He mourned to think that he could not fully impress on the minds of others what he foreboded for his country; the common fault of a sensitive patriot. The diseases of his corporal frame entered deeply into his mind; and amid troublesome times he mingled dark augu. ries for the nation. He saw, in his imagination, the myrmidons of France sweeping over his country with rapine, fire, and dagger, and the conflagration of cities filled his eyes, and the screams of ravished virgins his ears. His countrymen seemed to him in a state of amazing apathy, and he grew almost frantick at the thought; but he mistook their cool, brave, and persevering character, for want of discernment and feeling. His warning appeals, as he thought them, were all wasted on the winds, although every one listened to him with profound respect and admiration. His friends and neighbours flocked around him, as a being of wonderful powers and superiour sagacity; but from their habits of reasoning for themselves, they thought that all these evils might not come, and they would wait the providence of God in this as in other things; but the honour and honesty of the great man they never doubted, for he was to them an angel of light; crowded with all his gloomy thoughts for his country, he sunk to the grave; but his admirers never lost one particle of their veneration for the genius and virtues of the man. No man has a higher claim than Samuel Phillips to that solemn eloquence which was formerly common in New-England, but is now nearly extinct; and which was a union of the dignity of the eloquence of the magistracy, and the sanctity of that usual in the ecclesiastical council. Mr. Phillips was for twenty years president of the senate of the commonwealth of Massachusetts. He was a man of sterling integrity, of scrupulous exactness, and of religious solemnity; he possessed a strong mind, had a good share of classical taste, and a thorough early education. In speaking, his enunciation was slow, but not in the least drawling; his emphasis and cadence were admirable. He never rose to speak until he had fully matured his subject, and when he did, all were attentive. Point, maxim, inference, and conclusions, followed with such order, and such strength of argument, that he never spoke without making a deep impression, and seldom was on the unsuccessful side of a question. I have no belief that there are many speeches, or even skeletons of speeches, of his in print. There are several articles from his pen in the Massachusetts state papers. Among other things, there is an address of the legislature of the commonwealth of Massachusetts to John Adams, on his return to his residence in Quincy, after the election of Mr. Jefferson to the presidency of the United States. This is an elegant production, full of both dignity and affection; and all writings that are known to be his are of a high character, as well in point of composition, as in spirit and matter. Samuel Dexter was another of our orators, who was the great man of his day. Every epithet of praise was lavished on his eloquence. He was indeed a strong man. His frame was colossal, his features prominent and marked. There were no nice graces, no delicate finishings about him as an orator. His voice was heavy, his enunciation slow, and his manner generally cool; and even when he was disturbed, it was rather the swell of the ocean, than the dash of the torrent. Like Pinckney, he was equally distinguished at the bar and in the deliberative assembly, and was constantly engaged in one or the other. Mr. Dexter was in Congress in stormy times, and fearlessly took his course. From the Congress he was made a member of the cabinet of President Adams, continued a while with his successor, and from that office he returned again to the bar. Here it was thought by many that he was without a rival as an advocate. He never did any thing by trick or cunning. In every argument he took the lion by the mane, and brought strength to match strength, and put the mastery upon the trial of superiour power; and no one will venture to say that he had inferiour intellects to contend with. He practised in an enlightened community, and had to struggle with those who wore polished armour, and bore fearful weapons, and used them with knightly skill. Yet, if not always victorious, he was never broken down by superiour energy, but kept himself ready for the combat. It is to be regretted that of such a man there should be so little remaining— not a whole political speech, not a full argument of his, in any case, can be found in print, and probably does not exist any where, in manuscript or memory. Pinckney was truly a great man-a lawyer, a statesman, a diplomatist, an orator, and, withal, a scholar. Feeling the fire of genius kindling up within him, he broke from the common high road of business, and sought the paths of professional learning, against the suggestions of the prudent, and the advice of the sagacious. He conquered one province after another in the regions of science and letters; and went up with the unquenchable thirst of a great mind to drink of the springs of knowledge, not satisfied with the tainted currents as they flowed onwards through the world. He gave ample proofs, if any were wanting, that the highest cultivation of taste and imagination is consistent with profound research and sound judgement; that ornament was not incompatible with strength; and that even the temple of the law might, notwithstanding its gothick structure, be susceptible of elegance and high finish. His genius was not more lofty than versatile. It might have been said of him as of the fifth Harry: "Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs, You would say, it hath been all in all his study; A fearful battle rendered you in musick; And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences." The spaces he filled at the bar, in the senate, and as a foreign minister, were all great indeed. If he sometimes found equals, he had no superiours, and his country and his clients placed their interests in his hands with the fullest confidence that he would do all the case would admit of; and who could do more? He never spared himself in any efforts required for his client's interest, and he went on day by day performing Herculean labours in the court, until nature, not early, but untimely, sunk under them. His eloquence was of the highest grade, but not faultless. His audible whispers and his tremendous bursts were well enough in him, for he threw intellect into every thing, even into manner; and his voice was never harsh or dissonant. This habit in his imitators is shocking; they are unequal to riding the great horse. Pinckney died at Washington, in the discharge of his duty at the bar of the supreme court of the United States. He was buried in the publick graveyard, on the eastern branch of the Potomack, about a mile and a half from the capitol, in Washington. The lonely traveller, as he gazes on the monument, calls to his recollection how lately this heap of dust was the centre of attraction! How few days have elapsed since bevies of beauties hung enamoured on his accents, and strewed flowers in his path! They make no visits now, with returning seasons, to this spot, in honour of the shade of this once gifted orator! Some other idol, perhaps, has arisen, and the pæans they sung are forgotten; or perhaps these very votaries of fashion, whose smile of approbation was fame, have also passed away, without historian or poet. The records of fashion, notwithstanding the omnipotence of her reign, are written in fading ink, and soon become illegible. Over the spot where repose the ashes of the dead, hang the scales in which the mighty deeds of men are weighed! How eloquent is the silence of the grave. We might go on to name a great number of men justly styled orators, who have passed from the stage of action within less than twenty years past; but our limits will not permit us to proceed; not meaning simply to include the second class of the good business speakers, but only those of unquestionable superiority; and I think no candid man will hesitate to say, that our community has been prolifick in those, compared with any other people. It has been said, by the Baron de Sainte Croix, that from the commencement of the thirteenth century to that of the third before Christ, Athens did not produce more than fifty-four distinguished orators and rhetoricians. We have had many more than that number within half a century. LECTURE XIII. I would I were a Poet, and could write The passage NICHOLAS BRETON. TO HAVE a fair and just view of the mind which has been active in the affairs of our country, ever since it had an existence, we must look at her military and naval characters, as well as to her literary and scientifick men: in fact they are, in our time, intimately connected. In every stage of our growth, we have had to struggle with hardships of an extraordinary nature. These exertions gave a hardihood to the people, which could not have been acquired in days of peace and prosperity. We will pass over those military characters, John Smith and Miles Standish-heroes of such prowess, that, if they had lived in some other ages of the world, would have had temples erected to their memories-and proceed to trace, with rapid hand, some of the wars in which the colonies were involved, from their infancy up to the present time. The colonies classed their wars under the following names: When the country of the Indians at war with them was without their grants, they called it a war, in the common accep tation of the term; but if within their grants and without their settlements, they called it an interruption; but if within their settlements, they called it a rebellion; hence the term so often used, rebel Indians: some of their bloodiest wars were of this description. In 1634, the Pequods, a powerful nation of Indians, killed Capts. Stone and Norton, traders in their country; this gave the colonies the alarm. In 1636, Lords Say and Brook erected a fort near the head quarters of the Pequods, which so incensed them, that they con tinued their massacres, until the people of Connecticut found it necessary to make a war of extermination upon this tribe of Indians in their neighbourhood. Previous to this period, the colonies of NewEngland had associated for self-defence, and had made a league with the six Narragansett sachems. The Narragansetts were not friendly to the Pequods, and entered at first into this war with alacrity. In May, 1637, a body of seventy men, with sixty Connecticut river Indians, with two hundred Narragansetts, and one hundred Nianticks, a settlement of the Pequods in friendship with the colonists, and twenty men from the garrison of Say-Brook, under the command of Capt. Mason, with their friends from Massachusetts, consisting of one hundred and sixty-three men under Mr. Staughton, and fifty from the old colony, in three months cut up the Pequods, destroying about seven hundred of them, and only left about two hundred remaining, who were soon scattered among the tribes, and lost their name and sovereignty. They were fierce and brave, but fought generally with bows and battle axes, not having as yet procured many fire arms. The colonists lost a considerable number of men in these engagements, and had a still greater number wounded. In 1654, the Narragansetts made war on the Indians on Long Island, but the confederates soon suppressed these hostilities. In New-England there was peace from this time until 1675, when Philip, son of Massasoit-the father had been in friendship with the whites for fifty years-commenced hostilities upon them. He had conceived the design of exterminating the colonists at a blow. For this purpose, he covered his designs in the most artful manner by a treaty, in 1671. Philip was a savage of the first order of intellect. He saw that his people were wasting away before the growing power of the white men, and that if a great effort was not made to destroy them, it would soon be too late. He had for many years, during the life time of his father, been brooding over the fate of his country, and the visions of futurity grew strong before his eyes; he meditated upon what he saw, and silently determined on his course. His council probably were not apprized of the extent of his plan, which was to form a confederacy of the tribes from the St. Lawrence to the Missis sippi; and so secretly did he proceed on his journey to carry this in |