schemes were accomplished; always seasonable, always
adequate, the suggestion of an understanding animated by ardor and
enlightened by prophecy.

The ordinary feelings which make life amiable and indolent, were unknown
to him. No domestic difficulties, no domestic weakness, reached him; but,
aloof from the sordid occurrences of life, and unsullied by its
intercourse, he came occasionally into our system, to counsel and decide.
A character so exalted, so strenuous, so various, so authoritative,
astonished a corrupt age, and the treasury trembled at the name of Pitt,
through all classes of venality. Corruption imagined, indeed, that she had
found defects in this statesman, and talked much of the inconsistency of
his glory, and much of the ruin of his victories; but the history of his
country, and the calamities of the enemy, answered and refuted her.

Nor were his political his only talents. His eloquence was an era in the
senate; peculiar and spontaneous; familiarly expressing gigantic
sentiments and instructive wisdom; not like the torrent of Demosthenes, or
the splendid conflagration of Tully; it resembled sometimes the thunder,
and sometimes the music of the spheres. He did not conduct the
understanding through the painful subtilty of argumentation, nor was he
ever on the rack of exertion; but rather lightened upon the subject, and
reached the point by the flashings of the mind, which, like those of the
eye, were felt, but could not be followed.

Upon the whole, there was in this man something that could create,
subvert, or reform; an understanding, a spirit, and an eloquence, to
summon mankind to society, or to break the bonds of slavery asunder, and
to rule the wildness of free minds with unbounded authority; something
that could establish or overwhelm empires, and strike a blow in the world
that should resound through the universe.

NOTES.--Demosthenes (b. 385, d. 322, B. C.) was the son of a cutler at
Athens, Greece. By diligent study and unremitting toil, he became the
greatest orator that ever lived.

Tully, Marcus Tullius Cicero (b. 106, d. 43, B. C.), was the most
remarkable of Roman orators. He held the highest office of the Republic.

XXXIV. THE SOLDIER'S REST. (156)

Sir Walter Scott, 1771-1832, the great Scotch poet and novelist, was born
in Edinburgh. Being a feeble child, he was sent to reside on his
grandfather's estate in the south of Scotland. Here he spent several
years, and gained much k