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But God forbid that that occasion should arise. After a war sustained for nearly a quarter of a century, sometimes singlehanded, and with all Europe arrayed at times against her, or at her side, England needs a period of tranquillity, and may enjoy it without fear of misconstruction. Long may we be enabled, gentlemen, to improve the blessings of our present situation, to cultivate the arts of peace, to give to commerce, now reviving, greater extension, and new spheres of employment, and to confirm the prosperity now generally diffused throughout this island. Of the blessings of peace, gentlemen, I trust that this borough, with which I have now the honour and happiness of being associated, will receive an ample share. I trust the time is not far distant, when that noble structure (i.e. the breakwater), of which, as I learn from your Recorder, the box with which you have honoured me, through his hands, formed a part, that gigantic barrier against the fury of the waves that roll into your harbour, will protect a commercial marine not less considerable in its kind, than the warlike marine of which your port has been long so distinguished an asylum; when the town of Plymouth will participate in the commercial prosperity as largely as it has hitherto done in the naval glories of England.

EDWARD IRVING.

VINDICATION OF THE AUTHOR'S STYLE. (FROM THE PREFACE TO "FOR THE ORACLES OF GOD. FOUR ORATIONS." PUBLISHED IN 1824.)

FOR the taste and style of composition I carry my appeal from the judgment of upstart unknown pretenders, to the great

(1) It has been thought advisable to present a specimen of the manner of writing of one whose mind acted strongly on the minds of his generation, and whose works still praise him. Irving's style, though to some extent an echo of that of the theologians of the seventeenth century, is by no means an imitation of it. He plunged profoundly himself into the depths whence they drew their inspiration, conversed with their minds on topics of common interest, and almost insensibly learnt to speak their language. He combines in his writings much of the stately argumentation of Hooker, the splendid imagery of Taylor, and the heart-touching unction of Baxter. In some respects he is more ancient than those ancients, adopting, for instance, the th of the third person singular, which in their days was obsolescent, if not obsolete.

fathers of English composition, who have been my companions, my models, first of thought, and next of the utterance of thought. In whom, and in the Holy Scriptures, I have found forms for expressing the deeper feelings of the heart, and the sublimer aspirations of the soul, which I could not find in the writers of later times, but which seem reviving again in one or two of our living authors, for the blessing of this ancient land. Style is not the dress of thought, but the body of thought, and is active and energetic, according as the spirit that works beneath is active and energetic; and when monotony and dulness mark the style, and are commended by the critics of any age, it proves that the living spirit of thought is dull and disordered, and needeth to be roused from its lethargy. And the Lilliputian creatures who have caught it in its listless and sleepy mood will strive to pinion it down, dreading the resurrection of its might. But what of that? they are but Lilliputians who have bound it, and the cords with which they have bound it are but Lilliputian cords. I have been accused of affecting the antiquated manner of ages and times now forgotten. The writers of those times are too much forgotten, I lament, and their style of writing hath fallen much out of use; but the time is fast approaching when this stigma shall be wiped away from our prose, as it is fast departing from our poetry. I fear not to confess that Hooker, and Taylor, and Baxter, in theology, Bacon, Newton, and Locke, in philosophy, have been my companions, as Shakespeare, and Spenser, and Milton, have been in poetry. I cannot learn to think as they have done, which is the gift of God; but I can teach myself to think as disinterestedly, and to express as honestly what I think and feel. Which Í have in the strength of God endeavoured to do. They are my models of men, of Englishmen, of authors. My conscience could find none so worthy, and the world hath acknowledged none worthier. They were the fountains of my English idiom, they taught me forms for expressing my feelings; they showed me the construction of sentences, and the majestic flow of continuous discourse. I perceived a sweetness in every thought, and a harmony in joining thought to thought; and through the whole there ran a strain of melodious feeling, which ravished the soul as vocal melody ravisheth the ear. Their books were to me like a concert of every sweet instrument of the soul, and heart, and strength, and mind. They seemed to think, and feel, and imagine, and reason all at once, and the result is to take the whole man captive in the chains of sweetest persuasion.

JOHN JAMES AUDUBON.1

A BURNING PRAIRIE.

(FROM "THE BIRDS OF AMERICA,” PUBLISHED IN 1828.)

AFTER toiling for an hour, through a wide bottom of tall weeds and matted grass, I reached the grove-erected a small shed of boughs after the manner of the Indians, and lying down, was soon asleep, before a huge fire, which I built against the trunk of a fallen tree. I was awakened by the increasing violence of the gale. At times it sank into low wailings, and then would swell again, howling and whistling through the trees. After sitting by the fire for a short time, I again threw myself upon my pallet of dried grass, but could not sleep. There was something dismal and thrilling in the sound of the wind. At times, wild voices seemed shrieking through the woodland. It was in vain that I closed my eyes; a kind of superstitious feeling came over me, and, though I saw nothing, my ears drank in every sound. I gazed around in every direction, and sat with my hand on my gun-trigger, for my feelings were so wrought up that I momentarily expected to see an armed Indian start from behind each bush. At last I rose up, and sat by the fire. Suddenly, a swift gust swept through the grove, and whirled off sparks and cinders in every direction. In an instant fifty little fires shot their forked tongues in the air, and seemed to flicker with a momentary struggle for existence. There was scarcely time to note their birth before they were creeping up in a tall tapering blaze, and leaping lightly along the tops of the scattered clumps of dry grass. In another moment they leaped forward into the prairie, and a waving line of brilliant flame quivered high up in the dark atmosphere. It was

Another gust came rushing along the ravine. announced by a distant moan; as it came nearer a cloud of dry leaves filled the air; the slender shrubs and saplings bent like weeds-dry branches snapped and crackled. The lofty forest trees writhed, and creaked, and groaned. The next

(1) Audubon-a native of America-has been much admired for his "written pictures of birds, so graceful, so clearly defined, and brilliantly coloured, that they are scarcely inferior to the productions of his pencil." "His powers of general description, too," adds the same critic (Griswold), "are also remarkable." No one who reads the above passage will be inclined to call this criticism in question.

instant the furious blast reached the flaming prairie. Myriads and myriads of bright embers were flung wildly in the air: flakes of blazing grass whirled like meteors through the sky. The flame spread into a vast sheet that swept over the prairie, bending forward, illumining the black waste which it had passed, and shedding a red light far down the deep vistas of the forest; though all beyond the blaze was of a pitchy blackness. The roaring flames drowned even the howling of the wind. At each succeeding blast they threw long pyramidal streams upwards in the black sky, then flared horizontally, and seemed to bound forward, lighting at each bound a new conflagration. Leap succeeded leap; the flames rushed on with a race-horse speed. The noise sounded like the roar of a stormy ocean, and the wild tumultuous billows of the flame were tossed about like a sea of fire. Directly in their course, and some distance out in the prairie, stood a large grove of oaks-the dry leaves still clinging to the branches. There was a red glare thrown upon them from the blazing flood. A moment passed, and a black smoke oozed from the nearest tree-the blaze roared among their branches, and shot up for one hundred feet in the air, waving as if in triumph. The effect was transient. In a moment had the fire swept through a grove covering several acres. It sank again into the prairie, leaving the limbs of every tree scathed and scorched to an inky blackness, and shining with a bright crimson light between their branches. In this way the light conflagration swept over the landscape: every hill seemed to burn its own funeral pyre, and the scorching heat licked every blade in the hollows. A dark cloud of grey smoke, filled with burning embers, spread over the course of the flames, occasionally forming not ungraceful columns, which were almost instantly shattered by the wind, and driven in a thousand different directions.

For several hours the blaze continued to rage, and the whole horizon became girdled with a belt of living fire. As the circle extended the flames appeared smaller and smaller, until they looked like a slight golden thread drawn around the hills. They then must have been nearly ten miles distant. At length the blaze disappeared, although the purple light, that for hours illumined the night sky, told that the element' was extending into other regions of the prairies.

(1) The element, i.e. the fire. It is curious to notice that in Shakspere's time, his word meant the air or sky. In " Julius Cæsar," for instance, we have "the complexion of the element," i.e. the appearance of the sky. Milton, too ("Comus "), has "gay creatures of the element," i.e. the air.

It was sunrise when I rose from my resting-place and resumed my journey. What a change! All was waste. The sun had set upon a prairie still clothed in its natural garb of herbage. It rose upon a scene of desolation. Not a single weed-not a blade of grass was left. The tall grove, which at sunset was covered with withered foliage, now spread a labryinth of scorched and naked branches-the very type of ruin. A thin covering of grey ashes was sprinkled upon the ground beneath, and several large dead trees, whose dried branches had caught and nourished the flame, were still blazing or sending up long spires of smoke. In every direction, barrenness marked the track of the flames. It had even worked its course against the blast, hugging to the roots of tall grass.

The wind was still raging; cinders and ashes were drifting and whirling about in almost suffocating clouds, sometimes rendering it impossible to see for more than one or two hundred yards.

SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH.1

1. LORD BACON AS AN AUTHOR.
(FROM "EDINBURGH REVIEW," PUBLISHED IN 1830.)

PERHAPS no great man has been either more ignorantly censured, or more uninstructively commended [than Lord Bacon]. It is easy to describe his transcendent merit in general terms of commendation; for some of his great qualities lie on the surface of his writings. But that in which he most excelled all other men, was the range and compass of his intellectual view, and the power of contemplating2 many and distant objects together without indistinctness or confusion; which he himself has called the "discursive" or "comprehensive" understanding. This wide ranging intellect was illuminated by the brightest

(1) Mackintosh wrote with great care; but his composition, though pregnant and suggestive, is wanting in ease. It has little or no colour; yet those who prefer the statuesque to the picturesque, may discover-and without difficulty-numerous graces and beauties in his manner of treating his subject.

(2) Contemplating. The exact propriety of this word here will be seen on reference to note 2, p. 138.

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