By thy great name of Liberator live
In golden letters upon history's page;

And this thy epitaph while time shall be

He found his country chained, but left her free.

Broadly considered, his eloquence has never been equaled in modern times, certainly not in English speech. Do you think I am partial? I will vouch John Randolph of Roanoke, the Virginia slaveholder, who hated an Irishman almost as much as he hated a Yankee, himself an orator of no mean level. Hearing O'Connell, he exclaimed: "This is the man, these are the lips, the most eloquent that speak English in my day!"

I think he was right. I remember the solemnity of Webster, the grace of Everett, the rhetoric of Choate; I know the eloquence that lay hid in the iron logic of Calhoun; I have melted beneath the magnetism of Sergeant S. Prentiss of Mississippi, who wielded a power few men ever had. It has been my fortune to sit at the feet of the great speakers of the English tongue on the other side of the ocean. But I think all of them together never surpassed, and no one of them ever equaled, O'Connell. Nature intended him for our Demosthenes. Never since the great Greek has she sent forth any one so lavishly gifted for his work as a tribune of the people.

In the first place, he had a magnificent presence, impressive in bearing, massive like that of Jupiter. Webster himself hardly outdid him in the majesty of his proportions. His presence filled the eye. There was something majestic in his presence before

he spoke; and he added to it what Webster had not

what Clay might have lent— infinite grace, that magnetism that melts all hearts into one. Then he had a voice that covered the gamut.

We used to say of Webster, "This is a great effort"; of Everett, "It is a beautiful effort"; but you never used the word "effort" in speaking of O'Connell. It provoked you that he would not make an effort. I heard him perhaps a score of times, and I do not think more than three times he ever exerted himself to the full sweep of his ability.

His marvelous voice, its almost incredible power and sweetness, Bulwer has well described:

Once to my sight that giant form was given,
Walled by wide air, and roofed by boundless heaven.
Beneath his feet the human ocean lay,

And wave on wave rolled into space away.
Methought no clarion could have sent its sound
Even to the center of the hosts around;

And, as I thought, rose the sonorous swell,

As from some church-tower swings the silvery bell.
Aloft and clear, from airy tide to tide

It glided, easy as a bird may glide;

Even to the verge of that vast audience sent,
It played with each wild passion as it went-
Now stirred the uproar, now the murmur stilled,
And sobs or laughter answered as it willed.

Webster could awe a senate, Everett could charm a college, and Choate could cheat a jury; Clay could magnetize the million, and Corwin lead them captive. O'Connell was Clay, Corwin, Choate, Everett,

and Webster in one. Before the courts he was logical; at the bar of the senate, unanswerable and dignified; on the platform he was wit and pathos; before the masses he was a whole man. Carlyle says, "He is God's own anointed king whose single word melts all wills into his." This well describes him. Emerson says, "There is no true eloquence unless there is a man behind the speech." Daniel O'Connell was listened to because all England and all Ireland knew that there was a man behind the speech-one who could be neither bought, bullied, nor cheated. He held the masses enthralled but willing subjects in his hand.

He owed this power to the courage that met every new question frankly and concealed none of his convictions; to an entireness of devotion that made the people feel he was all their own; to a masterly brain that made them sure they were always safe in his hands. Behind them were ages of bloodshed — every rising had ended at the scaffold. O'Connell said, "Follow me; put your feet where mine have trod, and a sheriff shall never lay hand on your shoulder." And the great lawyer kept his pledge.

Behind O'Connell were over three million people steeped in utter wretchedness, sore with the oppression of centuries, ignored by statute. For thirty restless and turbulent years he stood in front of them and said, "Remember, he that commits a crime helps the enemy." And during that long and fearful struggle I do not remember one of his followers ever being convicted of a political offense, and during this period crimes of violence were very rare.

There is no such record in our history. Neither in classic nor in modern times can the man be produced who held a million of people in his right hand so passive. It was due to the consistency and unity of a character that had hardly a flaw.

I do not forget your soldiers, orators, or poetsany of your leaders. But when I consider O'Connell's personal disinterestedness; his rare, brave fidelity to every cause his principles covered, no matter how unpopular or how embarrassing to his main purpose; that clear, far-reaching vision and true heart which, on most moral and political questions, set him so much ahead of his times; his eloquence, almost equally effective in the courts, in the senate, and before the masses; that sagacity which set at naught the malignant vigilance of the whole imperial bar, watching thirty years for a misstep; when I remember that he invented his tools, and then when I remember and measure his limited means with his vast success, bearing in mind its nature; when I see the sobriety and moderation with which he used his measureless power, and the lofty, generous purpose of his whole life-I am ready to affirm that he was, all things considered, the greatest man the Irish race has ever produced.

a tone' ment, amends; satisfaction for injury.

chap' let, wreath for the head.

De mos' the nes (nēz), orator of ancient
Greece.

gam' ut, the whole musical scale.

Ju' pi ter, in Roman mythology the
king of gods and men.

ma lig' nant, full of malice or hate.
par' al leled (lěld), equaled.
spec' ter, a phantom.

SKIPPER BEN.

LUCY LARCOM.

Sailing away!

Losing the breath of the shores in May,
Dropping down from the beautiful bay
Over the sea-slope vast and gray,

And the skipper's eyes with a mist are blind;
For a vision comes on the rising wind

Of a gentle face that he leaves behind.

And a heart that throbs through the fog-bank dim, Thinking of him.

Far into night

He watches the gleam of the lessening light,
Fixed on the dangerous island height,
That bars the harbor he loves from sight:
And he wishes, at dawn, he could tell the tale
Of how they had weathered the southwest gale,
To brighten the cheek that had grown so pale,
With a wakeful night among specters grim-
Terrors for him.

Yo-heave-yo!

Here's the Bank where the fishermen go.
Over the schooner's sides they throw

Tackle and bait to the deeps below.

And Skipper Ben in the water sees,

When its ripples curl to the light land breeze,
Something that stirs like his apple trees,

And two soft eyes that beneath them swim,
Lifted to him.