His master took the chariot of the sky:* LESSON CXXXII. Character of William Pitt,† Earl of Chatham.-ANONYMOUS. 1. THE secretary stood alone. Modern degeneracy had not reached him. Original and unaccommodating, the features of his character had the hardihood of antiquity. His august mind overawed majesty; and one of his sovereigns thought majesty so impaired in his presence, that he conspired to remove him, in order to be relieved from his superiority. No state chicanery -no narrow system of vicious politics-no idle contest for ministerial victories, sunk him to the vulgar level of the greatbut overbearing, persuasive, and impracticable, his object was England; his ambition was fame. 2. Without dividing, he destroyed party; without corrupting, he made a venal age unanimous. France sunk beneath him. With one hand he smote the house of Bourbon, and wielded, in the other, the democracy of England. The sight of his mind was infinite; and his schemes were to affect, not England-not the present age only-but Europe and posterity. Wonderful were the means by which these schemes were accomplished-always seasonable always adequate—the suggestions of an understanding, animated by ardor, and enlightened by prophecy. 3. The ordinary feelings which made life amiable and indolent-those sensations which soften, allure, and vulgarize, were unknown to him. No domestic difficulties-no domestic weakness, reached him—but aloof from the sordid occurrences of life, and unsullied by its intercourse, he came occasionally into our system to counsel and to decide. 4. A character so exalted, so strenuous, so various, so authoritative, astonished a corrupt age, and the Treasury trembled at the name of Pitt, through all her classes of venality. Corrup*See 2d Kings, chap. ii. + William Pitt, an illustrious English statesman, born in 1708, and died 1778, aged 70. tion imagined, indeed, that she had found defects in this statesman, and talked much of the inconsistency of his glory, and much of the ruin of his victories-but the history of his country, and the calamities of the enemy, answered, and refuted her. 5. Nor were his political abilities his only talents. His eloquence was an era in the Senate, peculiar and spontaneous, familiarly expressing gigantic sentiments and instructive wisdom; not like the torrent of Demosthenes, or the splendid conflagration of Tully, it resembled sometimes the thunder, and sometimes the music of the spheres. Like Murray,* he did not conduct the understanding through the painful subtlety of argumentation; nor was he, like Townsend, for ever on the rack of exertion; but rather lightened upon the subject, and reached the point by the flashings of his mind, which, like those of his eye, were felt, but could not be followed. 6. Upon the whole, there was in this man something that could create, subvert, or reform-an understanding-a spirit and an eloquence to summon mankind to society, or to break the bonds of slavery asunder, and to rule the wilderness of free minds with unbounded authority; something that could establish or overwhelm empires, and strike a blow in the world that should resound through the universe. LESSON CXXXII. Character of the Puritans.-EDINBURGH REVIEW. 1. THE Puritans† were men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging, in general terms, an overruling Providence, they habitually as William Murray, Earl of Mansfield, was born at Perth, in Scotland, 1705. He was an eminent lawyer, and celebrated for integrity, wisdom, and discernment. He died 1793. † Puritans, the first settlers of New-England. They were dissenters from the established church, and obtained the name of Puritans, from the superior purity and simplicity of the modes of worship to which they adhered. Being persecuted in England, a small number removed to Leyden, in Holland. After residing several years in that city, they resolved to leave it, and seek an asylum in the wilderness of America, where they might worship God agreeably to the dictates of their own consciences. On the 22d of December, 1620, they landed on a desolate coast, where they immediately erected huts, and called the place Plymouth. Their number amounted to 101. They suffered incredible hardships from the inclemency of the season, want of provisions, and suitable dwellings, and during the winter one half of their number perished. cribed every event to the will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To know him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was with them the great end of existence. 2. They rejected with contempt the ceremonious homage which other sects substituted for the pure worship of the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the Deity through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full on the intolerable brightness, and to commune with him face to face. Hence originated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. 3. The difference between the greatest and meanest of mankind seemed to vanish, when compared with the boundless interval which separated the whole race from him on whom their own eyes were constantly fixed. They recognized no title to superiority but his favor; and, confident of that favor, they despised all the accomplishments and all the dignities of the world. If they were unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, they were deeply read in the oracles of God. 4. If their names were not found in the registers of heralas, they felt assured that they were recorded in the Book of Life. If their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials, legions of ministering angels had charge over them. Their palaces were houses not made with hands; their diadems crowns of glory which should never fade away! 5. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt; for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language, nobles by the right of an earlier creation,—and, priests by the imposition of a mightier hand. 6. The very meanest of them was a being to whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged-on whose slightest action the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxiosn interest, who had been destined, before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity which should continue when heaven and earth should have passed away. Events which short-sighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes, had been ordained on his account. 7. For his sake empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed. For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the pen of the evangelist, and the harp of the prophet. He had been rescued by no common deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had arisen, that all nature had shuddered at the suffer. ings of her expiring God! 8. Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men; the one all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion; the other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before his Maker; but he set his foot on the neck of his king. In his devotional retirement, he prayed with convulsions, and groans and tears. He was half maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He heard the lyres of angels or the tempting whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam of the beatific vision, or woke screaming from dreams of everlasting fire. 9. Like Vane,† he thought himself intrusted with the sceptre of the millennial year. Like Fleetwood, he cried in the bitterness of his soul that God had hid his face from him. But, when he took his seat in the council, or girt on his sword for war, these tempestous workings of the soul had left no perceptible trace behind them. People who saw nothing of the godly but their uncouth visages, and heard nothing from them but their groans and their hymns, might laugh at them. But those had little reason to laugh who encountered them in the hall of debate, or in the field of battle. 10. The Puritans brought to civil and military affairs, a coolness of judgment, and an immutability of purpose, which some writers have thought inconsistent with their religious zeal, but which were in fact the necessary effects of it. The intensity of their feelings on one subject made them tranquil on every other One overpowering sentiment had subjected to itself pity and hatred, ambition and fear. Death had lost its terrors, and pleasure its charms. 11. They had their smiles and their tears, their raptures and their sorrows, but not for the things of this world. Enthusiasm had made them stoics, had cleared their minds from every vulgar passion and prejudice, and raised them above the influence of danger and of corruption. It sometimes might lead them to pursue unwise ends, but never to choose unwise means. 12. We acknowledge that the tone of their minds was often injured by straining after things too high for mortal reach: And we know that, in spite of their hatred of popery, they too often *See St. Matthew, chap. xxvii. 45-55. Sir Henry Vane, an English statesman, and a political and theological writer, was beheaded on a charge of treason, in 1602. William Fleetwood, an English bishop, was born in London, 1656, and died 1723. fell into the vices of that bad system, intolerance and extravagant austerity. Yet, when all circumstances are taken into consideration, we do not hesitate to pronounce them a brave, a wise, an honest, and an useful body. LESSON CXXXIV. Character of Washington.*-PHILLIPS. 1. No matter what may be the birth-place of such a man as WASHINGTON. No climate can claim, no country can appropriate him—the boon of Providence to the human race--his fame is eternity, his residence creation. Though it was the defeat of our arms, and the disgrace of our policy, I almost bless the convulsion in which he had his origin: if the heavens thundered and the earth rocked, yet, when the storm passed, how pure was the climate that it cleared-How bright in the brow of the firmament was the planet it revealed to us! In the production of Washington, it does really appear as if nature was endeavoring to improve upon herself, and that all the virtues of the ancient world were but so many studies preparatory to the patriot of the new. 2. Individual instances, no doubt, there were; splendid exemplifications of some single qualification-Cæsart was merciful -Scipiot was continent,-Hannibal‡ was patient, but it was reserved for Washington to blend them all in one, and like the lovely master-piece of the Grecian artist, to exhibit in one glow of associated beauty, the pride of every model, and the perfection of every master. *George Washington, the commander of the American army in the war of the revolution, and the first president of the United States, was the son of Augustine Washington, of Virginia. He was born February 22d, 1732. At the age of 19, he was appointed an Adjutant-General of Virginia, with the rank of Major, and during the French and Indian wars which immediately followed, he was actively engaged in defending the frontiers of his native state. In 1775, when the United Colonies determined to resist the British claims, Washington was unanimously appointed to the command of the American army. He accepted the office with great diffidence, and declined any pecuniary compensation for his services, desiring only that his expenses should be defrayed by the public. He immediately entered upon. his duties, and during the whole of the revolutionary war and the establishing of the independence of the United States, under the most distressing and discouraging circumstances, he manifested the most determined resolution, fortitude, and intrepidity. He was the first president, chosen in 1789, which office he held eight years. He died December 14th, 1799, universally honored, esteemed, and beloved. + A Roman General. A Carthaginian General. |