THE STUDIES OF AN ORATOR.

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well remarked of the great English dramatist, that he has been true to nature, in placing the "greater number of his profoundest maxims and general truths, both political and moral, not in the mouths of men at ease, but of men under the influence of passion, when the mighty thoughts overmaster and become the tyrants of the mind which has brought them forth." Then the mind rushes, by intuition, upon the truth; scorns subtle and useless distinctions; disregards entirely the husk, seizes and appropriates the kernel. Emotion in the speaker produces emotion in the hearer. You must feel, you must sympathize with him. Your mind darts with the speaker's, right through the textures which cover up the subject, and grasps the heart of it. How deadening are the words of some passionless men! Like a dull mass of inert matter, their lifeless thought stretches across the path of your spirit. Different, indeed, are the words of another, to whom has been given some spark of ethereal fire. His words become to you a law of life. They start your sluggish spirit from its dull equilibrium, and its living wheels shall thenceforth move whithersoever the spirit that is in them moves. Rarely has been found that combination of qualities necessary to the greatest orator,—dignity, enthusiasm, wit, the power of sarcasm, the power of soothing, philosophy which does not despise imagination, imagination which does not spurn the restraints of philosophy.

Such should be the studies of the orator. The great orator must be a great man, a severe student in broad and deep studies. He must thoroughly know his materials, his models, the history of his race, and most of all, the heart within him. Then shall he have power to struggle in the noblest contest, that of mind with mind, for the noblest object, — the well-being of his race.

ROUSSEAU AND COWPER.

BY CARLOS WILCOX.

ROUSSEAU Could weep: yes, with a heart of stone,
The impious sophist could recline beside

The pure and peaceful lake, and muse alone
On all its loveliness at eventide :

On its small running waves in purple dyed
Beneath bright clouds or all the glowing sky,
On the white sails that o'er its bosom glide,
And on surrounding mountains wild and high,
Till tears unbidden gushed from his enchanted eye.

But his were not the tears of feeling fine,
Of grief or love; at fancy's flash they flowed,
Like burning drops from some proud lonely pine
By lightning fired; his heart with passion glowed
Till it consumed his life, and yet he showed
A chilling coldness both to friend and foe,
As Etna, with its centre an abode

Of wasting fire, chills with the icy snow
Of all its desert brow the living world below.

Was he but justly wretched from his crimes?
Then why was Cowper's anguish oft as keen,
With all the heaven-born virtue that sublimes
Genius and feeling, and to things unseen

Lifts the pure heart through clouds that roll between
The earth and skies, to darken human hope?

Or wherefore did those clouds thus intervene
To render vain Faith's lifted telescope,

And leave him in thick gloom his weary way to grope?

He too could give himself to musing deep:
By the calm lake at evening he could stand,
Lonely and sad, to see the moonlight sleep
On all its breast by not an insect fanned,
And hear low voices on the far-off strand,
Or through the still and dewy atmosphere
The pipe's soft tones, waked by some gentle hand,
From fronting shore and woody island near

In echoes quick returned, more mellow and more clear.

ROUSSEAU AND COWPER.

And he could cherish wild and mournful dreams,
In the pine grove, when low the full moon fair
Shot under lofty tops her level beams,

Stretching the shades of trunks erect and bare,
In stripes drawn parallel with order rare,

As of some temple vast or colonnade,

While on green turf made smooth without his care
He wandered o'er its stripes of light and shade,
And heard the dying day-breeze all the boughs pervade.

'T was thus in nature's bloom and solitude
He nursed his grief till nothing could assuage;
'T was thus his tender spirit was subdued,
Till in life's toils it could no more engage;
And his had been a useless pilgrimage,
Had he been gifted with no sacred power,
To send his thoughts to every future age;
But he is gone where grief will not devour,
Where beauty will not fade, and skies will never lower.

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121

THE CENTENNIAL OF PETERBOROUGH.

FROM AN ADDRESS AT THE FIRST CELEBRATION.

BY JOHN

H.

MORISON.

A HUNDRED years ago this whole valley, from mountain to mountain, from the extreme north to the extreme southern limit, was one unbroken forest. The light soil upon the banks of the Contoocook was covered with huge and lofty pines, while the rocky hills and rich loamy lands were shaded with maple, beech and birch, interspersed with ash, elm, hemlock, fir, oak, cherry, bass, and other kinds of wood. Bogs and swamps were far more extensive then than now; and the woods in many parts, on account of the fallen timber and thick underbrush, were almost impassable. The deer and the moose roamed at large; the wolf and bear prowled about the hills; the turkey and partridge whirred with heavy flight from tree to tree, while the duck swam undisturbed upon the lonely, silent waters. The beaver and the freshet made the only dam that impeded the streams in their whole course from the highlands to the Merrimac ; the trout, pickerel and salmon moved through them unmolested, while the old Monadnoc, looking down in every direction upon almost interminable forests, saw in the hazy distance the first feeble encroachments upon the dominion which he had retained over his wild subjects for more than a thousand years.

That an attempt was made to settle this town as early as 1739 there can be no doubt. The authority of the petition for incorporation as a town, of which, through the Secretary of State, we have been favored with a copy, is on this point

THE CENTENNIAL OF PETERBOROUGH,

123

decisive. The town was surveyed and laid out by Joseph Hale, Jr. in 1737. Of the party that came in 1739 no memorial remains. Probably they were driven away before any considerable clearing had been made. In 1742 five men,* each with an axe and a small supply of provisions upon his shoulders, came from Lunenburg, Massachusetts, and cleared a few small patches of land near the old meeting house. They abandoned the settlement at, or more probably considerably before the alarm of war in 1744. Soon after this party, three men cut down the brush and girdled the large trees on the hill near the Ritchie-place at the south part of the town, but left before they had put in their seed. They probably returned the next year with Thomas Morison and John Swan. It could not have been later than 1744, and must have been at a period when there were no other settlers here. For it is a story often told by the children of Thomas Morison, and which cannot well be doubted, that soon after they came, several Indians called upon them just after breakfast, appeared friendly, and after tarrying a short time, went away. When the cook, however, came from chopping to prepare a dinner for the party, he found not only the pot which he had left upon the fire robbed of its contents, but all their provisions carried off; and they were obliged to go to Townsend, twenty-five miles, for a dinner; which they would not have done had there been other inhabitants here at the time.

In 1744 the town was entirely abandoned, and the settlement was not resumed till the peace of 1749. Indeed, I have found little evidence that families † had established themselves here previous to that period, and this presump

*The traditions are by no means distinct, and it is possible that this party came as early as 1739. They may not have staid more than a single season. Their names, according to Mr. Dunbar, (see N. H. Historical Collections, Vol. I, p. 129,) were William Robbe, Alexander Scott, Hugh Gregg, William Gregg and Samuel Stinson. John Todd, senior, a high authority in the antiquities of our town, says they were William Scott, William Robbe, William Wallace, William Mitchell and Samuel Stinson. The second party were William M'Nee, John Taggart, William Ritchie.

† Catharine Gregg, mother of Gov. Miller, is said to have been baptized here in 1743.