Elson Grammar School Literature Part 56

RIENZI'S ADDRESS TO THE ROMANS

MARY RUSSELL MITFORD

Friends!

I come not here to talk. You know too well The story of our thralldom. We are slaves!

The bright sun rises to his course, and lights A race of slaves! he sets, and his last beam Falls on a slave!--not such as, swept along By the full tide of power, the conqueror leads To crimson glory and undying fame, But base, ign.o.ble slaves--slaves to a horde Of petty tyrants; feudal despots; lords, Rich in some dozen paltry villages, Strong in some hundred spearmen; only great In that strange spell--a name.

Each hour dark fraud, Or open rapine, or protected murder, Cry out against them. But this very day, An honest man, my neighbor--there he stands-- Was struck--struck like a dog, by one who wore The badge of Ursini, because, forsooth, He tossed not high his ready cap in air, Nor lifted up his voice in servile shouts At sight of that great ruffian! Be we men, And suffer such dishonor?--Men, and wash not The stain away in blood?

Such shames are common.

I have known deeper wrongs. I that speak to you, I had a brother once, a gracious boy, Full of gentleness, of calmest hope, Of sweet and quiet joy: there was the look Of heaven upon his face, which limners give To the beloved disciple. How I loved That gracious boy! Younger by fifteen years, Brother at once and son! He left my side, A summer bloom on his fair cheek, a smile Parting his innocent lips: in one short hour, The pretty, harmless boy was slain! I saw The corse, the mangled corse, and then I cried For vengeance!

Rouse ye, Romans! rouse ye, slaves!

Have ye brave sons? Look in the next fierce brawl To see them die. Have ye fair daughters? Look To see them live, torn from your arms, distained, Dishonored; and, if ye dare call for justice, Be answered by the lash!

Yet this is Rome, That sat on her seven hills, and from her throne Of beauty ruled the world! Yet we are Romans!

Why, in that elder day, to be a Roman Was greater than a king! And, once again,-- Hear me, ye walls, that echoed to the tread Of either Brutus!--once again, I swear, The Eternal City shall be free!

Biographical and Historical: Mary Russell Mitford, born in 1787, was an English writer of miscellaneous works. Among her most noted productions is the tragedy "Rienzi," which was presented in London in 1828. It is the story of the Roman patriot, Rienzi, who led a revolution at Rome in 1347.

He overthrew the power of the aristocracy and introduced many reforms in the government. After establishing himself in power, however, he is said to have become in turn haughty and arbitrary.

EMMET'S VINDICATION

MY LORDS: What have I to say why sentence of death should not be p.r.o.nounced on me, according to law? I have nothing to say that can alter your predetermination, nor that it will become me to say with any view to the mitigation of that sentence which you are here to p.r.o.nounce, and I must abide by. But I have that to say which interests me more than life, and which you have labored 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.

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 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. The man dies, but his memory lives. That mine may not perish--that it may live in the respect of my countrymen--I seize upon this opportunity to vindicate myself from some of the charges alleged against me.

When my spirit shall be wafted to a more friendly port; when my shade shall have joined the bands of those martyred heroes who have shed their blood, on the scaffold and in the field, in defense of their country and virtue; this is my hope--I wish that my memory and name may animate those who survive me, while I look down with complacency on the destruction of that perfidious government which upholds its domination by blasphemy of the Most High, which displays its powers over man as over the beasts of the forest, which sets man upon his brother, and lifts his hand, in the name of G.o.d, against the throat of his fellow who believes or doubts a little more or less than the government standard--a government which is steeled to barbarity by the cries of the orphans and the tears of the widows which its cruelty has made.

I swear by the throne of Heaven, before which I must shortly appear--by the blood of the murdered patriots who have gone before me--that my conduct has been, through all this peril and all my purposes, governed only by the convictions which I have uttered, and no other view than that of the emanc.i.p.ation of my country from the superinhuman oppression under which she has so long and too patiently travailed; and that I confidently and a.s.suredly hope, wild and chimerical as it may appear, that there is still union and strength in Ireland to accomplish this n.o.ble enterprise.

My country was my idol. To it I sacrificed every selfish, every endearing sentiment; and for it I now offer up my life! I acted as an Irishman, determined on delivering my country from the yoke of a foreign and unrelenting tyranny, and from the more galling yoke of a domestic faction, its joint partner and perpetrator in the patricide, whose reward is the ignominy of existing with an exterior of splendor and a consciousness of depravity. It was the wish of my heart to extricate my country from this doubly riveted despotism. I wished to place her independence beyond the reach of any power on earth. I wished to exalt her to that proud station in the world which Providence had fitted her to fill.

Let no man dare, when I am dead, to charge me with dishonor; let no man attaint my memory by believing that I could have engaged in any cause but that of my country's liberty and independence, or that I could have become the pliant minion of power in the oppression or the miseries of my countrymen. I would not have submitted to a foreign oppressor, for the same reason that I would resist the domestic tyrant; in the dignity of freedom I would have fought upon the threshold of my country, and her enemies should enter only by pa.s.sing over my lifeless corpse. Am I, who lived but for my country, and who have subjected myself to the vengeance of the jealous and wrathful oppressor, and to the bondage of the grave, only to give my countrymen their rights and my country her independence--am I to be loaded with calumny, and not to be suffered to resent or repel it? No! G.o.d forbid!

If the spirits of the ill.u.s.trious dead partic.i.p.ate in the concerns and cares of those who are dear to them in this transitory life, O ever dear and venerated shade of my departed father, look down with scrutiny on the conduct of your suffering son, and see if I have even for a moment deviated from those principles of morality and patriotism which it was your care to instill into my youthful mind, and for an adherence to which I am now to offer up my life!

My Lords, you are all impatient for the sacrifice. The blood which you seek is not congealed by the artificial terrors which surround your victim; it circulates warmly and unruffled through the channels which G.o.d created for n.o.ble purposes, but which you are bent to destroy, for purposes so grievous that they cry to Heaven!

Be ye patient; I have but a few words more to say. I am going to my silent grave; my lamp of life is nearly extinguished; my race is run; the grave opens to receive me, and I sink into its bosom. I have but one request to ask at my departure from this world--it is the charity of its silence. Let no man write my epitaph; for, as no one who knows my motives dare now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them and me repose in obscurity and peace, and my tomb remain uninscribed, until other times and other men can do justice to my character. When my country shall take her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written! I have done.

Biographical and Historical: During the latter part of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, the spirit of independence was abroad. The American Revolution was followed by the French Revolution, and in 1803 Robert Emmet, an Irish patriot, headed a band to gain independence for Ireland. After an unsuccessful attempt to take the a.r.s.enal and castle at Dublin, he fled to the Wicklow mountains, whence he planned to escape to the continent. Contrary to the advice of his friends, he determined to have a last interview with his sweetheart, but the delay proved fatal to him. He was seized and condemned to death. This extract is from the remarkably eloquent speech with which he vainly defended himself.

KING PHILIP TO THE WHITE SETTLER

EDWARD EVERETT

Think of the country for which the Indians fought. Who can blame them? As Philip looked down from his seat on Mount Hope, that glorious eminence, that

"----throne of royal state, which far Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, Or where the gorgeous East, with richest hand, Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,"--

as he looked down, and beheld the lovely scene which spread beneath, at a summer sunset, the distant hill-tops glittering as with fire, the slanting beams streaming across the waters, the broad plains, the island groups, the majestic forest,--could he be blamed, if his heart burned within him, as he beheld it all pa.s.sing, by no tardy process, from beneath his control, into the hands of the stranger?

As the river chieftains--the lords of the waterfalls and the mountains--ranged this lovely valley, can it be wondered at, if they beheld with bitterness the forest disappearing beneath the settler's ax--the fishing-place disturbed by his saw-mills? Can we not fancy the feelings with which some strong-minded savage, the chief of the Pocomtuck Indians, who should have ascended the summit of the Sugar-loaf Mountain (rising as it does before us, at this moment, in all its loveliness and grandeur),--in company with a friendly settler,--contemplating the progress already made by the white man, and marking the gigantic strides with which he was advancing into the wilderness, should fold his arms and say, "White man, there is eternal war between me and thee! I quit not the land of my fathers, but with my life. In those woods, where I bent my youthful bow, I will still hunt the deer; over yonder waters I will still glide, unrestrained, in my bark canoe. By those dashing waterfalls I will still lay up my winter's store of food; on these fertile meadows I will still plant my corn.

"Stranger, the land is mine! I understand not these paper rights. I gave not my consent, when, as thou sayest, these broad regions were purchased, for a few baubles, of my fathers. They could sell what was theirs; they could sell no more. How could my fathers sell that which the Great Spirit sent me into the world to live upon? They knew not what they did.

"The stranger came, a timid suppliant,--few and feeble, and asked to lie down on the red man's bear-skin, and warm himself at the red man's fire, and have a little piece of land to raise corn for his women and children; and now he is become strong, and mighty, and bold, and spreads out his parchments over the whole, and says, 'It is mine.'

"Stranger! there is not room for us both. The Great Spirit has not made us to live together. There is poison in the white man's cup; the white man's dog barks at the red man's heels. If I should leave the land of my fathers, whither shall I fly? Shall I go to the south, and dwell among the graves of the Pequots? Shall I wander to the west, the fierce Mohawk,--the man-eater,--is my foe. Shall I fly to the east, the great water is before me. No, stranger; here I have lived, and here will I die; and if here thou abidest, there is eternal war between, me and thee.

"Thou hast taught me thy arts of destruction; for that alone I thank thee.

And now take heed to thy steps; the red man is thy foe. When thou goest forth by day, my bullet shall whistle past thee; when thou liest down by night, my knife is at thy throat. The noonday sun shall not discover thy enemy, and the darkness of midnight shall not protect thy rest. Thou shalt plant in terror, and I will reap in blood; thou shalt sow the earth with corn, and I will strew it with ashes; thou shalt go forth with the sickle, and I will follow after with the scalping-knife; thou shalt build, and I will burn,--till the white man or the Indian perish from the land. Go thy way for this time in safety,--but remember, stranger, _there is eternal war between me and thee!_"

Biographical and Historical: Edward Everett was a celebrated American orator and statesman. His career was varied, but he will be remembered chiefly through his essays and orations. He was in turn clergyman, professor of Greek at Harvard, representative in Congress, governor of Ma.s.sachusetts, minister to England, president of Harvard, and secretary of state. He died at the close of the Civil War.

This extract is from an address delivered at b.l.o.o.d.y Brook, South Deerfield, Ma.s.s., September 30, 1835, in commemoration of the death of many colonists in that spot during King Philip's War, September 18, 1675. King Philip, son of Ma.s.sasoit, was an Indian chief who resented the coming of the white man and, gathering many Indian tribes about him, waged bitter war against the colonists. He himself was killed at Mount Hope, Rhode Island.

THE CAPTURE OF QUEBEC (From "Montcalm and Wolfe.")

FRANCIS PARKMAN

The sun rose, and, from the ramparts of Quebec, the astonished people saw the Plains of Abraham glittering with arms, and the dark-red lines of the English forming in array of battle. Breathless messengers had borne the evil tidings to Montcalm, and far and near his wide-extended camp resounded with the rolling of alarm drums and the din of startled preparation.

He, too, had had his struggles and his sorrows. The civil power had thwarted him; famine, discontent, and disaffection were rife among his soldiers; and no small portion of the Canadian militia had dispersed from sheer starvation. In spite of all, he had trusted to hold out till the winter frosts should drive the invaders from before the town; when, on that disastrous morning, the news of their successful temerity fell like a cannon-shot upon his ear.

Still he a.s.sumed a tone of confidence. "They have got to the weak side of us at last," he is reported to have said, "and we must crush them with our numbers." With headlong haste, his troops were pouring over the bridge of the St. Charles, and gathering in heavy ma.s.ses under the western ramparts of the town. Could numbers give a.s.surance of success, their triumph would have been secure; for five French battalions and the armed colonial peasantry amounted in all to more than seven thousand five hundred men.

Full in sight before them stretched the long, thin lines of the British forces, the half-wild Highlanders, the steady soldiery of England, and the hardy levies of the provinces,--less than five thousand in number, but all inured to battle, and strong in the full a.s.surance of success.

Yet, could the chiefs of that gallant army have pierced the secrets of the future, could they have foreseen that the victory which they burned to achieve would have robbed England of her proudest boast, that the conquest of Canada would pave the way for the independence of America, their swords would have dropped from their hands, and the heroic fire have gone out within their hearts.

It was nine o'clock, and the adverse armies stood motionless, each gazing on the other. The clouds hung low, and, at intervals, warm light showers descended, besprinkling both alike. The coppice and cornfields in front of the British troops were filled with French sharp-shooters, who kept up a distant, spattering fire. Here and there a soldier fell in the ranks, and the gap was filled in silence.