From the first, she had loved to watch the course of my feelings, subjected entirely, as they were, to the power of a passion, by every one spoken of with pleasure; by every modern person deemed romantic; to every heart known a little; but felt, in its excess, by few. The curiosity of her whose care saved my life was now more excited than before; and with feelings like those awakened by a tragedy of Schiller, she left me sleepy from exhaustion and flew to prepare restoratives. In the course of that very morning came Ethelwald ;-had I died he would have been called to look upon me!-he was told that I lay slightly indisposed; and another evening had come, ere Marian let me know of his visit. Exhausted as I was, a lively regret took possession of my soul; for, had I known he was beneath the roof, I would have seen him, even as I lay, and told to him the cause of my suffering. But destiny had differently ordained; and Marian, perhaps, while her kindness saved me from death-(for even the effect of the poison must have killed without her care and gentleness;)-Marian, perhaps, was commissioned to separate my days from those of him I loved, even as darkness at the beginning of the world was separated from light and animation. Carefully nursed and nourished, in three days I was able to rise; but the vivid regret I had felt, at not seeing once more, when he came, the bright being whose estrangement made life insupportable, was succeeded by a despair more dull and heavy than before. Joshua Reed Giddings. BORN in Athens, Penn., 1795. DIED in Montreal, Canada, 1864. A DEMAND FOR SOUTHERN CONSISTENCY. [Speech on a Bill to pay for a Fugitive Slave. U. S. H. of R., 13 May, 1848.] T the very moment we are thus called on to legislate for the support of slavery in Maryland and in the other slave States, we are told that we have no power whatever over that institution; that it is so far beyond our control, that we must not even discuss its merits. Now, sir, I desire that Southern gentlemen shall take some position, and that they shall remain in it at least during this session of Congress. If we have jurisdiction of slavery in the States, let Southern men admit the fact, and let us at once abolish it from our Union, and wipe out the foul blot that has so long disgraced our national character. If we have not jurisdiction of it, why are we called on to legislate for its support? If it be a State institution, why is it constantly dragged into the discussions of this Hall? Why are we called on to take jurisdiction of it? Why are its burdens sought to be cast upon the people of the free States? Why are we to participate in its crimes? A year or two since, we were not permitted to speak our views in regard to slavery, for the reason, as Southern gentlemen then said, that we had no power over it; to-day they ask us to legislate for its benefit. Yes, sir; it is an established fact, and history will record it, that we are now legislating upon the rights of a master to his slave in Maryland: not at the instance of Northern members-no; the bill was reported by a gentleman from South Carolina, and we Northern men sit here with all becoming gravity and solemnly enter into an investigation of this man's right to the body of his fellow-man in that State. I repeat, sir, we have jurisdiction of this subject, or we have not. I am willing to leave the selection of either horn of this dilemma to Southern men. They may take their choice; but let them choose one or the other. Let us know where to find them. I have at all times denied that we have any constitutional powers in relation to this institution. But if we have the constitutional right to legislate on the subject, and to appropriate the treasure of the nation in the manner proposed, then, sir, let us change the form of the bill before us, and give the two hundred and eighty dollars which it appropriates to the slave instead of the master. That proposition would be much more consonant to my feelings, and is equally within our power, and much nearer our duty. I would go further, and would grant fifty or a hundred dollars to each slave who shall escape from his master, as a bounty for his energy, and to begin the world with. But Southern men will start back with horror at this proposition. Yet, sir, if we are to appropriate the money of our people on this subject, I insist that the appropriation shall be for the promotion of freedom, and not of slavery. I repeat that I am willing Southern members should choose either position. They may give us jurisdiction of slavery, or they may retain it in their several States. But if they place it in our hands, then I propose at once to abolish it, to strike it from existence. But, sir, I tell Southern gentlemen that we will not take jurisdiction of it to-day, and deny that we have any power over it to-morrow. We will not face to the right, to the left, and to the right-about, at the bidding of the slave power. I William Buell Sprague. BORN in Andover, Conn, 1795. DIED at Flushing, N. Y., 1876. ROBERT HALL AND JOHN FOSTER. [Visits to European Celebrities. 1855.] REACHED Bristol some time on Saturday, and the most important point which I had to settle on my arrival was, whether Mr. Hall was in town, and would preach the next day. I had two introductory letters to him-one from Rowland Hill, and one from an intimate friend of his in London, to whom I knew he was under great obligations; so that I felt tolerably strong in calling, as I did, Saturday night, to pay my respects to him; and yet, had I known as much before as I did afterwards, of his extreme aversion to seeing company, I scarcely think I should have had the courage to seek an introduction to him. He received me courteously, but told me that he was suffering extreme pain, as, indeed, he had been during the greater part of his life. He was rather shabbily dressed; but with such a commanding person and countenance as he had, he could well afford to be; for it must have been a singular eye that would have been detained by his dress, let it have been what it might. His face has been made so familiar to everybody by numerous engraved likenesses, that it would be needless to attempt to describe it; and yet the most perfect portrait of him that I have seen is not so perfect but that the original, as it has always lain in my memory, casts it into the shade. Having ascertained that he would preach the next morning, I took my leave of him, promising, however, to see him again at his house, early in the week. men. I went the next morning to Broadmead Chapel, to hear him preach. It was, by no means, a large building; nor was the congregation, in point of numbers, anything like what I had expected; though I understood it was select, and had in it an unusual proportion of intelligent One of the tutors in the Baptist Theological Academy at Bristol performed the introductory services, and it was not till they were singing the second time, that Mr. Hall walked into the pulpit. His gait was slow and majestic; and if I had known nothing of him before, I should have needed nobody to assure me that he was some extraordinary personHe rose and announced his text in the most unpretending manner age. that can be imagined, and in so low a tone that I found it difficult to understand him. For several minutes there was no material improvement in his style of elocution-he kept pulling the leaves of his Bible, as if he were a book-binder, engaged in taking a book to pieces; and his eyes were steadfastly fixed in one direction, as if his whole audience were. gathered into one corner of the room. I said to myself "If this is Robert Hall in England, I greatly prefer to meet him as I can in America; for I had rather read his writings, than merely hear his unintelligible whispers." Presently, however, the scene began to change; and his voice, though still low, became distinctly audible. For the first fifteen or twenty minutes, he said nothing which would have led me to inquire who he was, if I had not known; for the last twenty-five or thirty, it seemed to me that he said scarcely anything that could have been said by another man. It was like an impetuous mountain torrent in a still night. There was not the semblance of parade—nothing that betrayed the least thought of being eloquent, but there was a power of thought, a grace and beauty, and yet force, of expression, a facility of commanding the best language, without apparently thinking of the language at all, combined with a countenance all glowing from the fire within, which constituted a fascination that was to me perfectly irresistible. As he advanced to the close of his discourse, the effect upon my nervous system was like the discharge of artillery; and though I was completely wrapt with wonder and admiration, I was not sorry when he said-"Let us pray." I shall, perhaps, be less suspected of extravagance in this statement, when I say that Robert Hall's own people regarded this as an extraordinary performance; and one of his intelligent hearers told me that I might have heard him for years, and not have chanced to hear so fine a sermon. At the close of the service, observing that Mr. Hall passed into the vestry from which I had seen him come, I ventured, after a moment, to step in and pay my respects to him; and I found him stretched out upon two or three chairs, with his pipe already in his mouth; and I was assured that he always smoked up to the last moment before going into the pulpit. He introduced me to several of his friends, and especially to a Dr. Stock, who was just at that time a good deal talked about for his having recently renounced Unitarianism. He requested me to come and see him the next day, and said he should beg me to go home with him then, but that he was so much exhausted after preaching, as to be unfit for any conversation. When I called upon him after dinner, on Monday, I found him lying down upon chairs, and literally writhing in agony. After a few minutes, he called to his wife for his accustomed opiate, laudanum, and took three hundred drops, and after a short time, poured out as much more, and drank it as if it had been water. I found that he had made arrangements to take me to the house of a friend to pass the evening, where there was to be a small party, and among them the celebrated John Foster. This was to me an evening of great interest. Foster was there, and he and Hall bore the chief part in the conversation, each rendering the other more brilliant. Foster expressed to me the opinion that Hall was unquestionably the greatest preacher in the world; and Hall told me that Foster was the best model of an ancient philosopher now extant. Foster was a tall, stately, and somewhat rough-looking man, given to saying weighty, and sometimes witty things; and though he was, on the whole, a remarkably fine talker, he was certainly greatly inferior both in fluency and in brilliancy to Hall. Joseph Rodman Drake. BORN in New York, N. Y., 1795. DIED there, 1820. THE CULPRIT FAY. [Composed in 1819.-The Culprit Fay, and Other Poems. 1847.] I. IS the middle watch of a summer's night 'TIS The earth is dark, but the heavens are bright; But the moon, and the stars, and the cloudless sky, A river of light on the welkin blue. She mellows the shades on his shaggy breast, His sides are broken by spots of shade, By the walnut bough and the cedar made, Like starry twinkles that momently break II. The stars are on the moving stream, A burnished length of wavy beam In an eel-like, spiral line below ; |