CARDINAL WOLSEY.

Men's evil manners live in bra.s.s; their virtues We write in water. May it please your highness To hear me speak his good now? This Cardinal, Though from an humble stock, undoubtedly Was fas.h.i.+oned to much honor. From his cradle, He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one: Exceeding wise, fair spoken, and persuading; Lofty and sour to them that lov'd him not, But to those men that sought him, sweet as summer; And though he were unsatisfied in getting, (Which was a sin), yet in bestowing, madam, He was most princely; ever witness for him Those twins of learning that he raised in you, Ipswich and Oxford! one of which fell with him, Unwilling to outlive the good he did it; The other, though unfinish'd, yet so famous, So excellent in art, and still so rising, That Christendom shall ever speak his virtue.

His overthrow heaped happiness upon him; For then and not till then, he felt himself, And found the blessedness of being little: And to add greater honors to his age Than man could give him, he died fearing G.o.d.

Shakespeare.

BOOK SECOND.

RECENT SELECTIONS

FOR

RECITATION AND DECLAMATION

IN PROSE AND POETRY.

BOOK SECOND.

RECENT SELECTIONS.

PROSE.

CCL.

THE ORATORS OF REVOLUTIONS.

And then and thus comes the orator of that time, kindling with their fire; sympathizing with that great beating heart; penetrated, not subdued; lifted up rather by a sublime and rare moment of history made real to his consciousness; charged with the very mission of life, yet una.s.sured whether they will hear or will forbear; transcendent good within their grasp, yet a possibility that the fatal and critical opportunity of salvation will be wasted; the last evil of nations and of men overhanging, yet the siren song of peace--peace when there is no peace--chanted madly by some voice of sloth or fear,--there and thus the orators of revolutions come to work their work! And what then is demanded, and how it is to be done, you all see; and that in some of the characteristics of their eloquence they must all be alike. Actions, not law or policy: whose growth and fruits are to be slowly evolved by time and calm; actions daring, doubtful but instant; the new things of a new world,--these are what the speaker counsels; large, elementary, gorgeous ideas of right, of equality, of independence, of liberty, of progress through convulsion,--these are the principles from which he reasons, when he reasons,--these are the pinions of the thought on which he soars and stays; and then the primeval and indestructible sentiments of the breast of man,--his sense of right, his estimation of himself, his sense of honor, his love of fame, his triumph and his joy in the dear name of country, the trophies that tell of the past, the hopes that gild and herald her dawn,--these are the springs of action to which he appeals,--these are the chords his fingers sweep, and from which he draws out the troubled music, "solemn as death, serene as the undying confidence of patriotism," to which he would have the battalions of the people march!

Directness, plainness, a narrow range of topics, few details, few but grand ideas, a headlong tide of sentiment and feeling; vehement, indignant, and reproachful reasonings,--winged general maxims of wisdom and life; an example from Plutarch; a pregnant sentence of Tacitus; thoughts going forth as ministers of nature in robes of light, and with arms in their hands; thoughts that breathe and words that burn,--these vaguely, approximately, express the general type of all this speech.

R. Choate.

CCLI.

THE ELOQUENCE OF REVOLUTIONS

The capital peculiarity of the eloquence of all times of revolution, is that the actions it persuades to are the highest and most heroic which men can do, and the pa.s.sions it would inspire, in order to persuade to them, are the most lofty which man can feel. "High actions and high pa.s.sions"--such are Milton's words, high actions through and by high pa.s.sions; these are the end and these the means of the orator of the revolution. Hence are his topics large, simple, intelligible, affecting.

Hence are his views broad, impressive, popular; no trivial details, no wire-woven developments, no subtle distinctions and drawing of fine lines about the boundaries of ideas, no speculation, no ingenuity; all is elemental, comprehensive, intense, practical, unqualified, undoubting. It is not of the small things of minor and instrumental politics he comes to speak, or men come to hear. It is not to speak or to hear about permitting an Athenian citizen to change his tribe; about permitting the Roman knights to have jurisdiction of trials equally with the Senate; it is not about allowing a 10 householder to vote for a member of Parliament; about duties on indigo, or onion-seed, or even tea.

"That strain you hear is of an higher mood."

It is the rallying-cry of patriotism, of liberty, in the sublimest crisis of the State,--of man. It is a deliberation of empire, of glory, of existence, on which they come together. To be or not to be, that is the question. Shall the children of the men of Marathon become slaves of Philip? Shall the majesty of the Senate and people of Rome stoop to wear the chains forging by the military executors of the will of Julius Caesar?

Shall the a.s.sembled representatives of France, just waking from her sleep of ages to claim the rights of man,--shall they disperse, their work undone, their work just commencing; and shall they disperse at the order of the king? or shall the messenger be bid to go, in the thunder-tones of Mirabeau,--and tell his master that "we sit here to do the will of our const.i.tuents, and that we will not be moved from those seats but by the point of the bayonet?" Shall Ireland bound upward from her long prostration, and cast from her the last links of the British chain, and shall she advance "from injuries to arms, from arms to liberty," from liberty to glory? Shall the thirteen Colonies become, and be free and independent States, and come unabashed, unterrified, an equal, into the majestic a.s.sembly of the nations?

These are the thoughts with which all bosoms are distended and oppressed.

Filled with these, and with these flas.h.i.+ng in every eye, swelling every heart, pervading electric all ages, all orders, like a visitation, "an unquenchable public fire," men come together,--the thousands of Athens around the Bema, or in the Temple of Dionysus,--the people of Rome in the forum, the Senate in that council-chamber of the world,--the ma.s.ses of France, as the spring-tide, into her gardens of the Tuileries, her club-rooms, her hall of the convention,--the representatives, the genius, the grace, the beauty of Ireland into the Tuscan Gallery of her House of Commons,--the delegates of the Colonies into the Hall of Independence at Philadelphia,--thus men come in an hour of revolution, to hang upon the lips from which they hope, they need, they demand, to hear the things which belong to their national salvation, hungering for the bread of life.

R. Choate.

CCLII.

AMERICAN NATIONALITY.

By the side of all antagonisms, higher than they, stronger than they, there rises colossal the fine sweet spirit of nationality, the nationality of America! See there the pillar of fire which G.o.d has kindled and lifted and moved for our hosts and our ages. Gaze on that, wors.h.i.+p that, wors.h.i.+p the highest in that. Between that light and our eyes a cloud for a time may seem to gather; chariots, armed men on foot, the troops of kings may march on us, and our fears may make us for a moment turn from it; a sea may spread before us, and waves seem to hedge us up; dark idolatries may alienate some hearts for a season from that wors.h.i.+p; revolt, rebellion, may break out in the camp, and the waters of our springs may run bitter to the taste and mock it; between us and that Canaan a great river may seem to be rolling; but beneath that high guidance our way is onward, ever onward; those waters shall part, and stand on either hand in heaps; that idolatry shall repent; that rebellion shall be crushed; that stream shall be sweetened; that overflowing river shall be pa.s.sed on foot dryshod, in harvest time; and from that promised land of flocks, fields, tents, mountains, coasts, and s.h.i.+ps, from north and south, and east and west, there shall swell one cry yet, of victory, peace, and thanksgiving!

R. Choate.

CCLII.

THE SAME CONTINUED.

Think of this nationality first as a state of consciousness, as a spring of feeling, as a motive to exertion, as blessing your country, and as reacting on you. Think of it as it fills your mind and quickens your heart, and as it fills the mind and quickens the heart of millions around you. Instantly, under such an influence, you ascend above the smoke and stir of this small local strife; you tread upon the high places of the earth and of history; you think and feel as an American for America; her power, her eminence, her consideration, her honor, are yours; your compet.i.tors, like hers, are kings; your home, like hers, is the world; your path, like hers, is on the highway of empires; our charge, her charge, is of generations and ages; your record, her record, is of treaties, battles, voyages, beneath all the constellations; her image, one, immortal, golden, rises on your eye as our western star at evening rises on the traveller from his home; no lowering cloud, no angry river, no lingering spring, no broken creva.s.se, no inundated city or plantation, no tracts of sand, arid and burning, on that surface, but all blended and softened into one beam of kindred rays, the image, harbinger, and promiser of love, hope, and a brighter day!

But if you would contemplate nationality as an active virtue, look around you. Is not our own history one witness and one record of what it can do?

This day and all which it stands for,--did it not give us these? This glory of the fields of that war, this eloquence of that revolution, this one wide sheet of flame which wrapped tyrant and tyranny and swept all that escaped from it away, forever and forever; the courage to fight, to retreat, to rally, to advance, to guard the young flag by the young arm and the young heart's blood, to hold up and hold on till the magnificent consummation crowned the work,--were not all these imparted or inspired by this imperial sentiment? Has it not here begun the master-work of man, the creation of a national life? Did it not call out that prodigious development of wisdom, the wisdom of constructiveness which ill.u.s.trated the years after the war, and the framing and adopting of the Const.i.tution? Has it not, in general, contributed to the administering of that government wisely and well since?

R. Choate.

CCLIV.

THE SAME CONCLUDED.

Look at it! It has kindled us to no aims of conquest. It has involved us in no entangling alliances. It has kept our neutrality dignified and just. The victories of peace have been our prized victories. But the larger and truer grandeur of the nations, for which they are created, and for which they must one day, before some tribunal, give an account, what a measure of these it has enabled us already to fulfil! It has lifted us to the throne, and has set on our brow the name of the Great Republic. It has taught us to demand nothing wrong, and to submit to nothing wrong; it has made our diplomacy sagacious, wary, accomplished; it has opened the iron gate of the mountains and planted our ensign on the great, tranquil sea.

It has made the desert to bud and blossom as the rose; it has quickened to life the giant brood of useful arts; it has whitened lake and ocean with the sails of a daring, new, and lawful trade; it has extended to exiles, flying as clouds, the asylum of our better liberty.

It has kept us at rest within all our borders; it has repressed without blood the intemperance of local insubordination; it has scattered the seeds of liberty, under law and under order, broadcast; it has seen and helped American feeling to swell into a fuller flood; from many a field and many a deck, though it seeks not war, makes not war, and fears not war, it has borne the radiant flag, all unstained; it has opened our age of lettered glory; it has opened and honored the age of the industry of the people!

R. Choate.

CCLV.

THE NATIONAL ENSIGN.