rences of the last few weeks furnish to us all an impressive and awful admonition of the precarious tenure by which we hold this fleeting and feverish existence, while we are but too prone to act as if it would never have an end.

2. Scarcely have our feelings recovered from the violence of the shock, produced by the extraordinary and unexampled spectacle of one of our number, falling dead before our eyes, while in the act of addressing the house on a great question of deep and absorbing interest, when we are summoned to pay the last melancholy offices of humanity to another, whose death was equally sudden.

3. Mr. Speaker, I never have been able to feel that on occasions of this kind, panegyric is an appropriate tribute to the memory of the dead. They are beyond the reach of praise; and it is not by this, that they are judged, either in this world or the next. Biographical details, however brief, are, in my opinion, not more appropriate. Where the deceased is known, they are unnecessary; where he is unknown, they are seldom of any interest.

4. His name should be his epitaph; and, however blank it may appear to the vacant eye of the passing stranger, it will always have the power to call up the recollection of his virtues in the bosom of friendship, and the tear of undissembled sorrow in the eye of affection-offerings more grateful and congenial to the disembodied spirit, than the proudest monument which human art can erect, or the most pompous eulogium which human eloquence can pronounce.

5. Without saying more, sir, I now ask the house to bestow upon the memory of the deceased, the customary testimonials of respect, by adopting the resolution I hold in my hand.

General Blair, and the Hon. Thomas T. Bouldin, of Virginia, the other member of congress to whom Mr. M'Duffie alludes in the second verse of his eloquent and solemn speech, died at Washington in the year 1834. The resolution of which he speaks in conclusion, proposed that the members of the house should go into mourning, by wearing crape on the left arm, for thirty days,-a custom which has long prevailed in parliamentary bodies. When General Harrison's death occurred, as that melancholy event took place while he was president of the United States, crape was worn also on the hats of all the various officers of the government. The twenty-six pall bearers, one for each state, wore, in addition to these habiliments of wo, white silk scarfs over the shoulder, with a black crape rosette on their bosoms.

State affairs have, for several years, occupied Mr. M'Duffie's attention, almost exclusively. He has been governor of South Carolina, as well as

a representative in congress from that state. He speaks rapidly and with power. His announcement of General Blair's death, is a burst of true eloquence. It should be given in the deep and solemn tone of grief. The countenance should be expressive of "the nothingness of man, and the supremacy of Providence."

46. THE RIGHT OF FREE DISCUSSION, DERIVED FROM GOD.Gerrit Smith, Esq.

1. I love the free and happy form of civil government under which I live; not because it confers new rights on me. My rights all spring from an infinitely nobler source-from the favor and grace of God. Our political and constitutional rights, so called, are but the natural and inherent rights of man, asserted, carried out, and secured by modes of human contrivance. To no human charter am I indebted for my rights. They pertain to my original constitution; and I read them in that Book of books, which is the great Charter of man's rights. No, the constitutions of my nation and state create none of my rights. They do, at the most, but recognize what it was not theirs to give.

2. My reason therefore, for loving a republican form of government, and for preferring it to any other-to monarchical and despostic government-is, not that it clothes me with rights, which these withhold from me; but, that it makes fewer encroachments than they do, on the rights which God gave me on the divinely appointed scope of man's agency. I prefer, in a word, the republican system, because it comes up more nearly to God's system. It is not then to the constitutions of my nation and state, that I am indebted for the right of free discussion; though I am thankful for the glorious defence with which those instruments surround that right.

3. God himself gave me this right; and a sufficient proof that He did so, is to be found in the fact, that He requires me to exercise it. Take from the men, who compose the church of Christ on earth, the right of free discussion, and you disable them for His service. They are now the lame and the dumb and the blind. In vain is it now, that you bid them "hold forth the word of life"-in vain that you bid them "not to suffer sin upon a neighbor, but in any wise to rebuke him"—in vain is

it, that you bid them "go into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature."

4. If God made me to be one of his instruments for carrying forward the salvation of the world, then is the right of free discussion among my inherent rights; then may I, must I, speak of sin, any sin, every sin, that comes in my way—any sin, every sin, which it is my duty to search out and to assail. When, therefore, this right is called in question, then is the invasion, not of something obtained from human convention and human concession; but the invasion of a birthright-of that which is as old as our being, and a part of the original

man.

5. This right, so sacred, is sought to be trammeled. It is virtually denied. What I have said is introductory to the expression of my dissent from the tenor of the language, with which this invasion is generally met. This right is, for the most part, defended on the ground, that it is given to us by our political constitution; and that it was purchased for us by the blood and toil of our fathers. Now, I wish to see its defence placed on its true and infinitely higher ground; on the ground, that God gave it to us; and that he, who violates or betrays it, is guilty, not alone of dishonoring the laws of his country and the blood and toil and memory of his fathers; but, that he is guilty also of making war upon God's plan of man's constitution and endowments; and of attempting to narrow down and destroy that dignity, with which God invested him, when He made him in his own image, and but "little lower than the angels."

6. When, therefore, we would defend this right, let us not defend it so much with the jealousy of an American-a republican; as though it were but an American or a republican right, and could claim no higher origin than human will and human statutes; but let us defend it as men, feeling that to lose it, is to lose a part of ourselves; let us defend it as men, determined to maintain, even to their extreme boundary, the rights and powers, which God has given to us for our usefulness and enjoyment; and the surrender of an iota of which is treason against Heaven.

7. We are threatened with legislative restraints on this right. Let us tell our legislators in advance, that this is a right, restraints on which, we will not, cannot bear; and that every attempt to restrain it is a palpable wrong on God and

man. Submitting to these restraints, we could not be what God made us to be; we could not perform the service, to which he has appointed us; we could not be men. Laws to gag a

man-to congeal the gushing fountains of his heart's sympathy-and to shrivel up his soul by extinguishing its ardor and generosity-are laws not to assist him in carrying out God's high and holy purposes in calling him into being; but they are laws to throw him a passive, mindless, worthless being, at the feet of despotism.

8. Our republican spirit cannot thus succumb. God gave us our freedom,-it is not an ex gratia freedom bestowed by man. The right of free discussion is derived from God; and knowing this, let us vindicate it against all the threats and arts of demagogues, and money worshippers, and in the face of mobs, and of death!

The speech from which this most_eloquent vindication of the right of free discussion is taken, was made at Peterborough, Madison county, N. Y. where Mr. Smith resides, on the 22d day of October, in the year 1835. The right to discuss all subjects, either of individual or national concernment, is, doubtless, derived from God. So surely therefore as our blood has a right to circulate through the veins which He created for that purpose, just so surely we have an inalienable right to speak with the tongue, the pen, and the press, in the fearless language, and in the manly tones of freemen,

The thought has often occurred to the writer, that if a speaker could combine the dignity of Demosthenes, with the gracefulness of Cicero; or the intellectual strength, and impressive authority of the manner of speaking of such men, as John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster, and Silas Wright, with the pleasing and alluring style of Henry Clay, Martin Van Buren, or Benjamin F. Butler; he would reach the highest point of excellence in oratory. The elocution of Gerrit Smith is distinguished alike for beauty and power. Having a refined taste and great compass of voice, he gives quantity and rhetorical pauses where elocution requires them, very perfectly. His gestures, too, are appropriate and graceful., Quantity is no less essential in elocution than in vocal music, and the suspension of the breath in which the rhetorical pause chiefly consists, aids the orator essentially in speaking with ease, facility, and power. Possessing a clear, full, sonorous, and powerful voice, which Dr. Rush calls "oratund," Mr. Smith gives quantity and rhetorical pauses, and all the other varieties of expres sive intonation most admirably. There is as much difference between his elocution, and that of an ordinary speaker, as between "the light of a taper, and the light of the SUN." Mr. Smith is, moreover, a gentleman of great hospitality and munificence.

The eloquent and glowing passages with which the above extract abounds, will furnish the young American orator, with an excellent specimen, for practice in powerful declamation,

47. ADDRESS TO THE MOON.-Ossian.

1. Daughter of heaven, fair art thou! the silence of thy face is pleasant! Thou comest forth in loveliness. The stars attend thy blue course in the east. The clouds rejoice in thy presence, O moon. They brighten their darkbrown sides. Who is like thee in heaven, light of the silent night! The stars in thy presence turn away their sparkling eyes.

2. Whither dost thou retire from thy course, when the darkness of thy countenance grows? Hast thou thy hall, like Ossian? Dwellest thou in the shadow of grief? Have thy sisters fallen from heaven? Are they who rejoice with thee at night, no more? Yes; they have fallen, fair light! and thou dost often retire to mourn. But thou thyself shalt fail, one night, and leave thy blue path in heaven.

3. The stars will then lift their heads and rejoice. Thou art now clothed with thy brightness. Look from thy gates in the sky. Burst the clouds, O wind, that the daughter of night may look forth; that the shaggy mountains may brighten, and the ocean roll its white waves in light.

The elocution of Ossian's beautiful address to the Moon, should be very similar to that of his address to the Sun. That is the 14th piece, and the reader is referred to the writer's note appended to it.

48. CONCLUSION OF DANIEL WEBSTER'S SPEECH.

Gentlemen: A hundred years hence, other disciples of Washington will celebrate his birth, with no less of sincere admiration, than we now commemorate it. When they shall meet, as we now meet, to do themselves and him the honor, so surely as they shall see the blue summits of his native mountains rise in the horizon, so surely as they shall behold the river on whose banks he lived, and on whose banks he rests, still flow to the sea; so surely may they see as we now see, the flag of the Union floating on the top of the capitol; and then, as now, may the sun in his course, visit no`land more free, more happy, more lovely, than this our own country.