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The chief of Israel was a living prey :

“ Away,

Strike the sharp weapon through my mangled breast,
One better wound be added to the rest."
"O fly, great chief! a happier day"
Thou poor pale coward: this is Saul's last day!
This is the day-Said I not?-this is the hour:
Saul not outlives his glory and his power........
Eternity! how dark the waves that roll

In booming discord on my frighted soul!
Eternity! how filled with wrack and gloom!—
Creation's vast and never-closing tomb!—
Billows that float in awful shade and fire,
Black lowering horror, and fierce flashing ire;
Mystic and hideous, yet unshunn'd by me,
Thy dismal desert, O Eternity!"

He said the weapon made its furious way—
And night and horror closed the fatal day.

THE TRUE AMERICAN STATESMAN.

BY NICHOLAS BIDDLE.

For the high and holy duty of serving his country, he begins by deep and solitary studies of its constitution and laws, and all its great interests. These studies are extended over the whole circumference of knowledge-all the depths and shoals of the human passions are sounded to acquire the mastery over them. The solid structure is then strengthened and embellished by familiarity with ancient and modern languages-with history, which supplies the treasures of old experience-with eloquence, which gives them attraction—and with the whole of that wide miscellaneous literature, which spreads over them all a perpetual freshness and variety. These acquirements are sometimes reproached by the ignorant as being pedantry. They would be pedantic if they intruded into public affairs inappropriately, but in subordination to the settled habits of the individual, they add grace to the strength of his general character, as the foliage ornaments the fruit that ripens beneath it. They are again denounced as weakening the force of native talent, and contrasted disparagingly with what are called rough and strong minded men. But roughness is no necessary attendant on strength; the true steel is not weakened by the highest polishjust as the scymetar of Damascus, more flexible in the hands of its master, inflicts a keener wound than the coarsest blade. So far from impairing the native strength

of the mind, at every moment this knowledge is available. In the play of human interests and passions, the same causes ever influence the same results; what has been, will again be, and there is no contingency of affairs on which the history of the past may not shed its warning light on the future. The modern languages bring him into immediate contact with the living science and the gifted minds of his remote cotemporaries. All the forms of literature, which are but the varied modifications in which the human intellect develops itself, contribute to reveal to him its structure and its passions; and these endowments can be displayed in a statesman's career only by eloquence-itself a master power, attained only by cultivation, and never more requiring it than now, when its influence is endangered by its abuse. Our institutions require and create a multitude of public speakers and writers but, without culture, their very numbers impede their excellence as the wild richness of the soil throws out an unweeded and rank luxuriance. Accordingly, in all that we say or write about public affairs, a crude abundance is the disease of our American style. On the commonest topic of business, a speech swells into a declamation—an official statement grows to a dissertation. A discourse about any thing must contain every thing. We will take nothing for granted. We must commence at the very commencement. An ejectment for ten acres, reproduces the whole discovery of America -a discussion about a tariff or a turnpike, summons from their remotest caves the adverse blasts of windy rhetoric -and on those great Serbonian bogs, known in political geography as constitutional questions, our ambitious fluency often begins with the general deluge, and ends with its own. It is thus that even the good sense and reason of some become wearisome, while the undisciplined fancy

of others wanders into all the extravagances and the gaudy phraseology which distinguish our western orientalism. The result is, that our public affairs are in danger of becoming wholly unintelligible-concealed rather than explained, as they often are, in long harangues which few who can escape will hear, and in massive documents which all who see will shun. For this idle waste of words

-at once a political evil and a social wrong-the only remedy is study. The last degree of refinement is simplicity; the highest eloquence is the plainest; the most effective style is the pure, severe, and vigorous manner, of which the great masters are the best teachers.

But the endearing charm of letters in a statesman, is the calmness and dignity which they diffuse over his whole thoughts and character. He feels that there are higher pursuits than the struggles for place. He knows that he has other enjoyments. They assist his public duties they recruit his exhausted powers, and they fill, with a calm and genuine satisfastion, those hours of repose so irksome to the mere man of politics. Above all, and what is worth all, they make him more thoroughly and perfectly independent. It is this spirit of personal independence which is the great safeguard of our institutions. It seems to be the law of our physical and of our moral nature, that every thing should perish in its own excesses. The peculiar merit of free institutions is, that they embody and enforce the public sentiment-the abuse which has destroyed them is, that they execute prematurely, the crude opinions of masses of men without adequate reflection, and before the passions which excited them can subside. Opinions now are so easily accumulated in masses, and their action is so immediate, that unless their first impulses are resisted, they will not brook even the restraints which, in cooler moments, they have

imposed on themselves, but break over the barriers of their own laws. Their impatience is quickened by the constant adulation from the competitors for their favour, till, at last, men become unwilling to hazard offence by speaking wholesome truth. It is thus that the caprice of a single individual, some wild phantasy, perhaps, of some unworthy person, easily corrected, or, if there were need, easily subdued at first—when propagated over numerous minds, not more intelligent than the first, becomes, at length, commanding-and superior intellects are overawed by the imposing presence of a wide-spread folly, as the noxious vapor of the lowest marsh, may poison, by contagion, a thousand free hills. That is our first danger. The second and far greater peril is, when these excited masses are wielded by temporary favorites, who lead them against the constitution and the laws. For both these dangers, the only security for freedom is found in the personal independence of public men. This independence is not a mere abundance of fortune, which makes place unnecessary-for wealth is no security for personal uprightness-but it is the independence of mind, the result of talents and education, which makes the possessor conscious that he relies on himself alone-that he seeks no station by unworthy means-will receive none with humiliation-will retain none with dishonor. They take their stand accordingly. Their true position as that where they can best defend the country equally from this inflamed populace and their unworthy leaders-on the one hand, resisting this fatal weakness-the fear of losing popular favor-and, on the other, disdaining all humiliating compliances with men in power.

Of the ancient and modern world, the best model of the union of the man of letters and the statesman was he, with whose writings your studies have made you familiar

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