THE

AMERICAN SPEAKER.

EXERCISE I.

LIBERTY AND KNOWLEDGE.

THIS lovely land, this glorious liberty, these benign institutions, the dear purchase of our fathers, — are ours; ours to enjoy, ours to preserve, ours to transmit. Generations past, and generations to come, hold us responsible for this sacred trust. Our fathers, from behind, admonish us with their anxious parental voices; posterity calls out to us, from the bosom of the future; the world turns hither, with its solicitous eye; all, all conjure us to act wisely and faithfully in this relation which we sustain. We can never, indeed, pay the debt which is upon us; but by virtue, by morality, by religion, by the cultivation of every good principle, and every good habit, we may hope to enjoy the blessing through our day, and to leave it unimpaired to our children.

Let us feel deeply how much of what we are, and what we possess, we owe to this liberty, and these institutions of government. Nature has indeed given us a soil which yields bounteously to the hand of industry; the mighty and fruitful ocean is before us, and the skies over our heads shed health and vigor. But what are lands, and seas, and skies, to civilized man, without knowledge, without morals, without religious culture? and how can these be enjoyed, in all their excellence, but under the protection of wise institutions and a free government?

There is not one of us, who does not at this moment, and at every moment, experience, in his own condition, and in the condition of those most near and dear to him, the influence and benefits of this liberty, and of these institutions. Let us, then, acknowledge the blessing; let us feel it deeply and powerfully; let us cherish a strong affection for it, and resolve to maintain and perpetuate it. The blood of our fathers, let it not have been shed in vain: the great hope of posterity, — let it not be blasted!

-

EXERCISE II.

FREE SCHOOLS, THE GLORY OF NEW ENGLAND.

I KNOW not, my friends, what more munificent donation any government can bestow, than by providing instruction at the public expense, not as a scheme of charity, but of municipal policy. If a private person deserves the applause of all good men, who founds a single hospital or college, how much more are they entitled to the appellation of public benefactors, who by the side of every church in every village plant a school of. letters! Other monuments of the art and genius of man may perish; but these, from their very nature, seem, as far as human foresight can go, absolutely immortal.

The triumphal arches of other days have fallen; the sculptured columns have crumbled into dust: the temples of taste and religion have sunk into decay; the pyramids themselves seem but mighty sepulchres hastening to the same oblivion to which the dead they cover long since passed. But here, every successive generation becomes a living memorial of our public schools, and a living example of their excellence.

Never, never may this glorious institution be abandoned or betrayed, by the weakness of its friends, or the power of its adversaries. It can scarcely be abandoned or betrayed, while New England remains free, and her representatives are true to their trust. It must forever count in its defence a majority of all those who ought to influence public affairs by their virtues or their tal

ents; for it must be that here they first felt the divinity of kr.owledge stir within them.

What consolation can be higher, what reflection prouder, than the thought, that, in weal and in woe, our children are under the public guardianship, and may here gather the fruits of that learning which ripens for eternity?

'EXERCISE III.

THE NATURE OF TRUE ELOQUENCE.

WHEN public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great interests are at stake, and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable in speech, further than it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness, are the qualities which produce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire after it; they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force.

The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men, when their own lives, and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country, hang on the decision of the hour. Then, words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then, patriotism is eloquent; then, self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception, out-running the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right on

ward, to his object—this, this is eloquence; or, rather, it is something greater and higher than all eloquence, -it is action, noble, sublime, godlike action.

EXERCISE IV.

CONCLUSION OF A DISCOURSE AT PLYMOUTH.

THE hours of this day are rapidly flying, and this occasion will soon be passed. Neither we nor our children can expect to behold its return. They are in the distant regions of futurity, they exist only in the allcreating power of God, who shall stand here, a hundred years hence, to trace, through us, their descent from the Pilgrims, and to survey, as we have now surveyed, the progress of their country during the lapse of a century. We would anticipate their concurrence with us in our sentiments of deep regard for our common ancestors. We would anticipate and partake the pleasure with which they will then recount the steps of New England's advancement. On the morning of that day, although it will not disturb us in our repose, the voice of acclamation and gratitude, commencing on the rock of Plymouth, shall be transmitted through millions of the sons of the Pilgrims, till it lose itself in the murmurs of the Pacific seas.

We would leave, for the consideration of those who shall then occupy our places, some proof that we hold the blessings transmitted from our fathers in just estimation; some proof of our attachment to the cause of good government, and of civil and religious liberty; some proof of a sincere and ardent desire to promote everything which may enlarge the understandings and improve the hearts of men. And when, from the long distance of an hundred years, they shall look back upon us, they shall know, at least, that we possessed affections, which, running backward, and warming with gratitude for what our ancestors have done for our happiness, run forward also to our posterity, and meet them with cordial salutation, ere yet they have arrived on the shore of Being

Advance, then, ye future generations! We would hail you as you rise in your long succession, to fill the places which we now fill, and to taste the blessings of existence where we are passing, and soon shall have passed, our own human duration. We bid you welcome to this pleasant land of the Fathers. We bid you welcome to the healthful skies and the verdant fields of New England. We greet your accession to the great inheritance we have enjoyed. We welcome you to the blessings of good government and religious liberty. We welcome you to the treasures of science and the delights of learning. We welcome you to the transcendant sweets of domestic life, to the happiness of kindred, and parents, and children. We welcome you to the immeasurable blessings of rational existence, the immortal hope of Christianity, and the light of everlasting Truth.

EXERCISE V.

THE AMERICAN INDIAN.

Nor many generations ago, where you now sit, circled with all that exalts and embellishes civilized life, the rank thistle nodded in the wind, and the wild fox dug his hole unscared. Here lived and loved another race of beings. Beneath the same sun that rolls over your heads, the Indian hunter pursued the panting deer; gazing on the same moon that smiles for you, the Indian lover wooed his dusky mate.

Here the wigwam-blaze beamed on the tender and helpless, the council-fire glared on the wise and daring. Now they dipped their noble limbs in your sedgy lakes, and now they paddled the light canoe along your rocky shores. Here they warred; the echoing whoop, the bloody grapple, the defying death-song, all were here; and when the tiger strife was over, here curled the smoke of peace.

Here, too, they worshipped; and from many a dark bosom went up a pure prayer to the Great Spirit. He had not written his laws for them on tables of stone, but