How strange it should be, when the night comes again, Fainting, Freezing, Dying alone, Too wicked for prayer, too weak for my moan To be heard in the crazy town, Gone mad in the joy of the snow coming down, To lie and to die in my terrible woe, With a bed and a shroud of the beautiful snow. LXXXI.-PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S SPEECH AT THE GETTYSBURG CEMETERY. 1. FOURSCORE and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who gave their lives that that nation might live. 2. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which those who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. 3. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we * take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measures of devotion: that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain: that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that Government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. LXXXII.-CHARACTER OF BLANNERHASSETT. WIRT. IN 1807, Aaron Burr and others, among whom was Blannerhassett, were tried on an indictment for treason against the government of the United States. They were accused of a design to take possession of New Orleans, and to erect the country watered by the Mississippi and its branches, into an independent government. They were acquitted for want of evidence, though it was generally believed that Burr was guilty. The beautiful island, upon which Blannerhassett resided, is situated in the Ohio river, about 270 miles above Cincinnati. His former residence is now in ruins, but the island is still an object of curiosity to the traveller. 1. LET us put the case between Burr and Blannerhassett. Let us compare the two men, and settle the question of precedence between them. Who, then, is Blannerhassett ? A native of Ireland, a man of letters, who fled from the storms of his own country, to find quiet in ours. Possessing himself of a beautiful island in the Ohio, he rears upon it a palace, and decorates it with every romantic embellishment of fancy. A shrubbery, that Shenstone might have envied, blooms around him. Music, that might have charmed Calypso and her nymphs, is his. An extensive library spreads its treasures before him. A philosophical apparatus offers to him all the secrets and mysteries of nature. Peace, tranquillity, and innocence shed their mingled delights around him. 2. The evidence would convince you, that this is but a faint picture of the real life. In the midst of all this peace, this innocent simplicity, and this tranquillity, this feast of the mind, this pure banquet of the heart, the destroyer comes: he comes to change this paradise into a hell.A stranger presents himself. Introduced to their civilities, by the high rank which he had lately held in his country, he soon finds his way to their hearts by the dignity and elegance of his demeanor, the light and beauty of his conversation, and the seductive and fascinating power of his address. 3. The conquest was not difficult. Innocence is ever simple and credulous. Conscious of no design itself, it suspects none in others. It wears no guard before its breast. Every door, and portal, and avenue of the heart is rown open, and all who choose it, may enter. Such was the state of Eden, when the serpent entered its bowers. The prisoner, in a more engaging form, winding himself into the open and unpracticed heart of the unfortunate Blannerhassett, found but little difficulty in changing the native character of that heart, and the objects of its affecinto it the fire of his own courage a daring and desperate thirst for glory: an ardor panting for great enterprises, for all the storm, and bustle, and hurricane of life. tion. By degrees, hoses 4. In a short time, the whole man is changed, and every object of his former life is relinquished. No more he enjoys the tranquil scene: it has become flat and insipid to his taste. His books are abandoned. His retort and crucible are thrown aside. His shrubbery blooms and breathes its fragrance upon the air in vain: he likes it not. His ear no longer drinks the rich melody of music: it longs for the trumpet's clangor and the cannon's roar. Even the prattle of his babes, once so sweet, no longer affects him; and the angel smile of his wife, which hitherto touched his bosom with ecstacy so unspeakable, is now unseen and unfelt. 5. Greater objects have taken possession of his soul. His imagination has been dazzled by visions of diadems, of stars, and garters, and titles of nobility. He has been taught to burn, with restless emulation, at the names of great heroes and conquerors. His enchanted island is destined soon to relapse into a wilderness; and, in a few months, the beautiful and tender partner of his bosom, whom he lately “ permitted not the winds of summer to visit too roughly," we find shivering, at midnight, on the winter banks of the Ohio, and mingling her tears with the torrents, that froze as they fell. 6. Yet this unfortunate man, thus deluded from his in terest and his happiness, thus seduced from the paths of innocence and peace, thus confounded in the toils that were deliberately spread for him, and overwhelmed by the mastering spirit and genius of another this man, thus ruined and undone, and made to play a subordinate part in this grand drama of guilt and treason, this man is to be called the principal offender, while he, by whom he was thus plunged in misery, is comparatively innocent, a mere accessory! S 7. Is this reason? Is it law? Is it humanity? Neither the human heart nor the human understanding, will bear a perversion so monstrous and absurd! so shocking to the soul! so revolting to reason! Let Aaron Burr, then, not shrink from the high destination which he has courted; and having already ruined Blannerhassett, in fortune, character, and happiness, forever, let him not attempt to finish the tragedy, by thrusting that ill-fated man between himself and punishment. LXXXIII.-ON THE TRIAL OF A MURDERER. DANIEL WEBSTER. 1. AN aged man, without an enemy in the world, in his own house, and in his own bed, is made the victim of butcherly murder for mere pay. Truly, here is a new lesson for painters and poets. Whoever shall hereafter draw the portrait of murder, if he will show it, as it has been exhibited in an example, where such example was least to have been looked for, in the very bosom of our New England society, let him not give it the grim visage of Moloch, the brow knitted by revenge, the face black with settled hate, and the blood-shot eye emitting livid fires of malice: let him draw, rather, a decorous, smooth-faced, bloodless demon a picture in repose, rather than in action; not so much an example of human nature in its depravity and in its paroxysms of crime, as an infernal nature, a fiend in the ordinary display and development of his character. 2. The deed was executed with a degree of self-possession and steadiness, equal to the wickedness with which it was planned. The circumstances now clearly in evidence, spread out the whole scene before us. Deep sleep had fallen on the destined victim, and on all beneath his roof. A healthful old man, to whom sleep was sweet; the first sound slumbers of the night held him in their soft but strong embrace. The assassin enters through the window, already prepared, into an unoccupied apartment. With noiseless foot he paces the lonely hall, half lighted by the moon: he winds up the ascent of the stairs, and reaches the door of the chamber. Of this, he moves the lock, by soft and continued pressure, till it turns on its hinges; and he enters, and beholds his victim before him. The room was uncommonly open to the admission of light. The face of the innocent sleeper was turned from the murderer, and the beams of the moon, resting on the gray locks of his aged temple, showed him where to strike. The fatal blow is given and the victim passes without a struggle or a motion, from the repose of sleep to the repose of death! 3. It is the assassin's purpose to make sure work; and he yet plies the dagger, though it was obvious that life had been destroyed by the blow of the bludgeon. He even raises the aged arm, that he may not fail in his aim at the heart; and replaces it again over the wounds of the poniard! To finish the picture, he explores the wrist for the pulse! He feels it, and ascertains that it beats no longer! It is accomplished. The deed is done. He retreats, retraces his steps to the window, påsses out through it as he came in, and escapes. He has done the murder: no eye has seen him, no ear has heard him. The secret is his own, and it is safe! 4. Ah! gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake. Such a secret can be safe nowhere. The whole creation of God has neither nook nor corner, where the guilty can bestow it, and say it is safe. Not to speak of that eye which glances through all disguises, and beholds every thing as in |