VOL. VII.

NO. 11

NA late number of the Chautauquan Magazine there appeared an his torical sketch of the Supreme Court from its origin, with a critical notice of the several chief justices from John Jay to Melville W. Fuller.

In reading the writer's account of the court while under the chief justiceship of John Marshall, my recollection was awakened to a scene I witnessed before that august body sixty years ago.

It was in January, 1829, when an important case came before the court, in which several lawyers of distinction were engaged, among whom were Daniel Webster and William Wirt. These two legal Titans were ranged on opposite sides, and the case, being one involving the boundary line between two states, a wide range was given to the arguments of counsel. It was a case well suited to the genius of the expounder of the Constitution, and his opponent had no lack of knowledge in all the intricate windings of the controversy I took great pleasure at that early period of my life in listening to the speeches of the famous orators of the time. I had heard Webster at Bunker Hill four

The bench at that period was occu pied by men who were the contemporaries of the Father of his Country, of whom the illustrious jurist, John Marshall, was the most conspicuous figure. His associate justices were men of signal ability, the most notable of whom was Justice Story. Bushrod Washington-the nephew of his Uncle Georgeoccupied a seat. The names of the remaining four I do not call to mind. It was a bench of grave and able judges, lawyers who had won their spurs at the bar, reaching the breach by their merit rather than from their political prefer

in their silk gowns, I was immediately impressed with the gravity of the scene. They were all men of the eighteenth century, as if fresh from the stirring epoch of the Revolution, intent on perfecting the jurisprudence of a great nation. The illustrious Chief Justice, the friend and companion of Washing ton, presided with a dignity commensurate with his high office. The Constitution itself was but forty years old at that period, and it naturally fell to the court to determine nice questions of the interpretation of the great experiment. It was fortunate for the Nation and the solidity of our jurisprudence that the illustrious Marshall was so long the presiding genius of that highest court. But his associate judges, at that time, were men of no common distinction. The brainiest of the number was, without doubt, Justice Story, between whom and the Chief Justice the intimacy was very close. I often saw them walking together as they went down. Pennsylvania avenue to their hotels, in earnest and lively conversation— Marshall in his knee breeches, black silk stockings and low shoes, and Story in the regulation black broadcloth and his gold-rim spectacles. I call to mind. I call to mind my walk one day just behind them, and it is safe to say I have never since followed in the wake of so much legal lore. In personal appearance there was no resemblance. Marshall had the characteristic Virginia aspect of that period, sedate and void of the least taint of pride and ostentation. Story was a typical New Englander. bright, quick in his movements and utterance, always on the alert. His head was a library of reference, in which were stored all the legal lore that had come down from Justinian, Coke and Blackstone.

In listening to the speeches of Web

ster and Wirt in this celebrated case I had the opportunity of hearing two distinct styles of oratory. As was said! by Plutarch of Demosthenes, so I may say of Webster, "though without any embellishment of wit or humor, he was always grave and serious." Not so with Wirt, who embellished his argument with the flowers of rhetoric, and such was the exuberance of his wit and humor that a smile was often seen upon the faces of the judges.

Although Webster and Wirt were of nearly equal prominence at that period as lawyers and pleaders, there was yet a wide difference in their manner of addressing the court. I cannot better convey my own idea of this difference than by quoting the comparison made by Quintilian of Demosthenes with Cicero. By substituting the names of Webster and Wirt for Demosthenes and Cicero, the difference will be shown as it appeared to me: "There is some difference in their style. The one is more concise, the other more diffusive; the one pushes closer to his adversary, the other allows him a larger spot to fight upon. The one is always endeavoring to pierce him with the vivacity of his style, the other often bears him down with the weight of his discourse. Nothing can be retrenched from the one nor added to the other. Demosthenes has more care and study, Cicero more nature and genius." Webster was supreme in the grandeur and magnificence of his style, while Wirt evinced an exhaustless treasury of diversified knowledge, upon which he drew with a felicity that charmed. his auditors.

Webster held the trump card over all the public speakers of his day in his wonderful presence. I have yet to see his equal. This quality lent power to, and riveted the attention upon, his

discourse. When some ponderous axiom fell from his lips, the listener waited with bated breath for the next, as the Greeks of Lesbos, in the age of fable, counted the blows of Vulcan's hammer as he went on forging thunderbolts for Jupiter. The eloquence of Webster had many of the characteristics of that of Demosthenes, as described by a French author of the last century, who compared it to a "beautiful and magnificent building formed after the taste of ancient architecture, that admits only of simple ornaments, the first view of which, and much more the plan, the economy and distribution of the several parts, exhibit something so great, noble and majestic, they strike and charm the artist at the same instant."

In

The eloquence of Wirt was of another order, which might be compared to "houses built in an elegant and delicate taste, to which art and opulence have annexed whatever is rich and splendid, in which gold and marble are everywhere seen and where the eye is perpetually delighted with something curious and exquisite." person he was less tall than Webster, yet he, too, had a commanding presence; heavy-set, his great round head and broad forehead told of his Swiss descent. As I now remember him, standing before the court, holding in his hands a ponderous folio, from which he read in the Latin tongue, I was so impressed with the dramatic-scene that it still remains indelible on the disc of my memory.

While I have always ranked Webster as the Demosthenes of his time, I do not feel justified in ranking Wirt as the Eschines, to whom Quintilian gave the second place. Henry Clay was then in the flush of his brilliant career; with his speeches in the Senate and

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elsewhere I had often been charmed, though I had never heard him as a pleader. Before all other tribunals his rank was only second to Webster, though not a few of his ardent admirers ranked him as his equal.

The printed speeches of these two great orators lack, as in all cases, the power to convey to the reader the most essential part of eloquence, and, as it were, the soul of it. We fail to catch the "marvelous art by which the orator sometimes insinuates himself gently into the people's hearts, and sometimes enters with a kind of violence and makes himself absolute master over them."

That matchless oration delivered by Webster on Bunker Hill on June 17, 1825, at the laying of the corner-stone of the Bunker Hill monument, has been read by two generations of men, born since its delivery, and pronounced eloquent, but they should have heard it delivered and seen the orator to appreciate the grandeur of the scene and the occasion, and drank from the flowing cup of his eloquence, which has not since been equaled in this country. The orator, standing upon a raised platform with his vast audience on descending ground around him, having for his background the clear blue sky of a bright June day, which caused his magnificent figure to be seen to the best advantage, called to mind the gods of Homer, and the line, "As from Olympus o'er the clear blue sky." Another dramatic feature of the occasion was the presence of the illustrious Frenchman, Lafayette, who laid the corner stone. On that historic spot the towering shaft still stands, but I know of but a single spectator, besides myself, not yet gathered by the sickle of Time.

F. E. COREY.

Written for the Utah Monthly Magazine.

III.

VIRGO.

RIMEVAL man was not a sav

age, but the glorious creation of the immortal gods. The earliest period of the history of humanity was called the golden age in the mythology of the ancient Greeks - a period when men's lives and hearts were swayed only by love, truth and innocenceere the elements were propitious. Earth smiled in perpetual spring, evil was unknown and the gods were pleased to descend and dwell among A beautiful parallel story may be found in our own Bible and enlarged to our imaginations by the fertile brain of Milton, as he sings of Eden with its two innocent, pure, happy dwellers, where

men.

"Thus talking, hand in hand alone they pass'd On to their blissful hour,

where Adam says to Eve,

"How often from the steep

Of echoing hill or thicket have we heard
Celestial voices to the midnight air.
Sole, or responsive each to other's note,
Singing their great Creator? oft in bands
While they keep watch, or nightly rounding

walk,

With heavenly touch of instrumental sounds In full harmonic number joined, their songs Divide the night and lift our thoughts to hea

ven.

Wonderful, beautiful Eden! whence "From a sapphire fount the crisped brooks, Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold, With mazy error under pendant shades Ran nectar, visiting each plant, and fed Flow'rs worthy of Paradise.

Where bloomed

"Flow'rs of all hue and without thorn the rose. airs, vernal airs. Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune The trembling leaves, while universal Pan, Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance, Led on the eternal spring.

But Pandora, in over-weening curiosity, opened the mysterious box presented her by Jupiter. From it escaped all the evil passions, pain and disease that afterward afflicted mankind, leaving only Hope inviolate. Of this curiosity Longfellow says:

"This passion in their ire,

The gods themselves inspire,
To vex mankind with evils manifold,
So that disease and pain

O'er the whole earth may reign, And never more return the Age of Gold." Man therefore became less pure, less tranquil, less happy in the silver age which succeeded the golden. The good, however, was still predominant and the gods lingered. Then followed the brazen and iron ages Purity and joy had vanished, the earth groaned beneath slaughter and wickedness, and every man's hand was raised against his neighbor. One by one the gods departed from the abodes of men until Astroa alone remained, still striving against the overwhelming tide of evil. But at length she, too, bade farewell to earth and Jupiter placed her among the constellations. In his poem "On the Death of an Infant," Milton alludes to this Goddess in the following lines: Or wert thou that just Maid, who once before Forsook the hated earth, O tell me sooth, And cam'st again to visit us once more?" LIBRA.

in the 4th book of Paradise lost. In the battle of words and arms between Satan and Gabriel, the former, scorning the dire threats of the latter, had collected all his force for offense and defense, and Paradise with all the starry heavens was threatened by the dreadful conflict that was brewing. The elements at least would have been torn and Chaos assumed his old-time reign had not

"Th' Eternal to prevent such horrid fray Hung forth in Heav'n his golden scales yet

s en

Betwixt Astrea and the Scorpion sign. Wherein all things created first He weigh'd, The pendulous round earth with balanced air In counterpoise; now ponders all merits, Battles and realms: in these He put two weights,

The sequel each of parting and of fight,

The latter quick up flew and kick'd the beam: Which Gabriel spying thus bespake the fiend: Satan, I know thy strength, and thou know'st mine:

Neither our own but given; what folly then To boast what arms can do, since thine no

more

Than heaven permits, nor mine, though

double now

To trample thee as mire? for proof look up!
And read thy lot in yon celestial sign
Where thou art weighed, and shown how light,

how weak,

If thou resist. The fiend look'd up, and knew His mounted scale aloft: nor more; but fled Murmuring, and with him fled the shades of night.

SCORPIO.

This is the scorpion which Juno commanded to kill Orion with its poisonous sting. Further reference will be made to this constellation in the story of Orion.

SAGITTARIUS.

This constellation forms a very distinct bow and arrow already drawn and ready to let fly at Scorpio. He was known on earth as Chiron the Centaur, half man, half horse. Chiron was distinguished for skill in music, medicine,

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hunting and prophecy. He taught Aesculapius in medicine, who afterward became the great patron and god of that science. Chiron also taught music to Apollo, whose harp discoursed such sweet and beautiful music "as no mortal ear had heard before." And Hercules learned astronomy from this same Centaur while at his death he gave to Dejanira the fatal secret which destroyed the renowned hero.

AQUARIUS.

In calculating backward 630 years from the erection of the pyramid we find Thurban, the dragon star, looking down the entrance, still retaining its place at the pole, but instead of the Pleiades being at the zenith as in the beginning of the world's history, Aquarius, the waterman, has taken that position.

The Pyramid gives the date of its own building as being 2170 B. C., add to this the required number 630 and we have 2800-the mean of the two dates given for Noah's Flood in the Septuagint and Hebrew versions of the Bible, which differ from each other.

This is striking to the believer in the Pyramid, not only in thus settling a doubtful chronolgy but in proving the antiquity of star names and arrangements and realistic signs.

We will now leave the zodiac and consider some of the circumpolar constellations.