RIVAL COLLECTION

OF

READINGS.

ELOQUENCE AND LOGIC.--WILLIAM C. PRESTON.

UR popular institutions demand a talent for speaking, and create a taste for it. Liberty and eloquence are united, in all ages. Where the sovereign power is found in the public mind and the public heart, eloquence is the obvious approach to it. Power and honor, and all that can attract ardent and aspiring natures, attend it. The noblest instinct is to propagate the spirit,—“to make our mind the mind of other men," and wield the sceptre in the realms of passion. In the art of speaking, as in all other arts, a just combination of those qualities necessary to the end proposed, is the true rule of taste. Excess is always wrong. Too much ornament is an evil,-too little, also. The one may impede the progress of the argument, or divert attention. from it, by the introduction of extraneous matter; the other may exhaust attention, or weary by monotony. Elegance is in a just medium. The safer side to err on, is that of abundance,--as profusion is better than poverty; as it is better to be detained by the beauties of a landscape than by the weariness of the desert.

It is commonly, but mistakenly, supposed, that the enforcing of truth is most successfully effected by a cold and formal logic; but the subtleties of dialectics and the forms of logic may play as fantastic tricks with truth, as the most potent magic of Fancy. The attempt to apply mathematical precision to moral truths is always a failure, and generally a dangerous one. If man, aud es

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THE AMERICAN FLAG.

pecially masses of men, were purely intellectual, then cold reason would alone be influential to convince; but our nature is most complex, and many of the great truths which it most concerns us to know, are taught us by our instincts, our sentiments, our impulses, and our passions. Even in regard to the highest and holiest of all truth, to know which concerns us here and hereafter, we are not permitted to approach its investigation in the confidence of proud and erring reason, but are taught to become as little children, before we are worthy to receive it. It is to this complex nature that the speaker addresses himself, and the degree of power with which all the elements are evoked, is the criterion of the orator. His business, to be sure, is to convince, but more to persuade; and, most of all, to inspire with noble and generous passions. It is the cant of criticism, in all ages, to make a distinction between logic and eloquence, and to stigmatize the latter as declamation. Logic ascertains the weight of an argument, Eloquence gives it momentum. The difference is that between the vis inertia of a mass of metal, and the same ball hurled from the cannon's mouth. Eloquence is an argument alive and in motion, -the statue of Pygmalion inspired with vitality.

THE AMERICAN FLAG.-J. R. DRAKE.

W

HEN Freedom, from her mountain height,
Unfurled her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night,

And set the stars of glory there.
She mingled with its gorgeous dyes
The milky baldric of the skies,
And striped its pure, celestial white,
With streakings of the morning light.
Then, from his mansion in the sun,
She called her eagle bearer down,
And gave into his mighty hand
The symbol of her chosen land.

Majestic monarch of the cloud,
Who rear'st aloft thy regal form,

THE AMERICAN FLAG.

To hear the tempest trumpings loud,
And see the lightning lances driven.

When strive the warriors of the storm,
And rolls the thunder-drum of Heaven,—
Child of the Sun! to thee 'tis given

To guard the banner of the free;
To hover in the sulphur smoke,
To ward away the battle-stroke;
And bid its blendings shine afar,
Like rainbows on the cloud of war,

The harbingers of victory!

Flag of the brave! thy folds shall fly,
The sign of hope and triumph high,
When speaks the signal trumpet tone,
And the long line comes gleaming on,-
Ere yet the life-blood, warm and wet,
Has dimmed the glistening bayonet,-
Each soldier's eye shall brightly turn
To where thy sky-born glories burn;
And, as his springing steps advance,
Catch war and vengeance from the glance.
And, when the cannon-mouthings loud
Heave in wild wreaths the battle shroud,
And gory sabres rise and fall
Like shoots of flame on midnight's pall,
Then shall thy meteor glances glow,

And cowering foes shall fall beneath
Each gallant arm that strikes below
That lovely messenger of death.

Flag of the seas! on ocean's wave
Thy stars shall glitter o'er the brave,
When Death, careering on the gale,
Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail,
And frighted waves rush wildly back,
Before the broadside's reeling rack,
Each dying wanderer of the sea
Shall look at once to Heaven and thee;

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