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[IN this Poem it is intended to give succinct sketches of our principal Parliamentary Orators, commencing with the origin of parliamentary oratory (in the Civil Wars), and closing with the late Sir Robert Peel. The Poem will be completed in Three Parts.]

WHEN frank-eyed War with Love stood hand in hand,
And cities oped on lonely Faeryland,

Song was the voice most faithful to the time,

And England spoke in CHAUCER's lusty rhyme.

Thus long ere yet the Orator is known,
Each age demands an utterance all its own ;
Now thrills in carols wise without a rule,
Now fires a camp, and now dictates a school.

But not till warring thoughts mature their strife,
Till some slow people swell to stormy life,
And, lost the inert hereditary awe,
Exact a reason where imposed a law,—
Not till the right to argue truth be won,
The heart of many fires the lips of one;

And the great Art which sways this age of ours,
Stands forth as Justice 'midst conflicting powers,
And, lest the foe of all, Brute Force, prevail,
Leans on the sword, while proffering but the scale.

What causes first in English halls combined

To free the voice ?-those which first freed the mind. VOL. LXXXVII.-NO. DXXXI.

In Eastern tales, a fond enchanter's care
Immures in rock a giant child of air ;
By its own growth the genius wears away
The yielding stone, and nears its native day;
Till through pale fissures rushes in the storm,
And from the granite whirlwinds lift the form ;-
So forth soared Reason from the cells of Rome,
Rapt on the blasts that rent her prison-home;
And her own pinions in their angry flight
Cast shadow down while sailing up to light.
Then Man, tormented with a glorious grief,
Scared by the space that spreads round unbelief,
Sought still to reconcile the earth and sky,
And to his trouble came Philosophy.

She came, as came from Jove a Prophet-Dream,
Mid Night's last shade and Morning's earliest beam,
And in weird parables of coming things

Showed truth to seers, but boded woe to kings.

Forms that hem round this social state of Man
Are so by custom blended into plan,
That thro' one chink if some bold footstep steals,
Each fence is loosed, and all the structure reels.
Hark, BACON speaks! and walls, with which the wise
Had belted Nature, vanish; startled eyes
Explore a bound, and skies expand on skies.

Faith thus dislodged from ancient schools and creeds,
Question to question, doubt to doubt succeeds-
Clouds gathering flame for thunders soon to be,
And glass'd on SHAKESPEARE as upon a sea.
Each guess of others into worlds unknown

Shakespeare revolves, but guards concealed his own—
As in the Infinite hangs poised his thought,
Surveying all things, and asserting nought.

And now, transferr'd from singer and from sage,
Stands in full day the spirit of the age-
INQUIRY-She, so coy when first pursued
In her own ancient arduous solitude,

Seized by the crowd, and dragged before their bar,
Changes her shape, and towers transformed to War;
Inscribes a banner, flings it to the gales-

Cries, "I am Truth, and Truth, when arm'd, prevails." Up leaps the zealot-Zeal must clear her way,

And fell the forests that obscure the day.

To guard the Bible flashes forth the sword,
And Cromwell rides, the servant of the Lord.
Twin-born with Freedom, then with her took breath
That Art whose dying will be Freedom's death.

From Thought's fierce clash in lightning broke the word;
Ungagg'd at last the Isle's strong Man was heard :
Still in their sheaths the direful swords repose;
Voice may yet warn: The ORATOR arose !

Founders of England's slow-built eloquence-
Truth's last adornment as her first defence-
Pass-but as shadows! Nevermore again
May the land need, yet reel beneath such men !
Lo, where from haunted floors the phantoms rise,
Pale through the mists which cleared for us the skies,
There, but one moment lingering in the hall,

The earliest, hardiest Orator of all

Shines and wanes ELIOT on the verge of War,
As day, in redd'ning, slays its own bright star.
There flits by WALLER of the silvery tongue,
And faith as ductile as the lyre he strung.
There, wise to warn, yet impotent to guide,
And sad with foresight, moves the solemn HYDE.
Mark in the front, fit leader of the van,

Yon large, imperfect, necessary Man;
With all the zeal a cause conflicting needs,
And all the craft by which the cause succeeds;

Iron as Ludlow, yet as Villiers trim,
'Twixt saint and sinner-Atlas-shoulder'd PYм.

Behind, pure, chill, and lonely as a star,
Ruthless as angels, when destroying, are,
Sits VANE, and dreams Utopian isles to be,
While swells the storm, and sea but spreads on sea;

Still in a mirage he discerns a shore,

And acts with Hampden from belief in More.

Nor less alone, nor less a dreamer, there

Wan FALKLAND looks through space with gloomy stare,
Pondering that question which no wise man's voice
Ever solved yet to guide the brave man's choice,
When the dread Present, as on an abyss,
Splits, in two paths, the frowning precipice-
That, to lost towers which tides already whelm;
This, through dark gorges to an unknown realm;

Hard to decide! each future has its crime;

Each past its wreck: here, how control the time?
There, how rekindle dust? Between the two,
At least choose quick. Life is the verb "To do!"
What makes the huge wall crash before the course
Of the slight ball? Accelerated force!

Ponderest thou still, while murder fills the stage, And the ghost becks, O Hamlet of thine age? "The scholar's, soldier's glass !"-glass clearer still, Of worth made useless by the want of will.

But lo! what shadow fills the phantom hall, Awful and large, awhile obscuring all;

On angry aspects bending brows of woe,

Still as a glacier over storms below?

That front, proud STRAFFORD, needs no bauble crown
To make it kinglier than the Stuart's frown.
How the dire genius, skill'd, alert, intent,
Speaks from each swart Italian lineament!
Some close Visconti there your search defies,
In the cold gloom of unrevealing eyes;
And the hard daring of Castrucci dwells
In scheming lips comprest as Machiavel's.

But hark! what voice, deep-toned, and musical With Raleigh's noble English, thrills the hall? Still of that voice which awed its age, one tone Comes, sad as flutes funereal, to our own; When, at the last, the grand offender pleads, Tears drown our justice and efface his deeds; And when poor Stuart, with his feeble "Nay," Signs the great life which shields his own away, Freedom, that needs the victim, rights his shade, And turns her axe towards him who has betrayed; While loyal Knighthood, half a rebel grown, Veils its shamed eyes from Treason on a throne.

But see, where rising last on lull'd debate,

With brief discourse, in which each word has weight, With "brain to plan, tongue to persuade, and hand To do all mischief," which can free his land,

Great HAMPDEN fills the eye!—

Oh, wise as Strafford, and as Vane sincere,

Warm without frenzy, wary without fear,

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