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dent will solicit my friendship. Twenty years thus passed, will store my mind with images, which 1 shall be busy, through the rest of my life, in combining and comparing. I shall revel in inexhaustible accumulations of intellectual riches; | I shall find new pleasures for every moment; and shall never more be weary of myself.

"I will not, however, deviate too far from the beaten track of life; but will try what can be found in female delicacy. I will marry a wife beautiful as the Houries, and wise as Zobeide: with her I will live twenty years within the suburbs of Bagdat, | in every pleasure that wealth can purchase, and fancy can invent. |

"I will then retire to a rural dwelling, pass my | days in obscurity and contemplation, and lie silently down on the bed of death. Through my life it shall be my settled resolution, that I will never depend upon the smile of princes; that I will never stand exposed to the artifices of courts; I will never pant for public honors, nor disturb my quiet with the affairs of state." Such was my scheme of life, which I impressed indelibly upon my memory.

"The first part of my ensuing time was to be spent in search of knowledge, and I know not how I was diverted from my design. | I had no visible impediments without, nor any ungovernable passions within. I regarded knowledge as the highest honor, and the most engaging pleasure; yet day stole upon day, and month glided after month, till I found that seven years of the first ten had vanished, and left nothing behind them. I

"I now postponed my purpose of travelling; for why should I go abroad, while so much remained to be learned at home? I immured myself for four

• Hō'rèż, the girls of Mahomet's Paradise. b Zo-bl'de, wife of the Calif, a fictitious character. (See Arabian Nights Entertainments.

years, and studied the laws of the empire. The fame of my skill reached the judges; I was found able to speak upon doubtful questions; and was commanded to stand at the footstool of the calif. I was heard with attention; I was consulted with confi. dence; and the love of praise fastened on my heart. [

"I still wished to see distant countries; listened with rapture to the relations of travellers; and resolved some time to ask my dismission, that I might feast my soul with novelty: but my presence was always necessary; and the stream of business hurried me along. Sometimes I was afraid lest I should be charged with ingratitude: but I still proposed to travel, and therefore would not confine myself by marriage. I

"In my fiftieth year, I began to suspect that the time of travelling was past; and thought it best to lay hold on the felicity yet in my power, and indulge myself in domestic pleasures. But at fifty no man easily finds a woman beautiful as the Houries, and wise as Zobeide. I inquired and rejected, consulted and deliberated, till the sixty-second year made me ashamed of wishing to marry. I had now nothing left but retirement; and for retirement I never found a time, till disease forced me from public employment.

"Such was my scheme, and such has been its consequence. With an insatiable thirst for knowledge, I I trifled away the years of improvement; with a restless desire of seeing different countries. I have always resided in the same city; with the highest expectation of connubial felicity, I have lived unmarried; and with unalterable resolutions of contemplative retirement, I am going to die within the walls of Bag dat."!

EXTRACT FROM A SUPPOSED SPEECH OF JOHN ADAMS IN SUPPORT OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE.

(DANIEL WEBSTER.)

Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand, and my heart, to this vote. It is true, indeed, that in the beginning, we aimed not at Independence. But there's a Divinity which shapes our ends. The injustice of England has driven us to arms; and blinded to her own interest for our good,| she has obstinately persisted, till Independence is now within our grasp. We have but to reach forth to it, and it is ours. Why then should we defer the Declaration? Is any man so weak as now to hope for a reconciliation with England? Do we mean to submit to the measures of parliament, Boston port-bill and all? I know we do not mean to submit. | We never shall submit. |

The war, then, must go on. We must fight it through. And if the war must go on, why put off longer the Declaration of Independence? That measure will strengthen us. It will give us character abroad. The nations will then treat with us, which they never can do while we acknowledge ourselves subjects, in arms against our sovereign. Nay, I maintain that England herself, will sooner treat for peace with us on the footing of Independence, than consent, by repealing her acts, to acknowledge that her whole conduct towards us has been a course of injustice and oppression. !

Sir, the Declaration will inspire the people with increased courage. Instead of a long and bloody war for restoration of privileges, for redress of grievances, I for chartered immunities, held under a British king, I set before them the glorious object of entire Indepen dence, and it will breathe into them anew the breath of life. Read this Declaration at the head of the

army every sword will be drawn from its scabbard, and the solemn vow uttered, to maintain it, or to perish on the bed of honor. Publish it from the pul pit; religion will approve it, and the love of religious liberty will cling round it, resolved to stand with it,Į or fall with it. Send it to the public halls; proclaim it there; let them hear it, who heard the first roar of the enemy's cannon; let them see it, who saw their brothers and their sons fall on the field of Bunker Hill, and in the streets of Lexington and Concord,, and the very walls will cry out in its support.

Sir, before God, I believe the hour is come. My judgment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I hope, in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it; and I leave off as I began, that live or die, I survive or perish, I am for the Declaration. It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment; | Independence now;] and INDEPENDENCE FOR EVER. |

KNOWLEDGE.

(DE WITT CLINTON.)

Pleasure is a shadow: wealth is vanity: and power is a pageant but knowledge is ecstatic in enjoyment-perennial in fame, unlimited in space, and infinite in duration. In the performance of its sacred offices, it fears no danger spares no expense — omits no exertion. It scales the mountain- looks into the volcano-dives into the ocean-perforates the earth wings its flight into the skies-encircles the globe explores sea and land --plates the distant-examines the minute- compre hends the great ascends to the sublime. - No place too remote for its grasp - no heavens too exalted for its touch. ¡

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EXTRACT FROM A SPEECH OF ROBERT EMMET, ESQ., BEFORE LORD NORBURY, ON AN ENDICTMENT FOR HIGH TREASON.

What have I to say, why sentence of death should not be pronounced on me according to law? I have nothing to say that can alter your predetermination, nor that will become me to say with any view to the mitigation of that sentence which you are here to pronounce, and which I must abide by. But I have that to say which interests me more than life, and which you have labored (as was necessarily your office to do, in the present circumstances of this oppressed country) to destroy. I have much to say why my reputation should be rescued from the load of false accusation and calumny which has been heaped upon it.

I do not imagine, seated where you are, your minds can be so free from impurity as to receive the least impression from what I am going to utter. I have no hopes that I can anchor my character in the breast of a court constituted and trammelled as this is. I only wish, and it is the utmost I expect, that your lordships may suffer it to float down your memories, untainted by the foul breath of prejudice, until it finds some more hospitable harbor to shelter it from the storms by which it is at present buffeted. Were I only to suffer death, after being adjudged guilty by your tribunal, I should bow in silence, and meet the fate that awaits me without a murmur; but the sentence of the law, which delivers my body to the executioner, will, through the ministry of that law, labor, in its own vindication, to consign my character to obloquy— for there must be guilt SOMEWHERE; whether in the sentence of the court, or in the catastrophe, posterity must determine.

My lord, it may be a part of the system of angry justice to bow a man's mind by humiliation to the purposed ignominy of the scaffold; but worse to me than the purposed shame, or the scaffold's terrors, would

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