Imatges de pàgina
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"I did not know, I could not have thought, that all the foul kennels and stews of earth, nay, nor all the gorged avenues of hell, could regurgitate upon the world, these legions of iniquity!"

5. But look again on the other side, at that deep and dense array of Ignorance, whose limits the eye cannot discover. Its van leans against us here, its rear is beyond the distant hills. They too, in this hour of their country's peril, have come up to turn the folly of which they are unconscious, into measures which they cannot understand, by votes which they cannot read. Nay more, and worse! for, from the ranks of crime, emissaries and bandit leaders are sallying forth toward the ranks of ignorance, and hissing to and fro amongst them, shouting the gibberish war-cries of faction, and flaunting banners with lying symbols, such as cheat the eye of a mindless brain,— and thus the hosts of crime are to lead on the hosts of ignorance, in their assault upon Liberty and Law!

6. What, now, shall be done to save the citadel of freedom, where are treasured all the hopes of posterity? Or, if we can survive the peril of such a day, what shall be done, to prevent the next generation from sending forth still more numerous hordes,― afflicted with deeper blindness and incited by darker depravity? Are there any here, who would counsel us to save the people from themselves, by wresting from their hands this formidable right of ballot? Better for the man who would purpose this remedy to an infuriate multitude, that he should stand in the lightning's path as it descends from heaven to earth.

7. And answer me this question; you, who would re-conquer for the few, the power which has been won by the many; you, who would disfranchise the common mass of mankind, and re-condemn them to become helots, and bondmen, and feudal serfs; tell me, were they again in the power of your castes, would you not again neglect them, again oppress them.

again make them the slaves to your voluptuousness, and the panders or the victims of your vices? Tell me, you royalists and hierarchs, or advocates of royalty and hierarchy, were the poor and the ignorant again in your power, to be tasked and tithed at your pleasure, would you not turn another Ireland into paupers, and colonize another Botany Bay with criminals? Would you not brutify the men of other provinces into the "Dogs of Vendée," and debase the noble and refined nature of woman, in other cities, into the "Poissardes of Paris?"

better, that these

8. O! better, far better, that the atheist and the blasphemer, and he who since the last setting sun, has dyed his hands in parricide, or his soul in sacrilege, should challenge equal political power with the wisest and the best blind Samsons, in the wantonness of their gigantic strength, should tear down the pillars of the republic, than that the great lesson which Heaven, for six thousand years, has been teaching to the world, should be lost upon it; the lesson that the intel lectual and moral nature of man is the one thing precious in the sight of God; and therefore, until this nature is cultivated, and enlightened, and purified, neither opulence nor power, nor learning, nor genius, nor domestic sanctity, nor the holiness of God's altars, can ever be safe. Until the immortal and godlike capacities of every being that comes into the world are deemed more worthy, are watched more tenderly, than any other thing, no dynasty of men, or form of government, can stand, or shall stand upon the face of the earth; and the force of the fraud, which would seek to uphold them, shall be but 66 as fetters of flax to bind the flame."

9. In all that company of felons and caitiffs, who prowl over the land, is there one man, who did not bring with him into life, the divine germ of conscience, a sensibility to right, and capacities which might have been nurtured and trained into the fear of God and the love of man? In all this company of ig.

norance, which, in its insane surgery, dissects eye and brain and heart, and maims every limb of the body politic, to find the disease, which honestly, though blindly, it wishes to cure; in all this company, is there one, who did not bring with him into life, noble faculties of thought, capabilities of judgment, and prudence, and skill, that might have been cultivated into a knowledge, an appreciation, and a wise and loving guardianship of all human interests and human rights?

10. The wickedness and blindness of the subjects are the judgments of heaven for the neglect of the sovereign; for, to this end, and to no other, was superiority given to a few, and the souls of all men preädapted to pay spontaneous homage to strength and talent and exalted station, that through the benignant and attractive influence of their possessors, the whole race might be won to wisdom and virtue. Let those, then, whose wealth is lost or jeoparded by fraud or misgovernment; let those who quake with apprehension for the fate of all they hold dear; let those who behold and lament the desecration of all that is holy; let rulers whose counsels are perplexed, whose plans are baffled, whose laws defied or evaded-let them all know, that whatever ills they feel or fear, are but the just retributions of a righteous heaven for neglected childhood.

11. Remember, then, the child whose voice first lisps, to-day, before that voice shall whisper sedition in secret, or thunder treason at the head of an armed band. Remember the child whose hand, to-day, first lifts its tiny bauble, before that hand shall scatter fire-brands, arrows, and death. Remember those sportive groups of youth in whose halcyon bosoms there sleeps an ocean, as yet scarcely ruffled by the passions, which soon shall heave it as with a tempest's strength. Remember, that whatever station in life you may fill, these mortals, these immortals, are your care. Devote, expend, consecrate yourselves to the holy work of their improvement. Pour out light and truth, as God pours sunshine and rain. No longer seek knowl

edge as the luxury of a few, but dispense it amongst all as the bread of life. Learn only how the ignorant may learn; how the innocent may be preserved; the vicious reclaimed.

12. Call down the astronomer from the skies; call up the geologist from his subterranean explorations; summon, if need be, the mightiest intellects from the council-chamber of the nation; enter cloistered halls, where the scholiast muses over superfluous annotations; dissolve conclave and synod, where subtle polemics are vainly discussing their barren dogmas; collect whatever of talent, or erudition, or eloquence, or authority, the broad land can supply, and go forth and teach THIS PEOPLE. For, in the name of the living God, it must be proclaimed, that licentiousness shall be the liberty; and violence and chicanery shall be the law; and superstition and craft shall be the religion; and the self-destructive indulgence of all sensual and unhallowed passions, shall be the only happiness of that people who neglect the education of their children.

LESSON XVII.

THE OCEAN'S POWER.

BYRON.

1. On! that the desert were my dwelling-place,
With one fair spirit for my minister,

That I might all forget the human race,
And, hating no one, love but only her!
Ye elements in whose ennobling stir,
I feel myself exalted, can ye not
Accord me such a being? Do I err

In deeming such inhabit many a spot!

Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot?

2. There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

3. Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean-roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain
Man marks the earth with ruin-his control
Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own;
When for a moment, like a drop of rain,

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

4. The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war!

These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

5. Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters wasted them, while they were free,
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay

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