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ty, , and the sensibility of a friend of men, that it hath confided this solemn function. In this point of view, I may speak with firm confidence; for I have the public opinion, and the testimony of my own conscience, to second my wishes. Since nothing else is wanting than freedom, and sensibility, for that species of eloquence which this eulogium requires, I am satisfied; for I already possess them.

6. My voice shall extend to France, to America, to posterity. I am now to do justice to a great man, the founder of transatlantic freedom; I am to praise him in the name of the mother city of French liberty. I myself also am a man; I am a freeman; I possess the suffrages of my fellow citizens: this is enough; my discourse shall be immortal.

7. The academies, the philosophical societies, the learned associations which have done themselves honour by inscribing the name of Franklin in their records, can best appreciate the debt due to his genius, for having extended the power of man over nature, and presented new and sublime ideas, in a style simple as truth, and pure as light.

8. It is not the naturalist and the philosopher that the orator of the commons of Paris ought to describe; it is the man who hath accelerated the progress of social order; it is the legislator, who hath prepared the liberty of nations!

9. Franklin, in his periodical works, which had prodigious circulation on the continent of America, laid the sacred foundations of social morality. He was no less inimitable in the developements of the same morality, when applied to the duties of friendship, general charity, the employment of one's time, the happiness attendant upon good works, the necessary combination of private with public welfare, the propriety and necessity of industry; and to that happy state which puts us at ease with society and with ourselves. The proverbs of "Old Henry," and "Poor Richard," are in the hands both of the learned and the ignorant; they contain the most sublime, morality, reduced to popular language and common comprehension: and form the catechism of happiness for all mankind.

10. Franklin was too great a moralist, and too well acquainted with human affairs, not to perceive that women were the arbiters of manners. He strove to perfect their empire; and accordingly engaged them to adorn the sceptre of virtue with their graces. It is in their power to excite courage; to overthrow vice, by means of their disdain; to

kindle civism, and to light up in every heart the holy love. of our country.

11. His daughter, who was opulent and honoured with the public esteem, helped to manufacture and to make up the clothing for the army with her own hands, and spread abroad a noble emulation among the female citizens, who became eager to assist those by means of the needle and the spindle, who were serving the state with their swords and their guns.

LESSON XCVI.

The same continued.

1. With the charm ever attendant upon true wisdom and the grace ever flowing from true sentiment, this grave philosopher knew how to converse with the other sex; to inspire them with a taste for domestic occupations; to hold out to them the prize attendant upon honour unaccompanied by reproach, and instil the duty of cultivating the first precepts of education, in order to teach them to their children; and thus to acquit the debt due to nature, and fulfil the hope of society. It must be acknowledged, that, in his own country, he addressed himself to minds capable of comprehending him.

2. Immortal females of America! I will tell it to the daughters of France, and they only are fit to applaud you! You have attained the utmost of what your sex is capable; you possess the beauty, the simplicity, the manners, at once natural and pure; the primitive graces of the golden age. It was among you that liberty was first to have its origin. But the empire of freedom which is extended to France, is about to carry your manners along with it, and produce a revolution in morals as well as in politics.

3. Already our female citizens, (for they have lately become such) are not any longer occupied with those frivolous ornaments, and vain pleasures, which were nothing more than the amusements of slavery; they have awakened the love of liberty in the bosoms of fathers, of brothers, and of husbands; they have encouraged them to make the most generous sacrifices; their delicate hands have removed the earth, dragged it along, and helped to elevate the immense amphitheatre of the grand confederation.

4. The laws which are to teform education, and with it the national manners, are already prepared; they will ad vance, they will fortify the cause of liberty by means of their happy influence, and become the second saviours of their country!

means of being He spoke to all This amiable

5. Franklin did not omit any of the useful to men, or serviceable to society. conditions, to both sexes, to every age. moralist descended, in his writings, to the most artless details; to the most ingenuous familiarities; to the first ideas of a rural, a commercial, and a civil life; to the dialogues of old men and children; full at once of all the verdure and all the maturity of wisdom.

6. In short, the prudent lessons arising from the exposition of those obscure, happy, easy virtues, which form so many links in the chain of a good man's life, derived immense weight from that reputation for genius which he had acquired, by being one of the first naturalists and greatest philosophers in the universe.

7. At one and the same time, he governed nature in the heavens and in the hearts of men. Amidst the tempests of the atmosphere, he directed the thunder; amidst the storms of society, he directed the passions. Think, gentlemen, with what attentive docility, with what religious respect, one must hear the voice of a simple man, who preached up human happiness, when it was recollected that it was the powerful voice of the same man who invented the lightning rod.

8. Venerable old man! august philosopher! legislator of the felicity of thy country! prophet of the fraternity of the human race! what ecstatic happiness embellished the end of thy career! From thy fortunate asylum, and in the midst of thy brothers who enjoyed in tranquillity the fruit of thy virtues, and the success of thy genius, thou hast sung songs of deliverance. The last looks, which thou didst cast around thee, beheld America happy; France, on the other side of the ocean, free, and a sure indication of the approaching freedom and happiness of the world.

9. The United States, looking upon themselves as thy children, have bewailed the death of the father of their republic. France, thy family by adoption, has honoured thee as the founder of her laws; and the human race has revered thee as one of the universal patriarchs who have

formed the alliance of nature with society. Thy remembrance belongs to all ages; and thy memory to all nations.

LESSON XCVII.

The Importance of the Union of the States.

Extract from Edmund- Randolph's speech, on the expediency of adopting the Federal Constitution: delivered in the Convention of Virginia, June 6th, 1788.

1. After having heretofore attempted, Mr. Chairman, to show, by a course of argument, the excellency of the proposed constitution; how its adoption is intimately connected with the continuance of the union; and how important will be the vote of our own state to this end; I will now conclude with a few observations, which come from the heart.

2. I have laboured for the continuance of the union,the rock of our salvation, I believe that, as sure as there is a God in Heaven, our safety, our political happiness and existence, depend on the union of the states; and, that without this union, the people of this and the other states, will undergo the unspeakable calamities, which discord, faction, turbulence, war and bloodshed, have produced in other countries. The American spirit ought to be mixed with American pride-pride to see the union magnificently triumph.

3. Let that glorious pride, which once defied the British thunder, re-animate you again. Let it not be recorded of Americans, that, after having performed the most gallant exploits; after having overcome the most astonishing difficulties; and after having gained the admiration of the world by their incomparable valour and policy, they lost their acquired reputation, their national consequence and happiness, by their own indiscretion.

4. Let no future historian inform posterity, that they wanted wisdom and virtue to concur in any regular, efficient government. Should any writer, doomed to so disagreeable a task, feel the indignation of an honest historian, he would reprehend and recriminate our folly, with equal severity and justice. Catch the present moment, seize it with avidity and eagerness, for it may be lost, never to be

regained. If the union be now lost, I fear it will remain so for ever.

5. I believe gentlemen are sincere in their opposition, and actuated by pure motives: but when I maturely weigh the advantages of the union, and dreadful consequences of its dissolution; when I see safety on my right, and destruction on my left; when I behold respectability and happiness acquired by the one, but annihilated by the other, I cannot hesitate to decide in favour of the former.

LESSON XCVIII.

Eulogy on the Hon. William Pinkney; from a Sermon preached in the House of Representatives, by the Rev. Jared Sparks.

1. It is not my present purpose to ask your attention to any picture drawn in the studied phrase of eulogy. I aim not to describe the commanding powers and the eminent qualities, which conducted the deceased to the superiority he held, and which were at once the admiration and the pride of his countrymen. I shall not attempt to analyze his capacious mind, nor to set forth the richness and variety of its treasures.

2. The trophies of his genius are a sufficient testimony of these, and constitute a monument to his memory, which will stand firm and conspicuous amidst the faded recollections of future ages. The present is not the time to recount the sources or the memorials of his greatness. He is gone. The noblest of Heaven's gifts could not shield even him from the arrows of the destroyer. And this behest of he Most High is a warning summons to us all.

3. When Death comes into our doors, we ought to feel that he is near. When his irreversible sentence falls on the great and the renowned; when he severs the strongest bonds, which can bind mortals to earth, we ought to feel that our hold on life is slight; that the thread of existence is slender; that we walk amidst perils, where the next wave in the agitated sea of life may baffle all our struggles, and carry us back into the dark bosom of the deep.

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