unprincipled sycophants into silence. His brave example and eloquent speech caused millions of hearts to beat with a common sentiment of resistance. Every rock and wild ravine was made a rampart to "the sons of liberty," and their banner was on every summit unfurled, inscribed in letters of fire, "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God!"

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General Warren's speech resounds with the clash of arms, and is imbued with a high spirit of chivalry and faith. Brief, brave and glorious was his young career," and while, by the fearful emergency in which his country was plunged, he was compelled to tread "the blood-shod march of glory," he was an upright and conscientious patriot, ready to receive "the deep scars of thunder," and by his example to fortify the weak. Warren knew that "'tis liberty lends life its soul of light," and he was ready to immolate himself, if thus he might win the boon for all mankind.

Says Edward Everett: "Amiable, accomplished, prudent, energetic, eloquent, brave; he united the graces of a manly beauty to a lion heart, a sound mind, a safe judgment and a firmness of purpose, which nothing could shake. At the period to which I allude, he was but just thirty-two years of age; so young, and already the acknowledged head of the cause! He had never seen a battle-field, but the veterans of Louisburg and Quebec looked up to him as their leader; and the hoaryheaded sages who had guided the public councils for a generation, came to him for advice. Such he stood, the organ of the public sentiment, on the occasion just mentioned. At the close of his impassioned address,

after having depicted the labors, hardships and sacrifices endured by our ancestors, in the cause of liberty, he broke forth in the thrilling words, "the voice of our fathers' blood cries to us from the ground!" Three years only passed away; the solemn struggle came on; foremost in council, he also was foremost in the battle-field, and offered himself a voluntary victim, the first great martyr in the cause. Upon the heights of Charlestown, the last that was struck down, he fell, with a numerous band of kindred spirits, the gray-haired veteran, the stripling in the flower of youth, who had stood side by side through that dreadful day, and fell together, like the beauty of Israel, on their high places!"

Warren was eminently chivalrous and brave. Like Louis XII. at Aignadel, he would exclaim to the timid: "Let those who have fear, secrete themselves behind me." Or like the bold and generous Condé, he would animate his countrymen in the darkest hour with the cheerful cry, "Follow my white plume, you shall recognize it always on the road to victory."

In speech, as in action, he was sagacious and energetic. His words teem with the sulphurous breath of war, and are lurid with patriotic indignation, as if coined at the cannon's mouth. He seized his victim, as a vulture grasps a serpent in his talons, and bearing him aloft in triumph, tore him in fearless strength and scattered the fragments to the winds. But this was the rage produced by foreign aggression, and not the blind fury of mad ambition. Herein was Warren, like Washington, greater and nobler than Napoleon:

"The mighty heart that battled for the empire of the world, And all but won, yet perish'd in the strife!”

Warren was a powerful orator, because he was a true man, and struggled for man's highest rights. Eloquence and liberty are the inseparable offspring of the same mother, nursed at the same breast; two beams from the same sun; two chords of the same harp; two arrows from the same quiver; two thunderbolts twin-born in heaven, and most glorious in their conflicts and conquests on the earth.

"'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower

Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume,

And we are weeds without it. All constraint,
Except what wisdom lays on evil men,

Is evil; hurts the faculties, impedes

Their progress in the road of science; blinds
The eyesight of Discovery; and begets

In those that suffer it a sordid mind,
Bestial, a meagre intellect, unfit

To be the tenant of man's noble form,"

CHAPTER VII.

JOHN ADAMS,

ORATOR OF BLENDED ENTHUSIASM AND SOBRIETY.

JOHN ADAMS was born at Quincy, then part of the old town of Braintree, October 19th, 1735. He was of Puritanic descent, his ancestors having early emigrated from England, and settled in Massachusetts. He was early noted for studious habits, and was placed under the classical tuition of Mr. Marsh, who was also the teacher of Josiah Quincy, Jr. Having been admitted to Harvard College, in 1751, Mr. Adams was graduated in 1755. In a class that was distinguished, he stood among the first. In 1758, he was admitted to the bar, and commenced the practice of law in his native town. The skill with which he conducted a criminal cause, at Plymouth, first gave him professional fame. His business increased with his reputation and ability until 1766, when he removed to Boston where he could enjoy a wider scope for his talents. In 1770, he had the boldness to undertake the defence of the British officers and soldiers, on account of the memorable massacre of the 5th of March. The result reflected honor upon himself and upon the jury who, in the midst of great exaspera.

ms

spe

tion, dared to be just in maintaining the supremacy of law.

In 1776, Mr. Adams was appointed Chief Justice of Massachusetts, but yielding to the ruling passion of his ardent and patriotic nature, he devoted himself almost entirely to politics. The impressions early made on his mind by James Otis in the famous argument against Writs of Assistance, seem to have given tone and direction to his whole subsequent career. Before twenty years of age he predicted a vast increase of population in the Colonies, anticipated their naval distinction, and foretold that all Europe combined, could not subdue them. His thoughts were early and sagaciously occupied on these topics. On the 12th of October, 1755, he wrote from Worcester as follows:

'Soon after the Reformation, a few people came over into this new world, for conscience sake. Perhaps this apparently trivial incident may transfer the great seat of empire into America. It looks likely to me; for, if we can remove the turbulent Gallics, our people, according to the exactest computations, will, in another century, become more numerous than England itself. Should this be the case, since we have, I may say, all the naval stores of the nation in our hands, it will be easy to obtain a mastery of the seas; and then the united force of The only way

all Europe will not be able to subdue us.

to keep us from setting up for ourselves is to disunite us.

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Be not surprised that I am turned politician. This whole town is immersed in politics. The interests of nations, and all the dira of war, make the subject of every conversation. I sit and hear, and after having