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larly active, bold, enterprising spirit which actuates this whole country. A neighborhood of restless, daring, allgrasping communities would contain within itself the seeds of perpetual hostility. Our feverish activity would break out in endless competitions and jealousies. The same great objects would be grasped at by all.

6. Add to this, that the necessity of preserving some balance of power would lead each republic to watch the other with a suspicious eye; and this balance could not be maintained, in these young and growing communities, as easily as in the old and stationary ones of Europe. Among nations such as we should form, which would only have begun to develop their resources, the political equilibrium would be perpetually disturbed.

7. Under such influences an irritable and almost justifiable sensitiveness to one another's progress would fester into unrelenting hatred. Our neighbor's good would become to us a curse. To obstruct one another's growth would be deemed the perfection of policy. Slight collisions of interest would be exaggerated into unpardonable wrongs; and unprincipled statesmen would find little difficulty in swelling imaginary grievances into causes of war.

8. We proceed to the second, and a very important consideration. Our possession of a common language, which is now an unspeakable good, would, in case of disunion, prove as great a calamity; for it would serve above all things, to multiply jealousies and exasperate bad passions.

9. In Europe, different nations, having each its own language, and comparatively small communication, can act but little on each other. Each expresses its own self-esteem and its scorn of other communities in writings which seldom pass its own bounds, and which minister to its own vanity and prejudices without inflaming other states.

10. But suppose this country broken up into contiguous nations, all speaking the same language, all enjoying unrestrained freedom of the press, and all giving utterance to their antipathies and recriminations in newspapers which would fly through all on the wings. of the winds. Who can set bounds to the madness which such agents of mischief would engender?

11. Another source of discord, in case of our separation is almost too obvious to be mentioned. Once divided, we should form stronger bonds of union with foreign nations than with one another. Belligerents in the Old World would strive to enlist us in their quarrels. From disunion we should reap, in plentiful harvests, destructive enmities at home and degrading subserviency to the powers of Europe.

12. We pass to another topic, particularly worthy of notice. In case of separation, party spirit, the worst foe of free states, would rage more furiously in each of the new and narrower communities than it does now in our extensive Union; and this spirit would not only spread deadly hatred through each republic, but would perpetually embroil it with its neighbors.

13. We complain of party rage even now; but it is mild and innocent compared with what we should experience were our Union dissolved. Each republic would then be broken into factions, one in possession, and the other in pursuit of power, and both prepared to link themselves with the factions of their neighbors. Party spirit, when spread over a large country, is far less envenomed and ruinous than when shut up in small states. The histories of Greece and Rome are striking illustrations of this truth.

14. There is no need of exaggeration. We do dread separation as the greatest of political evils, with the single exception of slavery. Under the wise distribution of power in this country, we enjoy the watchful and minute protection of a local government with

the immense advantage of a wide-spread community. Greater means of prosperity a people cannot enjoy. Let us not be defrauded of them by selfish or malignant passions.

15. Let us prize and uphold our National Government. Let us prize it as our bond of union; as that which constitutes us one people; as preserving the dif ferent States from mutual jealousies and wars, and from separate alliances with foreign nations; as mitigating party spirit; in one word, as perpetuating our peace.

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The sonnet is a little song or poem appropriately of fourteen ten-syllable lines, usually arranged and rhymed thus: - abba, abba, cdc, dcd; or abab, bcbc, dbd, bcc; or abab, bcbc, cbc, bdd; or abba, acca, dede, ff. This form of composition having been sometimes ridiculed, Wordsworth vindicates it in the following admirable specimen of the sonnet itself, where the rhymes are arranged according to the last-named formula.

See in Index, FAIRY, WOUND, CAMÖENS, MILTON, PETRARCH, SHAKESPEARE, SPENSER, TASSO, WORDSWORTH.

SCORN not the sonnet;

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critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honors: with this key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound;
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;
Camöens soothed with it an exile's grief;
The sonnet glittered a gay myrtle-leaf
Amid the cypress with which Dantë crowned
His visionary brow; a glowworm lamp,

It cheered mild Spenser, called from fairy-land
To struggle through dark ways; and, when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand

The thing became a trumpet, whence he blew
Soul-animating strains, alas, too few!

XIV. THE FORCE OF BREVITY.

See in Index, INFANTILE, ÆSCHINES, CATILINE, CICERO, DEMOSTHENES.

1. BE brief. Come to the point. Begin very near where you intend to leave off. Brevity is the soul of wisdom as well as of wit. Without it you can seldom obtain hearers, much less be remembered. Ponderous things do not easily obtain currency. Only the gems of literature are treasured up and quoted: and gems are not reckoned by gross weight.

2. How compact all that comes down to us from the olden times! In how few words we have the Commandments and the history of the creation, hardly embracing so many words as are now employed to welcome an alderman, or to make a complimentary present of a spoon!

3. The efficacy and value of compression can scarcely be overrated. The common air, we beat aside with our breath, compressed, has the force of gunpowder, and will rend the solid rock; and so it is with language. Eloquence will never flourish in a country where the public taste is infantile enough to measure the value of a speech by the hours it occupies.

4. A gentle stream of persuasiveness may flow through the mind, and leave no sediment: let it come at a blow, as a cataract, and it sweeps all before it. It is by this magnificent compression that Cicero confounds Catiline, and Demosthenes overwhelms Eschines; by this that Mark Antony, as Shakespcare makes him speak, carries the heart away with a bad

cause.

5. A clergyman once, being asked why he made his sermon so long, replied that he had n't had time to make it shorter. Do you say it costs labor to be brief? Of course it does. Mere words are cheap and plenty enough; but ideas that rouse, and set multitudes think

ing, come as gold comes from the quarry. The language of strong passion is always terse and compressed. Genuine conviction uses few words. There is something of artifice in a long speech.

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The following extract is from the fifth act of Byron's tragedy of Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice. Lioni, a patrician Senator, is visited by Bertram whom he has befriended, and who comes to warn him against a conspiracy which is to involve the ruin of the principal men of the state. Pronounce MARINO FALIERO, ma-re'no fä-le-ā'ro, LIONI, le-one.

See in Index, ERE, HUMBLE, PATRON, SAVIOUR or SAVIOR, SEPULCHRE or SEPULCHER, WONT, BYRON.

Delivery. Much of the conversation of Bertram should be in the low aspirate and eager tone of a man who is imparting a secret on which life depends. Lioni's speeches should be mostly in the middle pitch, the force gentle, the quality pure, the tones subdued, as if modified by anxiety for the safety of Bertram. See §§ 53, 54.

Lioni. Now, what would you at such an hour? Bert. A boon, my noble patron; you have granted Many to your poor client, Bertram; add

This one, and make him happy.

Lioni. I would promise

Ere thy request was heard, but that the hour,
Thy bearing, and this strange and hurried mode

Of suing, gives me to suspect this visit

Hath some mysterious import;

but say on

What has occurred? some rash and sudden broil?

A cup too much, a scuffle, and a stab?

Mere things of every day! So thou hast not
Spilt noble blood, I guarantee thy safety.

Bert. I come

To save patrician blood, and not to shed it!
And thereunto I must be speedy, for

Each minute lost may lose a life, since Time

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