Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

of my fellow citizens, the benign influence of good laws under a free government,-the ever favorite object of my heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our mutual cares, labors, and dangers.

THE DUTIES OF AN AMERICAN CITIZEN.

THE paramount duty of an American citizen, is, to put in requisition every possible means for elevating universally the intellectual and moral character of the people.

When we speak of intellectual elevation, we would not suggest that all our citizens are to become able linguists, or profound mathematicians. This, at least for the present, is not practicable; it certainly is not necessary. The object at which we aim will be attained, when every man is familiarly acquainted with what are now considered the ordinary branches of English education. The intellectual stores of one language are then open before him; a language in which he may find all the knowledge that he shall ever need to form his opinions upon any subjects on which it shall be his duty to decide. A MAN WHO CANNOT READ, let us always remember, IS A BEING NOT CONTEMPLATED BY THE GENIUS OF our CONSTITUTION. Where the right of suffrage is extended to all, he is certainly a dangerous member of the community who has not qualified himself to exercise it. But on this part of the subject I need not enlarge. The proceedings of our general and state legislatures already furnish ample proof that the people are tremblingly alive to its importance. We do firmly believe the time to be not far distant, when there will not be found a single citizen of these United States, who is not entitled to the appellation of a well informed man.

But supposing all this to be done, still only a part and by far the least important part of our work will have been accomplished. We have increased the power of the people, but we have left it doubtful in what direction that power will be exerted. We have made it certain that a public opinion will be formed; but whether that opinion shall be healthful or destructive, is yet to be decided. We have cut out channels by which knowledge may be conveyed to every individual of our mighty population; it remains for us, by means of those very channels, to instil into every bosom an unshaken reverence for the principles of right. Having gone thus,

[ocr errors]

far, then, we must go farther; for you must be aware that the tenure by which our liberties are held can never be secure, unless moral keep pace with intellectual cultivation. This leads us to remark in the second place, that our other and still more imperious duty is, to cultivate the moral character of the people.

On the means by which this may be effected, I need not detain you. We have in our hands, a book of tried efficacy; a work which contains the only successful appeal that was ever made to the moral sense of man; a book which unfolds the only remedy that has ever been applied with any effect to the direful maladies of the human heart. You need not be informed that I refer to the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.

As to the powerful, I had almost said miraculous effect of the sacred scriptures, there can no longer be a doubt in the mind of any one on whom fact can make an impression. That the truths of the Bible have the power of awakening an intense moral feeling in man under every variety of character, learned or ignorant, civilized or savage; that they make bad men good, and send a pulse of healthful feeling through all the domestic, civil and social relations; that they teach men to love right, to hate wrong, and to seek each other's welfare, as the children of one common parent; that they control the baleful passions of the human heart, and thus make men proficients in the science of self government; and finally, that they teach him to aspire after conformity to a Being of infinite holiness, and fill him with hopes infinitely more purifying, more exalting, more suited to his nature than any other, which this world has ever known; are facts incontrovertible as the laws of philosophy, or the demonstration of mathematics. Evidence in support of all this can be brought from every age in the history of man, since there has been a revelation from God on earth. We see the proof of it every where around us. There is scarcely a neighborhood in our country where the Bible is circulated, in which we cannot point you to a very considerable portion of its population, whom its truths have reclaimed from the practice of vice, and taught the practice of whatsoever things are pure and honest and just and of good report.

That this distinctive and peculiar effect is produced upon every man to whom the gospel is announced, we pretend not to affirm. But we do affirm, that besides producing this

special renovation to which we have alluded, upon a part, it in a most remarkable degree elevates the tone of moral feeling throughout the whole of a community. Wherever the Bible is freely circulated, and its doctrines carried home to the understandings of men, the aspect of society is altered; the frequency of crime is diminished; men begin to love justice, and to administer it by law; and a virtuous public opinion, that strongest safeguard of right, spreads over a nation the shield of its invisible protection.

To sum up in a few words what has been said. If we would see the foundations laid broadly and deeply, on which the fabric of this country's liberties shall rest to the remotest generations; if we would see her carry forward the work of political reformation, and rise the bright and morning star of freedom over a benighted world, let us elevate the intellectual and moral character of every class of our citizens, and especially let us imbue them thoroughly with the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

[merged small][ocr errors]

HAS Nature, in her calm majestic march,
Faltered with age at last? does the bright sun
Grow dim in heaven? or, in their fair blue arch,
Sparkle the crowd of stars, when day is done,
Less brightly? when the dew-lipped Spring comes on,
Breathes she with airs less soft, or scents the sky
With flowers less fair than when her reign begun?
Does prodigal Autumn, to our age, deny

The plenty that once swelled beneath his sober eye?
Look on this beautiful world, and read the truth
In her fair page; see, every season brings
New change, to her, of everlasting youth;
Still the green soil, with joyous living things,
Swarms, the wide air is full of joyous wings,
And myriads, still, are happy in the sleep
Of ocean's azure gulfs, and where he flings
The restless surge. Eternal Love doth keep
In his complacent arms, the earth, the air, the deep.
Will then the merciful One, who stamped our race
With his own image, and who gave them sway

O'er earth, and the glad dwellers on her face,
Now that our flourishing nations far away

Are spread, where'er the moist earth drinks the day,
Forget the ancient care that taught and nursed
His latest offspring? will he quench the ray
Infused by his own forming smile at first,
And leave a work so fair all blighted and accursed?
Oh, no! a thousand cheerful omens give
Hope of yet happier days whose dawn is nigh.
He who has tamed the elements, shall not live
The slave of his own passions; he whose eye
Unwinds the eternal dances of the sky,
And in the abyss of brightness dares to span
The sun's broad circle, rising yet more high,
In God's magnificent works his will shall scan-
And love and peace shall make their paradise with man.

ELOQUENCE, CRITICISM AND TASTE.

ELOQUENCE, like government, is designed for the people, and ought to be fitted to them. And as we should have little opinion of the constitution which, however beautiful philosophers might think it in theory, could not after a fair trial command the affections of the great body of the people; so we should think that style of oratory, to say the least of it, very useless, which could produce no effect, but upon a few minds, which had been formed by peculiar studies. But this no more proves that the people are the best judges of eloquence, than it proves that they are the best politicians. We protest against the merits of a speech being estimated by the number of times the orator is interrupted by applause or by the round and unqualified opinion which ignorant men may pronounce of its excellence. But then we have no doubt that the real effect which the orator produces upon a common audience, his permanent success in accomplishing his objects, may be considered the true measure of his eloquence, though it is not always a safe one; since his success is frequently assisted or retarded by circumstances foreign to the merit of his address. When we speak of his success, we take it for granted that the object of the orator is, not to excite noise and laughter, but to produce conviction on a given subject, or to inculcate particular opinions, or to impel his

hearers to a particular course of conduct. And when this is the case, we assert that the style of address best suited to his purpose is precisely that which correct taste would most approve. If then, what is meant, by calling the common people the best judges of eloquence, is merely that real eloquence, will never fail of commanding their admiration: nay, if more is meant, that nothing will produce so strong and deep an effect upon any assembly as good sense and correct taste, then we not only assent to the proposition, but we are ready to maintain its truth. Indeed how can it be otherwise? Criticism, by which the canons of taste are collected, must regard the operation of particular qualities in the works of art, on those faculties and passions, which nature has bestowed upon all men in common. If it does less than this; if it confines its observations to the operations of such qualities upon minds; which have been refined by art, until nature has lost its influence with them; then the criticism itself is unsound, and its deductions not to be regarded. It is true, perhaps, that the public taste may become so perverted, the public mind so contaminated and debased, as to have lost its capacity of relishing real beauty or sublimity when offered to it. But this at worst can happen only when public morals shall have reached their lowest point of degradation; and when this happens, it will be of little use to inquire which is the best style of eloquence; as the bar, the popular assembly, and the senate will before that time have ceased to be the theatres of free discussion.

But still the memory of our readers may suggest instances in which it may seem that equal, or even deeper effect, has been produced by false taste, than could have been produced by real eloquence. These facts, however, will probably admit an explanation, without our being driven to such a conclusion. There may be a great deal of eloquence mixed up with what is false and meretricious, a great deal of vigor and strength with what is coarse and vulgar, a great deal that is wild and beautiful with what is forced, unnatural, and conceited. Now the mob are not very discriminating; when they admire or condemn, it is for the whole. They are however upon ordinary occasions more disposed to approbation, than to censure; and where there is any thing really calculated to produce effect, they will not resist its operation, because it is accompained with what is superfluous or tawdry. But it is not so with men of a certain degree of refinement.

« ПредишнаНапред »