he is a great statesman. He believes the cause of the North to be hopeless, and that their enterprise cannot succeed. … I have another and a far brighter vision before my gaze. It may be a vision; but I will cherish it. I see one vast confederation stretching from the frozen North in unbroken line to the glowing South, and from the wild billows of the Atlantic westward to the calmer waters of the Pacific main; and I see one people and one language, and one law and one faith, and over all that wide continent the home of freedom and a refuge for the oppressed of every race and of every clime."
It remains to notice, however briefly, some of the more noticeable events of Mr. Bright's public life. They have not been so numerous as might, on first thoughts, be supposed: for he has all his da3'S been a sower of seed, and not a reaper; and, of much that he has sown, future generations will reap the fruit. His "record" will be best found in his collected speeches, which are, in my opinion, the finest in the language, whether as regards matter or diction. I know no politician who has been more uniformly in the right when others have been in the wrong, and I know no greater master of the English tongue.
His first public appearance was made at Rochdale, in 1830, in his nineteenth year. It was in favor of temperance, and is said to have been a success. Like most young speakers, he commenced by committing to memory what he intended to utter on the platform, but soon abandoned so clumsy and exhaustive a method of address. Instead of memoriter reproductions, he held impromptu rehearsals at odd hours in his father's mill before Mr. Nicholas Nuttall, an intelligent workman
