The British Spy, Or, Letters to a Member of the British Parliament: Written During a Tour Through the United States

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Printed at the Repertory Office, 1804 - United States - 105 pages

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Page 51 - It was all new, and I seemed to have heard it for the first time in my life. His enunciation was so deliberate that his voice trembled on every syllable, and every heart in the assembly trembled in unison. His peculiar phrases had that force of description that the original scene appeared to be, at that moment, acting before our eyes. We saw the very faces of the Jews — the staring, frightful distortions of malice and rage. We saw the buffet: my soul kindled with a flame of indignation and my hands...
Page 52 - I despair of giving you any idea of the effect produced by this short sentence, unless you could perfectly conceive the whole manner of the man as well as the peculiar crisis in the discourse. Never before did I completely understand what Demosthenes meant by laying such stress on delivery.
Page 55 - On a rock, whose haughty brow Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood, Robed in the sable garb of woe, With haggard eyes the poet stood ; (Loose his beard and hoary hair, Stream'd like a meteor to the troubled air,) And with a master's hand and prophet's fire Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre...
Page 76 - Th' applause of list'ning senates to command, The threats of pain and ruin to despise, To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, And read their history in a nation's eyes...
Page 58 - This grew speedily to an excess; for men began to hunt more after words than matter; and more after the choiceness of the phrase, and the round and clean composition of the sentence, and the sweet falling of the clauses, and the varying and illustration of their works with tropes and figures, than after the weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of argument, life of invention, or depth of judgment.
Page 51 - Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do' — the voice of the preacher, which had all along faltered, grew fainter and fainter, until his utterance being entirely obstructed by the force of his feelings, he raised his handkerchief to his eyes, and burst into a loud and irrepressible flood of grief.
Page 53 - ... to heaven, and pouring his whole soul into his tremulous voice — "but Jesus Christ — like a God!" If he had been indeed and in truth an angel of light, the effect could scarcely have been more divine.
Page 54 - His mind is too serious, too earnest, too solicitous, and at the same time too dignified, to stoop to artifice. Although as far removed from ostentation as a man can be, yet it is clear, from the train, the style, and substance of his thoughts, that he is not only a very polite scholar, but a man of extensive and profound erudition.
Page 50 - He then drew a picture of the sufferings of our Saviour; his trial before Pilate; his ascent up Calvary; his crucifixion and his death. I knew the whole history; but never until then had I heard the circumstances so selected, so arranged, so colored. It was all new, and I seemed to have heard it for the first time in my life.
Page 76 - Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear; Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air. Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast The little tyrant of his fields withstood, Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood.

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