W m BC W m BC W m BC hìm | scorned, | persecuted, | broken-hearted. In other ages, in distant hemispheres, when the votaries of science, with solemn | acts of consecrátion, shall dedicate their stately edifices to the BO cause of knowledge and of truth, | thŷ name | shall be mentioned with honor. 70. CRIME ITS OWN DETECTOR.-Daniel Webster. GENTLEMEN: This is a most extraordinary case. 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 has fallen on the destined victim, and on all beneath his roof. The assassin 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 is uncommonly light. The face of the innocent sleeper is turned from the murderer; and the beams of the moon, resting on the gray locks of his aged temple, show 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! It is the assassin's purpose to make sure work; and he yet plies the dagger, though it is obvious that life. had been destroyed by the blow of the bludgeon. He even raises the aged arm, that he may not fail in his aim at the heart, and replaces it again over the wounds of the poniard! To finish the picture, he explores the wrist for the pulse! He feels it, and ascertains that it beats no longer. It is accomplished! The deed is done! He retreats, retraces his steps to the window, passes through 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. Not to speak of that eye which pierces through all disguises, and beholds everything as in the splendor of noon,- such secrets of guilt are never safe; "murder will out." A thousand eyes turn at once to explore every man, every thing, 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. The secret which the murderer possesses soon comes to possess him; and like the evil spirits of which we read, it overcomes him, and leads him whithersoever it will. 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 has become his master;-it betrays his discretion; it breaks down his courage; it conquers his prudence. When suspicions, from without, begin to embarrass him, and the net of circumstances to entangle him, the fatal secret struggles with still greater violence to burst forth. It must be confessed, it will be confessed; there is no refuge from confession but in suicide, and suicide is confession. 71. ADAMS AND JEFFERSON.-Edward Everett. No, fellow-citizens, we dismiss not Adams and Jefferson. to the chambers of forgetfulness and death. What we admired, and prized, and venerated in them can never die, nor, dying, be forgotten. I had almost said that they are now beginning to live,—to live that life of unimpaired influence, of unclouded fame, of unmingled happiness, for which their talents and services were destined. They were of the select few, the least portion of whose life dwells in their physical existence; whose hearts have watched while their senses slept; whose souls have grown up into a higher being; whose pleasure is to be useful; whose wealth is an unblemished reputation; who respire the breath of honorable fame; who have deliberately and consciously put what is called life to hazard, that they may live in the hearts of those who come after. Such men do not, can not die. To be cold, and motionless, and breathless; to feel not and speak not: this is not the end of existence to the men who have breathed their spirits into the institutions of their country, who have stamped their characters on the pillars of the age, who have poured their heart's blood into the channels of the public prosperity. Tell me, ye who tread the sods of yon sacred height, is Warren dead? Can you not still see him, not pale and prostrate, the blood of his gallant heart pouring out of his ghastly wound, but moving resplendent over the field of honor, with the rose of heaven upon his cheek, and the fire of liberty in his eye? Tell me, ye who make your pious pilgrimage to the shades of Vernon, is Washington indeed shut up in that cold and narrow house? That which made these men, and men like these, cannot die. The hand that traced the charter of independence is, indeed, motionless; the eloquent lips that sustained it are hushed; but the lofty spirits that conceived, resolved, matured, maintained it, and which alone, to such men, "make it life to live," these cannot expire: "These shall resist the empire of decay, When time is o'er, and worlds have passed away: But that which warmed it once can never die," 72. DEATH OF COPERNICUS.-Edward Everett. 66 At length he draws near his end. He is seventy-three years of age, and he yields his work on The Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs" to his friends for publication. The day at last has come on which it is to be ushered into the world. It is the 24th of May, 1543. an On that day—the effect, no doubt, of the intense excitement of his mind, operating upon an exhausted frameeffusion of blood brings him to the gates of the grave. His last hour has come; he lies stretched upon the couch from which he will never rise. The beams of the setting sun glance through the Gothic windows of his chamber; near his bedside is the armillary sphere which he has contrived to represent his theory of the heavens; his picture painted by himself, the amusement of his earlier years, hangs before him; beneath it are his astrolabe and other imperfect astronomical instruments; and around him are gathered his sorrowing disciples. The door of the apartment opens; the eye of the departing sage is turned to see who enters: it is a friend who brings him the first printed copy of his immortal treatise. He knows that in that book he contradicts all that has ever been distinctly taught by former philosophers; he knows that he has rebelled against the sway of Ptolemy, which the scientific world has acknowledged for a thousand years; he knows that the popular mind will be shocked by his innovations; he knows that the attempt will be made to press even religion into the service against him; but he knows that his book is true. He is dying, but he leaves a glorious truth as his dying bequest to the world. He bids the friend who has brought it place himself between the window and his bedside, that the sun's rays may fall upon the precious volume, and he may behold it once more before his eye grows dim. He looks upon it, takes it in his hands, presses it to his breast, and expires. But no, he is not wholly gone. A smile lights up his dying countenance; a beam of returning intelligence kindles in his eye; his lips move; and the friend who leans over him can hear him faintly murmur the beautiful sentiments which the Christian lyrist of a later age has so finely expressed in verse: 66 Ye golden lamps of heaven, farewell, with all your feeble light; Farewell, thou ever-changing moon, pale empress of the night; And thou, effulgent orb of day, in brighter flames arrayed; My soul, which springs beyond thy sphere, no more demands thy aid. Ye stars are but the shining dust of my divine abode, The pavement of those heavenly courts where I shall reign with God." So died the great Columbus of the heavens. 73. SPEECH OF VINDICATION.-Robert Emmett. MY LORDS: What have I to say why sentence of death should not be pronounced on me, according to law?—I have nothing to say that can alter your predetermination, nor that it will become me to say, with any view to the mitigation of that sentence which you are here to pronounce, and I must abide by. But I have that to say which interests me more than life, and which you have labored to destroy. I have much to say why my reputation should be rescued from the load of false accusation and calumny which has been heaped upon it. Were I only to suffer death, after being adjudged guilty by your tribunal, I should bow in silence, and meet the fate that awaits me without a murmur; but the sentence of law which delivers my body to the executioner will, through the ministry of that law, labor, in its own vindication, to consign my character to obloquy; for there must be guilt some |