SENATORIAL PERSONALITIES. 333 practicability of applying the voltaic battery to submarine purposes, and the certainty of exploding a charge at any depth of water. During the three subsequent years the diving operations were continued, and with such success, that the greater part of the guns were recovered, with considerable quantities of the ship's timbers; besides the object of obtaining a safe anchorage by their removal being effected. 1. Who was the inventor of the new diving apparatus ? 2. How is the diver supported while under water? 3. Describe the remarkable appearances which were observed immediately after the explosion. 4. What has Colonel Pasley established by his experiment ? LESSON CCXXXIII.-AUGUST THE TWENTY-FIRST. Senatorial Personalities, No. 1. MR. WALPOLE, ON THE YOUTH AND THEATRICAL MANNER OF MR. PITT (AFTERWARDS LORD CHATHAM).—1741. SIR, I WAS unwilling to interrupt the course of this debate while it was carried on with calmness and decency, by men who do not suffer the ardour of opposition to cloud their reason, or transport them to such expressions as the dignity of this assembly does not admit. I have hitherto deferred to answer the gentleman who declaimed against the bill, with such fluency of rhetoric, and such vehemence of gesture, who charged the advocates for the expedients now proposed, with having no regard to any interest but their own, and with making laws only to consume paper, and threatened them with the defection of their adherents, and the loss of their influence, upon the new discovery of their folly and their ignorance. Nor, Sir, do I now answer him for any other purpose than to remind him how little the clamours of rage and the petulancy of invectives contribute to the purposes for which this assembly is called together; how little the discovery of truth is promoted, and the security of the nation established, by pompous diction and theatrical emotions. Formidable sounds and furious declamations, confident assertions and lofty periods may affect the young and unexperienced; and perhaps the gentleman may have contracted his habits of oratory, by conversing more with those of his own age than with such as have had more opportunities of acquiring know ledge, and more successful methods of communicating their sentiments. If the heat of his temper, Sir, would suffer him to attend to those whose age, and long acquaintance with business, give them an indisputable right to deference and superiority, he would learn, in time, to reason rather than declaim, and to prefer justness of argument, and an accurate knowledge of facts, to sounding epithets and splendid superlatives, which may disturb the imagination for a moment, but leave no lasting impression on the mind. He will learn, Sir, that to accuse and prove are very different, and that reproaches unsupported by evidence, affect only the character of him that utters them. Excursions of fancy and flights of oratory are indeed pardonable in young men, but in no other; and it would surely contribute more, even to the purpose for which some gentlemen appear to speak (that of depreciating the conduct of the administration), to prove the inconveniences and injustice of the bill, than barely to assert them, with whatever magnificence of language, or appearance of zeal, honesty, or compassion. 1. For what purpose did Walpole say he answered Pitt? 2. What did the orator say his youthful antagonist would in time learn? 3. What said he relative to excursions of fancy and flights of oratory? LESSON CCXXXIV. -AUGUST THE TWENTY-SECOND. Senatorial Personalities, No. 2. MR. PITT IN REPLY TO MR. WALPOLE. SIR, THE atrocious crime of being a young man, which the honourable gentleman has, with such spirit and decency, charged me with, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny; but content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies may cease with their youth, and not of that number who are ignorant in spite of experience. Whether youth can be imputed to any man as a reproach, I will not assume the province of determining; but surely age may become justly contemptible if the opportunities which it brings have passed away without improvement, and vice appears to prevail when the passions have subsided. The wretch who, after having seen the consequences of a SENATORIAL PERSONALITIES. 335 thousand errors, continues still to blunder, and whose age has only added obstinacy to stupidity, is surely the object either of abhorrence or contempt, and deserves not that his gray hairs should secure him from insult. Much more, Sir, is he to be abhorred, who, as he has advanced in age, has receded from virtue, and becomes more wicked with less temptation who prostitutes himself for money which he cannot enjoy, and spends the remains of his life in the ruin of his country. But youth, Sir, is not my only crime; I have been accused of acting a theatrical part. A theatrical part may either imply some peculiarities of gesture, or a dissimulation of my real sentiments, and an adoption of the opinions and language of another man. In the first sense, Sir, the charge is too trifling to be confuted, and deserves only to be mentioned to be despised. I am at liberty, like every other man, to use my own language; and though perhaps I may have some ambition to please this gentleman, I shall not lay myself under any restraint, nor very solicitously copy his diction or his mein, however matured by age, or modelled by experience. If any man shall, by charging me with theatrical behaviour, imply that I utter any sentiments but my own, I shall treat him as a calumniator and a villain; nor shall any protection shelter him from the treatment he deserves. I shall, on such an occasion, without scruple trample upon all those forms with which wealth and dignity entrench themselves, nor shall any thing but age restrain my resentment-age, which always brings one privilege, that of being insolent and supercilious without punishment. But with regard, Sir, to those whom I have offended, I am of opinion that, if I had acted a borrowed part, I should have avoided their censure; the heat that offended them is the ardour of conviction, and that zeal for the service of my country, which neither hope nor fear shall influence me to suppress. I will not sit unconcerned while my liberty is invaded, nor look in silence upon public robbery. I will exert my endeavours, at whatever hazard, to repel the aggressor, and drag the thief to justice, whoever may protect them in their villainy, and whoever may partake of their plunder. 1. In what way may age become contemptible? 2. How does the orator say he shall treat any one who may charge him with uttering sentiments not his own? 3. Repeat the concluding sentence. LESSON CCXXXV. AUGUST THE TWENTY-THIRD. The Female Castle-Builder. A PICTURE FROM REAL LIFE. WHEN quite a girl she was the idol of an old maiden sister of her father, who stored her mind with all the enthusiastic hopes and fears, not unusually felt by other females till seventeen or eighteen. She was a great reader, and, at times, a great writer; so that between studying novels, and inventing moral tales for magazines, her head was stored with marvellous adventures and hair-breadth escapes, such as she trusted to become the heroine of herself, when time should have matured the graces yet folded up in the bud of youth. As the moment for unfolding approached, the vivacity of her imagination increased; she saw a lover in every man who came near her - she found an adventure in every common event - and referred every action to principles which, though strictly accordant to those in her own mind, she could find few people with sense enough to develope and understand. Though she was certainly very beautiful, very sensible, and very accomplished; yet, as she was merely a dependant in a family of fashion, she found her merits overlooked by all the male visitors who came to the house overlooked, at least, to any actual purpose; for, though she has often seen enough to set her busy brain to work, to enable her to spin out ideal conversations, and to weave a tissue of interesting events, in which she was to be a principal personage, yet she constantly found these beginning attentions nipped in the bud by some untoward accident or other; though even then her creative genius would not desert her, but would bring the enamoured Celadon ideally to her side, and frame such coherent reasons for the apparent suppression of a passion, which was, in fact, only smothered for a time, that she has been rather gratified by the evident coldness of her swain, and has constantly expected every day would bring forward the explanation she had anticipated. These agreeable imaginations have greatly contributed to enliven the dull sameness of her life. She has been, at various times, the wife of an opulent merchant, of a judge, of a bishop, of a peer; and once, for a short interval, just as she had reached her fortieth year, she was the favourite of the Earl of for she had seen him at LINES BY THE HONOURABLE ST. GEORGE TUCKER. 337 the opera-his Lordship had trod on her gown, and begged her pardon with a grace so captivating, that she felt convinced she had captivated him; and doubted not but a short time would bring this scion of a noble house to her feet. But here she is, at forty-seven, filling precisely the same situation, in the same family; and that situation is just to do a thousand things that are actually no servant's business to do;-such as to wash and comb the favourite dog,-run of messages from the parlour to the kitchenhasten the cook, if she is behind her time and many more, equally irksome to a mind like hers, which loves to wander in the seventh heaven. If these chimeras keep her mind from stagnating, and bestow on it an artificial, though a fallacious happiness, I do not see that any invader has a right to rob her of her aerial demesnes. 1. What is meant by a castle-builder? 2. How did her head become stored with marvellous adventures, &c.? 3. What has this lady been at various times? 4. What are her present occupations ? LESSON CCXXXVI. —AUGUST THE TWENTY-FOURTH. Lines by the Honourable St. George Tucker. THE following sweet and touching lines appeared in the "Canadian Courant" of the date August 24. 1812, and were written on being solicited to know why the author had ceased to court the inspiration of the poetic muse: -Days of my youth! ye have glided away; Hairs of my youth! ye are frosted and grey; |