will rule it at the consummation of time. My reason revolts against the thought that a worm, the offspring of the dust, can with impunity defy those laws by which the Eternal Lawgiver has bound not only the fluctuations of human events, but has bound even His own immovable will. No; I do not believe in the stability of successful crime. I turn my regard from the universe to history, the mirror of the future, because the record of the past, and I see that crime sometimes may have flashed up with the dazzling blaze of a passing moment, but the success of crime never yet did last, therefore never shall.

REPLY OF WILLIAM H. SEWARD,

TO PRESIDENT PIERCE, IN BEHALF OF MASSACHUSETTS AND NEW YORK, AGAINST THE CHARGE OF INABILITY TO HEAL PALPABLE SOCIAL EVILS.

THE remarks which we have made on previous extracts from the speeches of W. H. Seward, will equally well apply to this.

I challenge the President to the proof, in behalf of Massachusetts, although I have only the interest common to all Americans, and to all men, in her great fame. What one corporate or social evil is there, of which she is conscious, and conscious, also, of inability to heal? Is it ignorance, prejudice, bigotry, vice, crime, public disorder, poverty, or disease, afflicting the minds or the bodies of her people? There she stands. Survey her universities, colleges, academies, observatories, primary schools, Sunday schools, penal codes, and penitentiaries. Descend into her quarries, walk over her fields, and through her gardens, observe her manufactories of a thousand various fabrics, watch her steamers ascending every river and inlet on your own coast, and her ships displaying their canvas on every sea; follow her fishermen in their adventurous voyages from her own adjacent bays to the icy ocean under either pole; and then return, and enter her hospitals, which cure or relieve suffering humanity, in every condition, and at every period of life, from the lying-in to the second childhood, and which not only restore sight to the blind, and hearing to the deaf, and speech to the dumb, but also bring back wandering reason to the insane, and teach even the idiot to think! Massachusetts, sir, is a model of states, worthy of all honor, and though she was most conspicuous of all the states, in the establishment of republican institutions here, she is even more conspicuous still, for the municipal wisdom with which she has made them contribute to the welfare of her people, and to the greatness of the republic itself. In behalf of New York, for whom it is my right and duty to speak, I defy the presidential accuser. Mark her tranquil magnanimity, which becomes a state, for whose delivery from tyranny Schuyler devised

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and labored, who received her political constitution from Hamilton, her intellectual and physical development from Clinton, and her lessons in humanity from Jay. As she waves her wand over the continent, trade forsakes the broad natural channels which conveyed it before to the Delaware and Chesapeake bays, and to the Gulfs of St. Lawrence and of Mexico, and obediently to her command pours itself through her artificial channels into her own once obscure seaport. She stretches her wand again toward the ocean, and the commerce of all the continents concentrates itself at her feet; and with it, strong and full floods of immigration ride in, tributing labor, capital, art, valor, and enterprise, to perfect and embellish our ever-widening empire. When, and on what occasion, has Massachusetts or New York officiously and illegally intruded herself within the jurisdiction of sister states, to modify or reform their institutions? No, no, sir. Their faults have been quite different. They have conceded too often and too much for their own just dignity and influence in Federal Administration, to the querulous complaints of the states in whose behalf he arraigns them. I thank the President for the insult which, though so deeply unjust, was, perhaps, needful to arouse them to their duty, in this great emergency.

WE are often requested to give shorter selections in the Orator, but that we can not often do; for we seldom find those of a few lines, which possess true value as selections for reading or speaking: but the following is not without oratorical merit, and, we think, brief enough for the most diffident.

BORODINO.

One foot in the stirrup, one hand on the mane,
One toss of white plumes on the air;

Then firm in the saddle- and loosened the rein;
And the sword-blade gleams bare!

A white face stares up from the dark frozen ground;
The prowler will shadow it soon:

The dead and the dying lie writhen around,
Cold and bright shines the moon!

There are laurels and gold for the living and proud :
But the ice-wreath of Fame for the slain;

Only Love turns away from the reveling crowd
To her own on the plain!

EXTRACT FROM A SPEECH

Delivered IN THE HOUSE OE REPRESENTATIVES, BY JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS, DEC. 10th, 1856.

THIS extract contains that energy which is so often evinced by young declaimers, when their recitations are entirely devoid of such material. It is a good selection for the student, but he should be careful to deliver it with that dignity it demands.

SIR, in what age do we live? Under what circumstances are we placed, that the President of the United States undertakes to assail and scold the people, whose servant he is, for not assisting to the utmost of their ability to prevent their fellow-men from escaping from an oppression which, from their inmost souls, they detest?

I never saw a panting fugitive flying from bondage, that I did not pray God most earnestly to speed him in his flight, and to enable him to make good his escape. The whole sympathy of my nature is at once enlisted in his behalf. I always feel anxious that he may escape from the crushing power under which he has been borne down. And yet the President assumes to lecture me, because I choose to obey God rather than him. Why, Sir, gentlemen may listen while I tell that I have seen, at one time, nine fugitives dining in my own house fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, and children, fleeing for their liberty and, in spite of the President's censure, I obeyed the divine mandate to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. I fed them. I clothed them. I gave them money, and sent them on their way. Was that treason? If so, make the most of it.

I would smite down the infamous slave-catcher if he were to enter my door in his infamous attempts to arrest and enslave a brother man. I make these statements in order that the people of my native State of Pennsylvania, the people of our Northern States, may express their manhood, and not be held in silence by executive insolence. It is the duty of every man, it is a christian duty, that we should speak out our honest sentiments in condemnation of those infamous crimes.

SO MUCH FOR WINE.

For a short selection, this poem will be found to contain no little interest. It will require pathos and comedy to illustrate it to nature; and, when truly delivered, will awaken both feeling and mirth.

THREE students sat in a banquet hall,

And merrily drank to the world and all.
They sung, "Hurrah for the rushing Rhine:
Our cheeks are burning "-"So much for wine!"

The first, he raised his glass on high:
"I could rush with joy to the battle-cry,
And gaze upon DEATH when he gives a sign,
And laugh at his beckon "-"So much for wine!"

The second, he rose with glass in hand;

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Long life to thee, German Fatherland;

With life and with soul I am ever thine,

A free-born German!"-"So much for wine!"

And so through the fair night they sung and dreamed;
In the wine-cup the glance of a true love gleamed :
"It burns yet, is pure, this flame of mine :
Hurrah for all true love!"-"So much for wine!"

Then, touching his red nose, the landlord spoke :
"I only drink wine for a jest or joke:"

And they paid him the ducats, some eight or nine,
And he slapped on his pockets-"So much for wine!"

EILEEN AND HER GRANDMOTHER.

In this little poem will be found a field for exquisite action, and to contain lines which will call forth the most delicate modulation It can not fail to win all the attention of an audience, when properly recited.

MELLOW the moonlight to shine is beginning;
Close by the window young Eileen is spinning;
Bent o'er the fire her blind grandmother sitting,
Is groaning, and moaning, and drowsily knitting-
"Eileen, achora, I hear some one tapping ;"-

""T is the Ivy, dear mother, against the glass flapping."

Eileen, I surely hear somebody sighing;"

"'T is the sound, mother dear, of the summer wind dying."
Merrily, cheerily, noisily whirring,

Spins the wheel, swings the reel, while the foot's stirring.
Sprightly, and lightly, and airily ringing,

Thrills the sweet voice of the young maiden singing.

"What's that noise that I hear at the window, I wonder?"
""Tis the little birds chirping the holly-bush under."
"What makes you be shoving and moving your stool on,
And singing all wrong that old song of The Coolun ?'"
There's a form at the casement, the form of her true love,
And he whispers, with face bent, "I'm waiting for you love;
Get up on the stool, through the lattice step lightly,
We'll rove in the grove, while the moon's shining brightly."

Merrily, cheerily, noisily whirring,

Spins the wheel, swings the reel, while the foot's stirring :
Sprightly, and lightly, and airily ringing,

Thrills the sweet voice of the young maiden singing.

The maid shakes her head-on her lip lays her fingers,
Steals up from the seat-longs to go, and yet lingers;
A frighten'd glance turns to her drowsy grandmother,
Puts one foot on the stool, spins the wheel with the other;
Lazily, easily, swings now the wheel round;

Slowly and lowly is heard now the reel's sound;
Noiseless and light to the lattice above her,

The maid steps-then leaps to the arms of her lover.
Slower and slower-and slower the wheel spins ;
Lower-and lower-and lower the reel rings;

Ere the reel and the wheel stopped their ringing and moving,
Through the grove the young lovers by moonlight are roving.

THE MANIAC LOVER.

A SCENE IN BEDLAM.

THIS selection will be found better adapted for recitation by male students than "The Maniac," of which it is a close imitation.

No little judgment is required to represent a selection where strong passion is called forth to that extent which delirium generally displays. A speaker may bellow and rant through a piece, and receive some applause from the uneducated; but he will ever fail to attract the worthy judge. When the harmony of nature is violated, the orator can not make up the deficiency by ranting.

PAUSE, jailer, pause, and hear me speak!
He's not insane who talks to thee;

These dismal walls too well I know,
For what intended, and should be.

I will not rave, though in despair;

Wilt hear me speak? "T will make me glad;
For well I know a captive here

Must be insane-must be called mad.

My niggard rival did the act,

Which broke my heart, deranged my mind;

This wretched fate my friends bewail;
Oh jailer haste, my mother find!
Oh haste, and cheer her broken heart;
For it will cheer, however sad,

To know, though kept a captive here,
Her son is not insane.

- not mad.