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One, when every human door

Is closed to His children, scorned and poor,
Who opens the heavenly portal wide -

Ah! God was near when the Outcast died.

XLIX. - THE GREAT REPUBLIC.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

See in Index, ALLY, CATASTROPHE, CORSELET, ENGINERY, OLIGARCHIC, PRAIRIE, PRECEDENT, SOVEREIGNTY, HOLMES. See remarks, §§ 49, 51. The style is argumentative, exhortative, didactic, and the delivery should be chiefly level, but rising here and there into great animation.

1. THE spirit of republican America is not that of a wild propagandism. It is not by war that we have sought or should ever seek to convert the Old World to our theories and practice in government. If this young nation is permitted, in the providence of God, to unfold all its possibilities into powers, the great lesson it will teach will be that of peaceful development.

2. American civilization hates war as such. It values life, because it honors humanity. It values property, because property is for the comfort and good of all, and not merely plunder, to be wasted by a few irresponsible lawgivers. It wants all the forces of its population to subdue Nature to its service. It demands all the intellect of its children for construction, not for destruction.

3. Let us not, therefore, waste our strength in threats of vengeance against those misguided governments who mistook their true interest in the prospect of our calamity. We can conquer them by peace better than by war. When the Union emerges from the battle-smoke, her crest towering, her eyes flashing defiance to all her evil-wishers, her breast heaving under its corselet of iron, her arm wielding the mightiest enginery that

was ever forged into the thunderbolts of war, - her triumph will be grand enough without her setting fire to the stubble with which the folly of the Old World has girt its thrones.

4. No deeper humiliation could be asked for our foreign enemies than the spectacle of our triumph. If we have any legal claims against the accomplices of pirates, they will be presented, and they will be paid. If there are any uncomfortable precedents which have been introduced into international law, the jealous "Mistress of the Seas" must be prepared to face them. in her own hour of trouble.

5. Had her failings but leaned to Freedom's side, had she but been true to her traditions, to her professions, to her pretended principles, where could she have found a truer ally than her own offspring, in the time of trial which is too probably preparing for her? "If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace!" No tardy repentance can efface the record of the past. We may forgive, but history is inexorable.

6. However our conflict may seem at first sight to do violence, in certain respects, to the principles of selfgovernment, everybody knows that it is a strife of dem ocratic against oligarchic institutions, of a progressive against a stationary civilization, of the rights of manhood against the claims of a class, of a national order representing the will of a people against a conspiracy organized by a sectional minority.

7. Just so far as the people of Europe understand the nature of our armed controversy, they will understand that we are pleading their cause. Nay, if the mass of our Southern brethern did but know it (as they one day will), we are pleading their cause just as much. The emancipation of industry has never taken effect in the South, and never can until labor ceases to be degrading.

8. The flame that sweeps our prairies is terrible, but it only scorches the surface. What has to be feared by all the governments based on smothered pauperism, tolerated ignorance, and organized degradation, is the subterranean fire which finds its vent in blazing craters, or breaks up all the ancient landmarks in earth-shattering convulsions. God forbid that we should invoke any such catastrophe even for those who have been hardest upon us in our bitter trial!

9. Yet so surely as American society founds itself upon the rights of civilized man, there is no permanent safety for any nation but in the progressive recognition of the American principle. The right of governing a nation belongs to the people of the nation; and the urgent duty of those provisional governments which we call monarchies, empires, aristocracies, is to educate their people with a view to the final surrender of all power into their hands.

10. A little longer patience, a little more sacrifice, a little more vigorous, united action, on the part of the loyal States, and the American Union will behold herself mirrored in the Atlantic and the Pacific, the stateliest of earthly sovereignties; - not in her own aspiring language, but by the confession of her most envious rival, "predominating over all mankind."

11. No Tartar hordes pouring from the depths of Asia, no Northern barbarians swarming out of the hive of nations, no Saracens sweeping from their deserts to plant the Crescent over the symbol of Christendom, were more terrible to the principalities and powers that stood in their way, than the Great Republic, by the bare fact of its existence, will become to every government which does not hold its authority from the people.

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Io (pronounced 'o) is an interjection, common to both the Greek and Latin languages, and equivalent to our huzza! The CITTERN or CITHERN was a stringed musical instrument. In HEARTH ea has the sound it has in heart.

See in Index, ERE, DORIAN, HEMANS.

Delivery. This little poem affords a most favorable specimen of the fine lyrical powers of Mrs. Hemans. It should be delivered with a spirit and tenderness for which it would be difficult to lay down rules.

I.

Io! they come, they come! garlands for every shrine!
Strike lyres to greet them home! bring roses, pour ye wine!
Swell, swell the Dorian flute, through the blue, triumphant sky!
Let the cittern's tone salute the sons of victory.

With the offering of bright blood, they have ransomed hearth and tomb,

Vineyard, and field, and flood; — Io! they come, they come!

II.

Sing it where olives wave, and by the glittering sea,

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And o'er each hero's grave, sing, sing, the land is free! Mark ye the flashing oars, and the spears that light the deep! How the festal sunshine pours, where the lords of battle sweep! Each hath brought back his shield; - maid, greet thy lover home!

Mother, from that proud field,

III.

Io! thy son is come!

Who murmured of the dead? Hush, boding voice! We know That many a shining head lies in its glory low.

Breathe not those names to-day! They shall have their praise

erelong,

With a power all hearts to sway, in ever-burning song.
But now shed flowers, pour wine, to hail the conquerors home;
Bring wreaths for every shrine, Io! they come, they come!

LI.

· EMMETT'S LAST SPEECH.

On the 23d of June, 1803, a rebellion against the government broke out in Dublin, in which Robert Emmett, at the time only twenty-three years of age, was a principal actor. It proved a failure. Emmett was arrested, having missed the opportunity of escape, it is said, by lingering to take leave of a daughter of Curran, the gifted orator, to whom he bore an attachment, which was reciprocated. On the 19th of September, 1803, Emmett was tried for high treason at the Sessions House, Dublin, before Lord Norbury, one of the Chief Judges of the King's Bench, and others; was found guilty, and executed the next day. Through his counsel, he had asked, at the trial, that the judgment of the court might be postponed until the next morning. This request was not granted. The clerk of the Crown read the indictment, and announced the verdict found, in the usual form. He then concluded thus: "What have you, therefore, now to say, why judgment of death and execution should not be awarded against you, according to law?" Standing forward in the dock, in front of the Bench, Emmett made an impromptu address, from which the following are extracts. At his execution, Emmett displayed great fortitude. As he was passing out of his cell, on his way to the gallows, he met the turnkey, who had become much attached to him. Being fettered, Emmett could not give his hand; so he kissed the poor fellow on the cheek, who, overcome by the mingled condescension and tenderness of the act, fell senseless at the feet of the youthful victim, and did not recover till the latter was no longer among the living.

Pronounce AL-LY', GAL'LANT,

Give the short sound to o in TRANSITORY.
OBSCURITY (-skure'-), SACRIFICE (-fize), SCAFFOLD (-föld or fuld).

Delivery. The best rule that can be given for the delivery of this profoundly impassioned address is: Put yourself in the situation of the prisoner, enter into his feelings and convictions, see the scaffold frowning before you, rise to a self-sacrificing love of country, to a sublime defiance of unmerited obloquy and death, and then speak accordingly.

1. My Lords, it may be a part of the system of angry justice to bow a man's mind, by humiliation, to the purposed ignominy of the scaffold; but worse to me. than the scaffold's shame, or the scaffold's terrors, would be the shame of such foul and unfounded imputations as have been laid against me in this court. You, my Lord, are a judge. I am the supposed culprit. I am a man,-you are a man also. By a revolution of power, we might change places, though we never could change characters.

2. If I stand at the bar of this court, and dare not vindicate my character, what a farce is your justice!

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