"thus providing that

may be a government of laws, and not of men; the three great departments shall be entirely independent of each other; and he remembered a story of a person who said that he could read Paradise Lost without affecting him at all, but that there was a passage at the end of Newton's Optics which made his flesh creep and his hair stand on end. I confess, said Mr. Choate, that I never read that article of the constitution without feeling the same," to the end that it may be a government of laws, and not of men."

Mr. Choate delivered an oration at New York, Dec. 22, 1843, before the New England Society, in the Tabernacle, on the Pilgrims. their character and acts, as constituting one of the heroic periods of history. He attributed much of the subsequent course of the Puritans to the residence of a thousand leading men of their number at Geneva for five years, whither they were driven by the bigoted Queen Mary. There they found a republic. He described the valley in which Geneva is situated, its placid lake, the lofty mountains which stand around it; he expatiated upon its laws, its quiet, its independence, its learning, its religion; and finished the description with the exclamation, "There they found a commonwealth without a king, and a church without a bishop," which received such a burst of emotion, long and loud, as never before resounded in the Tabernacle. Mr. Choate attends the Essex-street Congregational church, at Boston; and this bold sectarian allusion so sensibly affected those of the Episcopal order, that it forthwith prompted remarks from Rev. Dr. Wainwright, at the public dinner of the occasion on that day, which elicited a warm controversy, that continued for a twelvemonth.

In this connection, we introduce the highly felicitous allusion of Daniel Webster to the Mayflower, at the dinner of the New England Pilgrim Society, apropos to a miniature model of that vessel which was on the table. "There was," said Mr. Webster, "in ancient times, a ship which carried Jason on his voyage for the acquisition of the golden fleece; there was a ship at the battle of Actium which made Augustus Cæsar master of the world; there have been famous ships which bore to victory a Drake, a Howe, a Nelson; there are ships which have carried our own Hull, Decatur, and Stewart, in triumph. But what are they all, as to their chances of remembrance among men, to the little bark Mayflower? That Mayflower was and is a flower of perpetual blossom. It can stand the sultry blasts of summer, resist the furious tempests of autumn, and remain untouched by the gales and

the frosts of winter. It can defy all climates and all times. It will spread its petals over the whole world, and exhale a living odor and fragrance to the last syllable of recorded time."

A satirical journalist, remarking of the rhetorical eloquence of Rufus Choate in his arguments for the license of spirituous liquors, at Boston, in 1847, says that, as he shot his piercing, resolute eyes, hither and thither, drew on that solemn face, and poured out those deep tones of awful solemnity, rolled up those tremendous climaxes, raised his commanding form upon his toes, came down upon his heels like two paver's rammers, and shook the whole firmament of the Common Council chamber, like an earthquake, we could not but imagine what a sensation he would have produced as a revival preacher, or a Richard the Third on the stage. But, if he has mistaken his calling to either of the latter professions, the mistake is very slight and insignificant. Seeking undoubtedly for dramatic effect, he seemed to combine in a high degree the talents of all three professions. Choate has a playful sympathy with the ludicrous side of things, says Whipple, as, in his speech on the Oregon question, in which he uses the figure of the Legislature putting its head out of the window, and, in a voice all over the world, speaking to the negotiators of the pending treaty, bidding them God speed; but insinuating that, if they did not give up the whole subject in dispute, it would be settled by main force. It has been said of Choate, that he drives in a substantive and six; but unlike Burke, who had his reins upon them all, each restrained with a care essential to a proper guidance.

Rufus Choate is more at home as a pleader at the bar than in political speeches or public lectures. "While pleading, his eye flashes, as it turns rapidly from the court to the jury, and the jury to the court. Ever remarking, with intuitive sagacity, the slightest traces of emotion or thought in the eye, lip, face, position or movement, of the judge,— ever reading the soul revealed to him," as one graphically sketches, "perhaps to him alone, and comprehended by that mysterious sympathy which unites the orator and auditor, as by an electric atmosphere, through which thoughts and feelings pass and repass in silence, but in power, Choate is aware, with the certainty of genius and the rapidity of instinct, of the effect he has produced upon the judge, whose slightest word, he knows, is weightier than the eloquence of counsel; and, at the first slight intimation of dissent, rapidly, but almost imperceptibly, modifies, limits and explains, his idea, until he feels the concert of mental sympathy between mind and mind, and then, like

a

steed checked into noble action, or a river raising to burst over its barriers, with his mind elevated and excited by opposition, he discourses to the jury logic, eloquence and poetry, in tones that linger in the memory like the parting sound of a cathedral bell, or the dying note of an organ. His voice is deep, musical, sad. Thrilling it can be as a fife, but it has often a plaintive cadence, as though his soul mourned, amid the loud and angry tumults of the forum, for the quiet grove of the academy, or in these evil times sighed at the thought of those charms and virtues which we dare conceive in boyhood, and pursue as men, the unreached paradise of our despair."

The mind of Choate is as rapid as consists with sanity. In the attempt to keep pace with him, reporters, as already intimated, throw down their pencils in despair. His own pen traces, in the same vain attempt, one long, waving, illegible line, scarcely to be read by himself. and defying the scrutiny of others. It has been said of him, that, if the magnetic telegraph were affixed to his lips, the words would leap on the wires. His style is the poetry of prose, with here and there an expression, which, to use the questionable expression of Burke, rises from poetry into cloquence, some thoughts which entrance, some idea which burns. Such is that inimitable comparison, when speaking of the principles of Henry Clay. He said they rise like the peaks of a lofty mountain-range, from the table-land of all illustrious life. Such is that sentiment, worthy of Patrick Henry, the greatest orator of America, when, in the very words which we may suppose the forest-born Demosthenes would have used, he said, "What! banish the Bible from schools! Never, while there is a piece of Plymouth Rock left large enough to make a gun-flint of!" The autograph of Mr. Choate, says one, somewhat resembles the map of Ohio, and looks like a piece of crayon sketching done in the dark, with a three-pronged fork. His hand-writing cannot be deciphered without the aid of a pair of compasses and a quadrant.

Mr. Choate is a decided advocate for the union of the States. At the Union meeting of the Whig and Democratic parties, in Faneuil Hall, Nov. 26, 1850, when Dr. John C. Warren presided, the object of which was to sustain the Federal Union, uphold its constitution, and enforce the duty of obedience to the laws, occasioned by the sensation. arising from the recent Fugitive Slave Law, Mr. Choate delivered a noble speech, in which he said, after a train of argument: "I submit, that the two great political parties of the north are called upon, by

every consideration of patriotism and duty, to strike this whole subject from their respective issues. I go for no amalgamation of parties, and for the forming of no new party. But I admit the deepest solicitude, that those which now exist, preserving their actual organization and general principles and aims,—if so it must be,- should to this extent coalesce. Neither can act in this behalf effectually alone. Honorable concert is indispensable, and they owe it to the country. Have not the eminent men of both these great organizations united on this adjustment? Are they not both, primarily, national parties? Is it not one of their most important and beautiful uses, that they extend the whole length and breadth of our country; and that they help, or ought to help, to hold the extreme north to the extreme south, by a tie stronger almost than that of mere patriotism,- by that surest cement of friendship, common opinions on the great concerns of the republic? You are a Democrat; and have you not, for thirty-two years in fifty, united with the universal Democratic party in the choice of southern presidents? Has it not been your function, for even a larger part of the last half-century, to rally with the south for the support of the general administration? Has it not ever been your boast, your merit as a party, that you are in an intense, and even characteristic degree, national and unionist in your spirit and politics, although you had your origin in the assertion of State rights; that you have contributed, in a thousand ways, to the extension of our territory, and the establishment of our martial fame, and that you follow the flag on whatever field or deck it waves? And will you, for the sake of a temporary victory in a State, or for any other cause, insert an article in your creed, and give a direction to your tactics, which shall detach you from such companionship, and unfit you for such service in all time to come ?

"You are a Whig. I give my hand on that; and is not your party national, too? Do you not find your fastest allies at the south? Do you not need the vote of Louisiana, of North Carolina, of Tennessee, of Kentucky, to defend you from the redundant capital, matured skill, and pauper labor, of Europe? Did you not just now, with a wise contempt of sectional issues and sectional noises, unite to call that brave, firm and good OLD MAN, from his plantation, and seat him, with all the honors, in the place of Washington? Circumstances have forced both these parties -the northern and the southern divisions of both

to suspend for a space the legitimate objects of their institution. For

a space, laying them aside, and resolving themselves into our individual capacities, we have thought and felt on nothing but slavery. These circumstances exist no longer. And shall we not instantly revive the old creeds, renew the old ties, and, by a manly and honorable concert, resolve to spare America that last calamity, the formation of parties according to geographical lines?”

GEORGE TICKNOR CURTIS.

JULY 4, 1841. FOR THE CITY AUTHORITIES.

"OUR fathers conducted the Revolution against the king's government, and not against the institutions of the country," remarks our orator, in this performance. "They tore up no ancient landmarks," continues he, "except those which denoted the state of colonial bondage. They proceeded with the machinery of society as they found it. The provincial and continental authorities displaced those of the crown, and went on to arm the country for civil war, without loosening the bonds which held society together. Without resorting to the fiction under which Charles I. made war upon the king in the king's name, they took up arms for an independent government of their own, and not to eradicate the spirit or institutions of that civilization which they had derived from home. When, in the Declaration of Independence, they set forth the whole substance of the controversy, and the objects at which they aimed, moving on some of the most solid principles of the British constitution, as well as the inalienable rights of man, they clearly demonstrated that their design was to 'institute new government,' but not to go beyond what the abolition of the old forms required.

"It will be asked, What is the import of this to the present time? Not to give it any practical bearing upon any modern subject, I cannot but think that this forbearance whether it was the purpose of a wise forecast, or the happy tendency of the national temper, or the result of circumstances was most fortunate for the country. I cannot but think that we owe to it, as much as to the lucky accidents of our position, and our vast physical resources, what the country has become. Certain and manifest it is, that we owe to it the fact, that when the