Academy, has fancied what he should be, and bequeathed a republic of love. But sages, knowing their weakness, have appealed to his understanding, cherished his virtues, and chastised his vices.

Friends of learning! would you do homage at the shrine of literature? Would you visit her clearest founts? Go to Scotland. Are you philosophers, seeking to explore the hidden mysteries of mind?-Bend to the genius of Stewart! Student, merchant, or mechanic, do you seek usefulness?-Consult the pages of Black and of Adam Smith. Grave barrister! would you know the law-the true, the sole expression of the people's will?—There stands the mighty Mansfield!

LESSON LXXIV.

JACK HALYARD'S SPEECH.

YOUNG men, Americans, far from you be that mean spirit, which is satisfied with half-way excellence. Strive to gain the highest badge of honor for yourselves, and for your country. Be greatly good. Now is the time to store your minds with knowledge, and form your hearts to virtue. It is the condition of our being, that all which is most valuable is to be diligently sought. They who would win the prize, must exert themselves earnestly in the race, and not fall back, nor turn aside for small obstacles.

Young men of America, can you be ignorant of the high duties to which you are called? Will you pass

away the prime of your days in careless indolence, and cheat the hopes of your friends? Can you be contented to crawl through the world with infamy, and die without doing any thing worthy of your character as men?

My young countrymen,—your lot is cast in a land where empire is built on truth and justice; where the rights of man are cherished: you are to follow where a Washington has led, and where victory can gain no laurels in a bad cause.

LESSON LXXV.

THE LOSS OF NATIONAL CHARACTER.

THE loss of a firm national character, or the degradation of a nation's honor, is the inevitable prelude to her destruction. Behold the once proud fabric of a Roman empire—an empire carrying its arts and arms into every part of the eastern continent; the monarchs of mighty kingdoms dragged at the wheels of her triumphal chariots; her eagle waving over the ruins of desolated countries. Where is her splendor, her wealth, her power, her glory? Extinguished for ever. Her moldering temples, the mournful vestiges of her former grand

eur, afford a shelter to her muttering monks. Where are her statesmen, her sages, her philosophers, her orators, her generals? Go to their solitary tombs and inquire. She lost her national character, and her destruction followed. The ramparts of her national

pride were broken down, and Vandalism desolated her classic fields.

Place their example before you. Let the sparks of their veteran wisdom flash across your minds, and the sacred altars of your liberty, crowned with immortal honors, rise before you. Relying on the virtue, the courage, the patriotism, and the strength of our country, we may expect our national character will become more energetic, our citizens more enlightened, and may hail the age as not far distant when will be heard, as the proudest exclamation of man: I am an American.

LESSON LXXVI.

THE CAPTIVE CHIEF.

PALE was the hue of his faded cheek,
As it leaned on his cold damp pillow;
And deep the heave of his troubled breast,
As the lift of the ocean billow:

For he thought of the days when his restless foot
Through the pathless forest bounded,
And the festive throng by the hunting-fire,
Where the chase song joyously sounded.
He had stood in the deadly ambuscade,

While his warriors were falling around him;
He had stood unmoved at the torturing stake,
Where the foe in his wrath had bound him;
He had mocked at pain in every form-

Had joyed in the post of danger;

But his spirit was crushed by the dungeon's gloom, And the chain of the ruthless stranger.

LESSON LXXVII.

EXORDIUM OF A SPEECH.

AGAINST the prisoner at the bar, as an individual, I cannot have the slightest prejudice. I would not do him the smallest injury or injustice. But I do not affect to be indifferent to the discovery and the punishment of this deep guilt. I cheerfully share in the opprobrium, how much soever it may be, which is cast on those who feel and manifest an anxious concern, that all who had a part in planning, or a hand in executing this deed of midnight assassination, may be brought to answer for their enormous crime at the bar of public justice. Gentlemen, it is a most extraordinary case. In some respects, it has hardly a precedent anywhere; certainly none in our New-England history.

An aged man, without an enemy in the world, in his own house, and in his own bed, is made the victim of a butcherly murder, for mere pay. Deep sleep had fallen on the destined victim, and on all beneath his roof. A healthful old man, to whom sleep was sweet, the first sound slumbers of the night held him in their soft but strong embrace. The aasassin enters through the window, already prepared, into an unoccupied apartment. With noiseless foot he paces the lonely hall, half-lighted by the moon; he winds up the ascent of the stairs, and reaches the door of the chamber. Of this he moves the lock, by soft and continued pressure,

till it turns on its hinges; and he enters, and beholds his victim before him.

The room was uncommonly open to the admission of light. The face of the innocent sleeper was turned from the murderer, and the beams of the moon, resting on the gray locks of his aged temple, showed him where to strike. The fatal blow is given! and the victim passes without a struggle or a motion, from the repose of sleep to the repose of death! The deed is done. He retreats, retraces his steps to the window, passes out through it as he came in, and escapes. He has done the murder- -no eye has seen him, no ear has heard him. The secret is his own, and it is safe! Ah! gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake. Such a secret can be safe nowhere. The whole creation of God has neither nook nor corner, where the guilty can bestow it, and say it is safe.

A thousand eyes turn at once to explore every man, everything, and every circumstance, connected with the time and place; a thousand ears catch every whisper; a thousand excited minds intensely dwell on the scene, shedding all their light, and ready to kindle the slightest circumstance into a blaze of discovery. Meantime the guilty soul cannot keep its own secret. It is false to itself; or rather, it feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be true to itself. It labors under its guilty possession, and knows not what to do with it.

He feels it beating at his heart, rising to his throat, and demanding disclosure. He thinks the whole world sees it in his face, reads it in his eyes, and almost hears its workings in the very silence of his thoughts. It betrays his discretion, it breaks down his courage, it