Bons, and entreated that his remains should lie where those of Fox and Chatham are interred. His grave is in Westminster Abbey.

15. Reader! if you be an Irish Protestant, and entertain harsh prejudices against your Catholic countrymen, study the works and life of Grattan: learn from him (for none can teach you better) how to purify your nature from bigotry: learn from him to look on all your countrymen with a loving heart, to be tolerant of infirmities, caused by their unhappy history, — and, like Grattan, earnestly sympathize with all that is brave and generous in their character.

16. Reader! if you be an Irish Catholic, learn from Grattan, that it is possible to be a Protestant, and have a heart for Ireland and its people. Think that the brightest age of Ireland was when Grattan —a steady Protestant raised it to proud eminence; think also that in the hour of his triumph he did not forget the state of your oppressed fathers, but labored through his virtuous life that both you and your children should enjoy unshackled liberty of conscience.

17. But, reader! whether you be Protestant or Catholic, and whatever be your party, you will do well to ponder upon the spirit and principles which governed the public and private career of Grattan. Learn from him how to regard your countrymen, of all denominations. Learn from him to avoid hating men on account of their religious professions or hereditary descent. Go and carry into practice, within your social and political sphere, those moral duties which Grattan so eloquently taught in his matchless oratory, and so nobly enforced in his well-spent life. Recollect, that any country, containing such elements as those which roused his genius, never need despair. Be not disheartened.

LXXI.

TRUE AND FALSE VALOR.

BEN JONSON.

See in Index, CONTUMELY, ODIOUS, VALOR, JONSON.

Delivery. This noble specimen of the argumentative style requires middle pitch, gentle force, varied inflections and pauses, and a pure quality of voice. Some slight alterations and transpositions from the original have been made, to adapt the extract to our purpose.

I.

TRUE valor springs from reason,

And tends to perfect honesty. The scope
Is always honor and the public good.
Valor in private quarrels is no valor;
No, not for reputation! That's man's idol
Set up 'gainst God, the maker of all laws,
Who hath commanded us WE SHALL NOT KILL;
And yet we say we must for reputation!
What honest man can either fear his own,
Or else will hurt another's reputation?

II.

Fear to do base, unworthy things, is valor!
I never thought an angry person valiant ;
Virtue is never aided by a vice;
And 't is an odious kind of remedy
To owe our health to a disease.

III.

If it proceed from passion, not from judgment,
Brute beasts have valor,

wicked persons have it.

So in the end where it respects not truth

Or public honesty, but mere revenge,
The ignorant valor,

That knows not why it undertakes, but does it
To escape the infamy merely,-

Valor that lies in the eyes of the lookers on, —
Is worst of all.

IV.

The things true valor's exercised about

Are poverty, restraint, captivity,

Banishment, loss of children, long disease:

The least is death.

Here valor is beheld;

And as all knowledge, when it is removed,
Or separate from justice, is called craft,
Rather than wisdom, so a mind affecting
Or undertaking dangers for ambition,
Or any self-pretext, not for the public,
Deserves the name of daring, not of valor;
And over-daring is as great a vice
As over-fearing,-ay, and often greater.

V.

"But, as it is not the mere punishment,
But the cause that makes the martyr, so it is not
Fighting, or dying, but the manner of it,
Renders a man himself. A valiant man
Ought not to undergo, or tempt a danger,
But worthily, and by selected ways:
He undertakes with reason, not by chance.

VI.

His valor is the salt to his other virtues

They are all unseasoned without it. The attendants
Or the concomitants of it are his patience,

His magnanimity, his confidence,

His constancy, security, and quiet;
He can assure himself against all rumor,
Despairs of nothing, laughs at contumelies,
As knowing himself advanced in a height
Where injury cannot reach him, nor aspersion
Touch him with soil!

See in Index, CENTRE or CENTER, DIAMOND, FORWARD, HERBAGE HUMBLE, MOLECULE, HUNT. See remarks, §§ 48, 51.

1. IF we regard the conditions of the beautiful and varied organic covering of the Earth, the certainty, the

constancy of change are ever before us. Vegetable life passes into the animal form, and both perish to feed the future plant. Man, moving to-day the monarch of a mighty people, in a few years passes back to his primitive clod; and that combination of elementary atoms, which is dignified with the circle of sovereignty and the robe of purple, after a period may be sought for in the herbage of the fields and in the humble flowers of the valley.

2. We have, then, this certain truth: all things visible around us are aggregations of atoms. From particles of dust, which under the microscope could scarcely be distinguished one from the other, are all the varied forms of nature created. This grain of dust, this particle of sand, has strange properties and powers. Science has discovered some, but still more truths are hidden within this irregular molecule of matter which we now survey, than even philosophy dares dream of.

3. How strangely it obeys the impulses of heat! Mysterious are the influences of light upon it, -electricity wonderfully excites it, and still more curious is the manner in which it obeys the magic of chemical force. These are phenomena which we have seen; we know them, and we can reproduce them at our pleasure. We have advanced a little way into the secrets of nature, and from the spot we have gained, we look forward with a vision somewhat brightened by our task; but we discover so much that is yet unknown, that we learn another truth, our vast ignorance of many things relating to this grain of dust.

4. It gathers around it other particles; they cling together, and each acting upon every other one, and all of them arranging themselves around the little centre, according to some law, a beautiful crystal results, the geometric perfection of its form being a source of admiration. It exerts some other powers, and atom cohering to atom, obeying the influences of many exter

nal radiant forces, undergoes inexplicable changes, and the same dust which we find forming the diamond, aggregates into the lordly tree, blends to produce the graceful, scented, and richly painted flower,—and combines to yield the luxury of fruit.

5. It quickens with yet undiscovered energies; it moves with life. Dust and vital force combine; blood and bōne, nerve and muscle, result from the combination. Forces which we cannot, by the utmost refinements of our philosophy, detect, direct the whole, and from the same dust which formed the rock and grew in the tree is produced a living and a breathing thing, capable of receiving a Divine illumination, of bearing in its new state the gladness and the glory of a Soul.

6. These considerations lead us to reflect on the amount of our knowledge. We are led to ask ourselves, What do we know? We know that the world with all its variety is composed of certain material atoms, which, although presented to us in a great variety of forms, do not in all probability differ very essentially from one another.

7. We know that those atoms obey certain conditions which appear to be dependent upon the influences of motion, gravitation, heat, light, electricity, and chemical force. These powers are only known to us by their effects; we only detect their action by their operation upon matter; and although we regard the several phenomena which we have discovered as the manifestations of different principles, it is possible they may be but modifications of some one universal power, of which these are but a few of its modes of action.

8. Animals and vegetables are composed principally of four elementary principles,-oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon. The animal, perishing and dwindling by decomposition into the most simple forms of matter, mingling with the atmosphere as mere gas, gradually becomes part of the growing plant, and by like changes