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a touching case of this experience, which, though part.y imaginary, yet speaks the language of reality. The ruined cardinal says:

"Had I but served my God with half the zeal
I served my king, he would not in my age
Have left me naked to mine enemies."

It was the heart of the courtier which so affectingly reminded him of the causes of his ruin-they were the true sympathies of his nature, which so piteously rebuked the vain ambition of his life.

EXERCISE XLII.

THE COUNTRY OF WASHINGTON.

GENTLEMEN, the spirit of human liberty and of free government, nurtured and grown into strength and beauty in America, has stretched its course into the midst of the nations. Like an emanation from heaven, it has gone forth, and it will not return void. It must change, it is fast changing, the face of the earth. Our great, our high duty, is to show, in our own examples, that this spirit is a spirit of health as well as a spirit of power; that its benignity is as great as its strength; that its efficiency to secure individual rights, social relations, and moral order, is equal to the irresistible force with which it prostrates principalities and powers. The world, at this moment, is regarding us with a willing, but something of a fearful admiration. Its deep and awful anxiety is to learn, whether free states may be stable as well as free; whether popular power may be trusted as well as feared; in short, whether wise, regular, and virtuous self-government is a vision for the contemplation of theorists, or a truth, established, illustrated, and brought into practice, in the country of Washington.

Gentlemen, for the earth which we inhabit, and the whole circle of the sun, for all the unborn races of mankind, we seem to hold in our hands, for their weal or woe, the fate of this experiment. If we fail, who shall venture the repetition? If our example shall prove to

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not fit to

be onc, not of encouragement, but of terror be imitated, but fit only to be shunned—where else shall the world look for free models? If this great western sun be struck out of the firmament, at what other fountain shall the lamp of liberty hereafter be lighted? What other orb shall emit a ray to glimmer, even, on the darkness of the world?

Gentlemen, there is no danger of our overrating, or overstating, the important part which we are now acting in human affairs. It should not flatter our personal self-respect, but it should reänimate our patriotic virtues, and inspire us with a deeper and more solemn sense, both of our privileges and of our duties. We cannot wish better for our country, nor for the world, than that the same spirit which influenced Washington may influence a. who succeed him: and that the same blessing from above which attended his efforts may also attend theirs.

EXERCISE LIII.

INDIVIDUAL ACTION.

THE great lesson which I would teach you is, that it depends mainly on each individual what part he will bear in the accomplishment of this great work. It is to be done by somebody. In a quiet order of things, the stock of useful knowledge is not only preserved but augmented; and each generation improves on that which went before. It is true there have been periods, in the history of the world, when tyranny at home, or invasion from abroad, has so blighted and blasted the condition of society, that knowledge has perished with one generation faster than it could be learned by another; and whole nations have sunk from a condition of improvement to one of ignorance and barbarity, sometimes in a very few years. But no such dreadful catastrophe is now to be feared. Those who come after us will not only equal but surpass their predecessors. The existing arts will be improved, science will be carried to new heights, and the great heritage of useful knowledge will go down unimpaired and augmented.

But it is all to be shared out anew; and it is for each man to say, what part he will gain in the glorious patrimony.

When the rich man is called from the possession o. his treasures, he divides them as he will among his children and heirs. But Providence, the stern agrarian, deals not so with the living treasures of the mind. There are children just growing up in the bosom of obscurity, in town and in country, who have inherited nothing but. poverty and health, who will in a few years be striving in stern contention with the great intellects of the land. Our system of free schools has opened a straight way from the threshold of every abode, however humble, in the village or in the city, to the high places of usefulness, influence, and honor. And it is left for each, by the cultivation of every talent; by watching with an eagle's eye for every chance of improvement; by bounding forward like a greyhound, at the most distant glimpse of honorable opportunity; by grappling, as with hooks of steel, to the prize when it is won; by redeeming time, defying temptation, and scorning sensual pleasure, to make himself useful, honored and happy.

EXERCISE LIV.

THE MAN OF EXPEDIENTS.

THE man of expedients is he who, never providing for the little mishaps and stitch-droppings with which this mortal life is pestered, and too indolent or too ignorant to repair them in the proper way, passes his days in inventing a succession of devices, pretexts, substitutes, plans and commutations, by the help of which he thinks he appears as well as other people.

Look through the various professions and characters of life. You will there see men of expedients darting, and shifting, and glancing, like fishes in the stream. If a merchant, the man of expedients borrows incontinently at two per cent. a month; if a sailor, he stows his hold with jury-masts, rather than ascertain if his ship be seaworthy, if a visitor where he dislikes, he is called out

before the evening has half expired; if a nusician, he scrapes on a fiddle-string of silk; if an actor, he takes his stand within three feet of the prompter; if a poet, he makes fault rhyme with ought, and look with spoke; if a reviewer, he fills up three quarters of his article with extracts from the writer whom he abuses; if a divine, he leaves ample room in every sermon for an exchange of texts; if a physician, he is often seen galloping at full speed, nobody knows where; if a debtor, he has a marvellous acquaintance with short corners and dark alleys; if a printer, he is adroit at scabbarding; if a collegian, he commits Euclid and Locke to memory without understanding them, interlines his Greek, and writes themes equal to the Rambler.

But it is in the character of a general scholar that the man of expedients most shines. He ranges through all the arts and sciences-in cyclopædias. He acquires a most thorough knowledge of classical literature from translations. He is very extensively read-in title-pages. He obtains an exact acquaintance with authors—from reviews. He follows all literature up to its sources-in tables of contents. His researches are indefatigableinto indexes. He quotes memoriter with astonishing facility the dictionary of quotations; -- and his bibliographical familiarity is miraculous-with Dibdin.

We are sorry to say, that our men of expedients are to be sometimes discovered in the region of morality. There are those who claim the praise of a good action, when they have acted merely from convenience, inclination, or compulsion. There are those who make a show of industry, when they are set in motion only by avarice. There are those who are quiet and peaceable, only because they are sluggish. There are those who are sagely silent, because they have not one idea; abstemious, from repletion; patriots, because they are ambitious; perfect, because there is no temptation.

Who

But let us come down a little lower into life. appears so well and so shining at a ball-room as the man of expedients? Yet his small-clothes are borrowed, and as for his knee-buckles-about as ill-matched as if one had belonged to his hat and the other to a galoche - to

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prevent their difference being detected, he stands sidewise towards his partner. Nevertheless, the circumstance makes him a more vivacious dancer, since by the rapidity of his motions he prevents a too curious examination from the spectators.

You will find that he

Search further into his dress. very genteelly dangles one glove. There are five pins about him, and as many buttons gone, or button-holes broken. His pocket-book is a newspaper. His fingers are his comb, and the palm of his hand his clothes-brush. He conceals his antiquated linen by the help of a close vest, and adroitly claps a bur on the rent hole of his stocking, while walking to church:

Follow him home. Behold his felicitous knack of metamorphosing all kinds of furniture into all kinds of furniture. A brick constitutes his right andiron, and a stone his left. His bellows is his hearth-brush, and a hat his bellows, and that, too, borrowed from a broken window-pane. He shaves himself without a lookingglass, by the sole help of imagination. He sits down on a table. His fingers are his snuffers. He puts his candlestick into a chair. That candlestick is a decanter. That decanter was borrowed. That borrowing was without leave. He drinks wine out of a tumbler. A fork is his cork-screw. His wine-glass he converts into a standish.

Very ingenious is he in the whole business of writing a letter. For that purpose he makes use of three-eighths of a sheet of paper. His knees are his writing-desk. His ruler is a book cover, and his pencil a spoon handle. He mends his pen with a pair of scissors. He dilutes his ink with water, till it is reduced to invisibility. He uses ashes for sand. He seals his letter with the shreds and relics of his wafer-box. His seal is a pin.

O hearer, if you have smiled at any part of the foregoing representation, let it be to some purpose. There is no fault we are all so apt to indulge as that int which we are pushed by the ingenuity of indolence namely, the invention of expedients.

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