The audience are never permitted to pause for a inoment. There is no stopping to weave garlands of flowers to be hung in festoons around a favourite argument On the contrary, every sentence is progressive; every idea sheds new light on the subject; the listener is kept perpetually in that sweetly pleasurable vibration, with which the mind of man always receives new truths; the dawn advances in easy but unremitting pace; the subject opens gradually on the view; until, rising in high relief in all its native colours and proportions, the argument is consummated by the conviction of the delighted hearer. His political adversaries allege that he is a mere lawyer; that his mind has been so long trammelled by judicial precedent, so long habituated to the quart and tierce of forensic digladiation, (as Dr. Johnson would probably have called it,) as to be unequal to the discussion of a great quesion of state. Mr. Curran, in his defence of Rowan, seems to have sanctioned the probability of such an effect from such a cause, when he complains of his own mind as having been narrowed and circumscribed by a strict and technical adherence to established forms; but, in the next breath, an astonishing burst of the grandest thought, and a power of comprehension, to which there seems to be no earthly limit, proves that his complaint, as it relates to himself, is entirely without foundation. Indeed, if the objection to the chief justice mean any thing more than that he has not had the same illumination and exercise in matters of state as if he had devoted his life to them, I am unwilling to admit it. The force of a cannon is the same, whether pointed at a rampart or a man of war, although practice may have made the engineer more expert in one case than in the other. So it is clear that practice may give a man a greater command over one class of subjects than another; but the inherent energy of his mind remains the same whithersoever it may be directed. From this impression, I have never seen any cause to wonder at what is called a universal genius:it proves only that the man has applied a powerful mind to a great variety of subjects, and pays a compliment rather to is superior industry than his superior intellect. I am very certain that the gentleman of whom we are speaking possesses the acumen which might constitute him a universal genius, according to the usual acceptation of that phrase. But if he be the truant, which his warmest friends represent him to be, there is very little probability that he will ever reach this distinction. Moral Sublimity illustrated.—WAYLAND. PHILOSOPHERS have speculated much concerning a process of sensation, which has commonly been denominated the emotion of sublimity. Aware that, like any other simple feeling, it must be incapable of definition, they have seldom attempted to define it; but, content with remarking the occasions on which it is excited, have told us that it arises in general from the contemplation of whatever is vast in nature, splendid in intellect, or lofty in morals: or, to express the same idea somewhat varied, in the language of a critic of antiquity, "That alone is truly sublime, of which the conception is vast, the effect irresistible, and the remembrance scarcely, if ever, to be erased." But, although philosophers alone have written about this emotion, they are far from being the only men who have felt it. The untutored peasant, when he has seen the autumnal tempest collecting between the hills, and, as it advanced, enveloping in misty obscurity village and hamlet, forest and meadow, has tasted the sublime in all its reality; and, whilst the thunder has rolled and the lightning flashed around him, has exulted in the view of Nature moving forth in her majesty. The untaught sailor-boy, listlessly hearkening to the idle ripple of the moonlight wave, when on a sudden he has thought upon the unfathomable abyss beneath him, and the wide waste of waters around him, and the infinite expanse above him, has enjoyed to the full the emotion of sublimity, whilst his inmost soul has trembled at the vastness of its own conceptions. But why need I multiply illustrations from nature ? Who does not recollect the emotion he has felt while surveying aught, in the material world, of terror or of vastness? And this sensation is not produced by grandeur in material objects alone. It is also excited on most of those occa sions in which we see man tasking to the uttermost the ener gies of his intellectual or moral nature. Through the long lapse of centuries, who, without emotion, has read of Leonidas and his three hundred's throwing themselves as a barrier before the myriads of Xerxes, and contending unto death for the liberties of Greece? But we need not turn to classic story to find all that is great in human action; we find it in our own times, and in the history of our own country. Who is there of us that, even in the nursery, has not felt his spirit stir within him, when, with child-like wonder, he has listened to the story of Washington? And although the terms of the narrative were scarcely intelligible, yet the young so kindled at the thought of one man's working out the delivery of a nation. And as our understanding, strengthened by age, was at last able to grasp the detail of this transaction, we saw that our infantile conceptions had fallen far short of its grandeur. Oh! if an American citizen ever exults in the contemplation of all that is sublime in human enterprise, it is when, bringing to mind the men who first conceived the idea of this nation's independence, he beholds them estimating the power of her oppressor, the resources of her citizens, deciding in their collected might that this nation should be free, and, through the long years of trial that ensued, never blenching from their purpose, but freely redeeming the pledge they had given, to consecrate to it "their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honour." "Patriots have toiled, and, in their country's cause, It is not in the field of patriotism alone that deeds have been achieved, to which history has awarded the palm of moral sublimity. There have lived men, in whom the name of patriot has been merged in that of philanthropist; who, looking with an eye of compassion over the face of the earth, have felt for the miseries of our race, and have put forth their calm might to wipe off one blot from the marred and stained escutcheon of human nature, to strike off one form of suffering from the catalogue of human wo. Such a man was Howard. Surveying our world like a spirit of the blessed, he beheld the misery of the captivehe heard the groaning of the prisoner. His determination was fixed. He resolved, single-handed, to gauge and to measure one form of unpitied, unheeded wretchedness, and, bringing it out to the sunshine of public observation, to work its utter extermination. And he well knew what this undertaking would cost him. He knew what he had to hazard from the infection of dungeons, to endure from the fatigues of inhospitable travel, and to brook from the insolence of legalized oppression. He knew that he was devoting him. self to the altar of philanthropy, and he willingly devoted himself. He had marked out his destiny, and he hasted forward to its accomplishment, with an intensity, "which the nature of the human mind forbade to be more, and the character of the individual forbade to be less." Thus he commenced a new era in the history of benevolence. And hence, the name of Howard will be associated with all thatis sublime in mercy, until the final consummation of all things. Such a man is Clarkson, who, looking abroad, beheld the miseries of Africa, and, looking at home, saw his country stained with her blood. We have seen him, laying aside the vestments of the priesthood, consecrate himself to the holy purpose of rescuing a continent from rapine and murder, and of erasing this one sin from the book of his nation's iniquities. We have seen him and his fellow philanthropists, for twenty years, never waver from their purpose. We have seen them persevere amidst neglect and obloquy, and contempt, and persecution, until, the cry of the oppressed having roused the sensibilities of the nation, the "Island Empress" rose in her might, and said to this foul traffic in human flesh, Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther. ! J Eloquent Speech of Logan, Chief of the Mingoes.— JEFFERSON. I MAY challenge the whole orations of Demosthenes and Cicero, and of any more eminent orator, if Europe has fur nished more eminent, to produce a single passage superior to the speech of Logan, a Mingo chief, to Lord Dunmore, when governor of this state.* And, as a testimony of their talents in this line, I beg leave to introduce it, first stating the incidents necessary for understanding it. In the spring of the year 1774, a robbery was committed by some Indians on certain land adventurers on the river of Ohio. The whites in that quarter, according to their custom, undertook to punish this outrage in a summary way. Captain Michael Cresap and a certain Daniel Greathouse, leading on these parties, surprised, at different times, travelling and hunting parties of the Indians, having their women and children with them, and murdered many. Among these were unfortunately the family of Logan, a chief celebrated in peace and war, and long distinguished as the friend of the whites. This unworthy return provoked his vengeance. He accordingly signalized himself in the war which ensued. In the autumn of the same year a decisive battle was fought at the mouth of the Great Kanhaway, between the collected forces of the Shawañese, Mingoes, and Delawares, and a detachment of the Virginia militia. The Indians were defeated, and sued for peace. Logan, however, disdained to be seen among the suppliants. But, lest the sincerity of a treaty should be distrusted, from which so distinguished a chief absented himself, he sent, by a messenger, the following speech to be delivered to Lord Dunmore. "I appeal to any white man to say, if ever he entered Logan's cabin hungry, and he gave him not meat; if ever he came cold and naked, and he clothed him not. During the course of the last long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his cabin, an advocate for peace. Such was my love for the whites, that my countrymen pointed as they passed, and said, Logan is the friend of white men.' had even thought to have lived with you, but for the inju * Virginia I |