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But in these nice, sharp quillets of the law,
Good faith, I am no wiser than a daw.

Shakspeare.

ness.

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1 Yet with all his faults and affectations, Pitt had, in a very extraordinary degree, many of the elements of greatHe had splendid talents, strong passions, quick 2 sensibility, and vehement enthusiasm for the grand and the 3 beautiful. There was something about him that ennobled tergiversation itself. He often went wrong, very wrong 4 but to quote the language of Wordsworth,

He still retained,

'Mid such abasement, what he had received
From nature: an intense and glowing mind.

In an age of law and dirty prostitution, in the age of Doddington and Sandys, it is something to have a man who 5 might, perhaps, under some strong excitement, have been tempted to ruin his country, but who never would have stooped to pilfer from her: a man whose errors arose, not from a sordid desire of gain, but from a fierce thirst for power, for glory, and for vengeance. History owes to him this attestation: that, at a time when any thing short of direct embezzlement of the public money was considered as quite fair in public men, he showed the most scrupulous disinterestedness; that at a time, when it seemed to be generally taken for granted, that government could be upheld only by the basest and most immoral arts, he appealed to the better and nobler parts of human nature: that he made a brave and splendid attempt to do, by means of pub6 lic opinion, what no other statesman of his day thought it possible to do, except by means of corruption; that he looked for support, not like the Pelhams, to a strong aristocritical connection, not, like Bute, to the personal favor of the sovereign, but to the middle class of Englishmen ; that he inspired that class with a firm confidence in his integrity and ability; that backed by them, he forced an unwilling court and an unwilling oligarchy to admit him to an ample share of power; and that he used that power in such a manner, as clearly proved that he had sought it, not for the sake of profit or patronage, but from a wish to establish for himself a great and durable reputation by means of eminent services rendered to the state. Macaulay.

Sentence 6th.-A fine example of imperfect loose declarative.

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SEC. CXXVI. THE LIFE OF JOHNSON" AND ITS AUTHOR,

BOSWELL.

The life of Johnson is assuredly a great, a very great work. Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic 2 poets, Shakspeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of 3 orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers. He has 4 no second. He has distanced all his competitors so de5 cidedly, that it is not worth while to place them. Eclipse is first, and the rest, nowhere.

6

We are not sure that there is in the whole history of the human intellect so strange a phenomenon as this book. Many of the greatest men that ever lived have written bio7graphy; Boswell was one of the smallest men that ever lived, and he has beaten them all. He was, if we are to 8 give any credit to his own account, or to the united testimony of all who knew him, a man of the meanest and fee9 blest intellect. Johnson described him as a fellow who had missed his only chance of immortality, by not having been 10 alive when the Dunciad was written. Beauclerk used his name as a proverbial expression for a bore. He was the 11 laughingstock of the whole of that brilliant society which has owed to him the greater part of its fame. He was 12 always laying himself at the feet of some eminent man, and begging to be spit upon, and trampled upon. He was 13 always earning some ridiculous nickname, and then "bending it as a crown unto him," not merely in metaphor, but literally. He exhibited himself, at the Shakspeare jubilee, 14 to all the crowd which filled Stratford-on-Avon, with a placard around his hat, bearing the inscription of Corsica Boswell. In his tour, he proclaimed to all the world, that 15 at Edinburgh, he was known by the appellation of Paoli Boswell. Servile and impertinent, shallow and pedantic, a bigot and a sot, bloated with family pride, and eternally blustering about the dignity of a born gentleman, yet stooping to be a talebearer, an eaves-dropper, a common butt in the taverns of London; so curious to know everybody 16 who was talked about, that, tory and high churchman as he was, he manœuvered, we have been told, for an introduction to Tom Paine; so vain of the most childish distinctions, that, when he had been to court, he drove to the office where his book was being printed, without changing his clothes, and summoned all the printer's devils to admire his new ruffle and sword;-such was this man; and such he was content and proud to be. Every thing which

17 another man would have hidden, every thing, the publication of which would have made another man hang himself, was matter of gay and clamorous exultation to his weak and diseased mind. What silly things, he said; what bitter retorts he provoked; how, at one place, he was troubled with evil presentiments which came to nothing; how, at another place, on waking from a drunken doze, he read the prayer book, and took a hair of the dog that had bitten him; how he went to see men hanged, and came away maudlin; how he added five hundred pounds to the fortune of one of his babies, because she was not frightened at Johnson's ugly face; how he was frightened out of his wits 18 at sea, and how the sailors quieted him as they would have quieted a child; how tipsy he was at Lady Cork's one evening, and how much his merriment annoyed the ladies; how impertinent he was to the Duchess of Argyle, and with what stately contempt she put down his impertinence; how colonel Macleod sneered to his face at his impudent obtrusiveness; how his father and the very wife of his bosom laughed and fretted at his fooleries;-all these things he proclaimed to all the world, as if they had been subjects for pride and ostentatious rejoicing. All the caprices of his temper, all the illusions of his vanity, all his hypochondria whimsies, all his castles in the air, he dis19 played with a cool self-complacency, a perfect unconsciousness that he was making a fool of himself, to which it is impossible to find a parallel in the whole history of man20 kind. He has used many people ill, but assuredly he has used nobody so ill as himself.

21

That such a man should have written one of the best books in the world, is strange enough. Macaulay.

Sentence Ist.-This may be treated either as a simple declarative, or a simple indirect in errogative of the third kind. Sentence 5th." As eclipse, so the rest." Sentence 16th.-Though servile, yet impertinent, though shallow, yet, &c. unusual sentence, and requires attention to the delivery.

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SEC. CXXVII.

DEATH, THE FRIEND OF THE GOOD.

1

I will teach the world

2 To thank thee. Who are thine accusers? 3 Who? 4 The living! they who never felt thy power,

And know thee not! The curses of the wretch 5 Whose crimes are rife, his sufferings, when thy hand Is on him, and the hour he dreads is come,

Are writ among thy praises. But the good:

6 Does he, whom thy kind hand dismissed to peace, Upbraid the gentle violence that took off

His fetters, and unbound his prison cell?

Bryant.

Sentence 4th.-A compound loose definite interrogative. Sentence 6th —A semi-interrogative, with a perfect loose construction of the parts.

SEC. CXXVIII.

THE EXCESSES OF REVOLUTIONS PRODUCED

BY PREVIOUS OPPRESSION.

If it were possible that a people, brought up under an 1 intolerant and arbitrary system, could subvert that system without acts of cruelty and folly, half the objections to despotic power would be removed. We should, in that 2 case, be compelled to acknowledge, that it at least produces no pernicious effects on the intellectual and moral character of a people. We deplore the outrages which 3 accompany revolutions, but the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was necessary. The violence of these outrages will always be proportion4 ed to the ferocity and ignorance of the people; and the ferocity and ignorance of the people will be proportioned to the oppression and degradation under which they have 5 been accustomed to live. Thus it was in our civil war. 6 The rulers in the church and state reaped only that which they had sown. They had prohibited free discussion": 7 they had done their best to keep the people unacquainted with their duties and their rights: the retribution was just and natural. If they suffered from popular ignorance, it 8 was because they had themselves taken away the key of knowledge: if they were assailed with blind fury, it was because they had exacted an equally blind submission.

9 It is the character of such revolutions, that we always 10 see the worst of them at first. Till men have been for

some time free, they know not how to use their freedom. 11 The natives of wine countries are always sober: in climates where wine is a rarity, intemperance abounds. 12 A newly liberated people may be compared to a northern army, encamped on the Rhine or the Xeres. It is said, 13 that when soldiers, in such a situation, first find themselves able to indulge without restraint in such a rare and expensive luxury, nothing is to be seen but intoxication. Soon, however, plenty teaches discretion; and, after wine 14 has been for a few months their daily fare, they become more temperate than they had been in their own country.

15 In the same manner, the final and permanent fruits of liberty are wisdom, moderation, and mercy. Its immediate 16 effects are often atrocious crimes, conflicting errors, skepticism on points the most clear, dogmatism on points 17 the most mysterious. It is just at this crisis, that its enemies love to exhibit it. They pull down the scaffolding from the half-finished edifice; they point to the flying 18 dust, the falling bricks, the comfortless rooms, the frightful irregularity of the whole appearance; and then ask in scorn, where the promised splendor and comfort is to be 19 found. If such miserable sophisms were to prevail, there would never be a good house, or a good government in the world.

Ariosto tells a pretty story of a fairy, who, by some 20 mysterious law of her nature, was condemned to appear, at certain seasons, in the form of a foul and poisonous snake. Those who injured her, during the period of her disguise, were forever excluded from participation in the blessings which she bestowed; but to those who, in spite 21 of her loathsome aspect, pitied and protected her, she afterwards revealed herself in the beautiful and celestial form which was natural to her, accompanied their steps, granted all their wishes, filled their houses with wealth, 22 made them happy in love, and victorious in war. Such a 23 spirit is liberty. At times she takes the form of a hateful

reptile. She grovels: she hisses: she stings; but woe to 24 those, who, in disgust, shall venture to crush her! and happy are those, who, having dared to receive her in her degraded and frightful shape, shall at length be rewarded by her in the time of her beauty and her glory!

25

There is only one cure for the evils which newly-acquired freedom produces; and that cure is freedom! 26 When a prisoner leaves his cell, he cannot bear the light of day he is unable to discriminate colors, or recognize faces; but the remedy is not to remand him into his dungeon, but to accustom him to the rays of the sun. The 27 blaze of truth and liberty may at first dazzle and bewilder nations which have become half blind in the house of bondage, but let them gaze on, and they will soon be able to bear it. In a few years men learn to reason; the extreme violence of opinion subsides; hostile theories cor28 rect each other; the scattered elements of truth cease to conflict and begin to coalesce; and at length a system of justice and order is educed out of the chaos.

Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying 29 it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought

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