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long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it s has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find, which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm 10 which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the Ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been 15 slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne! In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and rec-20 onciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free-if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending-if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long en-25 gaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon, until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained-we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us!

They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and

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when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot?

Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that 10 which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The bat-15 tle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are 20 forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come!

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, peace!-but there is no peace. The 25 war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or 30 peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

XIX.

BOOKS.

BY EDWIN P. WHIPPLE.'

WHAT words can declare the immeasurable worth of books-what rhetoric set forth the importance of that great invention which diffused them over the whole earth to glad its myriads of minds? The invention of printing added a new element of power to the race. From that hour, in a most especial sense, the brain and not the arm, the thinker and not the soldier, books and not kings, were to rule the world; and weapons, forged in the mind, keen-edged and brighter than the sunbeam, were to supplant the sword and battle-ax. The con-10 flicts of the world were not to take place altogether on the tented field; but Ideas, leaping from a world's awakened intellect, and burning all over with indestructible life, were to be marshaled against principalities and powers. The great and the good, whose influ-15 ence before had been chiefly over individual minds, were now to be possessed of a magic, which, giving wings to their thoughts, would waft them, like so many carrier doves, on messages of hope and deliverance to the nations.

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Words, springing fresh and bright from the soul of a master spirit, and dropping into congenial hearts like so many sparks of fire, were no longer to lose their being with the vibrations of the air they disturbed, or molder with the papyrus' on which they were written, but 25 were to be graven in everlasting characters, and rouse,

strengthen, and illumine the minds of all ages. There was to be a stern death grapple between Might and Right-between the heavy arm and the ethereal thought -between that which was and that which ought to be; for there was a great spirit abroad in the world, whom dungeons could not confine, nor oceans check, nor persecutions subdue-whose path lay through the great region of ideas, and whose dominion was over the mind.

If such were the tendency of that great invention which leaped or bridged the barriers separating mind 10 from mind and heart from heart, who shall calculate its effect in promoting private happiness? Books-lighthouses erected in the great sea of time-books, the precious depositories of the thoughts and creations of genius-books, by whose sorcery time past becomes time 15 present, and the whole pageantry of the world's history moves in solemn procession before our eyes-these were to visit the firesides of the humble, and lavish the treasures of the intellect upon the poor. .. Precious and priceless are the blessings which books scatter around 20 our daily paths. We walk, in imagination, with the noblest spirits, through the most sublime and enchanting regions—regions which, to all that is lovely in the forms and colors of earth,

"... add the gleam,

The light that never was on sea or land,

The consecration, and the Poet's dream."

A motion of the hand brings all Arcadia' to sight. The war of Troy can, at our bidding, rage in the narrowest chamber. Without stirring from our firesides, we may roam to the most remote regions of the earth, or soar into realms where Spenser's' shapes of unearthly beauty flock to meet us, where Milton's angels peal in our ears the choral hymns of Paradise. Science, art,

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literature, philosophy-all that man has thought, all that man has done the experience that has been bought with the sufferings of a hundred generations— all are garnered up for us in the world of books. There, among realities, in a "substantial world," we move with s the crowned kings of thought. There our minds have a free range, our hearts a free utterance. Reason is confined within none of the partitions which trammel it in life. The hard granite of conventionalism melts away as a thin mist. We call things by their right names. 10 Our lips give not the lie to our hearts. We bend the knee only to the great and good. We despise only the despicable; we honor only the honorable. In that world no divinity hedges a king, no accident of rank or fashion ennobles a dunce or shields a knave. There, and almost only there, do our affections have free play. We can select our companions from among the most richly gifted of the sons of God, and they are companions who will not desert us in poverty or sickness or disgrace. When everything else fails-when fortune 20 frowns, and friends cool, and health forsakes us—when this great world of forms and shows appears a "twoedged lie, which seems but is not"-when all our earthclinging hopes and ambitions melt away into nothingness,

"Like snow-falls on a river,

One moment white, then gone forever," "7

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we are still not without friends to animate and console us-friends, in whose immortal countenances, as they look out upon us from books, we can discern no change; 30 who will dignify low fortunes and humble life with their kingly presence; who will people solitude with shapes more glorious than ever glittered in palaces; who will consecrate sorrow and take the sting from care;