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deadly fight; with the madness of fallen spirits seeking with murderous weapons the lives of brothers who have never injured them or their kindred. The havoc still rages. The ground is soaked with their commingling blood. The air is rent by their commingling cries. Horse and rider are stretched together on the earth. More revolting than the mangled victims, than the gashed limbs, than the lifeless trunks, than the spattering brains, are the lawless passions which sweep, tempest-like, through the fiendish tumult

'Nearer comes the storm and nearer,

Rolling fast and frightful on.
Speak, Ximena, speak and tell us,
Who has lost and who has won ?

"Alas! alas! I know not;

Friend and foe together fall,
O'er the dying rush the living;
Pray, my sister, for them all!"

Horror-struck, we ask, wherefore this hateful contest? The melancholy, but truthful answer, comes, that it is the established method of determining justice between nations!

"The scene changes. Far away on the distant pathway of the ocean two ships approach each other, with white canvas broadly spread to receive the flying gales. They are proudly built. All of human art has been lavished in their graceful proportions, and in their well-compacted sides, while they look in dimensions like floating happy

islands of the sea. A numerous crew, with costly appliances of comfort, hives in their secure shelter. Surely those two travellers shall meet in joy and friendship; the flag at the mast-head shall give the signal of fellowship; the delighted sailors shall cluster in the rigging, and even on the yardarms, to look each other in the face, while the exhilarating voices of both crews shall mingle in accents of gladness uncontrollable. It is not so. Not as brothers, not as friends, not as wayfarers of the common ocean, do they come together; but as enemies. The gentle vessels now bristle fiercely with death-dealing instruments. On their spacious decks, aloft on all their masts, flashes the deadly musketry. From their sides spout cataracts of flame, amidst the pealing thunders of a fatal artillery. They, who had escaped the dreadful touch of merchant-marring rocks; who on their long and solitary way had sped unharmed by wind or wave; whom the hurricane had spared; in whose favor storms and seas had intermitted their unmitigable war; now at last fall by the hand of each other. The same spectacle of horror greets us from both ships. On their decks, reddened with blood, the murders of St. Bartholomew and the Sicilian Vespers, with the fires of Smithfield, seem to break forth anew, and to concentrate their rage. Each has now become a swimming Golgotha. At length

these vessels-such pageants of the sea-once so stately, so proudly built-but now rudely shattered by cannon-balls-with shivered masts and ragged sails-exist only as unmanageable wrecks, weltering on the uncertain waves, whose temporary lull of peace is their only safety. In amazement at this strange, unnatural contest-away from country and home-where there is no country or home to defend-we ask again, wherefore this dismal duel? Again the melancholy, but truthful answer promptly comes, that this is the established method of determining justice between nations."

In a literary point of view, the reader of taste will derive pleasure from the perusal of this highly finished description of war, and the student of oratory will often turn to it with renewed delight. It furnishes young students in our schools and academies with an excellent piece for declamation, and conveys wholesome truths to all.

CHAPTER VII.

Delivers a Speech at the Free Soil State Convention-remarks on this effort-forcible extracts-Mr. Sumner ever true to the cause of Freedom.

On the 3d of October, 1850, Mr. Sumner delivered a most eloquent and impassioned speech at the Free Soil State Convention in Boston, on Our present Anti-Slavery Duties. This speech was delivered with overwhelming force, and was responded to by a whirlwind of enthusiasm, which has rarely been exceeded in the history of oratory. [One writer states that it was received with “thunders of applause ;" another adds, "It is the most graphic and eloquent address he has uttered." Those who were present on that occasion can never forget the music and melody of tone, the vehemence of manner, the gracefulness of action, and the majesty of countenance with which the speaker swayed and fascinated his audience. Never, perhaps, did Mr. Sumner rise to a higher pitch of eloquence than when he uttered some of the thrilling sentiments in which this speech abounds. He seemed to display all the grandeur

of oratory, while (to borrow the language of one, when describing a great oratorical effort of Daniel Webster)" eye, brow, each feature, every line of the face seemed touched, as with celestial fire. All gazed as at something more than human.” All, we may add, were enchained by the irresisti ble might of his eloquence; for all felt that the speaker was sincere in his remarks that his words came from the heart. It was a noble triumph of genuine oratory, one of the grandest that has ever swayed the feelings of a popular audience.

His indignant strictures on the Fugitive Slave Bill, which had but recently been passed, and his scathing remarks on Millard Fillmore who signed this iniquitous bill, possess a power which thrill the very soul. Let the following passage from this speech be carefully perused by every lover of freedom at the North. Candid reader, we ask you to consider these words:

"The soul sickens in the contemplation of this outrage. In the dreary annals of the past, there are many acts of shame-there are ordinances of monarchs, and laws, which have become a byword and a hissing to the nations. But, when we consider the country and the age, I ask fearlessly, What act of shame, what ordinance of monarch, what law can compare in atrocity with this enact

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