To the unaccommodating spirit of the Spartan is joined, in him, the polish, the delicacy of Athenian manners. Now he reaches the point in debate by a few bold and nervous sentences, expressed with laconic vigor and epigrammatic spirit: now his words appear to move only to the melodious and measured cadences of Attic harmony. The Spartan economy is forgotten, and an imagination, luxuriant beyond all account, is permitted to range as it were in despite of control and in derision of method, in all the sportiveness of mirth, and all the poignancy of satire.

The voice of this man happily corresponds with his genius; easily, by its compass and flexibility, accommodating itself to the several passions which he wishes to convey. It is a clear medium by which he is enabled to transfuse his spirit into his hearers, and kindle in their hearts an enthusiasm in defence of lib erty, which like the Greek fire, is never afterwards e be extinguished.

When his soul is inflamed with the frantic excesses of tyranny, the darkness on his brow gives notice of the tempest that is gathering: while the lightning in his eye, an unerring precursor, announces the thunder that is to follow. His invective is keen, is terrible, is desolating. The great lords of the court tremble on their benches, surrounded by guards and clad in purple and ermine; whilst, like a minister of divine wrath, he denounces against them the vengeance of Heaven, and the curses of posterity. The spies of the Government have been known to faint under his examination, alledging that they were unable to bear the fire of his eloquence, and the torture of his interrogatories.

He is small of stature, and of a visage sallow and wan: but when he opens his lips, his personal defects vanish; his stature reaches the clouds and he appears to be, alone, graceful and lovely in the creation. You are under a species of enchantment, similar to what Horace alludes to in his Art of Poetry, when the ski!ful dramatist transports you sometimes to Thebes and sometimes to Athens. Curran is indeed a magician who enchains the imaginations of his hearers, and the

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ch potency, that neither wisdom nor ig ave any charm to resist it.

den he harangues in defence of the rights of ankind, the most bigotted are in love with liberty and virtue; whilst with a master-hand he portrays the miseries of Ireland, not a dry eye is to be seen ;the court is drowned in tears; corrupt juries, packed and empannelled for the special purpose of condemnation, softened and touched by his eloquence, resign to him their victim; the prison doors fly open at his approach; the chains fall from the hands of the victims. He is the Angel of Mercy, whose lips, touched with fire, by the Almighty, whisper hope in the dungeon of despair, and speak deliverance to the captive.

But to form a correct estimate of this wonderful man, you must consider him, not merely as an orator, as a man distinguished only in a single walk or department of literature. Men in general have their fort or strong ground in which lies their peculiar excellence and strength. But this is not the case with him; in every thing he is great, in every thing equal. He is, as it were, a centre in the circle of sciences, an attractive and luminous focus, on which rays are incessantly falling from all parts of the orb; a profound mathematician; a logician, acute, subtle, and persuasive; a philosopher, elegantly speculative, and profoundly erudite; a wit, sometimes lashing vice with the wrath and indignation of Juvenal, sometimes tittering at folly with the elegant and courtly irony of Flaccus; a politican, clear-sighted, steady and incorruptible; an orator, realizing and transcending the definition of Cicero.

CHARACTER OF LORD CLIVE.

Ah! the tale is told! The scene is ended, and the curtain falls! As an emblem of the vanity of all earthly pomp, let his monument be a globe; but be that globe a bubble; let his effigy be a man walking round it in his sleep and let Fame, in the character of shadow, inscribe his honors on the air.

I view him but as yesterday on the burning plains of Plassy, doubtful of life, of health, of victory ;-I see him in the instant when" to be or not to be," were equal chances to the human eye. To be a Lord or a slave to return loaded with the spoils or remain mingled with the dust of India. Did necessity always justify the severity of a conqueror, the rude tongue of censure would be silent; and however painfully he might look back on scenes of horror, the pensive reflection would not alarm him. Though his feelings suffered, his conscience would be acquitted. The sad remembrance would move serenely, and leave the mind without a wound. But oh, India! thou loud proclaimer of European cruelties, thou bloody monument of unnecessary deaths, be tender in the day of inquiry, and show a christian world thou canst suffer and forgive!

Departed from India and loaded with the plunder, E see him doubling the Cape, and looking wishfully to› Europe. I see him meditating on years of pleasure, and gratifying his ambition with expected honors. E see his arrival pompously announced in every newspaper, his eager eye rambling through the crowd in quest of homage, and his ear listening lest an expression of applause should escape him. Happily for him he arrived before his fame; and the short interval was a time of rest. From the crowd I follow him to the court; I see him enveloped in the sunshine of sovereign favor, rivalling the great in honors, the proud in splendor, and the rich in wealth. From the court I trace him to the country; his equipage moves like a camp; every village bell proclaims his coming; the wondering peasants admire his pomp, and his heart runs over with joy.

But, alas! not satisfied with uncountable thousands, I accompany him again to India-I mark the variety of countenances which appear at his landing. Confusion spreads the news. Every passion seems alarmed. The wailing widow, the crying orphan, and the childless parent remember and lament; the rival nabobs court his favor; the rich dread his power and the poor his severity. Fear and terror march like pi-

oncers before his camp; murder and rapine accompa ny it; famine and wretchedness follow in the rear!

SHAKSPEARE'S OTHELLO.

Othello, who is apparently the hero of the fable, is one of the most memorable personages whose character and exploits are recorded either in fictitious or legitimate history. Though the vulgar idea, which figures him black, as an African, is absurd, yet he is unquestionably tawny as a Moor. He is a grim warrior in the wane of life, without any affectation of the courtier's softness, and without the least pretence to toilet beauty. With all a soldier's frankness, he declares that he is but moderately skilled in the arts. either of public or private eloquence. He painfully alludes to the character of his complexion, and the harshness of his speech. Yet all this is nothing but the amiable modesty of sterling merit. We know from the context, that he is as valiant as Cæsar, as frank as Antony, as magnanimous as Themistocles, and as sage as Solon. His intrepidity is of that gennine sort which is always tempered by the coolness. of prudence and moderation. His nature is noble, his deportment dignified, his language undissembling, and bis heart in his hand. The world's suffrage is on his side. He has all the confidence of the state and all the fondness of his friends. He is of royal lineage; and, in the forcible language of the poet, who has immortalized him, is every inch a king. He has the daring courage of an adventurer, and the prescience and sagacity of a statesman. He has experienced all the vicissitudes of life, and has surveyed the wide world both as a soldier and a pilgrim. He is as patient of hardships as Lucius Cataline, nor less in love than he of the arduous, the romantic, and the incredible. The flinty and steel couch of war is his thrice driven bed of down. What is rugged to others is smooth to him. In strange and mysterious alliance, he unites the soul of candor, and the facility of a man of the world, with the stratagem of war, and the dignified reserve of a politician.

SPECIMENS OF ELOQUENCE.

EXTRACT FROM MR. BURKE'S SPEECH ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA.

As to the wealth which the colonies have drawn from the sea by their fisheries, you had all that matter fully opened at your bar. You surely thought those acquisitions of value, for they seemed even to excite your envy; and yet the spirit, by which that enterprising employment has been exercised, ought rather, in my opinion, to have raised your esteem and admiration. And pray, Sir, what in the world is equal to it? Pass by the other parts, and look at the manner in which the people of New-England have of late carried on the whale fishery. Whilst we follow them amongst the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them penetrat ing into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson's Bay and Davis's Straights, whilst we are looking for them beneath the arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that they are at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen serpent of the South. Falkland Island, which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting-place in the progress of their victorious industry. Nor is the equ noctial heat more discouraging to them, than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We know that whilst some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude, and pursue the gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what is vexed by their fisheries. No climate that is not witness to their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprize, ever carried this most perilous mode of hard industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by