barism obscured its very ruins, that that mighty continent may not emerge from the horizon, to rule, for its time, sovereign of the ascendant.

Such, sir, is the natural progress of human operations, and such the unsubstantial mockery of human pride.

47. CHARACTER OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.—Phillips,

He is fallen! We may now pause before that splendid prodigy, which towered amongst us like some ancient ruin, whose frown terrified the glance its magnificence attracted. Grand, gloomy, and peculiar, he sat upon the throne a sceptred hermit, wrapt in the solitude of his own originality. A mind, bold, independent, and decisive a will, despotic in its dictates-an energy that distanced expedition, and a conscience pliable to every touch of interest, marked the outline of this extraordinary character the most extraordinary, perhaps, that in the annals of this world, ever rose, or reigned, or fell. Flung into life, in the midst of a revolution that quickened every energy of a people who acknowledge no superior, he commenced his course, a stranger by birth, and a scholar by charity! With no friend but his sword, and no fortune but his talents, he rushed in the list where rank, and wealth, and genius had arrayed themselves, and competition fled from him as from the glance of destiny.He knew no motive but interest-he acknowledged no criterion but success-he worshiped no God but ambition, and with an eastern devotion he knelt at the shrine of his idolatry. Subsidiary to this, there was no creed that he did not profess, there was no opinion that he did not promulgate; in the hope of a dynasty, he upheld the crescent; for the sake of a divorce, he bowed before the cross: the orphan of St. Louis, he became the adopted child of the republic: and with a parricidal ingratitude, on the ruins both of the throne and tribune, he reared the throne of his despotism. A professed catholic, he imprisoned the pope; a pretended patriot, he impoverished the country; and, in the name of Brutus, he grasped without remorse, and wore without shame, the diadem of the Cæsars! Through this pantomime of policy, fortune played the clown to his caprices. At his touch, crowns crumbled, beggars reigned, systems vanished, the wildest theories took the color of his whim, and all that was venerable, and all that was novel, changed places with the rapidity of a drama. Even apparent defeat assumed the appear. ance of victory-his flight from Egypt confirmed his destiny-

ruin itself only elevated him to empire. But if his fortune was great, his genius was transcendent; decision flashed upon his councils; and it was the same to decide and to perform. To inferior intellects his combinations appeared perfectly impossible, his plans perfectly impracticable; but, in his hands, simplicity marked their development, and success vindicated their adoption. His person partook the character of his mind-if the one never yielded in the cabinet, the other never bent in the field.-Nature had no obstacle that he did not surmount― space no opposition that he did not spurn; and whether amid Alpine rocks, Arabian sands, or Polar snows, he seemed proof against peril, and empowered with ubiquity! The whole continent trembled at beholding the audacity of his designs, and the miracle of their execution. Scepticism bowed to the prodigies of his performance; romance assumed the air of history; nor was there aught too incredible for belief, or too fanciful for expectation, when the world saw a subaltern of Corsica waving his imperial flag over her most ancient capitals. All the visions of antiquity became commonplaces in his contemplation; kings were his people-nations were his outposts; and he disposed of courts, and crowns, and camps, and churches, and cabinets, as if they were titular dignitaries of the chess-board !—Amid all these changes, he stood immutable as adamant.

It mattered little whether in the field or in the drawing-room -with the mob or the levee-wearing the jacobin bonnet or the iron crown-banishing a Braganza, or espousing a Hapsburg -dictating peace on a raft to the Czar of Russia, or contemplating defeat at the gallows of Leipsig-he was still the same military despot!

In this wonderful combination, his affectations of literature) must not be omitted. The gaoler of the press, he affected the patronage of letters-the proscriber of books, he encouraged philosophy-the persecutor of authors and the murderer of printers, he yet pretended to the protection of learning! the assassin of Palm, the silencer of De Staël, and the denouncer of Kotzebue, he was the friend of David, the benefactor of De Lille, and sent his academic prize to the philosopher of England. Such a medley of contradictions, and at the same time such an individual consistency, were never united in the same character. A royalist-a republican and an emperor-a Mohammedan—a catholic and a patron of the synagogue-a subaltern and a sovereign-a traitor and a tyrant-a Christian and an infidel-he was, through all his vicissitudes, the same stern, impatient, inflexible original-the same mysterious, incomprehensible self-the man without a model, and without a shadow.

48.

TO THE JURY IN THE CASE OF J. A. WILLIAMS FOR A LIBEL

ON THE CLERGY OF DURHAM.-Brougham.

The Church of England has nothing to dread from external violence. Built upon a rock, and lifting its head towards another world, it aspires to an imperishable existence, and defies any force that may rage from without. But let its friends beware of the corruption engendered within and beneath its massive walls, and in that corruption let all its well-wishers, all who, whether for religious or for political interests, desire its stability, beware how they give encouragement to the vermin bred in that corruption, and who stick and sting against the hand that would brush the rottenness away! My learned friend sympathizes with the priesthood of Durham; and innocently enough laments that they possess not the power of defending themselves through the public press. Let him be consoled; they are not so very defenseless; they are not so entirely destitute of the aids of the press, as through their council they affect to be. They have largely used that press, I wish I could say "as not abusing it"-and against some persons very near ine, I mean especially against the defendant, whom they have scurrilously and foully libeled, through that very vehicle of public instruction, over which, for the first time, among the other novelties of the day, I now hear they have no command. Not, indeed, that they have wounded deeply, or injured much, but that is no fault of theirs-and, without hurting, they have given annoyance. The insect nestled in filth, and brought into life by corruption-I mean the dirt-fly,--though its flight be lowly, and its sting puny, can buzz and storm, and irritate the skin, and offend the nostril, and altogether give nearly as much annoyance as the wasp, whom it aspires to emulate. So these reverend slanderers-these pious backbiters-devoid of force to wield the sword, snatch the dagger; and destitute of wit to point or to barb it, and make it rankle in the wound, steep it in venom to make it fester in the scratch. Those venerated personages, whose harmless and undefended state is now deplored, have been the wholesale dealers in calumny-the especial promoters of that vile traffick of late the disgrace of the country and now they come to demand protection against retaliation, and shelter from just exposure; and, to screen themselves, would have you prohibit all investigation of the abuses by which they exist, and the malpractice by which they disgrace their calling. If all existing institutions and all public functionaries must henceforth be sacred from question amon

the people; if, at length, the free press of this country, and with it the freedom itself, is to be destroyed at least let not this heavy blow fall from your hands-leave it to some profligate tyrant; leave it to a mercenary and effeminate parliament -a hireling army, degraded by the lash, and the appointed instrument of enslaving its fellow-citizens; leave it to a pampered House of Lords; a venal House of Commons; some vulgar minion, servant of all work to an insolent and rapacious court-some unprincipled soldier, unknown, thank God, in our times, combining the talents of an usurper with the fame of a captain-leave to such desperate hands and such fit tools so horrid a work! But you, an English jury, parent of the press, yet supported by it, and doomed to perish the instant its health and strength are gone; lift not you against it an unnatural hand-prove to the country that her rights are safe in your keeping; but maintain above all things the stability of her institutions by well guarding her corner-stone; defend the church from her worst enemies, who, to hide their own misdeeds, would veil her solid foundations in darkness; and proclaim to them by your verdict of acquittal, that henceforward, as heretofore, all the recesses of the sanctuary must be visited by the continual light of the day, and by that light all its abuses "be explored!"

49. PAINE'S AGE OF REASON.-Erskine.

It seems, gentlemen, this is an age of reason, and the time and the person are at last arrived, that are to dissipate the errors that have overspread the past generations of ignorance! The believers in Christianity are many, but it belongs to the few that are wise to correct their credulity! Belief is an act of reason; and superior reason may therefore dictate to the weak. In running the mind along the numerous list of sincere and devout Christians, I cannot help lamenting that Newton had not lived to this day, to have had his shallowness filled up with this new flood of light. But the subject is too awful for irony. I will speak plainly and directly. Newton was a Christian! Newton whose mind burst forth from the fetters cast by nature upon our finite conceptions; Newton whose science was truth, and the foundation of whose knowledge of it was philosophy. Not those visionary and arrogant assumptions which too often usurp its name, but philosophy resting upon the basis of mathematics, which, like figures, cannot lie. Newton who carried

the line and rule to the utmost barriers of creation, and explored the principles by which, no doubt, all created matter is held together and exists.

But this extraordinary man, in the mighty reach of his mind, overlooked, perhaps, the errors which a minuter investigation of the created things on this earth might have taught him, of the essence of his Creator. What shall then be said of the great Mr. Boyle, who looked into the organic structure of all matter, even to the brute inanimate substances which the foot treads on. Such a man may be supposed to have been equally qualified with Mr. Paine, to "look through nature up to nature's God." Yet the result of all his contemplation was the most confirmed and devout belief in all which the other holds in contempt as despicable and driveling superstition. But this error might, perhaps, arise from a want of due attention to the foundations of human judgment, and the structure of that understanding which God has given us for the investigation of truth.

Let that question be answered by Mr. Locke, who was to the highest pitch of devotion and adoration a Christian. Mr. Locke, whose office was to detect the errors of thinking, by going up to the fountain of thought, and to direct into the proper track of reasoning the devious mind of man, by showing him its whole process, from the first perceptions of sense, to the last conclusions of ratiocination; putting a rein besides upon false opinion, by practical rules for the conduct of human judgment.

But these men were only deep thinkers, and lived in their closets, unaccustomed to the traffick of the world, and to the laws which partially regulate mankind. Gentlemen, in the place where you now sit to administer the justice of this great country, above a century ago the never to be forgotten Sir Matthew Hale presided, whose faith in Christianity is an exalted commentary upon its truth and reason, and whose life was a glorious example of its fruits in man; administering human justice with a wisdom and purity drawn from the pure fountain of the Christian dispensation, which has been, and will be, in all ages, a subject of the highest reverence and admiration. But it is said by Mr. Paine, that the Christian fable is but the tale of the more ancient superstitions of the world, and may be easily detected by a proper understanding of the mythologies of the heathens.

Did Milton understand those mythologies? Was he less versed than Mr. Paine in the superstitions of the world? No: they were the subject of his immortal song; and though shut out from all recurrence to them, he poured them forth from the