. - • - Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from Microsoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/elocutionparkerOOparkrich PAIiKSB «& WAT©0> T, » S2£:«II^?^. ISO. ©, /■^v v«^^-> THE NATIONAL FIFTH KEADEE: CONTAINING A CO! _^TE AND PRACTICAL TREATISE ON ELOCUTION; SELECT AND CLASSIFIED EXERCISES IN READING AND declamation; WITH BIOGRAPHICAL sketches, AND COPIO JS NOTES : ADAPTED TO THE USE OF STUDENTS IN LITERATURE. By KICHAKD GKEENE PAEKEE AXD J. MADISON WATSON. A. S. BARNES & COMPANY, NEW YORK AND CHICAGO. 1872, LIBRARY UNJVERSlTY OF CAllfOtNIA ^HJE jMyVTIONyVI, J3ef;IE£ Of ^Ey\DE^g. COMPLETE IN TWO INDEPENDENT PARTS. I. THE NATIONAL READERS. By PARKER & WATSON. No. 1. — National Primer, 66pp>, ft mo. No. 2. — National First Reader, . . ?28pp., ttmo. No. 3. — National Second Reader, . 221pp., femo. No. 4. — National Third Reader, . . 2ss pp., f2mo. No. S. — National Fourth Reader, . 1.32 pp., i2mo. No. 6. — National Fifth Reader, . . goo pp., /2mo. II. THE INDEPENDENT READERS. By J. MADISON WATSON. The Independent First Reader, . . so pp., ?6mo. The Independent Second Reader,, too pp., femo. The Independent Third Reader, . 210 pjj., ?o>no. The Independent Fourth Reader, . 201 pp., 72»w. The Independent Fifth Reader, . . ss6 pp., /2mo. The National Fifth Reader, .... ceo pp., r&mo, III. NATIONAL SPELLING BOOKS. By J. MADISON WATSON. National Klementary Speller, . . . foopp., ?o»>o. National Pronouncing Speller, . . /sspp., /2mo. *** The Readers constitute two complete and entirely dis- tinct series, either of which are adequate to every want of the best schools. The Spellers may accompany either Series. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S66, by A . S . KARNES & CO., In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. N. 5th. 0JUQ PSYC ■ LI' PREFACE. IN the preparation of this volume, we have a!«.ned to make it a com« plete and sufficient work for advanced classes in Reading, Elocution, and English and American Literature ; to furnish, in an available form, such an amount of biographical, historical, classical, orthoepical, and miscellaneous matter, as to render it highly valuable as a book of ref- erence ; and to present a collection of pieces so rich, varied, perspicuous, and attractive, as to suit all classes of minds, all times, and all occasions. Part First, in two chapters, embraces a simple, complete, and emi- nently practical Treatise on Elocution. The principles and rules are stated in a succinct and lucid manner, and followed by examples and exercises of sufficient number and extent to enable the student thor- oughly to master each point as presented, as well as to acquire a dis- tinct comprehension of the parts as a ichqle. In Part Second, the Selections for Reading and Declamation contain what arc regarded as the choicest gems of English literature. The works of many authors, ancient and modem, have been consulted, and more than a hundred standard writers, of the English language, on both sides of the Atlantic, have been laid under contribution to enable the authors to present a collection, rich in all that can inform the understand- ing, improve the taste, and cultivate the heart, and which, at the same time, shall furnish every variety of style and subject to exemplify the principles of Rhetorical delivery, and form a finished reader and elocu- tionist. These selections have been arranged in a regularly graded course, and strictly classified with regard to the nature of the subjects. Although we have not been studious of novelty, presenting only what we regarded as suitable, intrinsically excellent, and most truly indica- ting the mode and range of thought of the writer, it will be seen that a large proportion of this collection is composed of pieces to be found in no siniilar work. Much care and labor have been devoted to the orthoepical department. The pronunciation of all words liable to be mispronounced is indicated once in each paragraph, or at the bottom of the page where they occur. With respect to the words about the pronunciation of which orthoe- pists differ, we have adopted the most recent and r. lial le authority. Classical and historical allusions, so common among the best writers, have in all cases been explained ; and, if the authors have not been de- 907 jy P It E F A C E . ceived, every aid has been given in the notes, that the reader may readily comprehend the meaning of the writer. This has been done in a manner more full and satisfactory than they have seen in any other collection, and in every instance at the bottom of the page where the difficulty occurs, so that the reader may not be subjected to the trouble of con- sulting a dictionary, or other books of reference, — a work which, in general, if done at all, is done with extreme reluctance, even by ad- vanced pupils. In order that the student may still more thoroughly understand what he reads, and for the convenience of that large class of readers who have not leisure to peruse voluminous memoirs of distinguished men, and yet would be unwilling to forego all knowledge of them, we have introduced concise Biographical Sketches of authors from whose works extracts have been selected, and of jDersons whose names occur in the Reading Exercises. These sketches, j>resenting a clear and distinct outline of the life, and producing a clear and distinct impression of the character, furnish an amount of useful and available information rarely surpassed by memoirs of greater extent and pretension. Lists of the names of authors, both alphabetical and chronological, have also been introduced, thus rendering this a convenient text book for students in English and Ameacan Literature. The improvements made in the revision of this work are numerous and important. The Treatise on Elocution has been carefully elabora- ted, involving the introduction of phonetic exercises, a more critical orthoepical notation, and many most apt and interesting examples for illustration. Several of these examples under each section are left un- marked, thus affording students opportunities to exercise their judg- ment, taste, and discrimination. The collection of Reading Lessons has been greatly improved by judicious omissions, and the substitution of new dialogues, ballads, dramatic lyrics, and other rhetorical pieces that are more varied and inspiriting, and better adapted to elocutionary readings, both public and private. The classification of these lessons is more systematic and thorough than that ever before attempted in any corresponding work. They are divided into formal sections, in each of which only one lead- ing subject is treated, or one important element of Elocution rendered prominent. All practical aids are furnished by more copious notes, new indexes, etc. New Yobk, June, 1S66. CONTENTS I. ELOCUTION. I. ORTHOEPY. PAGH Articulation 20 Definitions 20 Oral Elements 22 Cognates 24 Alphabetic Equivalents 24 Oral Elements Combined 26 Errors in Articulation 28 Words 29 Analysis of Words 29 Rules in Articulation 32 Exercises in Articulation 32 Phonetic Laughter , , . 35 SYLL A3IC ATION 3G Definitions 36 Formation of Syllables 36 Rules in Syllabication 37 Exercises in Syllabication 38 Accent 40 Definitions 40 Exercises in Accent 40 Words Distinguished by Accent 41 Accent Changed by Contrast 42 II EXPRESSION. Emphasis 43 Definitions 43 Rules in Emphasis 44 Exercises in Emphasis 44 Slur 47 Exercises in Slur 47 Inflections , 50 Definitions « 53 Rules in Inflections. , 54 Exercises in Inflections 5(j VI CONTENTS. PAGE Modulation. .■>. 58 Pitch 53 Forco CO Quality C2 Rate C5 Monotone 67 Exercises in Monotone 68 Personation , 09 Exercise in Personation TO Pauses , . TO Definitions TO Rules for Pauses Tl Suspensive Quantity 72 Exercises in Pauses T3 II. READINGS. I, PIECES IN PROSE. Section 1 77 1. The Months Henry Ward Beecher. 77 Section II 85 3. Never Despair . . . 85 5. A Golden Coppersmith , 89 0. Noble Revenge Thomas tie Quincey. 92 7. Beauty Ralph Waldo Emerson. 94 Section III 97 9. Maternal Affection 100 10. The Good Wife Donald G. Mitchell. 101 11. Influence of Home Richard Henry Dana. 103 13. The Widow and her Son— Part First Washington Irving. 106 14. The Widow and her Son — Part Second 110 Section IV 113 15. Biography of Jacob Hays William Cox. 113 16. Peter Pounce and Parson Adams . .Henry Fielding. 117 19. A Curtain Lecture of Mrs. Caudle Douglas Jerrold. 126 Section V 129 22. Broken Hearts — Part First Washington Irving. 134 23. Broken Hearts— Part Second. 186 27. Selected Extracts Henry Ward Beecher. 144 Section VI 147 29. The Barbarities of War Thomas Chalmers. 148 3)5. The Siege of Leyden John Lathrop Motley. 157 Section VII 164 37. Christopher Columbus Washington Irving. 165 38. Return of Columbus William 11. Preseott. 166 39. The Revolutionary Alarm George Bancroft. 170 CONTENTS. vii Page Section VIII 180 44. Wants — Part First James Kirke Paulding. 180 45. Wants— Part Second 183 46. Wants— Part Third 184 Section IX 198 51 Work Thomas Carlyle. 199 53. Study Oreille Dewey. 204 Section X 207 . 54. Letters D. G. Mitchell. 207 55. Select Passages in Prose 210 I. Good use of Memory. II. Injudicious Haste in Study — Locke. III. Studies — Bacon. IV. Books— Channi/ig. V. The Bible— Hall. 56. Buying Books Henry Ward Becchcr 214 57. Selected Extracts Thomas de Quincey. 217 Section XI 221 59. The Poet and his Critics Washington Allston. 224 Section XII 230 61. Ancient and Modern Writers Charles Sumner 280 63. Sound and Sense Robert Chambers. 234 64. The Power of Words E.P. Whipple. 2:7 66. Parallel between Pope and Dryden Dr Samuel Johnson. 243 Section XIII , 247 67. Charge against Lord Byron Francis Jeffrey. 247 70. View of the Coliseum Ortille Dewey. 255 Section XIV 257 72. Scene with a Panther Charles Brockden Broicn. 257 73. Count Fathom's Adventure— Part First T G. Smollett. 261 74. Count Fathom's Adventure— Part Second 263 76. The Rattlesnake William Gilmore Simms. 270 Section XV 275 77. Irving and Macaulay — Part First Wm. M. Thackeray. 275 78. Irving and Macaulay — Part Second 277 79. The Puritans Thomas B. Macaulay 280 82. Advantages of Adversity Edward Everett. 284 85. Liberty Oreille Deicey. 291 Section XVI 293 87. The Death of Hamilton Eiiphalct Kott. 294 90. Glory Dr. Francis Wayland. 299 Section XVII , . 304 92. The Stolen Rifle. Washington Irving. 304 93. The Tomahawk submissive to Eloquence John Neat 305 96. Marios in Prison Thomas de Quincey. 311 Section XIX ... 338 107. Daniel Webster— Part First Edward Boerett. 331) 108. Daniel Webster— Part Second 341 109. From a Historical Address Daniel Webster 313 viii CONTENT! PAGB 110. Public Virtue Henry Clay. 843 111. Washington's Sword and Franklin's Staff J. Q. Adams. 343 Section XX 350 113. Paul Flemming Resolves Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 353 115. Life Horace Binney Wallace. 857 Section XXI 359- 116. Blennerhassett's Temptation William Wirt. 359 Section XXII 370 119. Character of Scott William H. Prescott. 370 120. Scene from Ivanhoe Sir Walter Scott. 373 121. Shakspeare Dr. Johnson. 378 Section XXIV 400 130. Our Honored Dead Henry Ward Beecher. 403 132. Death of the Old Trapper— Part First. ... . .James F. Cooper. 406 133. Death of the Old Trapper— Part Second 410 Section XXVI 436 140. Scenes from Pickwick — The Dilemma Charles Dickens. 436 111. Scenes from Pickwick — Speech of Sergeant Buzfuz 440 142. Scenes from Pickwick — Sam Weller as Witness 443 143. My Oratorical Experience Nathaniel Hawthorne. 447 Section XXVII 450 145. Forest Trees Washington Irving. 452 147. Landscape Beauty Francis Jeffrey. 453 149. Elements of the Swiss Landscape George B. Cheevcr. 4C3 Section XXX 485 157. Character of Hamlet William Hazlitt. 485 Section XXXI 505 1G2. Society the Great Educator Orville Dewey. 505 163. The Schoolmaster and the Conqueror Henry Brougham. 507 164. Intellectual Power James H. Hammond. 509 105. Moral Progress of the American People Wm. H Seward. 511 Section XXXII 515 163. Hymns Henry Ward Beecher. 521 Section XXXIII 532 173. Select Passages in Prose 535 I. Evidence of a Creator — Tillotson. II. Nature Pro- claims a Deity — Chateaubriand. III. The Unbeliever — Chalmers. IV. Blessings of Religious Faith — Davy. Section XXXIV 543 175. The Poet H B. Wallace. 543 177. The Influence of Poetry William E. Channing. 547 Section XXXVII 575 183. Milton — Part First T/iomas Babbington Macaulay. 575 187. Milton— Part Second 577 Section XXXVIII 583 191. The Knocking at the Gate, in Macbeth. . Thomas de Quincey. 587 Section XXXIX 500 103. Omnipresence nnd Omniscience of God Addimn. 593 CONTENTS. ix IL PIECES IN VERSE. PAGE Section 1 77 2. Hymn to the Seasons James Thomson. 81 Section II So 4. Now Charles Mackay. 87 Section III 97 8. Sabbath Morning James Grahame. 97 12. An Old Haunt 105 Section V 129 20. Thanatopsis William Cullen Bryant. 129 21. Euthanasia Willis Oaylord Clark. 132 24. Lines Relating to Curran's Daughter Thomas Moore 139 25. The Bridge of Sighs Thomas Hood. 140 2G. Select Passages in Verse 142 I. Succession of Human Beings. II. Death of the Young and. Fair. III. A Lady Drowned — Pioctor. IV. Life of Man — Beaumont. V. Coronach — Scott. VI. Immortal- ity— R. II Dana. Section VI . g 147 28. Fuller's Bird'. Bryan Walter Proctor. 147 30. Bingcn on the Rhine Mrs. Caroline Norton. 150 32. Battle of Waisaw Thomas Campbell. 155 34. The Happy Warrior William Wordsworth. 1G0 35. The Conqueror's Grave William Cullen Bryant. 102 Section VII 1G4 36. Destiny of America George Berkeley. 164 40. The Revolutionary Rising Thomas Buchanan Read. 172 41. The Settler Albert B. Street. 174 42. The Star-Spangled Banner Francis Scott Key. 177 *3. The American Flag Joseph Rodman Drake. 178 (Section VIII 180 47. The Deserted Village— Part First Oliver Goldsmith. 185 48. The Deserted Village— Part Second 189 49. The Deserted Village— Part Third 192 Section IX 198 50. The Power of Art Charles Sprague. 198 52. Address to the Indolent James Thompson. 202 Section XII 2:J0 62. Language Oliver Wendell Holmes. 232 65. From the Essay on Criticism Alexander Pope. 240 Section XIII 247 68. Lord Byron Robert Pollok. 249 69. Midnight— The Coliseum Lord Byron. 358 71. The Dying Gladiator Lord Byron. 256 Section XIV . .* 257 75. Darkness Lord Byron. 2<.r r X CONTENTS. PAGE Section XV 275 80. The Pilgrim's Vision Oliver Wendell Holmes. 282 81. The Roclv of the Pilgrims George P. Morris. 283 83. The Graves of the Patriots James Gates Percival. 287 84. Antiquity of Freedom William Cullen Bryant. 289 Section XVI 293 86. The Inquiry Charles Mackay. 293 88. Pass On, Relentless World George Lunt. 295 89. The World for Sale = Rev. Ralph Hoyt. 297 91. Passing Away Rev. John Pierpont. £01 Section XVII £04 94. The Baron's Last Banquet Albert G. Greene. 307 95. Bernardo del Carpio Mrs. Felicia Hemans. £09 Section XVIII 313 97. The Annoyer Nathaniel Parker Willis. 313 98. The Palm and the Pine Bayard Taylor. £15 99. Fair Ines ". Thomas Hood. 317 100. Love Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 318 101. Lady Clare Alfred Ten nyson. 321 103. Maud Mailer John Greenleaf Whiltier. 324 103. The Dream— Part First Lord Byron. 327 104. The Dream— Part Second SCO Section XIX 338 106. A Great Man Departed 308 Section XX 350 112. Procrastination Edward Young. 350 114. Ode to Adversity , . Thomas Gray. 355 Section XXI 359 118. Parrhasius and the Captive Nathaniel I arkcr Willis. 365 Section XXIII 390 125. Select Passages in Verse 890 I. Patriotism — Scott. II. Ambition- -Byroi. III. Indepen- dence — Thomson. IV. The Captive's Dream — Mrs. F. Hemans. V. William Tell— Bryant. VI. Tell of Swit- zerland — Knowles. VII. How Sleep the Brave — Collins. VIII. The Greeks at Thermopylae — Byron, 126. Greece Lord Byron. 394 127. Song of the Greeks, 1822 Thomas Campbell. 396 128. Marco Bozzaris Fitz-Greene Halleck. 398 Section XXIV 400 129. The Closing Year George D. Prentice. 400 131. The Holy Dead Mrs. L. H Sigourney. 405 134. Elegy in a Country Church-Yard Thomas Gray. 414 Section XXV 417 135. The Phantom Ship 417 136. The Drowned Mariner Elisabeth Oakes Smith. 419 137. The Direr SchiUer. 42>2 CONTENTS. X i PAOH 138. Morte d Arthur Alfred Tennyson. 426 13!). The Skeleton in Armor II. W. Longfellow. 434 Section XXVII 450 144. A Forest Nook Albert B. Street. 430 14G. God's First Temples William Cullen Bryant. 455 148. Morning Hymn to Mount Blanc .Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 4C1 150. Alpine Scenery Lord Byron. 4GG Section XXVIII 4G9 151. Select Passages in Verse 4G9 I. Early Da.\vnShelley. II. Daybreak— Longfellow. III. Daybreak— Shelley. IV. Sunrise in South America — Bowles. V. Dawn— Willis. VI. Morning— Milton. VII. Morning on the Rhine— Bowles. VIII. Morning Sounds — Seattle. IX. Early Rising— Hurdis. 152. Select Passages in Verse 473 I. Invocation to Night— J". F. HoUingt, II. A Twilight Picture— Whiiticr. III. Evening — Croly. IV. Night — Coleridge. V. Night at Corinth — Byron. VI. A Sum- mer's Night — Bailey. VII. Night and Death — White. VIII. Night— Shelley. IX. The Moon— Charlotte Smith. X. The Stars — Darwin. Section XXIX : 470 153. Lochinvar's Ride Sir Walter Scott. 4 "19 154. The Kinir of Denmark's Ride Mrs. Caroline Nort m. 155. Sheridan's Ride Thomas Buchanan Bead. 156. The Ride from Ghent to Aix Robert Browning. 4S3 Section XXXII 515 1GG. To a Skylark Percy B. Shelley. 515 1G7. Select Passages in Verse 518 I. Voice of the Wind — Henry Taylor. II. Ministrations of Nature — Coleridge. III. Moonlight — Shakspcare. IV. The Bells of Ostend — Bowles. V. Music — Shakspcare. VI. Music — Shelley. VII. Pastoral Music — Byron. 1GD. The Passions William Collins. 504 170. Alexander's Feast John Drydcn. 527 Section XXXIII 503 171. Hamlet's Soliloquy William Shakspcare. 532 172. Cato's Soliloquy Joseph Addison. 533 174. Intimations of Immortality William Wordsworth. 537 Section XXXIV 543 176. To the Spirit of Poetry Francis S. Osgood. 514 178. To the Poet William Cullen Bryant. 549 Section XXXV 551 179. The Bells Edgar A. Poe. 551 ISO. The Cry of the Human Elizabeth B. Browning. 555 181. The Raven Edgar A. Poe. 558. xii CONTENTS. PA<=1? Section XXXVII 575 188. Satan's Encounter with Death John Milton. 580 189. The Dying Christian to his Soul ...Alexander Pope. 5S3 Section XXXIX 590 192. Messiah Alexander Pope. 590 194. God JR. Derzhavin 590 III. DIALOGUES. Section 17 .113 17. Conversations after Marriage— Part First. . . .R. B. Sheridan. 120 18. Conversations after Marriage — Part Second 123 Section VI 147 81. Lochiel's Warning Thomas Campbell. 153 Section XI 221 58. Gil Bias and the Old Archbishop Alain Le Sage. 221 60. The Sensitive Author R. B. Sheridan. 227 'Section XVIII 313 105. Scene from the Lady of Lyons. .Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton. 333 Section XXI 359 117. Roger Ascham and Lady Jane Grey W. S. Landor. 302 Section XXII 370 122. Scene from King Richard III William Shakspeare. 381 123. Norval John Home. 884 124. Scene from Catiline George Croly. 387 Section XXX 4S5 158. Scenes from Hamlet — Part First William Shakspeare. 487 159. Scenes from Hamlet — Part Second 493 1G0. Scenes from Hamlet— Part Third 498 . 161. Scenes from Hamlet — Part Fourth 501 Section XXXVI 562 182. The Saracen Brothers— Part First 502 183. The Saracen Brothers — Part Second 565 184. Brutus and Titus Nathaniel Lee. 563 85. The Phrensy of Orra Joanna Baillie. 571 Section XXXVIII 583 190. Murder of King Duncan WiUiam Shakspeare. 583 ALPHABETICAL LIST OF AUTHORS.' Adams, John Q., 348. Addison, Joseph, 533, 593. Allston, Washington, 224. Bacon, Francis, 211. Bailey, P. J., 476, Baillte, Joanna, 571. Bancroft, George, 170. Beattie, James, 472. Beaumont, Francis, 142. Beeciier, H. W., 77, 144, 214, 403, 521. Berkeley, George, 164. Bowles, W. L., 470, 472, 519. Brougham, Henry, 507. Brown, C. B. 257. Browning, Robert, 483. Browning, Elizabeth B., 555. Byrant, W. C, 129, 162, 289, 392, 455, 549. Byron, G. G., 253, 256, 267, 327, 391, 394, 466, 475, 520. Campbell, Thomas, 153, 155, 396.^ Carlyle, Thomas, 199. Chalmers, Thomas, 148, 536. Chambers, Robert, 234. Channing, W. E., 212, 547. Chateaubriand, F. A., 536. Cheever, G. B., 463. Clark, Willis G., 132. Clay, Henry, 346. Coleridge, Hartley, 475. Coleridge, S. T., 318, 461, 518. Collins, William, 393, 524. Cooper, J. Fenimore, 406. Cox, William, 113. Croly, George, 387, 474. Dana, R. H., 103, 143. Darwin, Erasmus, 478. Davy, Humphrey, 537. De Quincey, T., 92, 217, 311, 587. Derziiayin, G. R., 596. Dewey, Orville, 204, 255, 291, 505. Dickens, Charles, 436. Drake, J. R., 178. Dryden, John, 527. Emerson, R. W., 94. Everett, Edward, 284, 339. Fielding, Henry, 117. Gibbon, Edward, 95. Goldsmith, Oliver, 185. Graiiame, James, 97. Gray, Thomas, 355, 414. Greene, Albert G., 307. Hall, Robert, 213. Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 398. Hammond, James II., 509. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 447, Hazlitt, William, 485. Hemans, Mrs. F., 309, 392. Rollings, J. F., 473. Holmes, O. W., 232, 282. Home, John, 384. Hood, Thomas, 140, 317. Hoyt, Ralph, 297. Hume, David, 237. Hurdis, James, 473. Irving, W., 106, 134, 165, 304, 452. Jeffrey, Francis, 247, 458. Jerrold, Douglas, 126. Johnson, Samuel, 243, 378. 1 The numbers here given refer to Selections. For Biographical Sketches, see Chronological List ot Authors. XIV ALPHABETICAL LIST OF AUTHORS. Key, Francis Scott, 177. Knowles, J. S., 392. Landor, W. S., 362. Lee, Nathaniel, 568. Le Sage, Alain, 221. Locke, John, 210. Longfellow, H. W., 352, 434, 469. Lunt, George, 295. Lytton, E. Bulwer, 333. Macaulay, T. B., 280, 575. Mackay, Charles, 87, 293. Milton, John, 471, 580. Mitchell, D. G., 101, 207. Moore, Thomas, 139. Morris, George P., 283. Motley, John L., 157. Neal, John, 305. Norton, Caroline E., 150, 480. Nott, Eliphalet, 294. Osgood, Francis S., 544. Paulding, J. K., 180. Percival, J. G., 287. Pierpont, John, 301. Poe, Edgar A., 551, 558. Pollock, Robert, 249. Pope, Alexander, 240, 583, 590. Prentice, George D„, 400. Prescott. W. II., 166, 370. Proctor, B. W., 142, 147. Read, T. Buchanan, 172, 482. Schiller, J. C. F. von, 422. Scott, Walter, 143, 373, 390, 479. Seward, William H., 511. Shakspeare, We, 381, 487, 518, 519, 532, 583. Shelley, P. B., 469, 470, 477, 515, 520. Sheridan, R. B. 120. Sigourney, Mrs., 405. Simms, W. G. 270. Smith, Charlotte, 478. Smith, Elizabeth Oakes, 419. Smollett, T. G., 261. Sprague, Charles, 198. Street, A. B., 174, 450. Sumner, Charles, 230. Taylor, Bayard, 315. Taylor, Henry, 518. Tennyson, Alfred, 321, 426. Thackeray, William M., 275. Thomson, James, 81, 202, 391. Tillotson, JonN, 535. Wallace, H. B ., 357, 543. Wayland, Francis, 299. Webster, Daniel, 343. Whipple, E. P., 237. White, J. Blanco, 477. Whittier, John G., 324, 474. Willis, N. P., 313, 365, 471. Wirt, William, 359. Wordsworth, William, 160, 537, Young, Edward, 350. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF AUTHORS.' Bacon, Francis Siiakspeare, William Beaumont, Francis Milton, John Tillotson, John Dryden, John Locke, John Lee, Nathaniel Le Sage, Alain Addison, JosEPn Young, Edward Berkeley, George Pope, Alexander — Thomson, James Fielding, Henry Johnson, Samuel Hume, David Gray, Thomas .' Collins, William Smollett, T. G Home, John Goldsmith, Oliver Darwin, Erasmus Beattie, James Gibbon, Edward Derzhavin, G. R Smith, Charlotte Sheridan, R. B Schiller, J. C. F. von.. ..".. Bowles, W. L Baillie, Joanna Hurdis, James Hall, Robert. . Grahame, James PAGE 211 383 142 582 5;',.-) 531 210 571 5;J4 . 351 165 243 85 120 246 237 35G 526 267 387 196 478 472 95 . 598 . 478 126 . 426 470 574 473 , 213 99 Adams, John Q Chateaubriand, F. A.... Wordsworth, William., Scott, Walter Brown, C. B Coleridge, S. T Wirt, William Jeffrey, Francis Nott, Ellphalet Landor, W. S Campbell, Thomas Clay, Henry Hazlitt, William Davy, Humphrey Paulding, J. K.. Allston, Washington... Key, Francis Scott Brougham, Henry Chalmers, Thomas Ciiannino, W. E Moore, TnoMAS White, J. Blanco Webster, Daniel Irving, Washington.. . . Pierpont, John De Quincey, Thomas Dana, R. H Byron, George G Cooper, J. Fenimore Sigourney, Mrs. L. H... . Sprague, Charles Shelley, P. B Hemans, Mrs. F Bryant, William C PAGR 349 536 102 377 260 362 . 249 295 365 155 347 487 537 185 227 178 508 150 549 139 . 477 345 113- . 303 94 105 . 254 413 . 405 199 517 311 132 1 The numbers here given refer to Biographical Sketches. For Selections, see Alphabetical List of Authors. SV1 CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF AUTHORS. pact: Dewey, Orytlle 206 Everett, Edward 287 Neal, John 806 Percival, J. G 288 Proctor, B. W 148 Halleck, Fitz-Greene 400 Drake, J. R 180 Croly, George 300 Carlyle, Thomas 202 Coleridge, Hartley 475 Knowles, J. S 392 Prescott. William H 169 Wayland, Francis 301 Hood, Thomas 141 Pollok, Robert 252 Taylor, Henry 518 Bancroft, George 171 Chambers, Robert 236 Morris, George P 284 Macaulay, T. B 281 Seward, William H 514 Cox, William 116 Greene, Albert G 309 Prentice, George D 403 Emerson, R. W 96 Jerrold, Douglas 129 Smith, Elizabeth Oakes 421 Hawthorne, Nathaniel 450 Lunt, George 296 PAGB Bailey, P. J 476 Lytton, E. Bulwer 337 Simms, W. G 274 Willis, N. P 314 Cheever, George B 405 Longfellow, H. W 354 Norton, Caroline E 152 Hammond, James II 51"* Whittier, John G 327 Holmes, 0. W 233 Browning, Elizabeth B 558 Clark, Willis G 133 Tennyson, Alfred 824 Poe, Edgar A 553 Sumner, Charles 232 Thackeray, William M 280 Street, A. B 177 Dickens, Charles 446 Hoyt, Ralph 299 Browning, Robert 4S5 Mackay, Charles 89 Osgood, Francis S. 546 Beecher, Henry Ward 81 Motley, John L 159 Wallace, H. B 358 Whipple, E. P 239 Mitchell, D. G 102 Read, T. Buchanan 174 Taylor, Bayard 310 PART I. ELOCUTION. |j^ LOCUTION is the mode of utterance or delivery of -L-^ any thing spoken. It may be good or bad. 2. Good Elocution, in reading or speaking, is uttering ideas understandinglv, correctly, and effectively. It cm- braces the two general divisions, Orthoepy and Expression. Readers may be divided into three classes, — the mechanical, or those who merely pronounce words, with but slight reference to their connections and signification ; the intelligent, or those who understand the meaning of the separate words, their rela- tive importance in sentences, and historical and other refer- ences ; and the effective, or those who bring out clearly the emotional part, as well as the exact and full meaning of the author. To secure effective reading — the only reading that can satisfy a laudable ambition — it will be necessary for the student, first, to acquire such a practical knowledge of the oral elements of the language as shall insure the precise pronunciation of the separate words, with as little apparent effort of the mind as is ordinarily employed in the act of walking ; secondly, to learn the definitions of unusual or peculiarly significant words in the lesson — the explanations of classical, historical, and other allusions — and the analysis of all sentences that embrace parenthetical or other incidental matter; and thirdly, to ac- quire such a command of the perceptive faculties, of the emo- tional nature, and of the elements of expression, as shall enable him to see clearly whatever is represented or described, to enter fully into the feelings of the writer, and to cause the hearers to see, feel, and understand. 20 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. ORTHOEPY. OETHOEPY is the art of correct pronunciation. It embraces Articulation, Syllabication, and Accent. Orthoepy has to do with separate words, — the production of their oral elements, the division of these elements into sylla- bles, and the accentuation of the right syllables. I. ARTICULATION. I. DEFINITIONS. AETICULATION is the distinct utterance of the oral elements in syllables and words. 2. Okal Elements are the sounds that, uttered sepa- rately or in combination, form syllables and words. 3. Oral Elements are produced by different positions of the organs of speech, in connection with the voice and the breath. 4 The principal Organs of Speech are the lips, the teeth, the tongue, and the palate. 5. Yoice is produced by the action of the breath upon the larynx. 1 6. Oral Elements are divided into three classes : eighteen tonics, fifteen subtonics, and ten atonics. 7. Tonics are pure tones produced by the voice, with but slight use of the organs of speech. 8. Subtonics are tones produced by the voice, modified by the organs of speech. 9. Atonics are mere breathings, modified by the organs of speech. 10. Letters are characters that are used to represent or modify the oral elements. 11. The Alphabet is divided into vowels and consonants. • Larynx. — The larynx is the up- consisting of five gristly pieces t>er part of the trachea or windpipe, which form the organ of voice. ARTICULATION. 21 12. Vowels are the letters that usually represent the tonic elements. They are a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y} 13. A Diphthong is the union of two vowels in one syl- lable ; as, oa in out. 14. A Digraph, or Improper Diphthong, is the union of two vowels in a syllable, one of whict r s silent ; as oa in loaf, on in coza't. 15. A Triphthong is the union of three vowels in one syllable ; as eau in beau, ieu in adi'ew. 16. Consonants 2 are the letters that usually represent either subtonic or atonic elements. They are of two kinds, single letters and combined, including all the letters of the alphabet, except the vowels, and the combinations ch, sh, wh, ng ; th subtonic, and th atonic. 17. Labials are letters whose oral elements are chiefly formed by the lips. They are b, p, w s and wh. M may be regarded as a nasal labial, as its sound is affected by the nose. F and v are labia-dentals. 18. Dentals are letters whose oral elements are chiefly formed by the teeth. They are j, s, z, ch, and sh. 19. Linguals are letters whose oral elements are chiefly formed by the tongue. They are d, I, r, and t. j\ r is a nasal-lingual ; ?/, a lingua-palatal, and th, a lingua-dental. 20. Palatals are letters whose oral elements are chiefly formed by the palate. They are g and h. KG is a nasal- palatal. 21. Cognates are letters whose oral elements are pro- duced by the same organs, in a similar manner ; thus, / is a cognate of v ; k of g, &c. 22. Alphabetic Equivalents are letters, or combinations of letters, that represent the same elements, or sounds: thus, i is an equivalent of e, in purue. 1 W not a Vowel. — As «\ stand- combinations because they are rarely ing alone, does not represent a pure used in words without having a vow- or unmodified tone in the English el connected with them in the same language, it is not here classified syllable, although their oral elements with the vowels. may be uttered separately, and with- 8 Consonant. — The term conto- out the aid of a vowel. Indeed, they nant, literally meaning, sounding frequently form syllables by them. vritfi, is applied to these letters and selves, as in fechh (bl), taken (In). 22 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. II. OKAL .ELEMENTS. IN sounding the tonics, the organs should be fully opened, and the stream of sound from the throat should be thrown, as much as possible, directly upward against the roof of the mouth. These elements should open with an abrupt and explosive force, and then diminish gradually and equably to the end. In producing the subtonic and atonic elements, it is im- portant to press the organs upon each other with great firmness and tension ; to throw the breath upon them with force ; and to prolong the sound sufficiently to give it a full impression on the ear. The instructor will first require the students to pronounce a catch-word once, and then produce the oral element rep- resented by the figured vowel, or Italic consonant, four times — thus ; age, — a, a, a, a ; ate, — a, a, a, a': at, — a, a, a, a ; ash, — a, a, a, a, (fee. He will exercise the class until each student can utter consecutively all the elementary sounds as arranged in the following TABLE OF ORAL ELEMENTS. I. TONICS. a or a, 1 as in age, ate. e or e, as in he, these. a or a, a at, ash. e or e, a elk, end. 8 a, a art, arm. s 4 e, 4 a her, verse. 4 a Ml, ball. 1 or T, it ice, child. a, a bare, care. ! or I, a ink, inch. a, 3 u ask, glass. 6 or 6, a old, home. 1 Long and Short Vowels. — The attention of the class should be called to the fact that the first element, or sound, represented by ich of the vowels, is usually indicated by a hori- zontal line placed over the letter, and the second sound by a carved line. 2 A Fifth.— The 'fifth element, or sound, represented by a, is its first or Alphabetic sound, modified or softened by r. In its production, the lips, placed nearly together, are held immovable while the student tries to say, a. 3 A Sixth. — The sixth element rep resented by a, is a sound interme- diate between a, as heard in at, ash, and a, as in arm, art. It is produced by prolonging and slightly softening &. * E Third. — The third element rep- resented by e, is eas heard in end, pro- longed, and modified or softened by r. TABLE OF ORAL ELEMENTS. 23 o or o, 1 u or Q, 2 as in on, a a do, cube, frost, prove. cure. u or u, as in bud, full, our. a on. ii a b, as in lube, did, join, /ake, ?>/ild, ?» ame, d, a ff, a • a *, a m, a n, a *9, a n. orZ». dim. gig- ^'oint. /ane. ?y/ind. ?iine. sung. SUBTOXICS. r, 3 as in mke, y, 2. ii ii ii ii a a this, vine, wake, yard, 2-est, azure. hush, push. house. bar. with. rice, wise. yes. gaze. glazier. III. ATOXICS. /, as in ykme, /i/e- £, as in far/, toast. />, a //ark, //arm. th, " ^//ank, youth. *, a Zind, Z'iss. cA, " c//ase, marcA. 1>> a py;e, _£>um/>. */>, " s/ade, 6-// ake. *i a *ame, sense. w//, 4 " w//ale, W/ite. 1 O modified. — The modified oral element of 0, in this work, is repre- sented by (6 or 6) the same marks as its regular second power. This mod- ified or medium element may be pro- duced by uttering the sound of o in not, slightly softened, with twice its usual volume, or prolongation. It is usually given when short o is imme- diately followed by ff,ft, ss, ft, or th, as in off, soft, cross, cost, broth ; also in a number of words where short o is directly followed by n, or final riff, as in go/?e, begone ; \ong, along, yrong, song, strong, thong, throng, wrong. Smart says, To give the extreme short sound of o to such words is affectation ; to give them the full sound of broad a (a in all), is vulgar. 3 U initial — preceded by R. — JJ, at the beginning of words, when long, has the sound of yu, as in ■use. When u long, or its alphabetic equivalent ew, is preceded by r, or the sound of sh, in the same sylla- ble, it has always the sound of o in do; as, rude, sure, brew. 3 R trilled.— Iu trilling r, the tip of the tongue is made to vibrate against the roof of the mouth. U may be trilled when immediately fol- lowed by a vowel in the same syl- lable. "When thus situated in em- phatic words, it should always be trilled. Frequently require the stu- dent, after a full inhalation, to trill r continuously, as long as possible. 4 Wh. — To produce the oral ele- ment of irh, the student will blow from the center of the mouth — first compressing the lips, and then sud- denly relaxing them while the air Ls escaping. 24 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. m. COGNATES. FIRST require the student to pronounce distinctly the word containing the atonic element, then the subtonic cognate, uttering the element after each word — thus : lip, jp/ orb, b, &c. The attention of the pupil should be called to the fact that cognates are produced by the same organs, in a similar manner, and only differ in one being an undertone, and the other a whisper. ATONICS. SUBTONICS. lip, p oro, b. fife, f vase, v. tvJate, wh wise, w. save, s zeal, z, shade, sh azure, z. c/mrm, ch i i n > /• tart, t did, d. thing, th. . . this, fh. JcmJc, h gig, g. IV. ALPHABETIC EQUIVALENTS. THE instructor will require the students to read or recite the table of Alphabetic Equivalents, using the following formula : The Alphabetic Equivalents of A first 'power are ai, an, ay, e, ea, ee, ei, ey ; as in the words, ga/71, gawge, stray, melee', great, vem, the?/. I. TONIC ELEMENTS. For a, ai, an, ay, e, ea, ee, ei, ey ; as in gam, ga?/ge, stray, melee', great, \ein, they. For a, ai, ua ; as in pla/d, gaaranty. For a, an, e, ea, ua / as in haunt, sergeant, heart, guard. For a, au, aw, ea, o, oa, ou; as in fault, haa:k, Gearge, eork, braad, bought. SUBTONIC AND ATONIC ELEMENTS. 25 For a, ai, e, ea, ei/ as in chair, th^re, swear, heir. For e, ea, ee, ei, eo, ey, i, ie j as in read, deep, ceil, p^ple, kry, valise, field. For e, a, ai, ay, ea, ei, eo, ie, u, ice / as in any, said, says, head, heifer, leopard, fWcnd, bury, guess. For e, ea, i, o, ou, u, ice, y ; as in earth, girl, word, scoz^rge, hum, guerdon, myrrh. For i, ai, ei, eye, ie, oi, id, uy, y, ye; as in aisle, sWght, eye, die, choir, guide, buy, my, rye. For i, ai, e, ee, ie, o, oi, u, id, y ; as in captrmi, pretty, been, sieve, women, tortoise, busj, bidld, hymn. For 6, au, eau, eo, ew, oa, oe, oo, ou, ow / as in hautboy, beau, yeoman, sew, coal, foe, door, sou], blow. For 6, a, ou, ow / as in what, ho^gh, knowledge. For 6, ew, oe, oo, ou, it, ui ; as in grew, shoe, spoon, soun, rude, fruit. For u, eau, eu, ew, ieu, tew, ue, id; as in beauty, feud, new, adieu, view, hue, juice. For u, o, oe, oo, ouf as in love, does, bloo<:7, young. For u, o, oo, ou j wolf, book, could. For ou, ow j as in now. For oi (ai), oy/ as in b^>y. n. SUBTONIC AND ATONIC ELEMENTS. For f, (jh, ph / as in cony//, nymph. For j, ^ / as in yem, yin. For k, c, eh, gh, q ; as in cole, conch, lowgh, etiquette. For s, c / as in cell. For t, cl, th, phth / as in danced, Thames, phthisic. For v,f,ph; as in of, Stephen. For y, i ; as in pimon. For z, c, s, x ; as in suffice, rose, ^ebec. For z, g, s / as in rouye, osier. For ng, n * as in a;iger, ba»k. For ch, t ; as in fustian. For sh, c, ch, s, ss, t ; as in ocean, chaise, sure, assure, martial, 26 NATIONAL FIFTH HEADER. V. ORAL ELEMENTS COMBINED. AFTEE the instructor has given a class thorough drill on the preceding tables as arranged, the following exercises will be found of great value, to improve the or- gans of speech and the voice, as well as to familiarize the student with different combinations of sounds. Stu- dents will not pass from these exercises until they can utter the elements represented by the figured vowels in whatever order the instructor may require. As the fifth element represented by a, and the third ele- ment of e, are always immediately followed by the oral element of r in words, the r is introduced in like manner in these exercises. Since the sixth sound of a, when not a syllable by itself, is always immediately followed by the oral element of /, n, or s, in words, these letters are here employed in the same manner. I. TONICS AND SUBTONICS. 1. ba, ba, b^ ba, bar, baf ; M, be, b£r; h, W; bo, bo, bo ; bu, bu, bii; bou. ab, ab, ab, ab, arb, if; eb, eb, erb; ib, lb; 6b, 6b, 6b ; lib. ub, ub; oub. da, da, da, da, dar, das ; de, de, der ; ai, cli ; do, do, do; du, du, du; dou. ad, ad, ad, ad, ard, if; ed, ed, erd; id, Id; 6d, 6d, 6d ; iid, ud, ud; oud. ga, ag> *g> ga, g'; ag, 3 ga, g°, 3 Il g> "Si ga, g ( % ag, &g, gar, gu; arg, 5g ; gan ; gu, af; u g, ge, s g ll > eg, fig, g3, 3 g u ; ger; gou. erg; crag. 2. j as, ft las, jar, J 1 ! lar, lb, • 3 la, • 3 J a, la, • 9 • 1 la, • 3 la ; • 3 jer, • 9 ler, • » j u ; is, J e ; jou. le; 15, i}; i/>, 15, 16; ia, 1 3 hi, 16; lou. u, arl, al, al, B, al ; erJ, a, 61; 11, 11 5 61, 61, 61; a, ul, 61; oui. TONIO AND ATOXIC COMBINATIONS 27 mas, mar, md, ma. ma, ma; mer, me, me ; ml. mi ; mo, m6, mo ; mil, mu, mu; mou ai;' arm, am, am. am, am ; LTlll, om, em ; Im, im ; 5m, om, om ; um, um, inn ; oum. 3. na, na, na, nar, naf, na ; ne, ner, nfi ; ni, 9 in; no, no, no ; nu, nil, nu; nou. ang, arng, ang, if, ang, ang ; £ng, erng, OTXcr ' *ng, m g; on g, 6ng, 6ng; u ng, nng, nng ; oung ra, ra, rar, ra, 4 ra, raf ; re, rer, re ; ri, ri; ri, ro, ro ; ru, ■ ru, ru; rou. 4. £ha, fii a, fiiar, fliaf, fhd, fha ; fhor, ■flic, the , flii, fill; fho, Hio, fho; fhii, fllll, fliu; fhou. •ith, Afli, af, afh, arCh, afh; o£h, orlh, efh ; Ifli, Ifli; ofh, 6fh, ofli ; u£h, urh, ufii ; oivfti. va, ■ va, var, ■ va, A' at, 4 va ; VLT, vo, yS; *i, vi ; vo, yo, vo ; yu, vu ; vou. aV, at, av, av, av, arv ; erv. Ov, ev; iv ? s iv ; ov. ov, 6v; uv, uv, uv; ouv. wa, w&, war, wa, wd, waf ; wer, 2 we, we; wl, wi; wo, wo, wo ; wu, wu, wu ; wou. 5. ya, ya, ya, va, yar, van ; y e ? y«, ver : fh s y&> 9 yo, B yo; y*« 9 yn, yfl ; vou. •> zou ; ZU, zu, zu; zo, zo, zo ; a Zl, zl; ze*r, ze, ze ; zaf, zar, za, za, 9 za, za. onz; 11Z, UZ, uz ; 3 oz, 9 OZ, oz ; iz, iz; §rz, 6z, ez ; if, arz, az. az, az, az. II. TONIC AND ATONIC COMBINATIONS. 1. fa, ft. fa, fa. fi ak, ak, Ik, Ik ; pa, pa, vh v' 1 ; ft. liar, han, ha, hi. hi : no, ak, ok, pa, po, fa, far, las ; &, fo, fi; fu, fu, ha, ha, ha ; ho, ho, ho ; hu, hii. ak, ark, fif; ek, ok, ok ; uk, uk, pa, par, paf; pe, po, po; pu. pn, fe, fu; ho, hu i' tik; pe, pn; for ; fou. her ; hou. erk ; ouk. pei*; pou. 28 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 2. af, ars, as, as, as, as ; ers, es, es; is, is; OS, 6s; us, us, us ; ous. tas, A. " tar, til, ta, ta, ta; ter, to, te; ti, tl \ to, tS, to; til, tu, tu; tou. thaf, thar, tha, tha, tha, tha ; ther, the, the; ith, ith ; 6th, 6 th, 6th; uth, uth, uth; outh. ouch : uch, iich, iich; och, och, och ; icb, Ich ; erch, och, ech; af, ach, ach, arch, * i ach. 3. chou : cha, chu, chii; ch6, cho, ch6; dd, chi; cher, che, che ; cha, cha, cha, cha, char, chan. oush ; ush, ush, ush; osh, osh, osh ; ish, ish ; teh, esh, esii ; ash, af, ash, ash, ash, arsh. shou ; shu, shu, shu ; sho, sho, sho; sin, sin ; sh&r, she, she; shan, shar, sha, sha, sha, sha. whou;whu, whu, whu ; who, who, who ; win, win ; wher, wlie, whe ; whas, whar , wha, wha, wha, wha. VI. ERRORS IN ARTICULATION. ERRORS in Articulation arise chiefly, first, from the omission of one or more elements in a word ; as, an' for and. sta'm for stoT-m. frien's a friends. wa'm a wann. blln'ness " hlin^ ness. boist'rous " bois ter ous. fac's a facte. chick'n u chick en. sof ly a soft ly. his t'ry a his to ry. fiel's u fields. nov'l a nov el. wil's a wikfe. trav'l a trav el. Secondly, from uttering one or more elements that should not be sounded ; as, ev en for ev'n. rav el for rav'l. heav en a heav'n. sev en U sev'n. tak en u tak'n. sof ten a sof'n. sick en a sick'n. shak en a shak'n. driv el a driv'l. shov el a shov'l. grov el u <>tov'1. shriv el u shriv'l. WORDS. 29 Tliirdly, from substituting one element for another ; as, c6urse. set sSncc shet for g!t care dance past ask grass mil urirl a iran aganst berth for sit. it u u a u a it u a a a a a since. shut. for get. ciire. dance. past. ask. grass. s/triW. whirl. again (a gen). against (a genst). hearth (harth). for u it a a carse re part tr5f fv pa rent bun net chil drun " sul lcr " mcl hr pil L r mo m?/nt harm 1/ss " kind mss ' u a ti tvis per sing bi u a re port, tro phy. par ent. hon net. chil dren. eel lar. mel \vw. pil Ibw. mo ment. harm less, kind ik'SS. whis per. sing ing. vn. WOKDS. A WORD is one or more Oral elements, or letters used to represent an idea. 2. Words are divided into primitive, derivative, simple, and compound. 3. A iTJMiTrvE word istnot derived, hut constitutes a root from which other words are formed ; as faith, ease. 4. A derivative wopd is formed of a primitive and an affix or prefix ; as faitli/W, disease. 5. A simple word is one that can not be divided without destroying the sense ; as an, the, book. 6. A compound word is formed by two or more words ; as inkstand, book-binder, laughing-stock. vm. ANALYSIS OF WORDS. IN order to secure a practical knowledge of the preced- ing definitions and tables, to leam to spell spoken words by their oral elements, and to understand the uses of let- 30 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. ters in written words, the instructor will require the student to master the following exhaustive, though simple analysis. Analysis. — 1st. The word salve, in pronunciation, is formed by the union of three oral elements ; s a v — salve. [Here let the student utter the three oral elements separa- tely, and then pronounce the word.] The first is a modified breathing ; hence, it is an atonic. 1 The second is a pure tone ; hence, it is a tonic. The third is a modified tone ; hence, it is a subtonic. 2d. The word salve, in writing, is represented by five letters ; s a 1 v e — salve. S represents an atonic ; hence, it is a consonant. Its oral element is chiefly formed by the teeth ; hence, it is a dental. Its oral element is produced by the same organs and in a similar manner as the first oral element of z ; hence, it is a cognate of z. A represents a tonic ; hence, it is a vowel. L is silent. V represents a subtonic ; hence, it is a consonant. Its oral element is chiefly formed by the lower lip and the upper teeth ; hence, it is a labia-dental. Its oral element is formed by the same organs and in a similar manner as that of/; hence, it is a cognate of /. E is silent. Analysis. — 1st. The word shoe, in 'pronunciation, is formed by the union of two oral elements ; sh 6 — shoe. The first is a modified breathing ; hence, it is an atonic. The second is a pure tone ; hence, it is a tonic. 2d. The word shoe, in writing, is represented by four letters ; s h o e — shoe. The combination sh represents an atonic ; hence, it is a consonant. Its oral element is chiefly formed by the teeth ; hence, it is a dental. Its oral ele- ment is produced by the same organs and in a similar manner as the second oral element represented by z ; hence, it is a cognate of z. The combination oe is formed by the union of two vowels, one of which is silent ; hence, J The analysis logical. — It will stated, is as follows : — All modified be seen that this analysis is strictly breathings are Atonies ; logical ; and that each conclusion is The oral element of * is a modi- deduced from two premises, one of fied breathing ; which (the major proposition) is sup- Hence, the oral element of s is an pressed. The first syllogism, fully Atonic ANALYSIS OF WORDS. 31 it is an improper diphthong. It represents the oral ele- ment usually represented by o ; hence, it is an alphabetic equivalent of 6. Analysis — 1st. The compound word fbutt'-bud is a dis- syllable, accented on the penult. In pronunciation, it is formed by the union of seven oral elements ; f r 6t'-b iid — fruit'-bud. The first is a modified breathing ; hence, it is an atonic. The second is a modified tone ; hence, it is a subtonic. The third is a pure tone ; hence, it is a tonic. The fourth is a modified breathing ; hence, it is an atonic. The fifth is a modified tone ; hence, it is a subtonic. The sixth is a pure tone ; hence, it is a tonic. The seventh is a modified tone ; hence, it is a subtonic. 2d. The word fruit-bud, in writing, is represented by eight letters ; fruit-bud. F represents an atonic ; hence, it is a consonant. Its oral element is chiefly formed by the lower lip and the upper teeth ; hence, it is a labia-dental. Its oral element is produced by the same organs and in a similar manner as that of v ; hence, it is a cognate of v. II represents a subtonic ; hence, it is a consonant. Its oral element is chiefly formed by the tongue ; hence, it is a lin- gual. The combination ui is formed by the union of two vowels ; hence, it is a diphthong. It represents the oral element usually represented by 6 ; hence, it is an alpha- betic equivalent of 6. T represents an atonic ; hence, it is a consonant. Its oral element is chiefly formed by the tongue ; hence, it is a lingual. Its oral element is produced by the same organ and in a similar manner as that of d ; hence, it is a cognate of d. B represents a subtonic ; hence, it is a consonant. Its oral clement is chief! v formed by the lips ; hence, it is a labial. Its oral element is produced by the same organs and in a similar manner as that of p ; hence, it is a cognate of p. U represents a tonic ; hence, it is a vowel. D represents a subtonic ; hence, it is a con- sonant. Its oral element is chiefly formed by the tongue ; hence, it is a lingual. Its oral element is produced by the same organ and in a similar manner as that of t ; hence, it is a cognate of t. 32 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. IX. RULES IN ARTICULATION. A AS the name of a letter, or when used as an emphatic word, should always be pronounced a (a in age) ; as, She did not say that the three boys knew the letter a, but that a boy knew it. 2. The word A, when not emphatic, is marked short (a), 1 though in quality it should be pronounced nearly like a as heard in ask, grass ; as, Give a baby sister a smile, a kind word, and a kiss. 3. The, when not emphatic nor immediately followed by a word that commences with a vowel sound, should be pro- nounced thu ; as, The (fliu) peach, the (mu) plum, the apple, and the (thu) cherry are yours. Did he ask for a pen, or for the pen ? 4. U preceded BY R. — When u long (u in tube), or its alphabetic equivalent eiv, is preceded by r, or the sound of sh, in the same syllable, it has always the sound of o in do; as, Are you sure that shrewd youth was rude ? 5. R may BE trilled when immediately followed by a vowel sound in the same syllable. When thus situated in emphatic words, it should always be trilled ; as, He is both brave and true. She said scratching, not scrawling, X. EXERCISES IN ARTICULATION. SILENT letters are here omitted, in most of the exam- ples, and the words are spelled as they should be pro- nounced. Students will read the sentences several times, both separately and in concert, uttering all the oral ele- ments with force and distinctness. They will also analyze 1 A initial. — A in many words, or volume of sound being less than as an initial unaccented syllable, is that of a sixth power (a), as in alas, also marked short (a), its quantity aniass, abaft. EXERCISES IN ARTICULATION. 33 the words, both as spoken and written, and name the rules in articulation that are illustrated by the exercises. Sentences that are printed in the usual style are in- tended for dictation exercises, in which silent letters will be omitted and the words so written as to represent their cor- rect and exact pronunciation. 1. Thou ladst down and sleptst. 2. Thu hold, bad baiz brok bolts and barz. 3. Hi on a hil II u herd harsez harni hofs. 4. Sliur al her pafhz ar pafhz 6v pes. 5. Ba ! that'z not sties dollarz, but a dollar. 6. Charj the old man to ch6z a chats chGz. 7. Lit eeking lit, hath lit uv lit begild. 8. Thu hosts stud stll, In silent wimder fikst. 9. A thouzand shreks far hoples inert! kal. 10. Thu follslmes 6-v folz iz lolli. 11. Both'z yoths with troths yiiz 6fhz. 12. Arm it with ragz, a pigmi stra wil pers it 4 13. Kou set fhu teth and strech thu nostril wid. 14:. He wocht and wept, he felt and prad far al. 15. II Iz iz, amidst fhu mists, mezerd an azer ski. 1G. Thu febl, fritnd frernan febl! fat far fredum. 17. Whispers of revenge passed silently around among the troops. 18. ~N6 shet nar shroud enshrind flioz shrunsrkn shredz 6v shrivld kla. 19. lie has prints of an ice-house, an ocean, and wasts and deserts. 20. Thu whiilz wheld and wherld, and bard fhar brad, broun baks. 21. Jllz and Jasn Jdnz kan nut sa, — Arora, alas, amas, manna, villa, nar Luna. 22. It will pain nobody, if the sad dangler regain neither rope. 23. The ragged madman, in his ramble, did madly ran- sack every pantry in the parish. 24. What fhou wudst hill that fliou wudst holilf. 34: NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 25. He aksepts fhe 6fF!s, ekspekts to lern fhu fakts, and attemts bl hiz akts to konsel hiz falts. 2G. Prithee, blithe youth, do not mouth your words "when you wreathe your face with smiles. 27. That fellow shot a sparrow on a willow, in the nar- row meadow, near the yellow house. 28. Thu strif seseth, pes approcheth,' and fhu gud man rejaiseth. 29. Thu shrod shroz bad him sa that fhu vil viksnz yuzd shrugz, and sharp shril shreks. 30. Shorli, fho wended, fhu prudent rekrot wud not et that krod frot. 31 . Stern, rugged ners ! fhl rljfd 16r wifh pashens men! a yer she b6r. 32. At that time, the lame man, who began nobly, having made a bad point, wept bitterly. 33. When loud surges lash the sounding shore, the hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar. 34. "What whim led White Whitney to whittle, whistle, whisper, and whimper near the wharf, where a floundering whale might wheel and whirl ? 35. Amidst fhu mists and koldest frosts, wrfti barest rfsts and stoutest bests, he thrusts hiz fists agenst fhu posts, and stil insists he sez fhu gosts. 36. Thangks to Thaddeiis Thikthong, fliu. thatles thissl- sifter, h6 thiis thrust thro thouzand thisslz thro fhu tlnk 6v hiz thum. 37. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain ; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who taketh his name in vain. 38. Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. 39. A starm arizeth on fliu se. A model vessel !z strug- gling amidst thu war 6v elements, kwivering and shivering, shringking and battling lik a thfngkhig being. Thu m&rsi- les, raking wherhvindz, lik fritful fendz, houl and m6n, and send sharp, shril shreks thro fliu kreking kardaj, snapping PHONETIC LAUGHTER. 35 fhu shets and masts. Tim sterdi salarz stand to fhar tasks, and wefher fhu severest starm 6v fhu sezn. 40. Chast-id, cherisht dies ! Thu charmz 6v fhi chekerd chambe'rz chan me chanjlesli. Chamberllnz, ehaplinz, and chansellarz hav chanted fhi cherobik chiusnes. Cheftinz hav chanjd fhu chariot and fhu chas far fhu ches-bord and fhu charming charj 6v fhu ches-nits. K6 chiling cherl, no dieting chatterer, no chattering chanjling kan be fhi che-zn champion. Thou art fhu chassner ov fhu cherlish, fhu chider 6v fhu ehanjabl, fhu cherisher 6v fhu cherful and fhu char- itabl. Far fhe ar fhu chaplets 6v chanles chant 1 and fliu chalis 6v ehildlik cherfiilnes. Chanj kan not chanj fhe : from childhud to fliu charnel-hous, from our ferst childish cherpingz tu thu ehilz 6v fhu cherch-yard, fhou art our cheri, chanj 16s cheftfnes. XI. PHONETIC LAUGHTER. LAUGHTER, by the aid of Phonetics, is easily taught, as an art. It is one of the most interesting and healthy of all class exercises. It may be either vocal or respiratory. 2. There are thirty-two well-defined varieties of laughter in the English language, eighteen of which are produced in connection with the tonics ; nine, with the subtonics of 7, m, n, ng, r, th, v, and z ; and five, with the atonies of/, h, s, tli, and sh. 3. Commencing with vocal laughter, the instructor will first utter a tonic, and then, prefixing the oral element of I, and accompanied by the class, he will produce the syllable continuously, subject only to the interruptions that are inci- dental to inhalations and bursts of laughter ; as, a, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, &c, — a, ha, ha, ha, ha, &c. 4. The attention of the students will be called to the most agreeable kinds of laughter, and they will be taught to pass naturally and easily from one variety to another. 36 NATIONAL FIFTH HEADER. II. SYLLABICATION*. I. DEFINITIONS. A SYLLABLE is a word, or part of a word, uttered by a single impulse of the voice. 2. A Monosyllable is a word of one syllable ; as, Jiome. 3. A Dissyllable is a word of two syllables ; as, liome-less. 4. A Trisyllable is a word of three syllables ; as, con- fine-ment. 5. A Polysyllable is a word of four or more syllables ; as, in-no-cen-cy, un-in-tel-li-gi-bil-i-ly. 6. The Ultimate is the last syllable of a word ; as fid, in peace^?. 7. The Penult, or penultimate, is the last syllable but one of a word ; as mdJc, in peace-wafc-er. 8. The Antepenult, or antepenultimate, is the last syl- lable but two of a word ; as ta, in spon-fa-ne-ous. 9. The Preantepenult, or preantepenultimate, is the last syllable but three of a word ; as cab, in vo-ca£-u-la-ry. n. FOKMATION of syllables. A SINGLE impulse of the voice can produce but one radical or opening and vanishing or gradually dimin- ishing movement. Since a syllable is produced by a single impulse of the voice, it follows that only such an oral ele- ment, or order of oral elements, as gives but one radical and vanish movement, can enter into its formation. As the tonics can not be uttered separately without producing this movement, but one of them can enter into a single syllable ; and, as this movement is all that is essential, each of the tonics may, by itself, form a syllable. Consistently with this, we find, whenever two tonics adjoin, they always be- long to separate syllables in pronunciation, as in a-e-ri-al, I'-o-ta, o-a-sis. RULES IN SYLLABICATION. 37 2. Though oral elements can not be combined with a view to lengthen a syllable, by the addition of one tonic to another, as this would produce a new and separate impulse, yet a syllable may be lengthened by prefixing and affixing any number of tonics and atonies to a tome, that do not des- troy its singleness of impulse ; as, a, an, and, land, gland, glands. 3. A tonic is usually regarded as indispensable in the formation of a syllable. A few syllables, however, are formed exclusively by subtonics. In the words biddc-?i rive-n, rhyth-??*, schis-m, fic-7:c 7 e, i-dlc, lit-tle, and words of like construction, the last syllable is either pure subtonic, or a combination of subtonic and atonic. These final svl- lables go through the radical and vanish movement, though they are far inferior in quality, euphony, and force, to the full display of these properties on the tonics. m. EULES IN SYLLABICATION. TNITIAL CONSONANTS.— The elements of consonants -B- that commence words should be uttered distinctly, but should not be much prolonged. 1 2. Final Consonants. — Elements that are represented by final consonants should be dwelt upon, and uttered with great distinctness ; as, He accep/s the office, ancZ attempts by his nets to conceal his faul/s. 3. When one word or a sentence ends and the next begins with the same consonant, or another that is hard to produce after it, a difficulty in utterance arises that should be obviated by dwelling on the final consonant, and then taking up the one at the beginning of the next word, in a 1 Initial Elements Prolonged. — the following lines : On this point Dr. Rusn mentions the " Canst thou not w-inistei to a error of a distinguished actor, who, m4nd diseased, in order to give great force and dis- P£-uck from the w-emory a r-oot tmctness to his articulation, dwelt ed sorrow ?" on the initial letters, as marked in Such mouthing defeats its object 38 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. second impulse of the voice, without pausing between them ; as, It will pai?i nobody, if the sao* dangle?' regain neither rope. 4. Final Cognates. — In uttering the elements of the final cognates, b, p, d, t, g, and 1c, the organs of speech should not remain closed at the several pauses of discourse, but should be smartly separated by a kind of echo ; as, I took down ray hat-t, and put it upon my head-a 7 . 5. Unaccented Syllables should be pronounced as dis- tinctly as those which are accented : they should merely have less force of voice and less prolongation ; as, The thoughtless, helpfess, homeless girl did not resent his rudeness and harshness. Yery many of the prevailing faults of articulation result from a neglect of these rules, especially the second, the third, and the last. He who gives a full and definite sound to final consonants and to unaccented vowels, if he does it without stiffness or formality, can hardly fail to articulate well. EXERCISE IN SYLLABICATION. 1 1. Thirty years ago, Marseilles 2 lay burning in the sun, one day. A blazing sun, upon a fierce August day, was no greater rarity in Southern France then, than at any other time, before or since. Every thing in Marseilles, and abou£ Marseilles, had stared at the fervid sky, and been stared at in return, until a staring habi£ had become universal there. 2. Grangers were stared out of countenance by staring white houses, staring white walls, staring white streets, staring tracts of aria 7 road, staring hills from whic/i verdure was burnt away. The only things to be seen not firedly staring and glaring were the vines drooping under their load of grapes. These did occa- sionally winfc a little, as the hot air moved their faint leaves. 3. There was no wind to make a ?'ipple on the foul water i Direction.— Students will give formation of syllables each letter the number and names of the syl- that appears in Italics, in this exer- lables, in words of more than one cise, is designed to illustrate, syllable, and tell what rule for the 2 Marseilles, (mar salzO- EXERCISE IN SYLLABICATION. 39 within the harbor, or on the beautiful sea without The line of demarkation between the two colors, blacfc and blue, showed the point which the pure sea would not pass ; but it lay as quiet as the abominable pool, with which it never mixed. Boate without awni?i<7.5- were too hot to touch ; ships blistered at their mooring ; the stones of the quays had not cooled for months. 4. The universal s'arc made the eyes ache. Toward the dis- tant line of Italian (ltal'yan) coast, indeed, it was a little re* lieved by light clouds of mist, slowly risi??£7 from the evaporation of the sea ; but it softened nowhere else. Far away the stari??<7 roads, dee}) in dust, stared from the hillside, stared from the hollow, stared from the interminable plain. 5. Far away the dusty vines overhanging wayside cottages, and the monotonous wayside avenues of parched frees without shade, drooped beneath the stare of earth and sky. So did the horses with drowsy bells, in long files of carts, creepi??^ slowly toward the interior ; so did their recumbent drivers, when they were ttwa&e, which rarely happened; so did the exhausted laborers in the fields. G. Every thing that fived or <7?*ew was oppressed by the glare; except the lizard, passing swiftly over rough stone walls, and the cicada, chirping his dry hot chirp, like a ratde. The very dust w T as scorched ftrown, and somethi??^ quivered in the atmos- phere as if the air itself were -panting. Blinds, shutters, cur- tains, awnings, were all closed to keep out the stare. Grant it but a chin/.: or keyhole, and it shot in like a white-hot arrow. 7. The churches were freest from it. To come out of the twilight of pillars and arches — dreamily dotted with winking! lamps, dream?ly peopled with ugly old shadows piously dozing, spitting, and begging — was to plunge into a fiery river, and swim for life to the nearest strip of shade. So, with people lounging and lying wherever shade was, with but little hum of tongues or barki?2# of dogs, with occasional jangli??^ of discor- dant church bells, and rattling of vicious drums, Marseilles, a iact Jo be strongly smelt and tasted, lay broiling in the sun one day. 3. Shall I be left, forgotten in the dust, When Fata, relenting, lets the flowe?* revii-e? Shall Nature's voice, to Man alone tinjusf, Bid him, though doomed to peris/i, hope to hue ? 40 NATIONAL FIFTH HEADER. III. ACCENT. I. DEFINITIONS. ACCENT is the peculiar force given to one or more syllables of a word. 2. In many trisyllables and polysyllables, of two sylla- bles accented, one is uttered with greater force than the other. The more forcible accent is called primary, and the less forcible, secondary ; as, hab-i-TA-tioii. 3. The mark of acute accent [ ' ] is employed, first, to in- dicate primary accent ; secondly, the rising inflection (p. 53) ; as, Reading, or read'ing. If thine enemy hunger, give him bread. 4. The mark of grave accent [ * ] is employed, first , to in- dicate secondary accent ; secondly, that the vowel over which it is placed, with its attendant consonant, forms a separate syllable ; thirdly, that the vowel in the unaccented syllable is not an alphabetic equivalent, but represents one of its usual oral elements ; and fourthly, the falling inflec- tion (p. 53) ; as, Magnificent, or magnificent. A learned man caught that winged thing. Her goodness moved the roughest. Away, thou coward ! The student will be required to give the office of each mark in the following EXERCISES IN ACCENT. 1. The lone'ly hunt'er calls his bound'ing dogs, and seeks the high'way. 2. Hark ! the whirl'wind is in the forest : aged trees are oVerturncd'. 3. Veracity first of all, and forever. 4. The finest wits have their sediment. 5. Hunting men, not beasts, shall be his game. WORDS CHANGED BY ACCENT. 41 6. A foci with judges ; among fools, a judge. 7. "Will the heedlessness of honest students offend' their truest friends ? 8. Honest students learn the greatness of humility. 9. That blessed and beloved child loves every winged thing. 10. The agree'ablo ar'tisan* made an ad'niirable par'asoP for that beau'tiful Russian (rush'an) la'dy. 11. No'tice the mark 3 of ac'cent, and al'ways accent' correct 'ly words that should have but one ac'cent, as in scn'sible, vaga'ry, cir'cumslances, difficulty, interesting, &c. 12. Costume, manners, riches, civilization, have no permanent interest for him. — His heedlessness offends his truest friends. 13. In a crowded life, on a stage of nations, or in the ob- scurest hamlet, the same blessed elements offer the same rich choices to each new comer. n. WORDS DISTINGUISHED BY ACCENT. MANY words, or parts of speech, having the same form, are distinguished by accent alone. Nouns and adjectives are often thus distinguished from verbs, and, in a few dissyllables, from each other. EXAMPLES. 1. Why does your ab'scnt friend absent' himself. ? 2. Did he abstract' an ab'slract of your speech from the desk? 3. Note the mark of ac'cent, and accent' the right syllable. 4. Buy some cem'ent and cement' the glass. 5. Desert' us not in the clcs'ert. 6. If that proj'ect fail, he will project' another. 7. My in' crease is taken to increase' your wealth. 8. Perfume' the room with rich per'fume. 9. If they reprimand' that officer, he will not regard their rep'rimand. 10. If they rebel', and overthrow' the government, even the reb'eh can not justify the o'verthrow. 11. In Au'gust, the august' writer entered into a ccm'paet to prepare a compact' discourse. 42 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 12. In'stinct, not reason, rendered the herd instinct' with spirit. 13. Within a min'ute from this time, I will find a minute' piece of gold. 14. Earnest prayer is an in' cense that can never incense' Deity. 15. While you con verse' with each other, I hold con' verse with nature. 16. If they continue to progress' in learning, he will com- mend them for their jirog'ress. 17. If Congress interdict' intercourse with foreign nations, will the in'terdicO be just? 18. Unless the con' vert be zealous, he will never convict' the con'vict of his errors, and convert' him. 19. If the pro'test of the minority be not respected, they will protest' against your votes. 20. If the farmer produce' prod'uee enough for his family, he will not transfer' his title to that estate, though the trans'fer is legal. ILL ACCENT CHANGED BY CONTRAST. THE ordinary accent of words is sometimes changed by a contrast in sense, or to express opposition of thought. EXAMPLES. 1. He must tVcrease, but I must tfe'erease. 2. He did not say a new addition, but a new e'dition. 3. Consider well what you have done, and what you have left im'done. 4. I said that she will sws'pect the truth of the story, not that she will expect it. 5. He that descended is also the same that fls'ccnded. G. This corruptible must put on i?i'eorruption ; and this mor- tal must put on zm'mortality. 7- There are also ce'lestial bodies, and bodies fcr'restrial ; but the glory of the ce'lestial is one, and the glory of the ter'restrial is another. EXPRESSION. 43 EXPRESSION. EXPRESSION of Speech is the utterance of thought, feeling, or passion, with clue significance or force. Its general divisions are Emphasis, Slur, Inflection, Mod- ulation, Monotone, Personation, and Pauses. Orthoepy is the mechanical part of elocution, consisting in the discipline and use of the organs of speech and the voice for the production of the alphabetic elements and their combi- nation into separate words. It is the basis — the subsoil, which, by the mere force of will and patient practice, may be broken and turned up to the sun, and from which spring the flowers of expression. Expression is the soul of elocution. By its ever-varying and delicate combinations, and its magic and irresistible power, it wills — and the listless ear stoops with expectation ; the vacant eye burns with unwonted fire ; the dormant passions are aroused, and all the tender and powerful sympathies of the soul arc called into vigorous exercise. I. EMPHASIS. I. DEFINITIONS. EMPHASIS is the peculiar force given to one or more words of a sentence. 2. To give a word emphasis, means to pronounce it in a loud ' or forcible manner. No uncommon tone, however, is necessary, as words may be made emphatic by prolonging the vowel sounds, by a pause, or even by a wlris2 :)er - 3. Emphatic words are often printed in Holies ; those more emphatic, in small capitals ; and those that receive the greatest force, in large CAPITALS. 1 Loudness.— The instructor will ence to high pitch, but to volume of explain to the class the fact, that voice, vscd on the same hey or pitch, loudness has not, of necessity, refer- when reading or epeaking. 44 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 4. By the proper use of emphasis, we are enabled to im- part animation and interest to conversation and reading. Its importance can not be over-estimated, as the meaning of a sentence often depends upon the proper placing of the emphasis. If readers have a desire to produce an impres- sion on hearers, and read what they understand and feel, they will generally place emphasis on the right words. Students, however, should be required to observe carefully the following rules. n. EULES IN EMPHASIS. "TTTORDS AND PHRASES PECULIARLY SIGNIFICANT, or im- V V portant in meaning, are emphatic ; as, Whence and ickat art thou, execrable shape ? 2. Words and phrases that contrast, or point out a difference, are emphatic ; as, I did not say a better soldier, but an elder. 3. The repetition of an emphatic word or phrase usually requires an increased force of utterance ; as, You injured my child — you, sir! 4. A succession of important words or phrases usually requires a gradual increase of emphatic force, though em- phasis sometimes falls on the last word of a series only ; as, His disappointment, his anguish, his DEATH, were caused by your carelessness. These misfortunes are the same to the poor, the ignorant, and the weak, as to the rich, the wise, and the jJOicaful. The students will tell which of the preceding rules are illustrated by the following exercises — both those that are marked and those that are unmarked. EXERCISES IN EMPHASIS. 1. Boisterous in speech, in action prompt and bold. * 2. Speak little and well, if you wish to be considered as pos- sessing merit. 3. He buys, he sells, — he steals, he KILLS for gold. EXERCISES IN EMPHASIS. 45 4. But here I stand for right, for Roman right. 5. I shall know but one country. I was born an American ; I live an American ; I shall die an American. 6. I shall sing the praises of October, as the loveliest of months. 7. A good man loves himself too well to lose an estate by gaming, and his neighbor too well to win one. 8. The good man is honored, but the evil man is despised. 9. The young are slaves to novelty : the old, to custom : the middle-aged, to both : the dead, to neither. 10. The wicked flee when no man pursueth ; but the righteous are bold as a lion. 11. Tlieycome! to arms ! to arms! TO ARMS! 12. None but the brave, none but the brave, none but the BRAVE deserve the fair. 13. A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty, is worth a whole ETERNITY in bondage. 14. It is my living sentiment, and, by the blessing of God, it shall be my dying sentiment — independence now, and independ- ence forever. 15. The thunders of heaven are sometimes heard to roll in the voice of a united people. 16. If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop remained in my country, I never would lay down my arms — never, never, NEVER, 1 17. Let us fight for our country, our whole country, and NOTHING BUT OUR COUNTRY. 18. He that trusts you, where he should find you lions finds you hares ; where foxes, geese. 19. What should I say to you ? Should I not say, Hath & dog money ? is it possible, A cur can lend three thousand duc'atsf 20. In the prosecution of a virtuous enterprise, a brave man despises danger and difficulty. 21. Was that country a desert? No : it was cultivated and fertile ; rich and populous ! Its sons were men of genius, spirit, and generosity ! Its daughters were lovely, suseejytible, and (haste! Friendshij) was its inhabitant ! Love was its inhabit- 1 In order to make the last never depression of the voice, — almost to a more forcible, the emphasis is pro- deep aspirated whisper, drawn up duced bv the falling slide, and a dce"> from the verv bottom of the chest 46 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. ant! Domestic affection was its inhabitant! Liberty was its inhabitant ! 22. Son of night, retire ; call thy winds and fly. Why dost thou come to my presence with thy shadowy arms ? Do I fear thy gloomy form, dismal spirit of Loda ? Weak is thy shield of clouds ; feeble is that meteor, thy sword. 23. What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted! THRICE is he armed that hath his quarrel jest ; and he but naked, though locked up in STEEL, whose conscience with injustice is corrupted. 24. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounce it to you : trippingly on the tongue ; but if you moitfh it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spake my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand thus, but use all gently ; for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that will give it smoothness. 25. If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. You all do know this mantle : I remember the first time ever Csesar put it on : ('twas on a summer's evening in his tent : that day he overcame the Nervii :) — LOOK ! In this place ran Cassius' dag- ger through : see what a rent the envious Casca made. Through this, the well-beloved Brutus stabbed ; and, as he plucked his cursed steel away, mark how the blood of Caesar followed it! This was the most unkindest cut of all ! for, when the noble Caesar saw HIM stab, INGRATITUDE, more strong than traitors' arms, quite vanquished him ! Then burst his mighty heart ; and, in his mantle muffling up his face, even at the base of Pompey's statue, which all the while ran blood, great C/ESar fell. O what a fall was there, my countrymen! Then I, and you, and all of us, fell down ; whilst bloody TREASON flourished over us. 26. Oh, now you weep ; and I perceive you feel the dint of pity : these are gracious drops. Kind soids ! What, weep you when you but behold our Caesar's vesture wounded ? Look ye here ! Here is himSELF, marred, as you see, by traitors. 27. As Caesar loved me, I weep for him : as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it : as he was valiant, I honor him : but as he was ambitious, I slew him. There is tears for his love, joy for his fortune, honor for his valor, and death for his ambition. SLUR. 47 II. SLUR. SLUR is that smooth, gliding, subdued movement of the voice, by which those parts of a sentence of less comparative importance are rendered less impressive to the ear, and emphatic words and phrases set in stronger relief. 2. Emphatic words, or the words that express the lead- ing thoughts, are usually pronounced with a louder and more forcible effort of the voice, and are often prolonged, But words that are slurred must generally be read in a lower and less forcible tone of voice, more rapidly, and all pronounced nearly alike. 3. In order to communicate clearly and forcibly the whole signification of a passage, it must be subjected to a rigid analysis. It will then be found, that one paramount ide'a always pervades the sentence, although it may be as- sociated with incidental statements, and qualified in every possible manner. Hence, on the proper management of slur, much of the beauty and propriety of enunciation de- pends, as thus the reader is enabled to bring forward the primary idea, or more important parts, into a strong light, and throw other portions into shade ; thereby entirely changing the character of the sentence, and making it appear lucid, strong, and expressive. 4. Slur must be employed in cases of parenthesis, contrast, repetition, or explanation, where the phrase or sentence is of small comparative importance ; and often when qualification of time, place, or manner is made. 5. The parts which are to be slurred in a portion of the exercises are printed in Italic letters. Students will first read the parts of the sentence that appear in Roman, and then the whole sentence, passing lightly and quickly over what was first omitted. The} will also read the examples that are unmarked in like manner. EXERCISES IN SLUR. 1. The rich, softened by prosperUy t pitied the poor ; the poor, disciplined into order, respected the rich. 48 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 2. The general, with his head drooping, and his hands lean- ing on his horse's neck, moved feebly out of the battle. 3. The rivulet sends forth glad sounds, and, tripping o'er its bed of pebbly sands, or leaping down the rocks, seems with contin- uous laughter to rejoice in its own being. 4. We wish that this column, rising toward heaven among the pointed spires of so many temples dedicated to God, may contribute also to produce, in all minds, a pious feeling of de- pendence and gratitude. 5. I had always thought that I could meet death without a murmur ; but I did not know r , she said, with a faint voice, her lips quivering, I did not know 7 , till now, how hard a thing it would be to leave my child. 6. The calm shade shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze, that makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a balm to thy sick heart. 7. The stomach (cramm'd from every dish, a tomb of boiled and roast, and flesh and fish, where bile, and w r ind, and phlegm, and acid jar, and all the man is one intestine war) remembers oft the school-boy's simple fare, the temperate sleeps, and spirits light as air. 8. Ingen'ious boys, icho are idle, think, with the hare in the fable, that, running icith SNAILS (so they count the rest of their school-fellows), they shall come soon enough to the post ; though sleeping a good ivhile before their starting. 9. I heard a man who had failed in business, and whose furniture was sold at auction, say that, when the cradle, and the crib, and the piano went, tears would come, and he had to leave the house to be a man. 10. The soul of eloquence is the center of the human soul itself, which, enlightened by the rays of an idea, or warmed and stirred by an impression, flashes or bursts forth to manifest, by some sign or other, w r hat it feels or sees. 11. Can he, who, not satisfied with the wide range of ani- mated existence, calls for the sympathy of the inanimate crea- tion, refuse to worship with his fellow T -men ? 12. Why does the very murderer, his victim sleeping before him, and his glaring eye taking the measure of the blow, strike wide of the mortal part ? Because — of conscience ! 13. The massy rocks themselves, the old and ponderous EXERCISES IN SLUR. 4'J trunks of prostrate trees, that lead from knoll to knoll, a cause- way rude, or bridge the sunken brook, and their dark roots with all their earth upon thcin, twisting high, breathe fixed tranquillity. 14. "But now," whispered the clear girl, "it is evening; the sun, that rejoices, has finished his daily toil ; man, that labors, has finished his ; I, that suffer, have finished mine." Just then, her dull ear caught a sound. It was the sound, though muffled and deadened, like the ear thai heard it, of horsemen advancing. 15. Here we have butter pure as virgin gold ; And milk from cows that can a tail unfold With bovine pride ; and new-laid eggs, whose praise Is sung by pullets with their morning lays ; Trout from the brook ; good water from the well ; And other blessings more than I can tell ! 1G. I love Music, when she appeal's m her virgin purity, almost to adoration. But vocal music — the dearest, sweetest thing on earth — unaccompanied icith good elocution, is like butter without salt ; a garlic-eater with a perfumed handkerchief ; or, rather, like a bankrupt beau — his soft hands incased in delicate kids — with soiled linen, and patches upon his knees. 17. A Frenchman once — so runs a certain ditty — Had crossed the Straits to famous London city, To get a living by the arts of France, And teach his neighbor, rough John Bull, to dance. But lacking pupils, vain was all his skill ; His fortunes sank from low to lower still, Until at last, pathetic to relate, Poor Monsieur landed at starvation's gate. 18. No ! dear as freedom is, and in my heart's just estimation prized above all price, I would much rather be myself the slave, and wear the bonds, than fasten them on niM. 19. There is an ugly kind of forgiveness in this world— a kind of hedge-hog forgiveness, shot out like quills. Men take one who has offended, and set him down before the blow-pipe of their indignation, and scorch him, and burn his faults into him ; and, when they have kneaded him sufficiently with their fiery fists, then— they forgive him, 50 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 20. Ye glittering towns, with xceallh and splendor crowned ; Ye fields, where summer spreads profusion round ; Ye lakes, whose vessels catch the busy gale ; Ye bending swains, that dress the flowery vale ; For me your tributary stores combine : Creation's heir, the world, the world is mine ! 21. If there's a Power above us — and that there is, all Nature cries aloud through all her works — He must delight in -virtue ; and that which He delights in must be happy. 22. "Who had not heard Of Rose, the gardener's daughter ? "Where was he, So blunt in memory, so old at heart, At such a distance from his youth in grief, That, having seen, forgot ? The common mouth, So gross to express delight, in praise of her • Grew oratory. Such a lord is Love, And Beauty such a mistress of the w T orld. 23. The devout heart, penetrated with large and affecting views of the immensity of the twrks of God, the harmony of his laivs, and the extent of his beneficence, bursts into loud and vocal ex- pressions of praise and adoration ; and, from a full and over- flowing sensibility, seeks to expand itself to the utmost limits of creation. 24. I said, " Though I should die, I know That all about the thorn will blow In tufts of rosy-tinted snow ; And men, through novel spheres of thought Still moving after truth long sought, "Will learn new things when I am not." 25. O "WINTER! ruler of the inverted year.' thy scat- tered hair with sleet-like ashes filled, thy breath congealed upon thy lips, thy cheeks fringed with a beard made white with other snows than those of age, thy forehead wrapped in clouds, a leafless branch thy scepter, and thy throne a sliding car, indebted to no wheels, but urged by storms along its slippery way, I LOVE THEE, all unlovely as thou scem'st, and dreaded as thou art. 26. They shall hear my vengeance, that would scorn to listen to the story of my wrongs. The miserable Highland drover, bankrupt, barefooted, stripped of all, dishonored, and hunted down, EXERCISES IN SLUR. 51 because the avarice of others grasped at more than that poor all could pay, shall burst on them in an awful change. 27. Think Of the bright lands within the western maw, Where we will build our home, ichat time the seas Weary thy gaze ; — there the broad palm-tree shades The soft and delicate light of skies as fair As those that slept on Eden ; — Nature, there, Like a gay spendthrift in his flush of youth, Flings her whole treasure in the lap of Time. — On turfs, by fairies trod, the Eternal Flora Spreads all her blooms ; and from a lake-lite sea Wooes to her odorous haunts the western wind ! While, circling round and upward from the boughs y Golden with fruits that lure the joyous birds, Melody, like a happy soul released, Hangs in the air, and from invisible plumes Shakes sweetness down ! 28. Lo! the unlettered hind, who never knew to raise his mind excursive to the heights of abstract contemplation, as he sits on the green hillock by the hedge-row side, what time the insect swarms are murmuring, and marks, in silent thought, the broken clouds, that fringe with loveliest hues the evening sky, feels in his soul the hand of nature rouse the thrill of grat- itude to Him who formed the goodly prospect ; he beholds the god throned in the west ; and his reposing ear hears sounds angelic in the fitful breeze, that floats through neighboring copse or fairy brake, or lingers, playful, on the haunted stream. 29. Beauty — a living presence of the earth, Surpassing the most fair ideal forms Which craft of delicate spirits hath composed From earth's materials — waits upon my steps ; Pitches her tents before me as I move, An hourly neighbor. Paradise, and groves Elysian, Fortunate Fields — like those of old Sought in the Atlantic main — why should they be A history only of departed things, Or a mere fiction of what never was ? For the discerning intellect of man, 52 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. When wedded to this goodly universe In love and holy passion, should find these A simple produce of the common day. 30. Dear Brothers, who sit at this bountiful board, With excellent viands so lavishly stored, That, in newspaper phrase, 't would undoubtedly groan, If groaning were but a convivial tone, Which it isn't — and therefore, by sympathy led, The table, no doubt, is rejoicing instead ; Dear Brothers, I rise, — and it won't be surprising If you find me, like bread, all the better for rising, — I rise to express my exceeding delight In our cordial reunion this glorious night ! III. INFLECTIONS. I DEFINITIONS. INFLECTIONS are the bends or slides of the voice, used in reading and speaking. Inflection, or the slide, is one of the most important divisions of elocution, because all speech is made up of slides, and be- cause the right or wrong formation of these gives a pervading character to the whole delivery. It is to the graceful forma- tion of the slides that we are chiefly indebted for that easy and refined utterance which prevails in polished society ; while the coarse and rustic tones of the vulgar are commonly owing to some early and erroneous habit in this respect. Most of the schoolboy faults in delivery, such as drawling, whining, and a monotonous singing sound, result from a wrong formation of the slide, and may be corrected by a proper course of practice on this element of speech. A slide consists of two parts, viz. : the radical, or opening sound, and the vanish, or gradual diminution of force, until the sound is lost in silence. Three things are necessary to the per- fect formation of a slide. 1st. The opening sound must be struck with a full and lively impulse of voice. INFLECTIONS. 53 2d. The diminution of force must be regular and equable — not more rapid in one part than another, but naturally and gracefully declining to the last. 3d. The hnal vanish must be delicately formed, without being abrupt on the one hand, or too much prolonged on the other. This, a full opening, a gradual decrease, and a delicate termi- nation, are requisite to the perfect formation of a slide. 2. There are three inflections or slides of the voice : the Rising Inflection, the Falling Inflection, and the Cir- cumflex. 3. The Rising Inflection is the upward bend cr slide of the voice ; as, Do you love your \^ oX ^ 4. The Falling Inflection is the downward bend or slide of the voice ; as, When are you going °^e ? The rising inflection carries the voice upward from the gen- eral pitch, and suspends it on the highest tone required ; while the falling inflection commences above the general pilch, and falls down to it, as indicated in the last two examples. 5. The Circumflex is the union of the inflections on the same syllable or word, either commencing with the rising and ending with the falling, or commencing with the falling and ending with the rising, thus producing a slight wave of the voice. 6. The acuto accent [ ' ] is often used to mark the rising inflection; the grave accent [ v ] the falling inflection; as, Will you read or spell ? Let the students pronounce the following words wifli contrasted inflections, using great pains to form the slides in accordance with the joreceding directions : 1. Call, call ; far, far ; fame, fame ; shame, shame ; air, air ; scene, scene ; mile, mile ; pile, pile. 2. Roam, roam ; tool, tool ; school, school ; pure, piire ; mule, mule ; join, join ; our, our. 7. When the circumflex commences with a rising and ends with a falling slide of the voice, it is marked thus ' s ; but 54 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. when it commences with a falling and ends with a rising slide, it is marked thus w , which the pupil will see is the same mark inverted ; as, You must take me for a fool, to think I could do that. 8. The inflections or slides should be used on the ac- cented syllables of important or emphatic words ; as, I will never stay. I said goodly not homely, n. RULES IN INFLECTIONS. DIRECT QUESTIONS, or those that can be answered by yes or no, usually require the rising inflection ; but their answers, the falling ; as, Has any one sailed around the earth ? Yes, Captain Cook. Exceptions. — The falling inflection is required when the direct question becomes an earnest appeal, and the answer is anticipated ; and when a direct question, not at first un- derstood, is repeated with marked emphasis ; as, Will her love survive your neglect ? and may not you expect the sneers, both of your wife, and of her parents ? Do you reside in the city ? What did you say, sir ? Do you reside in the city ? 2. Indirect questions, or those that can not be answered by yes or no, usually require the falling inflection, and their answers the same ; as, Who said, " A wise man is never less alone than when he is alone ?" Swift. Exceptions. — The rising inflection is required when an indirect question is used to ask a repetition of what was not at first understood ; and when the ansivers to questions, whether direct or indirect, are given in an indifferent or careless manner ; as, Where did you say ? Shall I tell your enemy ? As you please ! 3. Questions, words, and clauses, connected by the disjunctive OR, usually require the rising inflection before, and the falling after it; though, when or is used con- RULES IN INFLECTIONS. 55 junctivehj, it takes the rising inflection after, as well as before it ; as, Does lie deservo praise, or blame ? Can youth, or health, or strength, or honor, or pleasure, satisfy the soul ? 4 When words or clauses are contrasted or com- pared, the first part usually has the rising, and the last the falling inflection ; though, when one side of the contrast is affirmed, and the other denied, generally the latter has the rising inflection, in whatever order they occur ; as, I have seen the effects of love and hatred, joy and grief, hope and despair. This book is not mine, but fours. I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. 5. Familiar address, and the pause of suspension, denot- ing condition, supposition, or incompleteness, usually re- quire the rising inflection ; as, Friends, I come not here to talk. If thine enemy hunger, give him bread to eat. 6. The language of concession, politeness, admiration, entreaty, and tender emotions, usually requires the rising inflection ; as, Your remark ifc true : the manners of this country have not all the desirable ease and freedom. I pray thee remember, I have done thee worthy service ; told thee no lies, made no mistakes ; served without grudge or grumbling. 7. The end of a sentence that expresses completeness, conclusion, or result, usually requires the falling slide of termination, which commences on the general pitch, and falls below it ; as, The rose is beauti/^; 8. At each complete termination of thought, before the close of a sentence, the falling inflection is usually re- quired ; though, when several pauses occur, the last but one generally has the rising inflection ; as, Every human being has the idea of duty ; and to unfold this idea is the end for which life was given him. The rock crumbles ; the trees fall ; the leaves fade, and the grass withers. 56 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 9. The language of command, rebuke, contempt, excla- mation, and terror, usually requires the falling inflection ; as, Thou slave, thou wretch, thou coward ! Away from my sight ! 10. The last member of a commencing series, and the last but one of a concluding series, usually require the rising inflection ; and all others the falling ; as, A good disposition, virtuous principles, a liberal education, and industrious habit*, are passports to happiness and honor. These reward a good disposition, virtuous principles, a liberal education, and industrious habits. 11. The Circumflex is used when the thoughts employed are not sincere or earnest, but are used in jest, irony, or double-meaning, — in ridicule, sarcasm, or mockery. The circumflex which ends with the rising slide should be given to the negative ideas, and that which ends with the falling slide to positive ideas ; as, This is } T our plain man, if not your gracious one. Students will be careful to employ the right slides in sen- tences that are unmarked, and tell what rule or rules are illustrated by each of the following EXERCISES IN INFLECTIONS. 1. Do you see that beautiful star ? Yes : it is splendid ! 2. "Will you forsake us ? and will you favor us no more ? 3. I said an elder soldier, not a better. Did I say better ? 4. Are you, my dear sir, willing to forgive ? 5. "Why is the hall crowded ? "What means this stir in town ? 6. Does that beautiful lady deserve praise, or blame ? 7. Will you ride in the carriage, or on horseback ? Neither. 8. Hunting men, not bea,<ts, shall be his game. 9. I said good, not bad : happy, not miserable. 10. O Rome ! O my country ! how art thou fallen ! 11. Do men gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles ? 12. Is a candle to be put under a bushel, or under a bed? 13. Can storied urn, or animated bust, Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can Honor's voice provoke the silent dust, Or Flattery soothe the dull, cold ear of death ? EXERCISES IN INFLECTIONS. 57 14. Fire and water, oil and vinegar, heat and cold, light and darkness, are not more opposed to each other, than is honesty to fraud, or vice to virtue. 15. Is this a time to be gloomy and sad "When our mother Nature laughs around ; "When even the deep blue heavens look glad, And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground ? 16. Can the great statesman, skilled in deep design, Protract but for a day precarious breath ? — Can the tuned follower of the sacred Nine Soothe, with his melody, insatiate Death ? 17. Hath a dog money? Is it possible a cur can lend three thousand ducats? 18. All the circumstances and ages of men, poverty, riches, youth, old age — all the dispositions and passions, melancholy, love, grief, contentment — are capable of being personified in poetry with great propriety. 19. If thou dost slander her, and torture me — never pbay MORE. 20. But, whatever may be our fate, be assured, be assured that this declaration will stand. It may cost treasure, and it may cost blood ; but it will stand, and it will richly compensate for both. 21. The war must go on. "We must fight it through. And if the war must go on, why put off longer the declaration of independence ? That measure will strengthen us. It will give us character abroad. 22. They boast they come but to improve our state, enlarge our thoughts, and free us from the yoke of error ! Yes, they will give enlightened freedom to our minds, who are themselves the slaves of passion, avarice, and pride ! They offer us pro- tection ! yes, such protection as vultures give to lambs — cover- ing and devouring them ! Tell your invaders we seek no change — and least of all such change as they would bring us ! 23. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation ? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled, that force must be called in to win back our love? 58 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. . $1 And this man Is now become a god ; and Cassins is A wretched creature, and must bend his body, If Coesar carelessly but nod on him. lie had a fever when he was in Spain, And, when the fit was on him, I did mark How he did shake : 't is true, this god did shake : His coward lips did from their color fly ; And that same eye, whose bend doth awe the world, Pid lose its lustre. IY. MODULATION. M{ )DULATION is the act of varying the voice in read* jng and speaking. Its general divisions are Pitch, Force, Quality, and Kate. The four general divisions, or modes of vocal sound, pre- sented in this section, are properly the elements of expression ; as, by the combination of the different forms and varieties of these modes, emphasis, slur, monotone, and other divisions of expression are produced. I. PITCH. PITCH 1 refers to the key-note of the voice — its general degree of elevation or depression, in reading and speaking. We mark three general distinctions of Pitch : High, Moderate, and Low. 2. High Pitch is that which is heard in calling to a per- 1 Exercise on Pitch. — For a gen- top of the voice shall have heen eral exercise on pitch, select a sen- reached, when the exercise may be tence, and deliver it on as low a key reversed. So valuable is this cxer- as possible ; then repeat it, gradu- rise, that it should be repeated as ally elevating the pitch, until the often as possible. MODULATION. 59 son at a distance. It is used in expressing elevated and joyous feelings and strong emotion ; as, 1. Go ring the bells, and fire the guns, And fling the starry banners out ; Shout " Freedom !" till your lisping ones Give back their cradle shout. 2. Ye crags and peaks, I'm with you once again ! I hold to you the hands you first beheld, To show they still are free. Methinks I hear A spirit in your echoes answer me, And bid vour tenant welcome to his home Again ! O, sacred forms, how proud ye look ! How high you lift your heads into the sky ! How huge you are ! how mighty and how free ! Ye are the things that tower, that shine, whose smile Makes glad, whose frown is terrible, whose forms, Robed or unrobed, do all the impress wear Of awe divine. Ye guards of liberty ! I'm with you once again ! — I call to you With all my voice ! I hold my hands to you To show they still are free. I rush to you, As though I could embrace you ! 3. First came renowned Warwick, Who cried aloud, " What scourge for perjury Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?" And so he vanished. Then came wandering by A shadow like an angel, with bright hair Dabbled in blood ; and he shrieked out, aloud, — "Claeexce is come— false, fleeting, perjured Clarence ; Seize on him, ye furies, take him to your torments" 3. Moderate Pitch is that which is heard in common conversation and description, and in moral reflection, or calm reasoning ; as, 1. The morning itself, few people, inhabitants of cities, know any thing about. Among all our good people, not one in a thousand sees the sun rise once in a year. They know nothing of the morning. Their idea of it is, that it is that part cf the day that comes along after a cup of coffee and a beef-steak, or a piece of toast. 60 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 2. The mountains look on Marathon, And Marathon looks on the sea ; And musing there an hour alone, I thought that Greece might still be free ; For, standing on the Persian's grave, I could not deem myself a slave. 4. Low Pitch is that which is heard when the voice falls below the common speaking key. It is used in expressing reverence, awe, sublimity, and tender emotions ; as, 1. 'Tis midnight's holy horn*, and silence now Is brooding, like a gentle spirit, o'er The still and pulseless world. Hark ! on the winds The bells' deep tones are swelling ; — 'tis the knell Of the departed year. No funeral train Is sweeping past, yet, on the stream and wood, With melancholy light, the moonbeams rest, Like a pale, spotless shroud ; the air is stirred As by a mourner's sigh ; and on yon cloud, That floats so still and placidly through heaven, The spirits of the seasons seem to stand. 2. Softly woo away her breath, Gentle Death ! Let her leave thee with no strife, Tender, mournful, murmuring Life ! She hath seen her happy day : She hath had her bud and blossom ; Now she pales and sinks away, Earth, into thy gentle bosom ! H. FORCE. FORCE l is the volume or loudness of voice, used on the same key or pitch, when reading or speaking. Though the degrees of force are numerous, varying from a soft 1 Exercise on Force. — For a gen- until the whole power of the voice is eral exercise on force, select a sen- brought into play. Reverse the prO- tence, and deliver it on a given key, cess, without change of key, ending wifh voice just sufficient to be heard ; with a whisper. This exercise can then gradually increase the quantity, not be too frequently repeated. FORCE. £\ whisper to a shout, yet they may be considered as three : Loud, Moderate, and Gentle. 2. Loud Force is used in strong, but suppressed pas- sions, and in emotions of sorrow, grief, respect, veneration, dignity, apathy, and contrition ; as, 1. How like a fawning publican he looks! I hate him, for that ho is a Christian. If I but ctttch him once upon the hip, I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him. 2. Virtue takes place of all things. It is the nobility of angels ! It is the majesty of GOD ! 3. Roll on, thou deep and dark-blue ocean — roll ! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain. 4. O thou that, with surpassing glory crowned, Look'st from thy solo dominion, like the God Of this new world ; at whose sight all the stars Hide their diminished heads ; to thee I call, But with no friendly voice, and add thy name, Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams, That bring to my remembrance from what state 1 fell, how glorious once above thy sphere ; Till pride and worse ambition threw me down, Waning in heaven against heaven's matchless King. 3. Moderate Force, or a medium degree of loudness, is used in ordinary assertion, narration, and description ; as, 1. Remember this saying, " The good paymaster is lord of another man's purse." He that is known to pay punctually, and exactly at the time he promises, may, at any time, and on any occasion, raise all the money his friends can spare. 2. What is the blooming tincture of the skin, To peace of mind and harmony within ? "What the bright sparkling of the finest eye, To the soft soothing of a calm reply ? Can comeliness of form, or shape, or air, With comeliness of words or deeds compare ? No ! those at first the unwary heart may gain, But these, these onlv, can the heart retain. 3. I have seen A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract 62 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Of inland ground, applying to his ear The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell : To which, in silence hushed, his very soul Listened intensely ; — and his countenance soon Brightened with joy ; for murmurings from within Were heard, sonorous cadences ! whereby, To his belief, the monitor expressed Mysterious union with its native sea. Even such a shell the universe itself Is to the ear of Faith. 4. Gentle Force, or a slight degree of loudness, is used to express caution, fear, secrecy, and tender emotions ; as, 1. Heard ye the whisper of the breeze, As softly it murmured by, Amid the shadowy forest trees ? It tells, wim meaning sigh, Of the bowers of bliss on that viewless shore. Where the weary spirit shall sin no more. 2. The}' are sleeping ! Who are sleeping ? Pause a moment — softly tread ; Anxious friends are fondly keeping Vigils by the sleeper's bed ! Other hopes have all forsaken ; One remains — that slumber deep : Speak not, lest the slumberer waken From that sweet, that saving sleep. m. QUALITY. QUALITY has reference to the kinds of tone used in reading and speaking. They are the Pure Tone, the Orotund, the Aspirated, the Guttural, and the Trembling. 2. The Pure Tone is a clear, smooth, round, flowing sound, accompanied with moderate pitch ; and is used to express peace, cheerfulness, joy, and love ; as, 1. Methinks I love all common things — The common air, the common flower ; The dear, kind, common thought, that springs QUALITY. 63 From hearts that have no other dower, No other wealth, no other power, Save love ; and will not that repay For all else fortune tears away ? % It is the hour, when from the boughs The nightingale's high note is heard ; It is the hour when lovers' vows Seem sweet in every whispered word ; And gentle winds, and waters near, Make music to the lonely ear. Each flower the dews have lightly wet, And in the sky the stars are met, And on the wave is deeper blue, And on the leaf a browner hue, And in the heaven that clear obscure, So softly dark, and darkly pure, Which follows the decline of day, As twilight melts beneath the moon away. 3. The Oeotuxd is the pure tone deepened, enlarged, and intensified. It is used in all energetic and vehement forms of expression, and in giving utterance to grand and sublime emotions ; as, 1. Strike — till the last armed foe expires ; Strike — for your altars and your fires ; STRIKE — for the green graves of your sires ; God — and vour native land ! 2. "Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns !" he said : — Into the valley of Death rode the six hundred. 3. The sky is changed ! and such a change ! Night, And Storm, and Darkness, ye are wondrous strong, Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light Of a dark evo in woman ! Far along-, From peak to peak, the rattling crags among, Leaps the live thunder ! — not from one lone cloud, But every mountain now hath found a tongue ; And Jura answers, through her misty shroud, Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud I 64 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 4. The Aspirated Tone is an expulsion of the breath more or less strong,— the words, or portions of them, being spoken in a whisper. It is used to express amazement, fear, terror, horror, revenge, and remorse ; as, 1. How ill this taper burns ! Ha ! who comes here f Cold drops of sweat hang on my trembling flesh, My blood grows chilly, and I freeze with horror ! 2. The ancient Earl, with stately grace, Would Clara on her palfrey place, And whisper, in an under-tone, " Let the hawk sloop, his prey is floivn." 3. While thronged the citizens with terror dumb, Or whispering with white lips, " TJiefoe ! they come, they come !" 5. The Guttural is a deep under-tone, used to express hatred, contempt, and loathing. It usually occurs on the emphatic words ; as, 1. Thou slave, thou icretch, thou coward ! Thou cold-blooded slave ! TJwu wear a lion's hide ? Doff it, for shame, and hang A calfskin on those recreant limbs. 2. Thou stand'st at length before me undisguised, Of all earth's groveling crew the most accursed I Thou worm ! thou viper ! — to thy native earth Return ! Away ! Thou art too base for man To tread upon. Thou scum ! thou reptile ! 6. The Tremulous Tone, or tremor, consists of a tremu- lous iteration, or a number of impulses of sound of the least assignable duration. It is used in excessive grief, pity, plaintiveness, and tenderness ; in an intense degree of suppressed excitement, or satisfaction ; and when the voice is enfeebled by age. 7. The tremulous tone should not be applied through- out the whole of an extended passage, but only on selected emphatic words, as otherwise the effect would be monoto- nous. In the second of the following examples, where the RATE. 65 tremor of age is supposed to be joined wifh that of suppli- cating distress, the tremulous tone may be applied to every emphatic syllable capable of prolongation, which is the case with all except those of pity and shortest; but even these may receive it in a limited degree. love, remain ! It is not yet near day ! It was the nightingale, and not the lark, That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear ; Nightly she sings in yon pomegranate-tree. Believe me, love, it was the nightingale. Pity the sorrows of a jioor old man, Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door, Whose days are dwindled to the shortest span : give relief, and Ileaven iciU bless your store. IV. KATE. I) ATE 1 refers to movement in reading and speaking, and Y is Quick, Moderate, or Slow. 2. Quick Rate is used to express joy, mirth, confusion, violent anger, and sudden fear ; as, 1. Away ! away ! our fires stream bright Along the frozen river, And their arrowy sparkles of brilliant light On the forest branches quiver. 2. Away ! away to the rocky glen, "Where the deer are wildly bounding ! And the hills shall echo in gladness again, To the hunter's bugle sounding. 3. The lake has burst ! The lake has burst ! Down through the chasms the wild waves flee : 1 Exercise on Rate. — For a gen- ticulation ceases. Having done this, oral exercise, select a sentence, and reverse the process, repeating slower deliver it as slowly as may be possible and slower. Thus you may acquire without drawling. Repeat the sen- the ability to increase and diminish tence with a slight increase of rate, rate at pleasure, which is one of the until you shall have reached a rapid- most important elements of good ity of utterance at which distinct ar- reading and speaking. 66 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. They gallop along, with a roaring song, Away to the eager awaiting sea ! 4. And there was mounting in hot haste : the steed, The mustering squadron, and the clattering car Went pouring forward with impetuous speed, And swiftly forming in the ranks of war. 3. Moderate Rate is used in ordinary assertion, narra- tion, and description ; in cheerfulness, and the gentler forms of the emotions ; as, 1. When the sun walks upon the blue sea-waters, Smiling the shadows from yon purple hills, We pace this shore, — I and my brother here, Good Gerald. We arise with the shrill lark, And both unbind our brows from sullen dreams ; And then doth my dear brother, who hath worn His cheek all pallid with perpetual thought, Enrich me with sweet words ; and 6ft a smile Will stray amidst his lessons, as he marks New wonder paint my cheek, or fondly reads, Upon the burning page of my black eyes, The truth reflected which he casts on me. 2. I have sinuous shells of pearly hue Within, and they that luster have imbibed In the sun's palace-porch, where, when unyoked, His chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave : Shake one and it awakens, then apply Its polished lips to your attentive ear, And it remembers its august abodes, And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there. 3. Warriors and statesmen have their meed of praise, And what they do, or suffer, men record ; But the long sacrifice of woman's days Passes without a thought, without a word ; And many a lofty struggle for the sake Of duties sternly, faithfully fulfilled — For which the anxious mind must watch and wake, And the strong feelings of the heart be stilled — Goes by unheeded as the summer wind, And leaves no memory and no trace behind ! MONOTONE. 67 Yet it may be, more lofty courage dwells In one meek heart which braves an adverse fate, Than his whose ardent soul indignant swells Warmed by the fight, or cheer'd through high debate. The soldier dies surrounded : could he live, Alone to suffer, and alone to strive ? 4. Slow Rate is used to express grandeur, yastness, pathos, solemnity, adoration, horror, and consternation ; as, 1. O thou Eternal One ! whose presence bright All space doth occupy, all motion guide ; Unchanged through time's all-dev'astating flight ; Thou only God ! There is no God beside ! 2. The curfew tolls the knell of parting day ; The lowing herd winds slowly 6'er the lea ; The plowman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. 3. Roll on, thou deep and dark-blue ocean — roll ! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain : Man marks the earth with ruin — his control Stops with the shore ; — upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, When, for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown. V. MOXOTOXE. MONOTONE consists of a degree of sayneness of sound, or tone, in a number of successive words or syllables. 2. It is very seldom the case that a perfect sameness is to be observed in reading any passage or sentence. But very little variety of tone is to be used in reading either prose or verse which contains elevated descriptions, or emotions of solemnity, sublimity, or reverence. 3. The monotone usually requires a low tone of the 63 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. voice, loud or prolonged force, and a slow rate of utterance. It is this tone only, that can present the conditions of the supernatural and the ghostly. The sign of monotone is a horizontal or even line over the words to be spoken evenly, or without inflection ; as, I heard a voice saying, Shall mortal man be more just tnan God ! Shall a man be more pure than his Maker ! EXERCISES IN MONOTONE. 1. Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-piace in ail generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst i fc> j formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to ever- lasting, Thou art God. 2. Tnen the earth shook and trembled ; the foundations, also, of the hills moved, and were shaken, because he was wroth. There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and tire out of his mouth devoured. He bowed the heavens, also, and came down, and darkness was under his feet ; and he rode upon a cherub, and did fly' ; yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind. 3. Man clieth, and wasteth away : yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he ? As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up, so man lieth down, and riseth nut; till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep. 4. High on a throne of rovai state, which far Outshone the wealth of Orrnus or of Ind, Or where the gorgeous East, with richest hand, Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold, Satan exalted sat ! 5. How reverend is the face of this tall pile, "Whose ancient pillars rear their marble heads, To bear aloft its arched and ponderous roof, By its own weight made steadfast and immovable, Looking tranquillity ! It strikes an awe And terror on my aching sight : the tombs And monumental caves of death look cold, And shoot a chillness to my trembling heart. PERSONATION. 09 6 Our revels are now ended : these our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air ; And like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself — Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this unsubstantial pageant, faded — Leave not a rack behind. 7. I am thy father's spirit ; Doomed for a certain term to walk the night, And, for the day confined to fast in fires, Till the foul crimes, done in my days of nature, Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid To tell the secrets of my prison-house, I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul ; freeze thy young blood ; Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres ; Thy knotted and combined locks to part, And each particular liair to staud on end, Like quills upon the fretful porcupine : But this eternal blazon must not be To ears of flesli and blood : — List, — list, — O list ! — If thou didst ever thy dear father love, Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder. VI. PEESOXATIOX PERSONATION consists of those modulations, or changes of the voice, necessary to represent two or more persons as speaking. 2. This principle of expression, upon the correct applica- tion of which much of the beauty and efficiency of delivery depends, is employed in reading dialogues and other pieces of a conversational nature. 3. The student should exercise his discrimination and 70 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. ingenuity in studying the character of persons to be rep- resented, — fully informing himself with regard to their tem- perament and peculiarities, as well as their condition and feelings at the time, — and so modulate his voice as best to personate them. EXERCISE IN PERSONATION. He. Dost thou love wandering ? "Whither wouldst thou go ? Dream'st thou, sweet daughter, of a land more fair ? Dost thou not love these aye-blue streams that flow ? These spicy forests ? and this golden air ? She. Oh, yes, I love the woods, and streams, so gay ; And more than all, O father, I love thee ; Yet would I fain be wandering — far away, Where such things never were, nor e'er shall be. He. Speak, mine own daughter wifh the sun-bright locks ! To what pale, banished region wouldst thou roam ? She. O father, let us find our frozen rocks ! Let's seek that country of all countries — Home ! He. Seest thou these orange flowers ? this palm that rears Its head up toward heaven's blue and cloudless dome ? She. I dream, I dream ; mine eyes are hid in tears ; My heart is wandering round our ancient home. He. Why, then, we'll go. Farewell, ye tender skies, Who sheltered us, when we were forced to roam ! She. On, on ! Let's pass the swallow as he flies ! Farewell, kind land ! Now, father, now — for Home ! VII. PAUSES. I. DEFINITIONS. PAUSES are suspensions of the voice in reading and speaking, used to mark expectation and uncertainty, and to give effect to expression. Pauses are often more eloquent than words. They differ greatly in their frequency and their length. In lively con- RULES FOR PAUSES. 71 versation and rapid argument, they are comparatively few and short. In serious, dignified, and pathetic speaking, they are far more numerous, and more prolonged. The pause is marked thus ~, in the following illustrations and exercises. n. EULES FOR PAUSES. NOMINATIVES. — A pause is required after a compound nominative, in all cases ; and after a nominative con- sisting of a single word, when it is either emphatic, or is the leading subject of discourse ; as, Joy and sorrow *\ move him not. No people ^ can claim him. No country ^ can appropriate him. 2. Words in Apposition. — A pause is required after words which are in apposition with, or ojjposition to, each other ; as, Solomon *i the son of David «*i was king of Israel. False del- icacy is affectation ^not politeness. 3. A Transition. — A pause is required after but, hence, and other words denoting a marked transition, when they stand at the beginning of a sentence ; as, But ~i it was reserved for Arnold m to blend all these bad qualities into one. Hence ^i Solomon calls the fear of the Lord m the bejnnninjx of wisdom. © o 4. Conjunctions and Relatives. — A pause is required before that, when a conjunction or relative, and the rela- tives who, which, what; together with ivhen, ichence, and other adverbs of time and place, which involve the idea of a relative ; as, He went to school ^ that he might become wise. This is the man ^ that loves me. We were present **\ when La Fayette embarked at Havre for New York. 5. The Infinitive. — A pause is required before the infini- ti ve mood, when governed by another verb, or separated by an intervening clause from the word which governs it ; as, He has gone **i to convey the news. He smote me wife a rod <*] to please my enemy. 72 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 6. In cases of Ellipsis, a pause is required where one or more words are omitted ; as, So goes the world : if ^ wealthy, you may call this ~\ friend, that «| brother. 7. Qualifying Clauses. — Pauses are used to set off qual- ifying clauses by themselves ; to separate qualifying terms from each other, when a number of them refer to the same word ; and when an adjective follows its noun ; as, The rivulet sends forth glad sounds, and <*| tripping o'er its bed of pebbly sands, or leaping down the rocks *q seems ^with continu- ous laughttr *-\ to rejoice in its own being. He had a mind^i deep «*] active «*i well stored with knowledge. These rules, though important, if properly applied, are by no means complete ; nor can any be invented which shall meet all the cases that arise in the complicated rela- tions of thought. A good reader or speaker pauses, on an average, at every fifth or sixth word, and in many cases much more frequent- ly. His only guide, in many instances, is a discriminating taste in grouping ideas, and separating by pauses those which are less intimately allied. In doing this, he will often use what may be called suspensive quantity. in. SUSPENSIVE QUANTITY. SUSPENSIVE QUANTITY means prolonging the end of a word, without an actual pause ; and thus suspend- ing, without wholly interrupting, the progress of sound. The prolongation on the last syllable of a word, or sus- pensive quantity, is indicated thus , in the following exam- ples. It is used chiefly for three purposes : 1st. To prevent too frequent a recurrence of pauses ; as, Her lover sinks — she sheds no ill-timed tear ; Her chief is slain — she fills his fatal post ; Her fellows flee — she checks their base career ; The foe~retires — she heads the rallying host. EXERCISES IN PAUSES. 73 2d. To produce a slighter disjunction than would be made by a pause ; and thus at once to separate and unite ; as, Would you kill your friend and benefactor? Would you practice hypocrisy and smile in his face, while your conspiracy is ripening V 3d. To break up the current of sound into small portions, which can be easily managed by the speaker, without the abruptness which would result from pausing wherever this relief was needed ; and to give ease in speaking ; as, Warms - in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, Glows - in the stars, and blossoms in the trees ; Lives through all life, extends through all extent, Spreads undivided, operates unspent. General Rule. — When a preposition is followed by as many as three or four words which depend upon it, the word preceding the preposition will either have suspensive quantity, or else a pause ; as, Ho is the in'ide of the whole country. Require students to tell which of the preceding rules or principles is illustrated, wherever a mark, representing the pause or suspensive quantity, is introduced in the following EXERCISES IN PAUSES. 1. It matters very little *i what immediate spot*' may have been the birth-place of such a man as Washington. No peo- ple^ can claim *i*i no country** can appropriate him. The boon of Providence to the human race*' his fame*' is eter- nity *i*i and his dwelling-place ~~ creation. 2. Though it was the defeat m of our arms ** and the dis- grace *i of our policy*-*' I almost bless the convulsion ** in which he had his origin. If the heavens thundered *- and the earth rocked*^*- yet*- when the storm passed *- how pure was the climate *i that it cleared*-*- how bright *- in the brow of the firmament *i was the planet *- which it revealed to us! 3. In the production of Washington -*• it does really appear*- as if nature *i was endeavoring to improve upon herself *-*»* and that all the virtues - of the ancient world *- were but so many {tfw/j'es*i preparatory - to the patriot of the new. Individual 74 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. instances «< no doubt there were ^ splendid exemplifications h of some single qualification. Coesar *i was merciful *i **i Scipio *< was continent wi^i Hannibal ^ was patient. But^iit was reserved for Washington ^ to blend them all in one **!*»■ and ^ like the lovely masterpiece of the Grecian artiste to exhibits in one glow - of associated beauty ~i the pride of every model ** and the perfection of every master. 4. As a general <*i*i he marshaled the peasants into a vet- eran <^h and supplied by discipline ^ithe absence of experience. As a statesman h*i he enlarged the poHcy of the cabinet **• into the most comprehensive system of general advantage. And such h was the wisdom of his views ** and the philosophy - of his counsels m *i that to the soldiery and the statesman ^ he almost added *j the character of the sage. 5. A conqueror **i he was untainted wim the crime of blood ^i wj a revolutionist **j he was free from any stain of treason **i for aggression - commenced the contests and his country - called him to the field. Liberty **i unsheathed his sword ^^neces- sity <*i stained ^i^i victory h returned it. 6. If he had paused here **i history might have doubted h what station to assign him ^\^\ whether at the head of her citizens**! or her soldiers «*m her heroes <*\ or her patriots. But the last - glorious act ~i crowns his career « and banishes all hesitation. Who >*i like Washington «i after having emancipated a hemis- phere **j resigned its crown ^m and preferred the retirement of domestic life h to the adoration of a land wj he might almost be said to have created ? 7. How - shall we rank thee **i upon glory's page, Thou mdre~ than soldier ^ and just less than sage ! All thou hasf been ^ reflects less praise <-i on thee, Far~less m than all thou hast forborne to be. KEY TO THE USE OF MARKED LETTERS. age or age, at or at, art, all, bare, ask ; we or we, £nd or end, her ; ice or Ice, !n or in, fly, hymn ; old or old, on or on, do ; mute or mute, up or tip, full ; fliis ; azure ; real, (not rel) ; oVershoot' ; badness, (not rnss) ; aged, (not djd) ; g as j. DsDEX TO EDITIONS. 5^" The figures refer to the pages where the same lessons may be found in the two editions of this work. NEW ED. OLD ED. 77 67 81 71 85 77 87 171 89 99 92 95 94 360 97 81 100 84 101 160 103 249 105 251 106 253 110 256 113 138 117 92 120 398 123 401 126 404 129 116 132 119 134 109 136 Ill 139 115 140 142 121 144 123 147 127 148 128 150 130 153 134 155 415 175 160 162 NEW ED. OLD ED. 164 152 165 166 148 170 172 174 200 177 178 180 178 183 180 184 181 185 183 189 187 192 191 198 176 199 168 202 538 204 173 207 197 210 300 214 304 217 221 282 224 375 227 230 145 232 216 234 218 237 221 240 224 243 228 247 285 249 287 253 291 255 NEW KD. OLD ED- 256 294 257 163 261... r 316 263 318 267 322 270 325 275 277 280 231 282 283 233 284 235 287 236 289 239 291 241 293 296 294 296 295 298 297 264 299 262 301 259 304 498 305 499 307 307 309 384 311 501 313 315 317 318 321 243 324 327 330 333 436 76 INDEX TO EDITIONS. iEW ED. OLD EI). NEW ED. OLD ED. NEW KD. OLD ED. 338 . ... 272 419 515... . . ... 378 339 273 . ... 275 422 518 521 . . . . 483 341 426 . ... 486 343 . ... 277 434 524 . ... 489 346 . . . . 420 436 527 . ... 493 348 . .- . . . 440 . ... 445 532 . ... 510 350 359 856 443 533 535 537 . ... 511 352. 447 450 . ... 42; 505 355 ... 334 357 . ... 595 452 427 543 . ... 540 359 . ... 412 455 . ... 430 544 . ... 543 362 .*. .. 330 458 . ... 459 547 365 . . . . 336 461 . ... 465 549 370 463 . ... 468 551 .... 549 373 466 . ... 470 555 378 . ... 344 469 .... 449 558..... .... 565 381 . ... 502 473 .... 454 562 .... 569 884 381 479 565 . ... 572 387 . ... 479 480 568 . ... 562 390 . ... 387 482 571 . ... 583 894 . . . . 391 483 575 .... . ... 575 896 . ... 394 485 577 . ... 578 393 . . . . 395 487 580 . ... 586 400 . . . . 363 493 583 403 498 583 .... 588 405 . ... 874 501 . ... 416 587 . ... 592 406 . ... 365 505 590 .... 477 410 . ... 369 507 . ..528 593 414. 597 .... 314 509 511 . . 518 596 417 PART II. "READINGS. SECTION I. I. 1. THE MONTHS. JANUARY! Darkness and light reign alike. Snow is on the ' ground. Cold is in the 3 air. 3 The winter is blossoming in frost-flowers. Why is the ground hidden ? Why is the earth * white ? So hath God wiped out the past, 5 so hath he spread the earth like an unwritten page, for a 6 new year ! Old sounds are silent in the forest and in the air. Insects are dead, birds 7 are gone, 8 leaves have perished, and all the foundations of soil remain. Upon this lies, white and tranquil, the emblem of newness and purity, the virgin* robes of the yet unstained year ! 2. February ! The day gains upon the night. The strife of heat and cold is scarce 10 begun. The winds that come from the desolate north wander through forests of frost-cracking boughs, and shout in the air the weird " cries of the northern bergs 13 and ice-resounding oceans. Yet, as the month wears on, the silent work begins, though storms rage. The earth is hidden yet, but not dead. The sun is drawing near. The storms cry out. But the sun is not heard in all the heavens. Yet he whispers words of deliverance into the ears of every sleeping seed and root 13 that lies beneath the snow. The day opens, but the night shuts the earth with its frost-lock. They strive together, but 1 The, (fhu), see Rule 3, p. 32. * Virgin, (vcr' jin). 2 The, see Rule 3, p. 32. ,0 Scarce, (skars). 8 Air, (ar), see Note 2, p. 22. u Weird, like witches ; skilled in * Earth, (erth), see Note 4, p. 22. witchcraft ; unearthly ; wild. 6 Past, (past), see Note 3, p. 22. " Bergs, (borgz), hills ; an iceberg e A, (a), see Rule 2, p. 32. is a hill or mountain of ice, or a vast 7 Birds, (berdz). body of ice floating on the ccean. • Gone, see Note 1, p. 23. "Root, (rot). 78 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. the Darkness and the Cold are growing weaker. On some nights they forget to work. 3. March! The conflict is more turbulent, 1 but the victory is gained. The world awakes. 3 There 3 come voices from long- hidden birds. The smell of the soil is in the air. The sullen ice retreating from open field, and all sunny places, has slunk to the north of every fence and rock. The knolls and banks that face the east or south sigh for release, and begin to lift up a thousand tiny palms. 4 4. April ! The singing month. Many voices of many birds call for resurrection over the graves of flowers, and they come forth. Go, see what they have lost. What have ice, and snow, and storm, done unto them? How did they fall into the earth, stripped and bare ? How do they come forth opening and glo- rified ? Is it, then, so fearful a thing to lie in the grave ? In its wild career, shaking and scourged of storms through its orbit, the earth has scattered away no treasures. The Hand that governs in April governed in January. You have not lost what God has only hidden. You lose nothing b in struggle, in trial, in bitter distress. If called to shed thy joys as trees their leaves ; if the affections be driven back into the heart, as the life of flowers to their roots, yet be patient. Thou shalt lift up thy leaf-covered boughs again. 6 Thou shalt shoot forth from thy roots new flowers. Be patient. "Wait. When it is February, April is not far off. Secretly the plants love each other. 5. May ! O Flower-Month, per'fect the harvests of flowers ! Be not niggardly. Search out the cold and resentful nooks T that refused the sun, casting back its rays from disdainful ice, and plant flowers even there. There is goodness in the worst. There is warmth in the coldness. The silent, hopeful, unbreath- ing sun, that will not fret or despond, but carries a placid brow through the unwrinkled heavens, at length conquers the very rocks, and lichens 8 grow and inconspicuously blossom. What shall not Time do, that carries in its bosom * Love ? i Turbulent, (t$r' bu lent). 8 Lichen, (11' ken), one of an order a Awakes, (a woks'), Note 1, p. 32. of flowerless plants, without distinc- 8 There, (thar). tion of leaf and stem, usually of 4 Palms, (pamz). scaly, expanded, front-like forms, but 6 Nothing, (nuth' ing). sometimes imitating the forms of • Again, (a gen'). branches of trees. 7 Nooks, (n6ks). 9 Bosom, (buz/ um). THE MONTHS. 79 G. Jttnt: ! Rest ! This is tho year's bower. Sit down within it. Wipe from thy brow the toil. The elements are thy ser- vants. The dews bring thee jewels. The winds bring per'fume. The earth shows thee all her treasure. The forests sing to thee. The air is all sweetness, as if all the angels of God had gone through it, bearing spices homeward. The storms are but as flocks of mighty birds that spread their wings and sing in tho high heaven ! Speak to God, now, and say, " O Father, where art thou ?" And out of every flower, and tree, and silver pool, and twined thicket, a voice will come, " God is in me." The earth cries to the heavens, " God is here." And the heavens cry- to the earth, " God is here." The sea claims Him. Tho land hath Him. His footsteps arc upon the deep ! He sitteth upon the Circle of the Earth ! O sunny joys of the sunny month, yet soft and temperate, how soon will the eager months that come burning from the equator, scorch you ! 7. July ! Rouse up ! The temperate heats that filled the air are raging forward to glow and overfill the earth with hot- ness. Must it be thus in everything, that June shall rush to- ward August? Or, is it not that there are deep and unreached places for whose sake the probing ' sun pierces down its glowing hands ? There is a deeper work than June can perform. The earth shall drink of the heat before she knows her nature or her strength. Then shall she bring forth to the uttermost the treas- ures of her bosom. For, there are things hidden far down, and the deep things of life arc not known till the fire reveals them. 8. August ! Reign, thou Fire-Month ! "What canst thou do ? Neither shalt thou destroy the earth, whom frosts and ice could not destroy. The vines droop, the trees stagger, the broad palmed leaves give thee their moisture, and hang down. But every night the dew pities them. Yet, there are flowers that look thee in the eye, fierce Sun, all day long, and wink not. This is the rejoicing month for joyful insects. If our unselfish eye would behold it, it is the most populous and the happiest month. The herds plash in the sedge ; fish seek the deeper pools ; forest fowl lead out their young ; the air is resonant 2 of insect orchestras, 3 each one carrying his part in Nature's grand 1 Prob' ing, scrutinizing ; search- 3 Orchestra, (ar' kes tra), a band ing to the bottom. of musicians ; a place prepared for 5 Resonant, (rez' o nant). the performers in a concert. 80 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. harmony. August, thou art the ripeness of the year ! Thou art the glowing center of the circle ! 9. September! There are thoughts in thy heart of death. Thou art doing a secret work, and heaping up treasures for an- other year. The unborn infant-buds which thou art tending are more than all the living leaves. Thy robes are luxuriant, but worn with softened pride. More dear, less beautiful than June, thou art the heart's month. Not till the heats of summer are gone, while all its growths remain, do we know the fullness of life. Thy hands are stretched out, and clasp the glowing palm of August, and the fruit-smelling hand of October. Thou di- videst them asunder, and art thyself molded of them both. 10. October! Orchard of the year! Bend thy boughs to the earth, redolent ' of glowing fruit ! Ripened seeds shake in their pods. Apples drop in the stillest hours. Leaves begin to let go when no wind is out, and swing in long waverings to the earth, which they touch without sound, and lie looking up, till winds rake them, and heap them in fence corners. When the gales come through the trees, the yellow leaves trail, like sparks at night behind the flying engine. The woods are thinner, so that we can see the heavens plainer, as we lie dreaming on the yet warm moss by the singing spring. The days are calm. The nights are tranquil. The year's work is dene. She walks in gorgeous apparel, looking upon her long labor, and her serene eye saith, " It is good." 11. November! Patient watcher, thou art asking to lay down thy tasks. Life, to thee, now, is only a task accomplished. In the night-time thou liest down, and the messengers of winter deck thee with hoar-frosts for thy burial. The morning looks upon thy jewels, and they perish while it gazes. AVilt thou not come, O December? 12. December! Silently the month advances. There is nothing to destroy, but much to bury. Bury, then, thou snow, that slumberously fallest through the still air, the hedge-rows of leaves ! Muffle thy cold wool about the feet of shivering trees ! Bury all that the year hath known, and let thy brilliant stars, that never shine as they do in thy frostiest nights, behold the work ! But know, O month of destruction, that in thy constel- 1 RSd' o lent, having or diffusing a rich fragrance, odor, or scent. HYMN TO THE SEASONS. 81 latioa ' is set that Star, whose rising is the sign, for evermore, that there is life in death ! Thou art the month of resurrection. In thee, the Christ came. Every star, that looks down upon thy labor and toil of burial, knows that all things shall come forth again. Storms shall sob themselves to sleep. Silence shall find a voice. Death shall live, Life shall rejoice, Winter shall break forth and blossom into Spring, Spring shall put on her glorious apparel and be called Summer. It is life ! it is life ! through the whole year ! II. W. Beeper. Eev. Henry "Ward Beeciier, son of Dr. Lyman Bcecher, was born in Litch- field, Connecticut, June 24th, 1813. He was graduated at Amherst College, in 1834. He studied theology at Lane Seminary, Cincinnati, which was under the direction of his father; and was first settled as a Presbyterian minister at Law- renccburg, Dearborn County, Indiana, where he remained two years. From thence, he removed to Indianapolis, the capital of the State, where he labored with great acceptation till he accepted the unanimous call of a new Congrega- tional Society, in Brooklyn, New York. He was installed pastor of the church, October, 1847. His eloquent sermons, which arc never commonplace, attract very large and attentive audiences. He is equally favored as a lecturer on topics of the day, usually lecturing about eighty times a year, in various parts of the country. Mr Bcecher generally avoids doctrinal topics. He preaches the truth of to-day applied to the temptations, the errors, and the wants of to-day. His sympathy with nature, acute observation of men and things, remarkable analy- sis of character, apt illustration, mental elasticity, soul-strength, and allluence and power of diction, are equally apparent in bis writings and his extemporane- ous speeches. n. 2. HYMN TO THE SEASONS. THESE, as they change, Almighty Father ! these Are but the varied God. The rolling year Is fall of Thee. Forth in the pleasing Spring Thy beauty walks, Thy tenderness, and love. Wide flush the fields ; the softening air is balm ; Echo the mountains round ; the forest smiles; And every sense and every heart is joy. 2. Then comes Thy glory in the Summer months, Wifti liprht and heat refulgent." Then thv sun Shoots full perfection through the swelling year; 1 C5n N stella'tion,an assemblage, or some other object which it is im- cluster, or group of fixed stars, situ- ngined to resemble. ated near each other in the heavens, 2 Re ful' gent, casting a bright and bearing the name of an animal, light ; brilliant ; splendid. 82 NATIONAL FIFTH READEK. And oft Thy voice in dreadful thunder speaks, And oft at dawn, deep noon, or falling eve, By brooks and groves, in hollow-whispering gales. Thy bounty shines in Autumn unconfined, And spreads a common feast for all that live. In Winter awful Thou, with clouds and storms Around Thee thrown, tempest o'er tempest rolled, Majestic darkness ! On the whirlwind's wing, Riding sublime, Thou bidst the world adore, And humblest Nature with thy northern blast. 3. MJsterious round ! what skill, what force divine, Deep felt, in these appear ! a simple train, Yet so delightful mixed, with such kind art, Such beauty and beneficence J combined ; Shade, unperceived, so softening into shade ; And all so forming a harmonious whole, That, as they still succeed, they ravish 5 still. 4. But wandering 6ft, with brute 3 unconscious gaze, Man marks not Thee ; marks not the mighty Hand, That, ever busy, wheels the silent sphere ; Works in the secret deep ; shoots, steaming, thence The fair profusion that 6'erspreads the Spring ; Flings from the sun direct the flaming day ; Feeds every creature ; hurls the tempest forth ; And, as on earth this grateful change revolves, With transport touches all the springs of life. 5. Nature, attend! join, every living soul, Beneath the spacious temple of the sky, In adoration * join ; and, ardent, raise One general song ! To Him, ye vocal gales, Breathe soft, whose spirit in your freshness breathes : O, talk of Him in solitary glooms ! Where, o'er the rock, the scarcely i waving pine * Be neT i cence, the practice of 4 AcT o ra' tion, the act of paying doing good ; active goodness, kind- honors to a divine being ; the wor- ness, or charity. ship paid to God ; marked respect * Rav' ish, enrapture ; transport paid to a superior or one in high es« with delight. teem. 8 Brute, (br5t), see Rule 4, p. 32. ■ Scarcely, (skars' II). HYMN TO THE SEASONS. g3 Fills the brown shade with a religious awe. And ye, whose bolder note is heard afar, Who shake the astonished world, lift high to heaven The impetuous song, and say from whom you rage. G His praise, ye brooks, attune, ye trembling rills ; And let me catch it as I muse along. Ye headlong torrents, rapid and profound ; Ye softer floods, that lead the humid maze Along the vale ; and thou, majestic main, A secret world of wonders in thyself, Hound His stupendous ' praise, whose greater voice Or bids you 2 roar, or bids your 3 roarings fall. 7. Soft roll your incense, /icrbs, and fruits, 4 and flowers, In mingled clouds to Him, whose sun exalts, "Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil paints. Ye forests, bend ; ye harvests, wave to Him ; Breathe your still song into the reaper's heart, As home he goes beneath the joyous moon. 8. Ye that keep watch in heaven, as earth asleep Unconscious lies, effuse 5 your mildest beams ; Ye constellations, while your angels strike, Amid the spangled sky, the silver lyre. Great source of day ! best image here below Of thy Creator, ever pouring wide, From world to world, the vital ocean round, On Nature write wirli every beam His praise. 9. The thunder rolls : be hushed the prostrate world, While cloud to cloud returns the solemn hymn. Bleat out afresh, ye hills ; ye mossy rocks, Betain the sound ; the broad responsive low, Ye valleys, raise ; for the Great Shepherd reigns, And His unsuffering kingdom yet will come. Ye woodlands all, awake : a boundless song Burst from the groves ! and when the restless day, 1 Stu pen" dous, literally, striking 3 You, (yo). dumb by its greatness of size or ini- 3 Your, (yor). portancc ; hence, astonishing ; wod- 4 Fruits, (frStz), Kulc 4, p. H2. derfuJ. * Effuse, (ef fuz'), spill, or pour out, 84 NATIONAL FIFTH HEADER. Expiring, lays the warbling world asleep, Sweetest of birds ! sweet Philomela, 1 charm The listening shades, and teach the night His praise. 10. Ye chief, for whom the whole creation smiles, At once the head, the heart, and tongue of all, Crown the great hymn ! in swarming cities vast, Assembled men, to the deep organ join The long-resounding voice, 6ft breaking clear, At solemn pauses, through the swelling bass ; And, as each mingling flame increases each, In one united ardor rise to heaven. Or, if you rather choose the rural 2 shade, And find a fane in every sacred grove, There let the shepherd's flute, the virgin's lay, The prompting seraph, 3 and the poet's lyre, Still sing the God of Seasons as they roll. 11. For me, when I forget the darling theme, Whether the blossom blows, the summer ray Russets the plain, inspiring Autumn gleams, Or Winter rises in the blackening east, Be m) r tongue mute, my fancy paint no more, And, dead to joy, forget my heart to beat! — Should fate command 4 me to the furthest verge Of the green earth, to distant barbarous climes, Rivers unknown to song, — where first the sun Gilds Indian mountains, or his setting beam Flames on the Atlantic isles, — 'tis naught to me ; Since God is ever present, ever felt, In the void waste as in the city full ; And where He vital breathes, there must be joy. 12. When even at last the solemn hour shall come, And wing my mystic & flight to future worlds, I cheerful will obey ; there, with new powers, Will rising wonders sing. I can not go 1 Fhir o me' la, from Philomela, " SSr'aph, (Eng., plural, ser'aphs ; daughter of Pandion, king of Athens, Heb., pi., ser'a phlrn), an angel of the who was supposed to have been highest order, changed into a nightingale ; hence, * Command, (kom mand'). the nightingale. 6 MyV tic, obscure ; involving 3 Rural, (ro' ral). some hidden meaning. NEVER DESPAIR 85 Where Universal Love not smiles around, Sustaining all yon orbs, and all their suns ; Prom seeming evil still educing good, And better thence again, and better still, In infinite progression. But I lose Myself in him, in Light ineffable ! ' Come then, expressive Silence, muse His praise. James Thomson. James Thomson was born at Ednam,ncar Kelso, Roxburgh County, Scotland, September 11th, 1700, and died August 27th, 1T4S. lie was the author of tho "Seasons," a work which alone would have perpetuated his name. Though born a poet, he seems to have advanced but slowly, and by reiterated efforts, to refinement of taste. The first edition of the "Seasons" differs materially fr<>m the second, and the second still more from the third. Every alteration was an improvement in delicacy of thought and language. That the genius of Thorn, eon was purifying and working oil" its alloys up to the termination of his exist- ence, may be seen from the superiority in style and diction of his last poem, the "Castle of Indolence," to which he brought not only the full nature, hut the perfect art of a poet. As a dramatic writer he was unsuccessful. lie was in poverty in early life, but through the inllucnec of Lord Lyttlcton, he obtained a pension of £100 a year, from the Prince of Wales, and an office which brought him £300 per annum. He was now in comparative opulence, and his residence at Kcw-lane, near Richmond, was the scene of social enjoyment and lettered case. He was friendly, shy and indolent. His noted lines in favor of early rising, commencing — Falsely luxurious, will not man awake, And springing from the bed of sloth, &c, were written in bed. SECTIOX II. I. 3. NEVER DESPAIR. THERE is no trait of human character so potential 3 for weal or woe as firmness. To the business man it is all-imoor- tant. Before its irresistible energy the most formidable obsta- cles become as cobweb barriers in its path. 3 Difficulties, the terror of which causes the pampered* sons of luxury to shrink 1 In ef fa ble, not capable of being powerful ; mighty ; forcible, expressed in words ; untold ; un- ' Path, (pith). speakable. 4 Pam' pered, fed or gratified in- 3 Potential, (p6 ten' ekal), efficient ; ordinately or unduly. 86 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. back with dismay, provoke from the man of lofty determination only a smile. The whole history of our race — all nature, indeed —teems with examples to show what wonders may be accom- plished by resolute perseverance and patient toil. 2. It is related of Tamerlane, ' the celebrated warrior, the terror of whose arms spread through all the Eastern nations, and whom victory attended at almost every step, that he once learned from an insect a lesson of perseverance, which had a striking effect on his future character and success. 3. When closely pursued by his enemies — as a contemporary' tells the anecdote — he took refuge in some old ruins, where, left to his solitary musings, he espied an ant tugging and striving to cany a single grain of corn. His unavailing efforts were re- peated sixty-nine times, and at each several time, so soon as he reached a certain point of projection, he fell back wifh his bur- den, unable to surmount it ; but the seventieth time he bore away his spoil in triumph, and left the wondering hero reani- mated and exulting in the hope of future victory. 5. How pregnant 3 the lesson this incident conveys! How many thousand instances there are in which inglorious defeat ends the career of the timid and desponding, when the same tenacity of purpose would crown it with triumphant success ! Resolution is almost omnipotent. Sheridan 4 was at first timid, and obliged to sit down in the midst of a speech. Convinced of, and mortified at, the cause of his failure, he said one day to a friend, " It is in me, and it shall come out." 5. From that moment he rose, and shone, and triumphed in a consummate 6 eloquence. Here was true moral courage. And it was well observed by a heathen moralist, that it is not because things are difficult that we dare 6 not undertake them. 1 Tarn' er lane, called also Timour fever, and died soon after taking the the Tartar, was born 1335. He be- field, 18th February, 1405. came sovereign of Tartary, and sub- ■ Con tern' po rary, living, acting, dued Persia, India and Syria. With, or happening at the same time, an army of 200,000 men, in a battle ■ Preg' nant, full of consequences, fought at Angora, on the 20th of July, * Richard Brinsley Sheridan, sco 1402, he defeated the Turkish army, Biographical Sketch, p. 126. composed of 300,000 men, and made 6 Con siim' mate, carried to the their emperor, Bajazet, prisoner. He utmost extent or degree ; complete; was on the point of invading China, perfect, when ho was seized with a violent Dare, (dlr), cec Note 2, p. 22. now. 87 G. Be, then, bold in spirit. Indulge no doubts — they arc traitors. In the practical pursuit of our high aim, let us never lose sight of it in the slightest instance : for it is more by a dis- regard of small things, than by open and flagrant offenses, that men come short of excellence. There is always a right and a wrong ; and if you ever doubt, be sure you take not the wrong. Observe this rule, and every experience will be to you a mean3 of advancement. n. 4. NOW. THE venerable Past — is past ; 'Tis dark, and shines not in the ray : 'Twas good, no doubt — 'tis gone at last — There dawns another day. Why should we sit where ivies creep, And shroud ourselves in charnels deep ? Or the world's yesterdays deplore, Mid crumbling ruins mossy hoar? 2. Why should we see with dead men's eyes, Looking at Was from morn to night, When the beauteous Now, the divine To Be, Woo with their charms our living sight ? Why should we hear but echoes dull, "When the world of sound, so beautiful, Will give us music of our own ? Why in the darkness should we grope, When the sun, in heaven's resplendent cope, Shines as bright as e'er it shone ? 3. Abraham ' saw no brighter stars Than those which burn for thee and me. When Homer 3 heard the lark's sweet song 5 Or night-bird's lovelier melody, 1 A' bra ham, the patriarch of the lie is supposed to have been an Asi- Jews, born and died moro than two atic Greek, though his birth-place, thousand years B. C. and the period in which he lived, 2 H5' mer, the most distinguished are not known. of poets, called the " Father of Song." * S5ng, see Note 1, p. 23. 88 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. They were such sounds as Shakspeare 1 heard, Or Chaucer," when he blessed the bird ; Such lovely sounds as we can hear. — 4. Great Plato 3 saw the vernal year Send forth its tender flowers and shoots, And luscious autumn pour its fruits ; And we can see the lilies blow, The corn-fields wave, the rivers flow ; For us all bounties of the earth, For us its wisdom, love, and mirth, If we daily walk in the sight of God, And prize the gifts he has bestowed. 5. We will not dwell amid the graves, Nor in dim twilights sit alone, To gaze at moldered architraves, 4 Or plinths 5 and columns overthrown ; We will not only see the light Through painted windows cobwebbed o'er, Nor know the beauty of the night Save by the moonbeam on the floor : But in the presence of the sun, Or moon, or stars, our hearts shall glow ; We'll look at nature face to face, And we shall love because we know. 6. The j)i*esent needs us. Every age Bequeams the next for heritage No lazy luxury or delight — But strenuous labor for the right ; For Now, the child and sire of Time, Demands the deeds of earnest men To make it better than the past, And stretch the circle of its ken. — — - ■ ■ - ■ -- — .— — .. — ■ — ■ — ■ — — , ■ , . . - 1 See Biographical Sketch, p. 383. about 430 n. c., and died in his 3 Geoffrey Chaucer, (cha'ser).call- eightieth year, ed the day-star and father of English * Architrave, (ark' i triv), the part poetry, born about 1328, and died in of a roof which rests on the top of a 1400. His great work is " The Can- column, designed to represent the terbury Tales." beam which supports the roof. 8 Pla' to, a very celebrated philos- b Plinth, a flat, round, or square opher of ancient Greece, was born baso or foundation for a column. A GOLDEN COPPERSMITH. 89 Now is a fact that men deplore, Though it might bless them evermore, Would they but fashion it aright : Tis ever new, 'tis ever bright. 7. Time, nor Eternity, hath seen A repetition of delight In all its phases : ne'er hath been For men or angels that which is ; And that which is hath ceased to be Ere we have breathed it, and its place Is lost in the Eternity. But Now is ever good and fair, Of the Infinitude the heir, And we of it. So let us live That from the Past we mav receive Light for the Now — from Now a joy That Fate nor Time shall e'er destroy. Mackay. Chakles Mackay, L.L.D., a British poet and journalist, was born in Perth, 1813. He was editor of the Morning Chronicle for live years, and of the Glasgow Argus for three. He is an author of considerable fame, ranking among the first of the present British poets, and still writes for the Illustrated London News. III. 5. A GOLDEN COPPERSMITH. BASEL GAVRELOFF MARINE, a Russian crown-slave, and by trade a coppersmith, was, at the beginning of March, returning to St. Petersburg from visiting his family at his native village. He arrived at Mos'cow on the night of the eleventh, with ten of his companions ; and as the railway train was al- ready gone, they were obliged to pass the night there, and re- main till three the next afternoon. 2. "The villagers are curious," Marine himself relates, "and as we had never been at Moscow before, we determined to see all the curiosities of that ancient town. "We entered the Cathe- dral of the Assumption, and kissed all its holy relics. We ascended to the top of the belfry of dTvan-Ycliky, and then pro- ceeded to the Bird-market. Here we heard that a terrible fire was raging — that the Great Theater was burning. As it was only noon, we determined to be spectators, and hastened to the spot." 3. They arrived just as the fire was at its height ; the theater 90 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. burnt from the interior, and the flames spread rapidly, bursting from the roof and the windows in savage fury. At the time the fire broke out, three workmen were engaged at the top of the building : it gained upon them so fast, they had only time from a window to reach the roof ; when they frantically rushed about without hope of escape, surrounded by the flames, which each moment gained upon them. Two of them in wild despair threw themselves from the roof, and were killed on the pavement below. 4. The third remained ; and, suffocating with the smoke, screamed for assistance in a manner that struck agony in the hearts of all who heard hini. His death seemed inevitable. There was not a ladder of sufficient length to reach the roof of the building, and the miserable man had the alternative of per- ishing by the flames or leaping down, as his comrades had done. But even in this extremity his confidence did not forsake him, and he sought refuse on that side where the wind blew the flames away from him. Marine and his companions all this time were spectators of the scene. " I held my tongue," said Marine, "but my heart beat painfully, and I asked myself how I could save this poor soul." 5. " Companions," cried the brave fellow, suddenly, " wait for me here, while I try and save that man." His comrades looked at him with surprise, but without dissuading him from his pur- pose. " God be with you," said they, " for it is a good deed you are about to do." Without losing another moment, Marine ap- proached the authorities present, and solicited permission to try and rescue the man from the frightful death which menaced him. G. Permission obtained, he took off his cap and sheepskin coat, and confided them to the care of the police. Accompanied by his brother, and provided with a stout cord, he rushed to a ladder that was placed against the wall, but which was very far from reaching the roof. Marine made the sign of the Cross, and be- gan to ascend. When he reached the summit, he fastened the cord around his waist, and once more devoutly crossing himself, began to climb one of the pipes that led from the roof. 7. The crowd below, breathless with astonishment and fear, eagerly watched each movement. Around him the flames were playing with intense fury ; and above the terrible noise of the falling timbers were heard the fearful shrieks of the unfortunate man ; who, though he saw assistance coming to him, dreaded it A GOLDEN COPPERSMITn. 91 might be too late. Nothing daunted, Marine continued his per- ilous ascent'. "It was cold," said ho, "and there was a terrible wind, but yet I felt it not ; for, from the moment I determined upon trying-to save the follow, my heart was on fire, and I was like a furnace." His burning hands kept continually sticking to the frozen pipes, which somewhat retarded his progress ; but still he courageously continued his way. "The pipe cracked," said he, " it was no longer firm — this dear pipe ; but happily I had arrived at the cornice, where there was foot-room." 8. His brother, who had remained all this time on the ladder, had made a hook fast to one end of the cord. Marine passed it to the man on the roof, and desired him to fasten it somehow securely ; this he did by fixing it round one of the ornaments of the cornice. Marine doubled it, to make it more secure, and then made him slide down the pipe, holding the cord in his hand, and his knees firmly round the pipe — himself giving the example. At the moment Marine reached the ladder, and tho man ho had so nobly preserved was seen to glide down in safety, a remarkable movement was manifested by the crowd — a move- ment truly Russian — all heads were simulta/neously uncovered, and all hands made the sign of the Cross. 9. When Marine reached the ground, tho man was already half-way down the ladder, and out of all danger. " I had hardly reached the ground," relates Marine, " when a gentleman, in a cloak and military casque, approached me, and gave me twenty- five silver rubles." ' A great number of others surrounded him, and each gave him according to his means — some ten kopecks 2 silver, others a ruble, and some only copper. " Thanks, brave man !" was cried on all sides ; "you are a courageous and good Christian ; and may G6d long grant you health, and bless you!" 10. " What became of the man I rescued," said Marine, " I do not know ; but that is not my affair. Thanks to God, lie is saved.. A gentleman — an aid-de-camp 3 — came to me, gave me a ticket, and took me in his sledge to the office of the Chan- cellerie, where he wrote down all that had taken place." During this time Marine did not lose his presence of mind ; he was uiily 'Ruble, (rS'bl), a Russian coin 3 Aid-de-camp, (ad' de king), a about the value of seventy-five cents, general's aid ; an officer selected by 7 Ko' peck, a Russian coin worth a general officer to assist him in his about two thirds of a cent. militarv duties. 02 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. anxious about one thing — that the railway should not leave with- out him. At three o'clock he was in the wagon ; and, on Friday, the thirteenth, he arrived at his destination, where he was waited for by his master, Monsieur x Flottoff. 11. He requested permission for one day's leave to visit his aunt, 3 who kept a small shop in the Vassili Ostroff, which was readily granted ; when, leaving her to return home, he was as- tonished at being called to the house of the Grand Master of the Police, who accompanied him to the palace. The courage of which he had so lately given so strong a proof, had been brought to the knowledge of the Emperor, who desired to see him. Never had he thought, even in his wildest dreams, that such an honor would be accorded to him, a simple man of the people. 12. The Emperor received Marine in his cabinet, and, with the greatest kindness, said, " Marine, I thank thee for the good and great action thou hast performed ; but I wish to hear from thy own mouth how, with God's assistance, thou didst it." Ma- rine related the adventure to him in his own simple manner, and when he had finished, the Czar, 3 who had listened to him with the greatest attention, embraced him, and said : " My son, may God bless you ! and remember, if you ever stand in need of my assistance, come to me and it shall be accorded you." The Emperor then presented him with a medal and one hundred and fifty silver rubles. Marine left the Emperor's presence a happy man. IV. 6. NOBLE REVENGE. A YOUNG officer (in what army no matter) had so far forgot, ten himself, in a moment of irritation, as to strike a private soldier, full of personal dignity (as sometimes happens in all ranks), and distinguished for his courage. The inex'orable 4 laws of military discipline forbade to the injured soldier any practical redress — he could look for no retaliation by acts. 2. "Words only were at his command, and, in a tumult of in- dignation, as he turned away, the soldier said to his officer that 1 Monsieur, (mo ser'), Sir ; Mr. < In ex' o ra tie, not to be per- ' Aunt, (ant), suaded or moved by entreaty or • Czar, (zar), emperor. prayer ; unyielding ; unchangeable. NOBLE REVENUE. <j;j he would " make him repent it." This, wearing the shape of a menace, naturally rekindled the officer's anger, and intercepted any disposition which might be rising within him toward a sen- timent of remorse ; and thus the irritation between the two young men grew hotter than before. 3. Some weeks after this a partial action took place with the enemy. Suppose yourself a spectator, and looking down into a valley occupied by the two armies. They arc facing each other, you see, in martial array. But it is no more than a skirmish which is going on ; in the course of which, however, an occasion suddenly arises for a desperate service. A redoubt, which has fallen into the enemy's hands, must be recaptured at any price, and under circumstances of all but hopeless difficulty. 4. A strong party has volunteered for the service ; there is a cry for somebody to head them ; you see a soldier step out from the ranks to assume this dangerous leadership ; the party moves rapidly forward ; in a few minutes it is swallowed up from your eyes in clouds of smoke ; for one half l hour, from behind these clouds you receive hieroglyphic 3 reports of bloody strife — fierce repeating signals, flashes from the guns, rolling musketry, and ex- ulting hurrahs 3 advancing or receding, slackening or redoubling. 5. At length all is over ; the redoubt has been recovered ; that which was lost is found again ; the jewel which had been made captive is ransomed with blood. Crimsoned with glorious gore, the wreck of the conquering party is relieved, and at lib- erty to return. From the river you see it ascending. 6. The plume-crested officer in command rushes forward, with his left hand raising his hat in homage to the blackened frag- ments of what once was a flag, whilst with his right lurnd he seizes that of the leader, though no more than a private from the ranks. That perplexes you not ; mystery you see none 4 in that. For distinctions of order perish, ranks are confounded ; "high and low" are words without a meaning, and to wreck goes every notion or feeling that divides the noble from the noble, or the brave man from the brave. 7. But wherefore 1 is it that now, when suddenly they wheel 1 Half, (haf). 3 Hurrahs, ( h6r raz' ), huzzas ; 3 Hr e ro glyph' ic, expressive of shouts of joy or exultation. meaning hy characters, pictures, or * None, (nun). figures. 'Wherefore, (wh&r'for). 94 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. into mutual recognition, 1 suddenly they pause? This soldier, this officer — who are they ? O reader ! once before they had stood face to face — the soldier that was struck, the officer that struck him. Once again 2 they are meeting; and the gaze of armies is upon them. If for a moment a doubt divides them, in a moment the doubt has perished. One glance exchanged between them publishes the forgiveness that is sealed forever. 8. As one who recovers a brother whom he has accounted dead, the officer sprang forward, threw his arms around the neck of the soldier, and kissed him, as if he were some martyr glorified by that shadow of death from which he was returning; whilst, on his part, the soldier, stepping back, and carrying his open hand through the beautiful motions of the military salute to a superior, makes this immortal answer — that answer which shut up forever the memory of the indignity offered to him, even while for the last time alluding to it : "Sir," he said, "I told you before, that I would make you repent it." Thomas de Quincey. TnoMAS de Quincet was born at Manchester, England, on the 15th of Au- gust, 1785. He passed his childhood in rural retirement. He was matriculated at Oxford, at Christmas, 1803, being then in his nineteenth year, where he re- mained till 1808. He resided for twenty years, between 1S08 and 1829, among the lakes and mountains of Westmoreland, and occupied Wordsworth's cottage seven years of the time. ' De Quinccy's first work, " Confessions of an English Opium-Eater," which appeared in the London Magazine, in 1S21, and was printed in book form in 1822, was immediately and immensely popular. It passed through several editions in Europe and this country, and at once placed its author in the front rank of vivid and powerful writers. After this period, his numerous contributions to the periodical press were paid for at a large price. He has written upon a wider and more diversified range of subjects than any other author of his time. He is noted for his original genius, stores of learn- ing, depth of insight, and subtlety of thought. His matter is always abundant and good. He has acquired a style of the rarest brilliancy and richness, but his force is often diminished by his capricious use of words, and the weary length of his digressions. V. 7. BEAUTY. THE high and divine beauty which can be loved without effeminacy, is that which is found in combination with the human will, and never separate. Beauty is the mark God sets 1 Recognition, (reV og nlsh' un), ed or confessed ; act of knowing again, acknowledgment : knowledge avow- ■ Again, (4 g£n'). BEAUTY. 9/3 upon virtue. Every natural action is graceful. Every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine. 2. Wo are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it. Every rational creature has all nature for his dowry and estate. It is his, if he will. He may divest himself of it ; he may creep into a corner, and abdi- cate his kingdom, as must men do ; but he is entitled to the world by his constitution. In proportion to the energy of his thought and will, he takes up the world into himself. " All those things for which men plow, build, or sail, obey virtue," said an ancient historian. " The winds and waves," said Gib- bon, 1 "are alway on the side of the ablest navigators." »So arc the sun and moon and all the stars of heaven. 3. When a noble act is done, — perchance in a scene of great natural beauty ; when Leonidas' and his three hundred martyrs consume one day in dying, and the sun and moon come each and look at them once in the steep defile of Thermopylae ; when Arnold Winkelried, a in the high Alps, under the shadow of the avalanche, 4 gathers in his side a sheaf of Austrian spears to break the hue for his comrades ; are not these heroes entitled to add the beauty of the scene to the beauty of the deed ? 4. AVhcn the bark of Columbus 5 nears the shore of America, — before it, the beach lined with savages, fleeing out of all their huts of cane — the sea behind, and the purple mountains of the 1 Edward Gibbon, one of the most no other means of breaking the celebrated historians of any age and heavy-armed lines of the Austrian?, country, author of the " Decline and he run with extended arms, and. Fall of the Roman Empire," was gathering as many of their spears as born at Putney, Surrey, England, he could grasp, thus opened a | April 27th, 1737, and died January sage for his countrymen, who, with 16th, 1794. hatchets and hammers, slaughter..! 2 Le 5n'i das, the first of the name, the mailed men-at-arms, and won king of Sparta, immortalized by his the victory. glorious defense of the pass of Ther- 4 Avalanche, (&v\u lanshA a mow- mopyla? against Xerxes, reigned from slip ; a vast body of ice, snow, or 491 to 480 B. C. earth, sliding down a mountain. 3 Arnold Winkelried, (wingk' el- 5 Christopher Colum'bus, the dis- ret), a Switzer of the fourteenth cen- covercr of the New World, was born tury, the glory of whose heroic, vol- in Gen'oii, about the year 1435 or untary death, is not surpassed in the 1436, and died at Seville, Spain, on annals of history. In the battle of the 20th of May, 1506. Sempach, perceiving that there was c Purple, (peV pi). 96 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Indian ' Ar'cMpel'ago around,— can we separate the man from the living picture ? Does not the New World clothe his form with her palm-groves and savannahs as fit drapery ? 5. Ever does natural beauty steal in like air, and envelop great actions. When Sir Harry Vane 2 was dragged up the Tower-hill, sitting on a sled, to suffer death as the champion of the English laws, one of the multitude cried out to him, "You never sat on so glorious a seat." Charles II., to intimidate the citizens of London, caused the patriot Lord Russell 3 to be drawn in an open coach, through the principal streets of the city, on his way to the scaffold. " But," to use the simple narrative of his biographer, "the multitude imagined they saw liberty and virtue sitting by his side." 6. In private places, among sordid objects, an act of truth or heroism seems at once to draw to itself the sky as its temple, the sun as its candle. Nature stretcheth out her arms to em- brace man, only let his thoughts be of equal greatness. Willingly does she follow his steps with the rose and the violet, and bend her lines of grandeur and grace to the decoration of her darling child. Only let his thoughts be of equal scope, and the frame will suit the picture. A virtuous man is in unison with her works, and makes the central figure of the visible sphere. Emerson. Ralph Waldo Emekson, a son of the Rev. William Emerson, was born in Boston, about the year 1803, took his degree of bachelor of arts at Harvard Col- lege in 1821, studied theology, and, in 1829, was ordained the colleague of the lute Rev. Henry Ware, jr., over the second Unitarian church of his native city; but subsequently, becoming independent of the control of set regulations of re- ligious worship, retired to Concord, where, in 1835, he purchased the house in which he has since resided, except while absent on two excursions in Europe, during the latter of which, in 1847, he delivered a course of lectures in London, and other parts of England. He has been a contributor to " The North American Review " and " The Christian Examiner," and was two years editor of " The Dial," 1 Indian, (Ind' yan). ment, opposed the king, became one 2 Sir Henry Vane, a republican of the council of state on the estab- and religionist, was born at Hadlow, lishment of the commonwealth, and, In Kent, England, in 1612. He was after the restoration, was condemned among the earliest of those whom for treason, and beheaded June religious opinion induced to seek a 14, 1GG2. He wrote several works, home in America. He was appointed chiefly religious. governor of Massachusetts in 1635, s Lord William Russell, born on returned to England the following the 20th of September, 1639, and be- year, married there, entered parlia. headed on the 21st of July, 1683. SABBATH MORNINU. 97 established in Boston, by Mr. Ripley, in 1840. lie published several orations and addresses in ISoT-oS-oD-IO, and in 1841 the first series of his " Essays," in 1844 the second series of his "Essays," in 1840 a collection of his " Poems," in 1S51 "Representative Men," in 1852, in connection with W. II. Channing and Janus Freeman Clarke, "Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli," and in 1856 "English Trait?." Mr. Emerson is an able lecturer, a most distinguished essayist, and an eminent poet. He perceives the evils in society, the falsehoods of popular opin- ions, and the unhappy tendencies of common feelings. He is an original and independent thinker, and commands attention both by the novelty of his view9 and the graces and peculiarities of his style. H SECTION III. I. 8. SABBATH MORNING. OVv still the morning of the hallowed day ! Mute is the voice of rural labor, hushed The plowboy's whistle, and the milkmaid's song. Tho scythe lies glittering in the dewy wreath Of tedded ' grass, mingled with fading flowers, That yester-morn bloomed, waving in the breeze. Sounds, the most faint, attract the ear, — the hum Of early bee, the trickling of the dew, The distant bleating, midway up the hill. Calmness sits throned on yon unmoving cloud. 2. To him who wanders o'er the upland leas, The blackbird's note comes mellower from the dale ; And sweeter from the sky the gladsome lark Warbles with heaven-tuned song ; the lulling brook Murmurs more gently down the deep-worn glen ; Whilo from yon lowly roof, whose curling smoke O'ermounts the mist, is heard, at intervals, The voice of psalms, — the simple song of praise. 8. With dove-like wings, Peace O'er yon village broods : The dizzying mill-wheel rests ; and the anvil's din Hath ceased ; all, all around is quietness. Less fearful, on this day, the limping hare 1 TSd' ded, spread out, or turned and scattered for drying. 5 98 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Stops, and looks back, and stops, and looks on man, Her deadliest foe. The toil-worn horse, set free, Unheedful of the pasture, roams at large ; And as his stiff, unwieldy bulk he rolls, His iron-armed hoofs gleam in the morning ray. 4. But chiefly man the day of rest enjoys. Hail, Sabbath ! thee I hail, the poor man's day. On other days, the man of toil is doomed To eat his joyless bread lonely, — the ground Both seat and board, screened from the winter's cold And summer's heat by neighboring hedge or tree ; But on this day, embosomed in his home, He shares the frugal meal with those he loves ; With those he loves, he shares the heart-felt joy Of giving thanks to God, — not thanks of form, A word and a grimace', but reverently, With covered face, and upward, earnest eye. 5. Hail, Sabbath ! thee I hail, the poor man's day : The pale mechanic now has leave to breathe The morning air, pure from the city's smoke ; WTiile, wandering slowly up the river's side, He meditates on Him, w r hose power he marks In each green tree that proudly spreads the bough, As in the tiny dew-bent flowers that bloom Around its roots ; and while he thus surveys, With elevated joy, each rural charm, He hopes, yet fears presumption in the hope, — That heaven may be one Sabbath without end. 6. But now his steps a welcome sound recalls : Solemn the knell, from yonder ancient pile, Fills all the air, inspiring joyful awe : Slowly the throng moves o'er the tomb-paved ground ; The aged man, the bowed down, the blind Led by the thoughtless boy, and he who breathes With pain, and eyes the new-made grave, well-pleased ; - These, mingled with the young, the gay, approach The house of God — these, spite of all their ills, A glow of gladness feel : with silent praise They enter in ; a placid stillness reigns, SABBATH MORNING. [)<j Until the man of God, -worthy the name, Opens the book, and reverentially The stated portion reads. A pause ensues. 7. The organ breathes its distant thunder notes, Then swells into a diapason ' full : The people rising sing, " with harp, with harp, And voice of psalms ;" harmoniously attuned, The various voices blend ; the long-drawn aisles, At every close, the lingering strain prolong. And now the tubes a softened stop controls : In softer harmony the people join, While liquid whispers from yon orphan band Recall the soul from adoration's trance, And fill the eye with pity's gentle tears. 8 Again the organ-peal, loud, rolling, meets The halleluiahs ' of the choir. Sublime A thousand notes symphoniously ascend, As if the whole were cne, suspended high ■ In air, soaring heavenward : afar they float, Wafting glad tidings to the sick man's couch : Raised on his arm, he lists the cadence close, Yet thinks he hears it still : his heart is cheered ; He smiles on death ; but ah ! a wish will rise — " Would I were now beneath that echoing roof ! No lukewarm accents from my lips should flow ; My heart would sing ; and many a sabbath-day My steps should thither turn ; or, wandering f:ir In solitary paths, where wild flowers blow, There would I bless His name who led me forth From death's dark vale, to walk amid those swects-i Who gives the bloom of health once more to glow Upon this cheek, and lights this languid eye." James Graiiame. "Rev James Graiiame was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 17o7>. He studied law and practiced at the Scottish bar several years, but afterward took orders in the Church of England, and was successively curate of Shipton, in Gloucester- shire, and of Sedgetield, in the county of Durham. Ill health compelled him to 1 Diapason, (dl v a p&'zon), in music, an octave apart : harmony, the octave or interval which includes 3 Halleluiah, (haP le lu' ya), praise all the tones ; concord, as of notes ye Jehovah ; give praises to God. 100 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. abandon his curacy when his virtues and talents had attracted notice and ren- dered him a popular and useful preacher ; and on revisiting Scotland, he died September 14th, 1811. His works consist of " Mary, Queen of Scotland," a dra- matic poem, published in 1801 ; " The Sabbath," from which the above selection is taken; "Sabbath Walks," "Biblical Pictures," "The Birds of Scotland," and "British Georgics," all in blank verse. "The Sabbath" is the best of his pro- ductions. The poet was modest and devout, though sometimes gloomy in his seriousness. His prevailing tone, however, is that of implicit trust in the good- ness of God, and enjoyment in his creation. n. 9. MATERNAL AFFECTION. \ \ 7 OMAN'S * charms are certainly many and powerful. The . V V expanding rose just bursting into beauty lias an irresisti- ble bewitchingness ; the blooming bride led triumphantly to the hy x mene'al altar awakens admiration and interest, and the blush of her cheek fills with delight ; but the charm of maternity i3 more sublime than all these. 2. Heaven has imprinted in the mother's face something be- yond this world, something which claims kindred with the skies, — the angelic smile, the tender look, the waking, watchful eye, which keeps its fond vigil over her slumbering babe. 3. These are objects which neither the pencil nor the chisel can touch, which poetry fails to exalt, which the most eloquent tongue in vain would eulogize, and on which all description be- comes ineffective. In the heart of man lies this lovely picture ; it lives in his sympathies ; it reigns in his affections ; his eye looks round in vain for such another object on earth. 4. Maternity, ecstatic 2 sound! so twined round our hearts, that they must cease to throb ere we forget it ! 'tis our first love ; 'tis part of our religion. Nature has set the mother upon such a pinnacle, that our infant eyes and arms are first uplifted to it ; we cling to it in manhood ; we almost worship it in old age. 5. He who can enter an apartment, and behold the tender babe feeding on its mother's beauty — nourished by the tide of life which flows through her generous veins, without a panting bosom and a grateful eye, is no man, but a monster. Ho who can approach the cradle of sleeping innocence without thinking that " of such is the kingdom of heaven !" or see the fond parent 1 Woman, (wum' an). side one's self ; delightful beyond * Ec stat' ic, rendering one be- measure THE GOOD WIFE. 10J hang over its beauties, and half retain her breath lest she should break its slumbers, without a veneration beyond all common feeling, is to be avoided in every intercourse of life, and is fit only for the shadow of darkness and the solitude of the desert. ni. 10. THE GOOD WIFE. THE heart of a man, with whom affection i3 not a name, and love a mere passion of the hour, yearns toward the quiet of a home, as toward the goal of his earthly joy and hope. And as you fasten there your thought, an indulgent, yet dreamy fancy paints the loved image that is to adorn it, and to make it sacred. 2. She is there to bid you — God speed ! and an adieu, that hangs like music on your car, as j'ou go out to the every-day labor of life. At evening, she is there to greet you, as you come back wearied with a day's toil ; and her look so full of gladness, cheats you of your fatigue ; and she steals her arm around you, with a soul of welcome, that beams like sunshine on her brow and that fills your eye with tears of a twin gratitude — to her, and Heaven. 3. She is not unmindful of those old-fashioned virtues of clean- liness and of order, which give an air of quiet, and which secure content. Your wants arc all anticipated ; the fire is burning brightly ; the clean hearth flashes under the joyous blaze ; the old elbow-chair is in its place. Your very airworthiness of nil this haunts you like an accusing spirit, and yet penetrates your heart with a new devotion toward the loved one who is thus watchful of your comfort. 4. She is gentle ; — keeping your love, as she has won it, by a thousand nameless and modest virtues, which radiate from her whole life and action. She steals upon your affections like a summer wind breathing softly over sleeping valleys. She gains a mastery over your sterner nature, by very contrast ; and wins you unwittingly to her lightest wish. And yet her wishes are guided by that delicate tact, which avoids conflict with your manly pride ; she subdues, by seeming to yield. By a singlo soft word of appeal, she robs your vexation of its anger ; and with a slight touch of that fair hand, and one pleading look of that earnest eye, she disarms your sternest pride. 102 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 5. She is kind ; — shedding her kindness, as Heaven sheds dew. Who indeed could doubt it ? — least of all, you who are living on her kindness, day by day, as flowers live on light? There is none of that officious parade, which blunts the point of benevo- lence ; but it tempers every action with a blessing. 6. If trouble has come upon you, she knows that her voice, beguiling you into cheerfulness, will lay your fears ; and as she draws her chair beside you, she knows that the tender and con- fiding way with which she takes your hand and looks up into your earnest face, will drive away from your annoyance all its weight. As she lingers, leading off your thought with pleasant words, she knows well that she is redeeming you from care, and soothing you to that sweet calm, which such home and such wife can alone bestow. 7. And in sickness, — sickness that you almost covet for the sympathy it brings, — that hand of hers resting on your fevered forehead, or those fingers playing with the scattered locks, are more full of kindness than the loudest vaunt of Mends ; and when your failing strength will permit no more, you grasp that cherished hand, with a fullness of joy, of thankfulness, and of love, which your tears only can tell. 8. She is good ; — her hopes live where the angels live. Her kindness and gentleness are sweetly tempered with that meek- ness and forbearance which are born of Faith. Trust comes into her heart as rivers come to the sea. And in the dark hours of doubt and foreboding, you rest fondly xrpon her buoyant faith, as the treasure of your common life ; and in your holier musings, you look to that frail hand, and that gentle spirit, to lead you away from the vanities of worldly ambition, to the fullness of that joy which the good inherit. D. G. Mitchell. Donald G. Mitchell was born in Norwich, Connecticut, April, 1822. His father was the pastor of the Congregational church of that place, and his grand- father a member of the first Congress at Philadelphia, and for many years Chief-justice of the Supreme Court of Connecticut. Mr. Mitchell graduated in due course, at Yale, in 1841. His health being feeble, he passed the three fol- lowing years in the country, where he became much interested in agriculture, and wrote a number cf letters to the " Cultivator," at Albany. He gained a silver cup from the New York Agricultural Society, as a prize for a plan of farm buildings. He next crossed the ocean, and after remaining about two years in Europe, returned home, and soon after published "fresh Gleanings." In ISoO, after his return from a second visit to Europe, he published " The Battle Sum- mer," containing personal observations in Paris during the year 1848. He has since published the " Reveries of a Bachelor," " Dream Life," " Fudge Doings," INFLUENCE OF HOME. 103 " }Iy Farm at Edgcwood," " Seven Stories," " Wet Days at Edgcwood," and "Plain Talks on Familiar Subjects." His works have usually been well received. His style is quiet, pure, and effective. In 1S53, Mr. Mitchell received the ap- pointment of United States consul at Venice. He is at present residing in the Vicinity of New Haven. IV. 11. INFLUENCE OF HOME. HOME gives a certain serenity to the mind, so that ever/ thing is well defined, and in a clear atmosphere, and the lesser beauties brought out to rejoice in the pure glow which floats over and beneath them from the earth and sky. In this state of mind afflictions come to us ehas^Ticd ; and if the wrongs of the world cross us in our door-path, we put them aside without anger. Vices are about us, not to lure us away, or make us morose, but to remind us of our frailty and keep down our pride. 2. We are put into a right relation with the world ; neither holding it in proud scorn, like the solitary man, nor being car- ried along by shifting and hurried feelings, and vague and care- less notions of things, like the world's man. We do not take novelty for improvement, or set up vogue for a rule of conduct ; neither do we despair, as if all great virtues had departed with the years gone by, though we see new vices and frailties taking growth in the very light which is spreading over the earth. 3. Our safest way of coming into communion with mankind is through our own household. For there our Borrow and regret at the failings of the bad are in proportion to our love, while our familiar intercourse with the good has a secretly assimilating influence upon our characters. The domestic man has an inde- pendence of thought which puts him at ease in society, and a cheerfulness and benevolence of feeling which seem to ray out from him, and to diffuse a pleasurable senso over those near him, like a soft, bright day. 4. As domestic life strengthens a man's virtue, so docs it help to a sound judgment and a right balancing of things, and gives an integrity and propriety to the whole character. God, in his goodness, has ordained that virtue should make its own enjoy- ment, and that wherever a vice or frailty is rooted out, some- thing should spring up to be a beauty and delight in its stead. But a man of character rightly cast, has pleasures at home, 104 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. which, though fitted to his highest nature, are common to him as his daily food ; and ho moves about his house under a continued sense of them, and is happy almost without heeding it. 5. "Women have been called angels in love-tales and sonnets, till we have almost learned to think of angels as little better than women. Yet a man who knows a woman thoroughly, and loves her truly, — and there are women who may be so known and loved, — will find, after a few years, that his relish for the grosser pleasures is lessened, and that he has grown into a fond- ness for the intellectual and refined without an effort, and al- most unawares. G. Ho has been led on to virtue through his pleasures ; and the delights of the eye, and the gentle play of that passion which is the most inward and romantic in our nature, and which keeps much of its character amidst the concerns of life, have held him in a kind of spiritualized existence : he shares his very being with one who, a creature of this world, and with something of the world's frailties, Is yet a spirit still, and bright, With something of an angel light. With all the sincerity of a companionship of feeling, cares, sor- rows, and enjoyments, her presence is as the presence of a purer being, and there is that in her nature which seems to bring him nearer to a better world. She is, as it were, linked 'to angels, and in his exalted moments he feels himself held by the same tie. 7. In the ordinary affairs of life, a woman has a greater influ- ence over those near her than a man. While our feelings are, for the most part, as retired as anchorites, hers are in play be- fore us. We hear them in her varying voice ; we see them in the beautiful and harmonious undulations of her movements — in the quick shifting hues of her face — in her eye, glad and bright, then fond and suffused ; her frame is alive and active with what i3 at her heart, and all the outward form speaks. 8. She seems of a finer mold than we, and cast in a form of beauty, which, like all beauty, acts with a moral influence upon our hearts ; and as she moves about us, we feel a movement within which rises and spreads gently over us, harmonizing us with her own. And can any man listen to this — can his eye, day after day, rest upon this — and he not be touched by it, and mado better ? AN OLD HAUNT. 105 9. The dignity of a woman lias its peculiar character ; it awes mora than that of man. His is more physical, bearing itself up with an energy of courage which we may brave, or a strength which we may struggle against : he is his own avenger, and wo may stand the brunt. A woman's has nothing of this force in it ; it is of a higher quality, and too delicate for mortal touch. Dana. Richard Henry Dana was born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the loth of November, 1737. He graduated at Harvard in 1807. He opened a law-ofliee in Newport, R. I., in 1811, and became a member of the legislature; but his constitutional sensitiveness and feeble health compelled him to abandon his pro- fession soon after. For two years, from 1818, he aided in editing the N. A. Re- view; and in 1831 began the publication of "The Idle Man," a periodical in which he communicated to the public his Tales and Essays. After the discon- tinuance of that paper, he wrote able articles for several of the best periodicals of the country. The first volume of his poems, containing " The Burancer," was printed i,H 1837. An edition of his writings, in two volumes, was published in New York in 1850. Mr. Dana at present passes his time between his town res- idence at Boston and his country retirement at Cape Ann, where he can indulge in his love of nature. He is regarded always, by as many as have the honor of his acquaintance, with admiration and the most reverent affection. All of his writings belong to the permanent literature of the country, and yearly find more and more readers. They are distinguished for profouud philosophy, simplo sen- timent, and pure and vigorous diction. V. 12. AN OLD HAUNT. HH HE rippling water, with its drowsy tone ; JL The tall elms, towering in their stately pride ; And — sorrow's type — the willow, sad and lone, Kissing in graceful woe the murmuring tide ; 2. The gray church-tower ; and dimly seen beyond, The faint hills gilded by the parting sun ; All were the same, and seemed with greeting fond To welcome me as they of old had done. 3. And for a while I stood as in a trance, On that loved spot, forgetting toil and pain ; Buoyant my limbs, and keen and bright my glance : For that brief space I was a boy again ! 4. Again with giddy mates I careless played, Or plied the quivering oar, on conquest bent : Again, beneath the tall elms' silent shade, I wooed the fair, and won the sweet consent J_06 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 5. But brief, alas! the spell ; for suddenly Pealed from the tower the old familiar chimes, And with their clear, heart-thrilling melody, Awaked the spectral forms of darker times. 6. And I remembered all that years had wrought : How bowed my care-worn frame, how dimmed my eye ! How poor the gauds by Youth so keenly sought ! How quenched and dull Youth's aspirations high ! 7. And in half mournful, half upbraiding host, Duties neglected — high resolves unkept — And many a heart by death or falsehood lost — In lightning current 6'er my bosom swept. 8. Then bowed the stubborn knees, as backward sped The self-accusing thoughts in dread array, And slowly, from their long-congealed bed, Forced the remorseful tears their silent way. 9. Bitter, yet healing drops ! in mercy sent, Like soft dews falling on a thirsty plain, — And ere those chimes their last faint notes had spent, Strengthened and calmed, I stood erect again. 10. Strengthened, the task allotted to fulfill ; Calmed the thick-coming sorrows to endure ; Fearful of naught but of my own frail will. — In His almighty strength and aid secure. 11. For a sweet voice had whispered hope to me, — Had through my darkness shed a kindly ray : It said : " The past is fixed immutably, Yet is there comfort in the coming day !" VI. 13. THE WIDOW AND HER SON. PART FIRST. DURING my residence in the country, I used frequently to attend at the old village church. Its shadowy aisles, its moldering monuments, its dark oaken panneling, nil reverend with the gloom of departed years, seemed to tit it for the haunt THE WIDOW AND HER SOX. 107 of solemn meditation. A Sunday, too, in the country, is so holy in its repose ; such a pensive quiet reigns over the face of nature, that every restless passion is charmed down, and we feel all the natural religion of the soul gently springing up within us. 2. I do not pretend to be what i3 called a devout man, but there are feelings that visit me in a country church, amidst tho beautiful serenity of nature, which I experience nowhere else ; and if not a more religious, I think I am a better man on Sun- day than on any other day of the seven. But in this church I felt myself continually thrown back upon the world by the fri- gidity and pomp of the poor worms around me. 3. The only being that seemed thoroughly to feel the humble and prostrate piety of a true Christian, was a poor decrepit old woman, bending under the weight of years and infirmities. She bore the traces of something better than abject poverty. The lingerings of decent pride were visible in her appearance. Her dress, though humble in the extreme, was scrupulously clean. Some trivial respect, too, had been awarded her, for she did not take her seat among tho village poor, but sat alone on the steps of the altar. 4. She seemed to have survived all love, all friendshij->, all. society, and to have nothing left her but the hopes of heaven. When I saw her feebly rising and bending her aged form in prayer, — habitually conning her prayer book, which her palsied hand and failing eyes could not permit her to read, but which she evidently knew by heart, — I felt persuaded that the falter- ing voice of that poor woman arose to heaven far before the re- sponses of the clerk, the swell of the organ, or the chanting of the choir. 5. I am fond of loitering about country churches, and this was so delightfully situated, that it frequently attracted me. It stood on a knoll, round which a small stream made a beautiful bend, and then wound its way through a long reach of soft meadow scenery. The church was surrounded by yew-trees, which seemed almost coeval with itself. Its tall Gothic spire shot up lightly from among them, with rooks and crows generally wheeling about it. G. I was seated there ono still sunny morning, watching two laborers who were digging a grave. They had chosen one of the most remote and neglected corners of the church-yard, 108 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. where, by the number of nameless graves around, it would ap- pear that the indigent and friendless were hurried into the earth. I was told that the new-made grave was for the only son of a poor widow. While I was meditating on the distinctions of worldly rank, which extend thus down into the very dust, the toll of the bell announced the approach of the funeraL 7. They were the obsequies of poverty, with which pride had nothing to do. A coffin of the plainest materials, without pall or other covering, was borne by some of the villagers. The sexton walked before, with an air of cold indifference. There were no mock mourners in the trappings of affected woe, but there was one real mourner, who feebly tottered after the corpse. 8. It was the aged mother of the deceased — the poor old woman whom I had seen seated on the steps of the altar. She was supported by a humble friend, who was endeavoring to comfort her. A few of the neighboring poor had joined the train, and some children of the village were running hand in hand, now shouting with unthinking mirth, and sometimes pausing to gazo with childish curiosity on the grief of the mourner. 9. As the funeral train approached the grave, the parson issued out of the church porch, arrayed in the surplice, with prayer book in hand, and attended by the clerk. The service, however, was a mere act of charity. The deceased had been destitute, and the survivor was pennyless. It was shuffled through, therefore, in form, but coldly and unfeelingly. The well-fed priest, scarcely moved ten steps from the church door; his voice could scarcely be heard at the grave; and never did I hear the funeral service, that sublime and touching ceremony, turned into such a frigid mummery of words 10. I approached the grave. The coffin was placed on the ground. On it were inscribed the name and age of the deceased — " George Somers, aged 26 years." The poor mother had been assisted to kneel down at the head of it. Her withered hands were clasped as if in prayer ; but I could perceive, by a feeble rocking of the body and a convulsive motion of the lips, that she was gazing on the last relics of her son with tho yearnings of a mother's heart. 11. Tho service being ended, preparations were made to de- posit the coffin in the earth. There was that bustling stir that breaks so harshly on the feelings of grief and affection > dure- THE WIDOW AND HER SON. 109 tions given in the cold tones of business ; the striking- cf spades into sand and gravel, which at the grave of those we love i3 of all sounds the most withering. 12. The bustle around seemed to awaken the mother from a wretched reverie. She raised her glazed eyes, and looked about with a faint wildness. As the men approached with cords to lower the coffin into the grave, she wrung her hands and broke into an agony of grief. The poor woman who attended her took her by the arm, endeavored to raise her from the earth, and to whisper something like consolation — "Nay, now — nay, now — don't take it so sorely to heart." She could only shake her head and wring her hands as one not to be comforted. 13. As they lowered the body into the earth, the creaking of the cords seemed to agonize her ; but when, on some accidental obstruction, there was a jostling of the coffin, all the tenderness of the mother burst forth ; as if any harm could come to him who was far beyond the reach of worldly suffering. I could see no more — my heart swelled into my throat — my eyes tilled with tears — I felt as if I wcro acting a barbarous part in standing by and gazing idly on this scene of maternal anguish. I wandered to another part of the church-yard, where I remained until the funeral train had dispersed. 14. When I saw the mother slowly and painfully quitting the grave, leaving behind her the remains of all that was dear to her on earth, and returning to silence and destitution, my heart ached for her. "What, thought I, arc the distresses of the rich ? They have friends to soothe — pleasures to beguile — a world to divert and dissipate their griefs. What are the Borrows of the young ? Their growing minds soon close above the wounds — their elastic spirits soon rise beneath the pressure — their green and ductile affections soon twine around new objects. 15. But the sorrows of the poor, who have no outward ap- pliances to soothe — the sorrows of the aged, with whom life at best is but a wintry day, and who can look for no after-growth of joy — the sorrows of a widow, aged, solitary, destitute, mourn- ing over an only son, the last solace of her years, — these are the sorrows which make U3 feel the Im'potency of consolation. 110 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. vn. 14. THE WIDOW AND HER SON. PAET SECOND. IT was some time before I left the church-yard. On my way homeward, I met with the woman who had acted as com- forter : she was just returning from accompanying the mother to her lonely habitation, and I drew from her some particulars connected with the affecting scene I had witnessed. 2. The parents of the deceased had resided in the village from childhood. They had inhabited one of the neatest cottages, and by various rural occupations, and the assistance of a small gar- den, had supported themselves creditably and comfortably, and led a happy and a blameless life. They had one son, who had grown up to be the staff and pride of their age. 3. " O, Sir I" said the good woman, " he was such a likely lad, so sweet-tempered, so kind to every one around him, so dutiful to his parents ! It did one's heart good to see him of a Sunday, dressed out in his best, so tall, so straight, so cheery, supporting his old mother to church, — for she was always fonder of leaning on George's arm than on her good man's ; and, poor soul, she might well be proud of him, for a finer lad there was not in the country round." 4. Unfortunately, the son was tempted, during a year of scarcity and agricultural hardship, to enter into the service of one of the small craft that plied on a neighboring river. He had not been long in this employ, when he was entrapped by a press-gang, and carried off to sea. His parents received the tidings of his seizure, but beyond that they could learn nothing. It was the loss of their main prop. The father, who was already infirm, grew heartless and melancholy, and sunk into his grave. 5. The widow, left lonely in her age and feebleness, could no longer support herself, and came upon the parish. Still there was a kind feeling toward her throughout the village, and a cer- tain respect as being one of the oldest inhabitants. As no one applied for the cottage in which she had passed so many happy days, she was permitted to remain in it, where she lived solitary and almost helpless. The few wants of nature were chiefly sup- plied from the scanty productions of her little garden, which the neighbors would now and then cultivate for her. TIIE WIDOW AND HER SON. 1H 6. It was but a few days before the time at which these cir- cumstances were told me, that she was gathering some vegeta- bles for her repast, when she heard the cottage-door, that faced the garden, suddenly opened. A stranger came out, and seemed to be looking eagerly and wildly around. Ho was dressed in seaman's clothes, was emaciated and ghastly pale, and bore the air of one broken by sickness and hardships. He saw her, and hastened toward her ; but his steps were faint and faltering: he sank on his knees before her, and sobbed like a child. 7. The poor woman gazed upon him with a vacant and wan- dering eye — " O my dear, dear mother ! don't you know your son ! your poor boy George !" It was, indeed, the wreck of her once noble lad ; who, shattered by wounds, by sickness, and foreign imprisonment, had, at length, dragged his wasted lirnbs homeward, to repose among the scenes of his childhood. 8. I will not attempt to detail the particulars ol such a meet- ing, where joy and sorrow were so completely blended ; still he was alive ! — he was come home ! — he might yet live to comfort and cherish her old age ! Nature, however, was exhausted in him ; and if any thing had been wanting to finish the work of fate, the desolation of his native cottage would have been suf- ficient. He stretched himself on the jDallet where his widowed mother had passed many a sleepless night, and he never rose from it again. 9. The villagers, when they heard that George Somers had returned, crowded to see him, offering every comfort and assist- ance that their humble means afforded. He, however, was too weak to talk — he could only look his thanks. His mother was his constant attendant, and he seemed unwilling to be helped by any other hand. 10. There is something in sickness that breaks down the pride of manhood ; that softens the heart, and brings it back to the feelings of infancy. Who that has suffered, even in advanced life, in sickness and despondency — who that has pined on a weary bed in the neglect and loneliness of a foreign land — but has thought on the mother " that looked on his childhood," that smoothed his pillow, and administered to his helplessness ! 11. Oh ! there is an enduring tenderness in the love of a mother to a son, that transcends all other affections of the heart. It is neither to be chilled by selfishness, nor daunted by 112 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. danger, nor weakened by worthlessness, nor stifled by ingrati- tude. She will sacrifice every comfort to his convenience ; she will surrender every pleasure to his enjoyment ; she will glory in his fame, and exult in his prosperity ; and, if adversity over- take him, he will be tho dearer to her by misfortune ; and, if disgrace settle upon his name, she will still love and cherish him ; and, if all the world besides cast him off, she will be all the world to him. 12. Poor George Somers had known well what it was to be in sickness, and none to soothe — lonely and in prison, and none to visit him. He could not endure his mother from his sight ; if she moved away, his eye would follow her. She would sit for hours by his bed, watching him as he slept. Sometimes he would start from a feverish dream, look anxiously up until he saw her venerable form bending over him, when he would take her hand, lay it on his bosom, and fall asleep with the tranquil- lity of a child. In this way he died. 13. My first impulse, on hearing this humble tale of affliction, was to visit the cottage of the mourner, and administer pecun- iary assistance, and, if possible, comfort. I found, however, on inqui'ry, that the good feelings of the villagers had prompted them to do every thing that the case admitted ; and as the poor know best how to console each other's sorrows, I did not ven- ture to intrude. 14. The next Sunday I was at the village church ; when, to my surprise, I saw the poor old woman tottering down the aisle to her accustomed seat on the steps of the altar. She had made an effort to put on something like mourning for her son ; and nothing could be more touching than this struggle between pious affection and utter poverty : a black ribbon or so — a faded black handkerchief — and one or two more such humble attempts to express by outward signs that grief which passes show. 15. When I looked round upon the storied monuments, the stately hatchments, the cold marble pomp, with which grandeur mourned magnificently over departed pride ; and turned to this poor widow, bowed down by age and sorrow at the altar of her God, and offering up the prayers and praises of a pious, though a broken heart, I felt that this living monument of real grief was worth them all. 16. I related her story to some of the wealthy members of BIOGRAPHY OF JACOB HAYS. 113 the congregation, and they were moved at it. They exerted themselves to render her situation more comfortable, and to lighten her afflictions. It was, however, but smoothing a few steps to the grave. In the course of a Sunday or two after, she was missed from her usual seat at church, and before I left the neighborhood, I heard, with a feeling of satisfaction, that she had quietly breathed her last, and gone to rejoin those she loved, in that world where sorrow is never known, and friends are never parted. Irving. Washington Irving, who has delighted the readers of the English language for more than half a century, was born in the city of New York, on the third of April, 1783. His father, a respectable merchant, originally from Scotland, died while he was quite young, and his education was superintended by his elder brothers, some of whom have gained considerable reputation for acquirements and literature. His first essays were a series of letters under the signature of Jonathan Oldstyle, Gent., published in the .Morning Chronicle, of which one of his brothers was editor, in 180:2. In 1800, after his return from a European tour, he joined Mr. Paulding in writing "Salmagundi," a whimsical miscellany, ■which captivated the town and decided the fortunes of its authors. Soon after, he produced "The History of New York, by Diedrick Knickerbocker," the most original and humorous work of the age. After the appearance of this work, he wrote but little for several years, having engaged with his brothers in foreign commerce; but, fortunately for American literature, while in England, in 1815, a reverse of fortune changed the whole tenor of his life, causing him to resort to literature, which had hitherto been his amusement, for solace and support. The first fruit of this change was "The Sketch Book," which was published in New York and London in 1819 and 1S20, and which met a success never before re- ceived by a book of unconnected tales and essays. Mr. Irving subsequently published "Bracebridge Hall," the "History of the Life and Voyages of Colum- bus," "The Alhambra," &C, <fcc. He received one of the gold medals of fifty guineas in value, provided by George the Fourth, for eminence in historical com- position. In 1So2, after an absence of seventeen yean, be returned to the United States. His admirable "Life of Washington" is his last literary production. He died Nov. 28, 1850. His style has the ease and purity, and more than the grace and polish of Franklin. His carefully selected words, his variously constructed periods, his remarkable elegance, sustained sweetness, and distinct and delicate painting, place him in the very front rank of the masters of our language. SECTION IV. I. 15. BIOGRAPHY OF JACOB HAYS. "TTTHERE the subject of the present memoir (meniVar) VV was born, can be but of little consequence ; who were his father and mother, of still less ; and how he was bred and 114 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. educated, of none at all. I shall therefore ' pass over this division of his existence in eloquent silence, and come at once to the period when he attained the ac'me 2 of constabulary 3 power and dignity by being created high constable of this city and its suburbs : and it may be remarked, in passing, that the honorable the cor- poration, during their long and unsatisfactory career, never made an appointment more creditable to themselves, more beneficial to the city, more honorable to the country at large, more impos- ing in the eye of foreign nations, more disagreeable to all rogues, nor more gratifying to honest men, than that of the gentleman whom we are biographizing, to the high office he now holds. 2. His acuteness and vigilance have become proverbial ; and there is not a misdeed committed by any member of this com- munity, but he is speedily admonished that he will " have old Hays (as he is affectionately and familiarly termed) after him/' Indeed, it is supposed by many that he is gifted with supernatu- ral attributes, and can see things that are hid from mortal ken ; or how, it is contended, is it possible that he should, as he does, " bring forth the secret'st man of blood ?" That he can discover " undivulged crime" — that when a store has been robbed, he, without hesitation, can march directly to the house where the goods are concealed, and say, " These are they" — or, when a gen- tleman's pocket has been picked, that, from a crowd of unsavory miscreants he can, with unerring judgment, lay his hand upon one and exclaim, "You're wanted!" — or, how is it that he is gifted with that strange principle of ubiquity * that makes him "here and there, and everywhere" at the same moment? No matter how, so long as the public reap the benefit ; and well may that public apostrophize him in the words of the poet — Long may he live ! our city's pride! Where lives the rogue, but flies before him ! With trusty crabstick by his side, And staff of office waving O'er him. 3. But it is principally as a literary man that we would speak of Mr. Hays. True, his poetry is "unwritten," as is also his prose ; and he has invariably expressed a decided contempt for 1 Therefore, (fh6r'f6r.) a constable, or to o police-officer. 2 Ac' me, the summit; the top or * Ubiquity, (xv blk' \\i tf). exist- highest point. ence in all places, or every where, at * Con stab" u la ry, pertaining to the same time. BIOGRAPHY OF JACOB HAYS. 115 philosophy, music, rhetoric, the belles-lettres, 1 the fine arts, and in fact all species of composition excepting bailiffs' warrants and biils of indictment : but what of that ? The constitution of his mind is, even unknown to himself, decidedly poetical. And here I may be allowed to avail myself of another peculiarity of modern biog'raphy, namely, that of describing a man by what he is not. 4. Mr. Hays has not the graphic 3 power or antiquarian 3 lore of Sir Walter Scott — nor the glittering imagery or voluptuous tenderness of Moore — nor the delicacy and polish of Rogers — nor the spirit of Campbell — nor the scntimcntalism of Miss Lan- don — nor the der)th and purity of thought and intimate acquaint- ance w T ith nature of Bryant — nor the brilliant style and playful humor of Halleck : no, he is more in the petit larceny 4 manner of Crabbe, with a slight touch of Byronic power and gloom. He is familiarly acquainted with all those interesting scenes of vice and poverty so fondly dwelt upon by that reverend chron- icler of little villainy, and if ever he can be prevailed upon to publish, there will doubtless be found a remarkable similarity in their works. 5. His height is about five feet seven inches, but who makes his clothes we have as yet been unable to ascertain. His coun- tenance is strongly marked, and forcibly brings to mind the lines of Byron when describing his Corsair — There was a laughing devil in his sneer That raised emotions both of hate and fear ; And where his glance of " apprehension ,? fell, Hope withering fled, ami mercy sighed, farewell ! 6. Yet with all his great qualities, it is to be doubted whether he is much to be envied. His situation certainly has its disad- vantages. Pure and blameless as his life is, his society is not courted — no man boasts of his friendship, and few indeed like even to own him for an intimate acquaintance. Wherever ho goes his slightest action is watched and criticised ; and if ho happen carelessly to lay his hand upon a gentleman's shoulder and whisper something in his car, even that man, as if there 1 Belles-lettres, (bel-lfttf ter), polite « Petit larceny, (pit' it lar' ce nil, or elegant literature. small thefts. In England, the steal- 5 Graph' ic, written ; clearly and ing of any thing of the value of twelve- vividly described. pence, or under that amount ; and 3 An v ti qua' ri an, pertaining to in the State of New York, under antiquity, or former ages. twenty-five dollars. HG NATIONAL FIFTH READER. were contamination in his touch, is seldom or never seen after- ward in decent society. Such things can not fail to prey upon his feelings. But when did ever greatness exist without some penalty attached to it ? 7. The first time that ever Hays was pointed out to me, was one summer afternoon, when acting in his official capacity in the City Hall. The room was crowded in every part, and as he en- tered with a luckless wretch in his gripe, a low suppressed mur- mur ran through the hall, as if some superior being had alighted in the midst of them. He placed the prisoner at the bar — a poor coatless individual, with scarcely any edging end no roof to his hat — to stand his trial for bigamy, 1 and then, in a loud, authoritative tone, called out for "silence," and there was silence. Again he spoke — " Hats off there !" and the multitude became uncovered ; after which he took his handkerchief out of his left-hand coat-pocket, wiped his face, put it back again, looked sternly around, and then sat down. 8. The scene was awful and impressive ; but the odor was disagreeable in consequence of the heat, acting upon a ]arge quantity of animal matter congregated together. My olfactory 2 organs were always lam'entably acute : I was obliged to retire, and from that time to this, I have seen nothing, though I have heard much of the subject of this brief and imperfect, but, I trust, honest and impartial memoir. 9. Health and happiness be wiih thee, thou prince of consta- bles — thou guardian of innocence — thou terror of evil-doers and little boys ! May thy years be many and thy sorrows few — may thy life be like a long and cloudless summer's day, and may thy salary be increased ! And when at last the summons comes from which there is no escaping — when the warrant arrives upon which no bail can be put in — when thou thyself, that hast "wanted" so many, art in turn "wanted, and must go," Mayest thou fall Into the grave as softly as the leaves Of the sweet roses on an autumn eve, Beneath 3 the small sighs of the western wind, Drop to the earth ! William Cox. William Cox, author of two volumes, entitled "Crayon Sketches," published 1 Big' a my, the crime of having 2 Ol fuc' to ry, pertaining to two wives or two husbands at the smelling, fame lime. 8 Be nealk'. PETER POUNCE AND PARSON ADAMS. H7 at New York, in 1830, an Englishman by birth, came to America at an early n~e to practice his calling of a printer. He was employed on the " Mirror," con- ducted by General M0RBI8, and gained a literary reputation by contributing a series of essays to its columns. These, in a happy vein of humor and critic'. satirizing the literary infirmities of the times, pleased men oftaste and good si The above sketch, " written during an awful prevalence of biographies," gained great celebrity at the time. His " Crayon Sketches " are full of originality, pli antry, and wit, alternately reminding the reader of the poetical eloquence of Haz- htt, and the quaint humor and eccentric tastes of Charles Lamb. After writing a number of years for the Mirror, he returned to England, where he died in 1851. n. 1G. PETER POUNCE AND PARSON ADAMS. 1 PETER POUNCE, being desirous of having some one to whom he might communicate his grandeur, told the parson he would convey him home in his chariot. This favor was, by Adams, with many bows and acknowledgments, accepted, though he afterward said he ascended the chariot rather that he might not offend, than from any desire of riding in it, for that in his heart he preferred the pedestrian even to the vehicular expedi- tion. The chariot had not proceeded far, before Mr. Adams observed it was a very fine day. " Ay, 2 and a very fine country, too," answered Pounce. 2. "I should think so more," returned Adams, "if I had not lately traveled over the Downs, which I take to exceed this, and all other prospects in the universe." "A fig for prospects," answered Pounce ; " one acre here is worth ten there : for my part, I have no delight in the prospect of any land but my own." 3. " Sir," said Adams," " you can indulge yourself in many fino prospects of that kind." ' I thank God I have a little," replied the other, " with which 1 am content, and envy no man. I havo a little, Mr. Adams, with which I do as much good as I can." 4. Adams answered, "that riches, without charity, were nothing worth ; for that thev wore a blessing onlv to him who made them a blessing to others." " You and I," said Peter, 1 In the following conversation, virtuous and manly parson, on the which is one of the most exquisite in other hand, rising and becoming glo- all novel-writing, the reader experi- rious out of the depths of his hum ences a delightful triumph in seeing ble honesty. This and the following how a vulgar upstart is led to betray two lessons aro admirable exercises his baseness while he thinks he is in Personation — see p. G9. most exalting himself; the poor, but ■ Ay. (d!\ yea : yes. 118 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. "have different notions of charity. I own, as it is generally used, I do not like the word, nor do I think it becomes one of us gentlemen ; it is a mean, parson-like quality ; though I would not infer that many parsons have it neither." 5. " Sir," said Adams, "my definition of charity is, a gener- ous disposition to relieve the distressed." " There is something in that definition," answered Peter, "which I like well enough; it is, as you say, a disposition — and does not so much consist in the act as in the disposition to do it : but, alas ! Mr. Adams, who are meant by the distressed ? believe me, the distresses of mankind are mostly imaginary, and it would be rather folly than goodness to relieve them." 6. "Sure, 1 sir," replied Adams, "hunger and thirst, cold and nakedness, and other distresses which attend the poor, can never be said to be imaginary evils." " How can any man complain of hunger," said Pounce, "in a country where such excellent salads are to be gathered in almost every field ? — or of thirst, where every stream and river produce such delicious potations ? — and as for cold and nakedness, they are evils introduced by luxury and custom. A man naturally wants clothes no more than a horse or any other animal ; and there are whole nations who go without them. But these are things, perhaps, which you, who do not know the world — " 7. " You will pardon me, sir," returned Adams ; " I have read of the Gymnos'ophists."* "A plague of your Jehosaphats," cried Peter ; " the greatest fault in our constitution is the pro- vision made for the poor, except that perhaps made for some others. Sir, I have not an estate which doth not contribute almost as much again to the poor as to ihc land-tax ; and I do assure you I expect myself to come to the parish in the end." 8. To which Adams giving a dissenting smile, Peter thus pro- ceeded : — " I fancy, Mr. Adams, you arc one of those who im- agine I am a lump of money ; for there are many who I fancy believe that not only my pockets, but my whole clothes are lined with bank bills ; but, I assure you, you are all mistaken : I am 1 Sure, (shor), see Rule 4, p. 32. Some of them practiced medicine. 2 Gym nos' o phists, philosophers They believed in flic transmigration of India, so called because they went of souls, and placed the chief hap] i- with bare feet and little clothing, ncss of man in the contempt of pleas- They never drank wine, nor married, ures of sense and goods of fortune. PETEll POUNCE AND PARSON ADAMS. H<j not the man the world esteems me. If I can hold my Lead above water, it is all I can. I have injured myself by purchas- ing ; I have been too liberal of my money. Indeed I fear my heir will find my affairs in a worse situation than they arc re- puted to be. Ah ! he will have reason to wish I had loved money more and land less. Pray, my good neighbor, where should I have that quantity of money the world is so liberal to bestow on me ? Where could I possibly, without I had stole it, acquire such a treasure ?" 9. " AVhy truly," said Adams, " I have been always of your opinion ; I have wondered, as well as yourself, with what confi- dence they could report such things of you, which have to me appeared as mere impossibilities ; for you know, sir, and I have often heard you say it, that your wealth is of your own acquisi- tion ; and can it be credible that in your short time you should have amassed such a heap of treasure as these people will have you are worth ? Indeed, had you inherited an estate like Sir Thomas Booby, which had descended in your family through many generations, they might have had a color for their asser- tions." " Why, what do they say I am worth ?" cries Peter, with a malicious sneer. • 10. " Sir," answered Adams, " I have heard some aver you are not worth less than twenty thousand pounds." At which Peter frowned. " Nay, sir," said Adams, " you ask me only the opin- ion of others ; for my own part, I have always denied it, nor did I ever believe you could possibly be worth half that sum." 11. " However, Mr. Adams," said he, squeezing him by the hand, " I would not sell them all I am worth for double that sum ; and as to what you believe, or they believe, I care not a fig. I am not poor, because you think me so, nor because you attempt to undervalue me in the country. I know the envy of mankind very well ; but I thank heaven I am above them. It is time, my wealth is of my own acquisition. I have not an es- tate like Sir Thomas Booby, that hath descended in my family through many generations ; but I know heirs of such estates, who are forced to travel about the country, like some people in torn cassocks, 1 and might be glad to accept of a pitiful curacy, 2 1 Cas' sock, a kind of long frock- • Cu' ra cy, the office of a curate, coat worn by a priest ; close garment who performs the duties in the place or gown. of the vicar, parson, cr incumbent. 120 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. for what I know ; yes, sir, as shabby fellows as yourself, whom no man of my figure, without that vice of good-nature about him, would suffer to ride in a chariot with him." 12. " Sir," said Adams, "I value not your chariot of a rush ; and if I had known you had intended to affront me, I would have walked to the world's end on foot, ere I would have ac- cepted a place in it. However, sir, I will soon rid you of that inconvenience !" And so saying, he opened the chariot door, without calling to the coachman, and leaped out into the high- way, forgetting to take his hat along with him ; which, however, Mr. Pounce threw after him with great violence. Henry Fielding. Henry Fielding was born at Sharpham, Somersetshire, England, April 22, 1707. He was educated at Eton, and afterward studied law at Leyden. He was the author of "Joseph Andrews," "A Journey from this World to the Next," " Jonathan Wild," " Tom Jones," and "Amelia," He received £600 for the copyright of "Tom Jones," and such was its success, that Millei, the pub- lisher, presented £100 more to the author. For "Amelia." he received £1000. In 1749 Fielding was appointed one of the justices of Westminster and Middle- sex, and was a zealous and active magistrate. He was a kind-hearted man; but improvident, and in early life dissipated. He ranks as one of the first among English novelists. His style is marked for light humor, lively description, and keen, yet sportive satire. Endowed with little of the poetical or imaginative faculty, his study lay in real*life and every-day scenes, which he depicted with a truth and freshness, a buoyancy and vigor, and such an exuberance of prac- tical knowledge, easy raillery, and lively fancy, that in his own department he stands unrivaled. He died at Lisbon, on the 8th of October, 1754. m. 17. CONVERSATIONS AFTER MARRIAGE. 1 PART FIRST. Enter Lady Teazle and Sir Peter. IR PETER. Lady Teazle, Lady Teazle, I'll not bear it I Lady Teazle. [Rigid.] Sir Peter, Sir Peter, you may bear it or not, as you please ; but I ought to have my own way in every thing ; and what's more, I will too. What ! though I was edu- cated in the country, I know very well that women of fashion in London are accountable to nobody after they arc married. Sir P. [Left.'] Very well, ma'am, very well — so a husband is to have no influence, no authority? Lady T. Authority! No, to be sure : — if you wanted authority 1 From " The School for Scandal." s CONVERSATIONS AFTER MARRIAGE. 121 over me, you should have adopted me, and not married me ; I am sure you were old enough. Sir P. Old enough ! — ay — there it is. "Well, well, Lady Teazle, though my life may be made unhappy by ydkir temper, I'll not be ruined by your extravagance. Lady T. My extravaganco ! I'm sure I'm not more extrava- gant than a woman ought to be. Sir P. No, no, madam, you shall throw away no more sums on such unmeaning luxury. 'Slifel to spend as much to furnish your dressing-room with flowers in winter as would suffice to turn the Pantheon ' into a green-house. Lady T. Lord, Sir Peter, am I to blame, because flowers are dear in cold weather? You should find fault with the climate, and not with me. For my part, I'm sure, I wish it was spring all the year round, and that roses grew under our feet ! Sir P. Zounds ' madam — if you had been born to this, I shouldn't wonder at your talking thus ; but you forget what your situation was when I married you. Lady T. No, no, I don't ; 'twas a very disagreeable one, or I should never have married you. Sir P. Yes, yes, madam, you were then in somewhat a hum- bler style, — the daughter of a plain country squire. Recollect, Lady Teazle, .when I saw you first sitting at your tambor, in a pretty figured linen gown, with a bunch of keys at your sido ; your hair combed smooth over a roll, and your apartment hung round with fruits in worsted of your own working. Lady T. Oh yes ! I remember it very well, and a curious life I led, — my daily occupation to inspect the dairy, superintend the poultry, make extracts from the family reccipt-bcok, and comb my aunt Deborah's lap dog. Sir P. Yes, yes, ma'am, 'twas so indeed. Lady T. And then, you know, my evening amusements ; — to draw patterns for ruffles, which I had not materials to mako up ; to play Pope Joan ' with the curate ; to read a novel to my aunt ; or to be stuck down to an old spinet to strum my father to sleep after a fox-chase. [C)*osses, L. 1 Pan the' on, a magnificent tern- pa, is of a round or cylindrical form, pie at Rome, dedicated to all the gods, with a spherical dome, and one Iran- lt is now converted into a church, drcd and forty-four feet in diameter. It was built or embellished by Agrip- - Pope Jean, a gamo nt cards, G 122 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Sir P. [B-] I am glad you have so good a memory. Yes, madam, these were the recreations I took you from ; but now you must have your coach — vis-a-vis ' — and three powdered footmen before your chair ; and, in the summer, a pair of white cats to draw you to Kensington Gardens. No recollection, I suppose, when you were content to ride double, behind the but- ler, on a docked coach-horse. Lady T. [LJ] No — I never did that : I deny the butler and the coach-horse. Sir P. This, madam, was your situation ; and what have I done for you ? I have made you a woman of fashion, of fortune, of rank ; in short, I have made you my wife. Lady T. Well, then ; and there is but one thing more you can make me add to the obligation, and that is — Sir P. My widow, I suppose ? Lady T. Hem ! hem ! Sir P. I thank you, madam ; but don't natter yourself ; for though your ill conduct may disturb my peace of mind, it shall never break my heart, I promise you : however, I am equally obliged to you for the hint. [ Crosses, L. Lady T. Then why will you endeavor to make yourself so disagreeable to me, and thwart me in every little elegant expense ? Sir P. [LJ] 'Slife, madam, I say, had you any of these little elegant expenses when you married me ? Lady T. Lud, Sir Peter ! would you have me be out of the fashion ? Sir P. The fashion, indeed ! What had you to do with the fashion before you married me ? Lady T. For my part, I should think you would like to have your wife thought a woman of taste. Sir P. Ay ; there again — taste. Zounds ! madam, you had no taste when you married me ! Lady T. That's very true indeed, Sir Peter ; and after having married you, I should never pretend to taste again, I allow. But now, Sir Peter, since we have finished our daily jangle, I presume I may go to my engagement at Lady Sneerwell's. Sir P. Ay, there's another precious circumstance — a charm- ing set of acquaintance you have made there. Vis-a-vis, (zlv^ a ve'), a carriage in which two persons Pit face to face. • CONVERSATIONS AFTER MARRIAGE. 123 Lady T. Nay, Sir Peter, they arc all people of rank and for- tune, and remarkably tenacious of reputation. Sir P. Yes, egad, they arc tenacious of reputation with a vengeance ; for they don't choose anybody shoukMiave a char- acter but themselves ! — Such a crew ! Ah ! many a wretch has rid on a hurdle ' who has done less mischief than these utterers of forged tales, coiners of scandal, and clippers of reputation. Lady T. What ! would you restrain the freedom of speech ? Sir P. Ah ! they have made you just as bad as any one of the society. Lady T. Why, I believe I do bear a part with a tolerable grace. Sir P. Grace, indeed ! Lady P. But I vow I bear no malice against the people I abuse. When I say an ill-natured thing, 'tis out of pure good- humor ; and I take it for granted, they deal exactly in the same manner with me. But, Sir Peter, you know you promised to come to Lady Sncerwell's too. Sir. P. Well, well, I'll call in just to look after my own char- acter. Lady T. Then indeed you must make haste after me, or you'll be too late. So, good-by to you. [Exit Lady Teazle. Sir P. So — I have gained much by my intended expostula- tion : yet, with what a charming air she contradicts every thing I say, and how pleasingly she shows her contempt for my au- thority ! Well, though I can't make her love me, there is great satisfaction in quarreling with her ; and I think she never ap- pears to such advantage, as when she is doing everything in her power to plague me. [Exit. IV. 18. CONVERSATIONS AFTER MARRIAGE. PART SECOND. Lady Teazle. Lud ! Sir Peter. I hope you haven't been quar- reling with Maria ? It is not using me well to be ill-humored when I am not by. Sir Peter. [Left.] Ah! Lady Teazle, you might have the power to make me good-humored at all times. 1 Hurdle, (h£r dl), a sort of sledge used to draw traitors to execution. 124 NATIONAL FIFTH HEADER. Lady T. [Right] I am sure I wish I had ; for I want you to be in a charming sweet temper at this moment. Do be good- humored now, and let me have two hundred pounds, will you ? Sir P. Two hundred pounds ! What, ain't I to be in a good humor without paying for it ? But speak to me thus, and i' faith there's nothing I could refuse you. You shall have it [gives her notes'] ; but seal me a bond of repayment. Lady T. Oh no ; there — my note of h^nd will do as well. [Offering her hand. Sir P. And you shall no longer reproach me with not giving you an independent settlement. I mean shortly to surprise you : ■ — but shall we always live thus, hey ? Lady T. If you please. I'm sure I don't care how soon we leave off quarreling, provided you'll own you were tired first. Sir P. Well ; then let our future contest be, who shall be most obliging. Lady T. I assure you, Sir Peter, good-nature becomes you : you look now as you did before we were married, when you used to walk with me under the elms, and tell me stories of what a gallant' you were in your youth, and chuck me under the chin, you would ; and ask me if I thought I could love an old fellow, who would deny me nothing — didn't you ? Sir P. Yes, yes, and you were kind and attentive — Lady T. Ay, so I was, and would always take your part when my acquaintance used to abuse you, and turn you into ridicule. Sir P. Indeed! Lady T. Ay ; and when my cousin Sophy has called you a stiff, peevish old bachelor, and laughed at me for thinking of marrying one who might be my father, I have always defended you, and said, I didn't think you so ugly by any means. Sir P. Thank you. Lady T. And I dared say you'd make a very good sort of a husband. Sir P. And you prophesied right : and we shall now be the happiest couple — Lady T. And never differ again ? Sir P. No, never ! — though at the same time, indeed, my dear Lady Teazle, you must watch your temper very seriously ; for in all our little quarrels, my dear, if you recollect, my love, you always begin first. CONVERSATIONS AFTER MARRIAGE, 125 Lady T. I beg your pardon, my dear Sir Peter ; indeed, you always gave the provocation. Sir P. Now see, my angel ! take care — contradicting isn't tho way to keep friends. Lady T. Then don't you begin it, my love. Sir P. There, now ! you — you are going on. You don't per- ceive, my life, that you are just doing the very thing which you know always makes me angry. Lady T. Nay, you know if you will be angry without any reason, my dear — Sir P. There ! now you want to quarrel again. Lady T. No, I am sure I don't ; but if you will be so peevish — Sir P. There now ! who begins first ? Lady T. Why you, to be sure. I said nothing — but there's no bearing your temper. Sir P. No, no, madam ; the fault's in your own temper. Lady T. Ay, you arc just what my cousin Sophy* said you would be. Sir P. Your cousin Sophy is a forward, impertinent gipsy. Lady T. You are a great bear, I'm sure, to abuse my relations. Sir P. Now may all the plagues of marriage be doubled on me, if ever I try to be friends with you any more. Lady T. So much the better. Sir P. No, no, madam : 'tis evident you never cared a pin for me, and I was a madman to marry you — a pert, rural coquette' that had refused half tho honest squires in the neighborhood. Lady T. And I am sure I was a fool to marry yon — an old dangling bachelor, who was single at fifty, only because he never could meet with any one who would have him. [Crosses L. Sir P. Ay, ay, madam ; but you were pleased enough to listen to me : 3-011 never had such an offer before. Lady T. No ! didn't I refuse Sir Tivy Terrier, who every- body said would have been a better match ? for his estate is just as good as yours, and he has broke his neck since we have been married. [Crosses R. Sir P. [L.~] I have done with you, madam ! You are an un- feeling, ungrateful — but there's an end of every thing. I believe you capable of every thing that is bad. Yes, madam, I now believe the reports relative to you and Charles, madam. Yes, madam, you and Charles are — not without grounds. 126 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Lady T. [P.] Take care, Sir Peter! you had better not in- sinuate any such thing ! I'll not be suspected without cause, I promise you. Sir P. Very well, madam ! very well ! A separate main'ten- ance as soon as you please ! Yes, madam, or a divorco ! — 1'il make an example of myself for the benefit of all old bachelors. Lady T. Agreed ! agreed ! And now, my dear Sir Peter, we are of a mind onco more, we may be the happiest couple — and never differ again, you know — ha ! ha ! ha ! Well, you aro go- ing to be in a passion, I see, and I shall only interrupt you ; so, bye — bye. [Exit Lady Teazls. Sir P. Plagues and tortures ! Can't I make her angry either ! Oh, I am the most miserable fellow ! But I'll not bear her presuming to keep her temper : no ! she may break my heart, but she shan't keep her temper. [Exit. Sheridan. Richard J5rinsley Sheridan, the celebrated orator, statesman, and comic play-writer, was born at Dublin in 1751. His father, Thomas Sheridan, was well known as an actor, elocutionist, and author of a pronouncing dictionary. Richard, an idle and mischievous boy, passed at school for a hopeless blockhead. He left Harrow at the age of eighteen, studied law with indifferent success in the Middle Temple, and, when barely of age, made a runaway marriage with Miss Linley, a beautiful and accomplished singer. His earliest comedy, " The Rivals," a humorous and lively play, appeared in 1773, when the author was lit- tle more than twenty-three years -old. About the same period he became one of the proprietors of Drury Lane Theater. His farce of "St. Patrick's Day," and opera of "The Duenna," appeared in 177G; and "The School for Scandal," which in plot, character, incident, dialogue, humor, and wit, perhaps, surpasses any comedy of modern times, was played in 1777. His last play, "The Critic," appeared in 1779. He obtained a seat in parliament in 17S0. He worked hard for the House of Commons, and, in his great efforts, was one of the most showy and striking of parliamentary orators. His famous speech on the trial of War- ren Hastings produced an impression on the public mind never, perhaps, sur- passed. Losing his wife in 1792, he married again, in 179G, a lady with whom he received £5000; and with this money, and £15,000 from shares in the theater, he purchased an estate, but his sottish habits soon dispelled Lis dreams of splen- dor, and finally reduced him to penury. He was treasurer of the navy during the ministry of Fox and Grenvillc ; but after 1812 he was no longer able to speak in the house. He died in 1816, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. V. 19. A CURTAIN LECTURE OF MRS. CAUDLE. BAH I that's the third umbrella gone since Christmas. 'What were you to do ? Why, let him go home in the rain, to be sure. I'm very certain there was nothing about him that could A CURTAIN LECTURE OF MRS. CAUDLE. 127 spoil. — Take cold, indeed! Ho doesn't look like one of the sort to take cold. Besides, he'd have better taken cold than taken our umbrella. — Do you hear the rain, Mr. Caudle? I say, do you hear the rain ? And, as I'm alive, if it isn't St. Swithin's day ! Do you hear it against the windows ? Nonsense ! you don't impose upon mo ; you can't be asleep with such a shower as that ! Do you hear it, I say ? Oh ! you do hear it ! Well, that's a pretty flood, I think, to last for six weeks ; and no stir- ring all tho time out of the house. 2. Pooh ! don't think me a fool, Mr. Caudle ; don't insult me ; he return the umbrella ! Anybody would think you were born yesterday. As if anybody ever did return an umbrella ! There : do you hear it ? Worse and worse. Cats and dogs, and for six weeks : always six weeks ; and no umbrella ! — I should like to know how the children arc to go to school to-morrow ! They shan't go through such weather ; I am determined. No ; they shall stop at home and never learn any thing (the blessed crea- tures!), sooner than go and get wet! And when they grow up, I wonder who they'll have to thank for knowing nothing : who, indeed, but their father. People who can't feel for their own children ousrht never to be fathers. o 3. But I know why you lent the umbrella : oh ! yes, I know very well. I was going out to tea at dear mother's to-morrow : you knew that, and you did it on purpose. Don't tell me ; you hate to have me go there, and take every mean advantage to hinder me. But don't you think it, Mr. Caudle ; no, sir : if it comes down in bucketfulls, I'll go all the more. No ; and I won't have a cab ! Where do you think the money's to como from ? You'vo got nice high notions at that club of yours ! A cab, indeed ! Cost me sixteen-pence, at least. Sixteen-penc© ! two-and-eight-penco ; for there's back again. Cabs, indeed ! I should like to know who's to pay for 'em ; for I'm suro you can't, if you go on as you do, throwing away your property, and beggaring your children, buying umbrellas ! 4. Do you hear the rain, Mr. Caudle ? I say, do you hear it ? But I don't care — I'll go to mother's to-morrow — I will ; and what's more, I'll walk every step of the way ; and you know that will give me my death. Don't call me a foolish woman ; it's you that's the foolish man. You know I can't wear clogs ; and with no umbrella, the wet's sure to give me a cold : it always 128 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. does ; but what do you care for that ? Nothing at all. I may be laid up, for what you care, as I dare say I shall ; and a pretty doctor's bill there'll bo. I hope there will. It will teach you to lend your umbrellas again. I shouldn't wonder if I caught my death : yes, and that'3 what you lent the umbrella for. Of course ! 5. Nice clothes I get, too, traipsing through weather like this. My gown and bonnet will be spoiled quite. Needn't I wear 'em, then ? Indeed, Mr. Caudle, I shall wear 'em. No, sir ; I'm not going out a dowdy, to please you, or anybody else. Gracious knows ! it isn't often that I step over the threshold : — indeed, I might as well be a slave at once : better, I should say ; but when I do go out, Mr. Caudle, I choose to go as a lady. 6. Oh ! that rain — if it isn't enough to break in the windows. Ugh ! I look forward with dread for to-morrow ! How am I to go to mother's, I'm sure I can't tell ; but if I die, I'll do it. — No, sir ; I won't borrow an umbrella : no ; and you shan't buy one. Mr. Caudle, if you bring home another umbrella, I'll throw it into the street. Ha ! And it was only last week I had a new nozzle put to that umbrella. I'm sure if I'd have known as much as I do now, it might have gone without one. Paying for new nozzles for other people to laugh at you ! Oh ! it's all very well for you ; you can go to sleep. You've no thought of your poor patient wife, and your own dear children ; you think of nothing but lending umbrellas ! Men, indeed ! — call them- selves lords of the creation ! pretty lords, when they can't even take care of an umbrella ! 7. I know that walk to-morrow will be the death of me. But that's what you want : then you may go to your club, and do as you like ; and then nicely my poor dear children will be used ; but then, sir, then you'll be happy. Oh! don't tell me! I know you will : else you'd never have lent the umbrella ! — You have to go on Thursday about that summons ; and, of course, you can't go. No, indeed : you don't go without the umbrella. You may loso tho debt, for whab I care — it won't be so much as spoiling your clothes — better loso it : people deserve to lose debts who lend umbrellas ! 8. And I should like to know how I'm to go to mother's with- out the umbrella. Oh ! don't tell me that I said I icould go ; that's nothing to do with it, — nothing at all. She'll think I'm neglecting her ; and the little money we're to have, we shan't TIIAN'ATOPSIS. 129 have at all ; — because we've no umbrella. — The children, too ! (dear things!) they'll be sopping wet : for they shan't stay at home ; they shan't lose their learning ; it's all their father will leave them, I'm sure ! But they shall go to school. DOn't tell me they shouldn't (you are so aggravating, Caudle, you'd spoil the temper of an angel !) ; they ahall go to school : mark that ! and if they get their deaths of cold, it's not my fault ; I didn't LEND THE UMBRELLA. JeRROLD. Douglas Jekrold was born in London on the 3d of January, 1S03. His father, Samuel Jerrold, was manager of the two theaters of Shccrness and Southend, and in these sea-places much of his childhood was passed. His school-days were few, and the results of his studies unimportant. At eleven years of age he became a midshipman in the British navy, and served about two years, thns ac- quiring nautical experience, which he used in writing " Black-eyed Susan," one of his most successful plays. A mere boy when he came ashore, he went to London, became an apprentice in a printing-office, and went through the ordi- nary course of a printer's life. At this time, though the hours of labor were long, he studied very hard, and wrote pieces for the magazines. Emboldened by success, he wrote numerous plays for the theaters before he was twenty yens old. Among the greatest and maturcst of his comedies arc "The Prisoner of War," "Bubbles of a Day," "Time works Wonders," "St. Cupid," and "The Heart of Gold." His chief brilliant and original prose writings, except "A Man made of Money," were first prepared for magazines. " Men of Character" ap- peared in "Blackwood's Magazine,"— " The Chronicles of Clovernook," in the " Illuminated Magazine," of which he was founder and editor, — and " The Story of a Feather," "Punch's Letters to his Son," and "The Caudle Lectures" in " Punch," of which he was the originator. The last literary event in his life was his assuming the editorship of " Lloyd's Newspaper," which rose under his hand to great circulation and celebrity. He died, from disease of the heart, on the 8th of June, 1857. SECTION V. I 20. TIIANATOPSIS. 1 TO him, who, in the love of naturo holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language ; for his gayer hours, She has a voice of gladness, and a smile, And eloquence of beauty, and she glides Into his darker musings with a mild, 1 Th^n^ a top' sis, this Greek word means a view of, or meditation on, death, 130 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. And gentle sympathy that steals away Their sharpness, ere he is aware. 2. "When thoughts Of the last biLter hour, come like a blight Over thy spirit, and sad images Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, And breathless darkmss, and the narrow house, Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart ; Go forth into the open sky, and list To nature's teaching, while, from all around, Comes a still voice : 3. " Yet a few days, and thee, The all-beholding sun shall see no more, In all his course ; nor yet in the cold ground, Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears, Nor in the embrace of ocean shall exist Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again : And, lost each human trace, surrendering up Thine individual being, shalt thou go, To mix forever with the elements, To be a brother to the insensible rock, And to the sluggish clod which the rude swain Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold. 4. " Yet not, to thy eternal resting-place, Shalt thou retire, alone — nor couldst thou wish Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down With patriarchs of the infant world, with kings, The powerful of the earth, the wise, the good, Fail* forms, and hoary seers of agc3 past, All in one mighty sepulchre. 5. " The hills, Rock-ribbed, and ancient as the sun ; the vales, Stretching in pensive quietness between ; The venerable woods : rivers that movo In majesty, and the complaining brooks That make the meadow green ; and poured round all, Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste, THANATOPSIS. 131 Aro but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun, The planets, all the mfinito host of heaven, Aro shining on the sad abodes of death, Through the still lapse of ages. G. "All that tread The globe, are but a handful, to the tribes That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings Of morning, and the Barcan desert pierce, Or, lose thyself in the continuous woods, Where rolls the Or'egon, and hears no sound, Save its own dashings — yet the dead are there ; And millions in those solitudes, since first The flight of years began, have laid them down In their last sleep : the dead reign there alone. 7. " So shalt thou rest ; and what, if thou shalt fall, Unnoticed by the living, and no friend Take note of thy departure ? All that breathe Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh, When thou art gone ; the solemn brood of care Plod on ; and each one, as before, will chase His favorite phantom ; yet, all these shall leave Their mirth, and their enjoyments, and shall come And make their bed with thee. 8. " As the long train Of ages glide away, the sons of men, The youth, in life's green spring, and he, who goes In the full strength of years, matron, and maid, The bowed with age, the infant, in the smiles And beauty of its innocent age cut off — Shall, one by one, be gathered to thy side, By those who, in their turn, shall follow them. 9. " So live, that when thy summons comes, to join The innumerable caravan that moves To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go, not like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, 132 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Like one who wrajDS the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dream3 I" W. C. Bryant. William Ccllen Bryant was born in Cummington, Massachusetts, on the third day of November, 1794. He gave indications of superior genius at a very early age ; and fortunately received the most careful and judicious instruction from his father, a learned and eminent physician. At ten years of age, he made very creditable translations from some of the Latin poets, which were printed in a newspaper at Northampton. At thirteen, he wrote " The Embargo," a po< litical satire, which was never surpassed by any poet of that age. Bryant en« tered an advanced class of Williams College in the sixteenth year of his age, in which he soon became distinguished for his attainments generally, and espe- cially for his proficiency in classical learning. He was admitted to the bar in 1815, and commenced the practice of his profession in the village of Great Bar- rington, where he was soon after married. He wrote the above noble poem — " Thanatopsis " — when but little more than eighteen years of age. In 1821 he delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College his longest poem, " The Ages," which is in the stanza of Spenser, and in its versification is not in- ferior to "The Faerie Qucene." " To a Waterfowl,'* "Inscription for an entrance to a Wood," and several other pieces of nearly equal merit were likewise written during his residence at Great Barrington. After passing ten years in successful practice in the courts, he determined to abandon the uncongenial business of a lawyer, and devote his attention more exclusively to literature. With this view, he removed to the city of New York in 1825, and, with a friend, established " The New York Review and Athenaeum Magazine," in which he published several of his finest poems. In 1820 he assumed the chief direction of the " Evening Post," one of the best gazettes iu this country, with which he has ever since been con- nected. In the summer of 1S34, Mr. Bryant visited Europe, with his family, where he remained till 1830, when the illness of his partner and associate, tho late William Leggctt, caused his hasty return. A splendid edition of his com- plete poetical works was published in 1840. His last volume entitled " Thirty Poems," appeared in 180-i. He is a favorite with men of every variety of tastes. He has passages of profound reflection for the philosopher, and others of such simple beauty as to please the most illiterate. He has few equals in grace and power of expression. Every line has compactness, precision, and elegance, and flows with its fellows in exquisite harmony. Mr. Bryant is the poet of nature. He places before us, in picturos warmly colored by the hues of the imagination, the old and shadowy forests, the sea-like prairies, the lakes, rivers, and moun- tains of our own country. To the thoughtful critic every thing in his verse be- longs to America, and is as different from what marks the poetry of England as it is from that which most distinguishes the poetry of France or Germany. n. 21. EUTHANASIA. 1 METHINKS, when on the languid eye Life's autumn scenes grow dim, — When evening's shadows veil the shy. 1 Euthanasia, (yiV than a' z.i 5), an easy death ; a mode of dYrn^ to be desired. EUTHANASIA. 133 And pleasure's siren ' hymn Grows fainter on the tuneless oar, Like echoes from another sphere, Or dream of seraphim, — It were not sad to cast away This dull and cumbrous load of clay. 2. It were not sad to feel the heart Grow passionless and cold ; To feel those longings to depart That cheered the good of old ; To clasp the faith w r hich looks on high, "Which fires the Christian's dying eye, And makes the curtain-fold, That falls upon his wasting breast, The door that leads to endless rest. 3. It were not lonely thus to lie On that triumphant bed, Till the pure spirit mounts on high, By white-winged seraphs led : "Where glories earth may neycr know O'er " many mansions " lingering glow, In peerless luster shed ; It were not lonely thus to soar, "Where sin and grief can sting no more. 4. And, though the way to such a goal Lies through the clouded toinb, If on the free, unfettered soul There rest no stains of gloom, How should its aspirations riso Far through the blue, unpillarcd skies, Up to its final home ! Beyond the journeyings of the sun, Where streams of living waters run. W. G. Class. Willis Gatlokd Clakk, a journalist, poet, and miscellaneous writer, was born 1 Si' reu, one of three damsels, — who sailed by forgot their country, or, according to some writers, of two, and died in an ecstacy of delight; — '■said to dwell near the Island of hence, an enticing, alluring, or dan- Caprea, in the Mediterranean, and to gcrous woman; one rendered dan- sing "with such sweetness that they gerous by her enticements. 134: NATIONAL, FIFTH READER. at Otisco, an agricultural town in Central New York, in the 3 T ear 1810. Stimu- lated by the splendid scenery outspread on every side around him, he began to feel the poetic impulse at an early age ; and, in numbers most musical, painted the beauties of nature with singular fidelity. As he grew older, a solemnity and gentle sadness of thought pervaded his verse, and evinced, his desire to gather from the scenes and images its reflected lessons of morality. When about twen- ty years of age, he repaired to Philadelphia, where he commenced a weekly miscellany, which was soon abandoned. He then assumed, with the Reverend Doctor Brantley, the charge of the " Columbian Star," a religious and literary periodical, of high character, in which he printed many brief poems of consid- erable merit. Some years later, he took charge of the " Philadelphia Gazette," one of the oldest and most respectable journals in Pennsylvania, of which he ultimately became proprietor, and from that time until his death continued to conduct it. In 1836 he married Anne Poyntell Caldcleugh, the daughter of one of the wealthiest citizens of Philadelphia, and a woman of great personal beau- ty, rare accomplishments, and affectionate disposition, who soon after died of consumption, leaving her husband a prey to the deepest melancholy. From this time his health gradually declined, though he continued to write for his paper until the last day of his life, the twelfth of June, 1841. His metrical writings, which are pervaded by a gentle religious melancholy, are all distinguished for a graceful and elegant diction, thoughts morally and poetically beautiful, and chaste and appropriate imagery. His prose writings, on the other hand, were usually marked by passages of irresistible humor and wit. His perception of the ludicrous was acute, and his jests and "cranks and wanton wiles" evinced the fullness of his powers and the benevolence of his feelings. m. 22. BROKEN HEARTS. PART FIRST. MAN is the creature of interest and ambition. His nature leads him forth into the struggle and bustle of the -world. Love is but the embellishment of his early life, or a song piped in the intervals of the acts. He seeks for fame, for fortune, for space in the world's thought, and dominion over his fellow-men. But a woman's whole life is a historv of the affections. The heart is her world : it is there her ambition strives for empire ; it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her sympathies on adventure : she embarks her whole soul in the traffic of affection ; and if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless — for it is a bankruptcy of the heart. 2. To a man, the disappointment of love may occasion somo bitter pangs : it wounds some feelings of tenderntss — it blasts some prospects of felicity ; but he is an active being — he may dissipate his thoughts in the whirl of varied occupation, or may plunge into the tide of pleasure : or, if the scene of disappoint- BROKEN HEARTS. 135 inent be too full of painful associations, ho can shift his abode at will, and taking as it were the wings of the morning, can " fly to the uttermost part of the earth, and be at rest." 3. But woman's is comparatively a fixed, a secluded, and a meditative life. She is more the companion of her own thoughts and feelings ; and if they are turned to ministers of sorrow, where shall she look for consolation ? Her lot is to be wooed and won ; and if unhappy in her love, her heart is like some fortress that has been captured, and sacked, and abandoned, and left desolate. 4. How many bright eyes grow dim — how many soft cheeks grow pale — how many lovely forms fade away into the tomb, and none can tell the causo that blighted their loveliness ! As the dove will clasp it3 wings to its side, and cover and conceal the arrow that is preying on its vitals, so it is the nature of woman to hide from the world the pangs of wounded affection. 5. The love of a delicate female is always shy and silent. Even when fortunate, she scarcely breathes it to herself ; but when otherwise, she buries it in the recesses of her bosom, and there lets it cower and brood among the ruins of her peace. Wifti her the desire of the heart has failed. The great charm of existence is at an end. She neglects all the cheerful exer- cises which gladden the spirits, quicken the pulses, and send the tide of life in healthful currents through the veins. Her rest is broken — the sweet refreshment of sleep is poisoned by melan- choly dreams — " dry sorrow drinks her blood,'' until her en- feebled frame sinks under the slightest external injury. G. Look for her, after a little while, and you will find friend- ship weeping over her untimely grave, and wondering that one who but lately glowed with all the radiance' of health and beauty, should so speedily be brought down to " darkness and the worm." You will be told of some wintry chill, some casual indisposition that laid her low ; but no one knows of the mental malady that previously sapped her strength, and made her so easy a prey to the spoiler. 7. She is like some tender tree, the pride and beauty of the grove ; graceful in its form, bright in its foliage, but with the worm preying at its heart. We find it suddenly withering when it should be most fresh and luxuriant. We see it drooping its branches to the earth and shedding leaf by leaf ; until, wasted 136 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. and perished away, it falls even in the stillness of the forest ; and as we muse over the beautiful ruin, we strive in vain to recollect the blast or thunderbolt that could have smitten it with decay. 8. I have seen many instances of women running to waste and self-neglect, and disappearing gradually from the earth, almost as if they had been exhaled to heaven ; and have repeat- edly fancied that I could trace their death through the various declensions of consumption, cold, debility, languor, melancholy, until I reached the first symptom of disappointed love. But an instanco of the kind was lately told to me ; the circumstances are well known in the country where they happened, and I shall but give them in the manner they were related. IV. 23. BROKEN HEARTS. PART SECOND. EVERY one must recollect the tragical story of young Ern- mett, 1 the Irish patriot : it was too touching to be soon for- gotten. During the troubles in Ireland he was tried, condemned, and executed, on a charge of treason. 2 His fate made a deep impression on public sympathy. He was so young — so intelli- gent — so generous — so brave — so everything that we are apt to like in a young man. His conduct under trial, too, was so lofty and intrepid ! 3 The noble indignation with which he repelled the charge of treason against his country — the eloquent vindi- cation* of his name — and his pathetic appeal to posterity, in the hopeless hour of condemnation — all these entered deeply into every generous bosom, and even his enemies lamented the stern policy that dictated his execution. 2. But there was one heart, whose anguish it would be impos- sible to describe. In happier days and fairer fortunes, he had won the affections of a beautiful and in'teresting girl, the daugh- 1 Robert Emmett, the Irish patri- ing the state into the hands of a ot, was born in 1780. He was exc- foreign power, cuted on the 20th of September, 1803. 3 In trep' id, undaunted ; brave. 3 Treason, (tre' zn), the offense of * Vin N di ca' tion, a justification attempting to overthrow the govern- against censure, objections, or accu- raent of the state to which the of- sations ; defense by proof, force, or fender owes allegiance, or of betray- otherwise. BROKEN HEARTS. 137 ter of a late celebrated Irish barrister. 1 She loved him with the disinterested fervor of a woman's first and early love. When every worldly maxim arrayed itself against him ; when blasted in fortune, and disgrace and danger darkened around liiij name, she loved him the more ardently for his very Bufferings. If, then, his fate could awaken tho sympathy even of hi3 foGS, what must have been the agony of her, whoso whole soul was occupied by his image ? Let those tell who have had the portals of the tomb suddenly closed botween them and the being they most loved on earth — who havo sat at its threshold, as one shut out in a cold and lonely world, from whence all that was most lovely and loving had departed. 3. But then the horrors of such a grave ! so frightful, so dis- honored ! There was nothing for memory to dwell on that could soothe the pang of separation — none of those tender though melancholy circumstances that endear tho parting scene — noth- ing to melt sorrow into those blessed tears, sent, like the dews of heaven, to revive the heart in the parting hour of anguish. 4. To render her widowed situation more desolate, she had incurred her father's displeasure by her unfortunate attachment, and was an exile from the paternal roof. But could tho sympa- thy and kind offices of friends have reached a spirit so shocked and driven in by horror, she would have experienced no want of consolation, for the Irish are a people of quick and generous sensibilities. The most delicate and cherishing attentions were paid her by families of wealth and distinction. She was led into society, and they tried by all kinds of occupation and amuse- ment to dissipate her grief, and wean her from the tragical story of her love. 5. But it was all in vain. There are some strokes of calamity that scath and scorch the soul — that penetrate to the vital scat of happiness, and blast it, never again to put forth bud or blos- som. She never objected to frequent the haunts of pleasure, but she was as much alone there as in the depths of solitude. She walked about in a sad reverie, apparently unconscious of tho world around her. Sho carried with her an inward woo that mocked at all the blandishments of friendship, and " heeded not the song of the charmer, charm he never so wisely." 5 John Philpot Curran, celebrated for his eloquence, wit, and sarcasm, born near C< rk, 1750, and died 1817. 138 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 6. The person who told me her story had seen her at a mas- querade. 1 There can be no exhibition of far-gone wretchedness more striking and painful than to meet it in such a scene. To nnd it wandering like a specter, lonely and joyless, where all around is gay — to see it dressed out in the trappings of mirth, and looking so wan and woe-begone, as if it had tried in vain to cheat the poor heart into a momentary forgetfulness of sorrow. 7. After strolling through the splendid rooms and giddy crowd with an air of utter abstraction, she sat herself down on the steps of an orchestra, and looking about for some time with a vacant air, that showed her insensibility to the gairish 2 scene, she began, with the capriciousness of a sickly heart, to warble a little plaintive air. She had an ex'quisite voice ; but on this occasion it was so simple, so touching, it breathed forth such a soul of wretchedness, that she drew a crowd mute and silent around her, and melted every one into tears. 8. The story of one so true and tender could not but excite great interest in a country remarkable for enthusiasm. It com- pletely won the heart of a brave officer, who paid his addresses to her, and thought that one so true to the dead could not but prove affectionate to the living. She declined his attentions, for her thoughts were irrev'ocably engrossed by the memory of her former lover. He, however, persisted in his suit. He solicited not her tenderness, but her esteem. He was assisted by her conviction of his worth, and her sense of her own destitute and dependent situation, for she was existing on the kindness of friends. In a word, he at length succeeded in gaining her hand, though with the solemn assurance that her heart was unaltera- bly another's. 9. He took her with him to Sicily, hoping that a change of scene might wear out the remembrance of early woes. She was an amiable and ex'emplary 3 wife, and made an effort to be a happy one ; but nothing could cure the silent and devouring melan- choly that had entered into her very soul. She wasted away in a slow but hopeless decline, and at length sunk into the grave, the victim of a broken heart. Washington Irving. 1 Masquerade, (mis kcr id') an » Gairish, (gar'isli), gaudy; showy; evening assembly of persons weari ng very fine. masks, and amusing themselves with 3 Exemplary, (egz'cm pier I), serv- dancing, conversation, etc. ing as a pattern ; commendable. LINES RELATING TO CURRAN'S DAUGHTER. 139 V. 24. LINES RELATING TO CURRAN'S DAUGHTER. SHE is far from the land where her young hero sleeps, And lovers around her are sighing ; But coldly she turns from their gaze, and weeps, For her heart in his grave is lying. 2. She sings the wild song of her dear native plains, Every note which he loved awaking — Ah ! little they think, who delight in her strains, How the heart of the minstrel is breaking. 3. He had lived for his love — for his country he died ; They were all that to life had entwined him — Nor soon shall the tears of his country be dried, Nor long will his love stay behind him. 4. Oh ! make her a grave where the sunbeams rest, Allien they promise a glorious morrow ; They'll shine o'er her sleep like a smile from the west, From her own loved island of sorrow. Thomas Moore. Thomas Mooke, the poet, was born in Dublin, in 17S0. He showed from boy« hood an imaginative and musical turn ; and various circumstances combined in impressing him early with that deep sense of the wrongs and sufferings of Ire- land to which his poetry owes so many of its most powerful touches. He was educated at Trinity College, where he took his degree in 17'JS, after which he went to London to keep his terms for the bar. Poetry however had taken pos- session of his mind ; and his gay translation of Anacreon was published in 1800. In 1S04, having obtained a rcgistrarship in Bermuda, he went out to discharge the duties of the office. It proved much less lucrative than he expected ; and in a few months he returned home, from which time his course of life was very uneventful. In 1S11 he married Miss Dyke, an amiable, attractive, and domestic lady. He soon after established himself permanently at Sloperton, near Devizes, visiting London, however, frequently, and making other excursions. In 1835 he received from government a pension of £300 a year; and in 1S50, when his health was completely broken, Mrs. Moore obtained a pension of a hundred pounds. He died in the beginning of 1852. Of his serious poems, M Irish Mel- odies," and " Lalla Rookh " best support his fame. Many pieces of the former are exquisite for grace of diction, for beauty, and for a refined and ideal kind of pathos. The latter evinces great skill and care of execution, with marvelous richness of fancy, and singular correctness of costume, and establishes his claim to an important place among the great painters of romantic narrative. Moore's political satires, perhaps, show his genius in a more brilliant light than any of his other works. Of his prose writings, the most noted and worthy is the gor- geous romance of " The Epicurean," which appeared in 1827. 140 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. VI. 25. THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS. 1. ONE more unfortunate, Weary of breath, Hashly importunate, 1 Gone to her death ! Take her up tenderly, Lift her with care ! Fashioned so slenderly — Young, and so fair ! 2. Look at her garments, Clinging like cerements, 3 "While the wave constantly Drips from her clothing ; Take her up instantly, Loving, not loathing ! 3. Touch her not scornfully ! Think of her mournfully, Gently and humanly — Not of the stains of her ; All that remains of her Now is pure womanly. 4. Make no deep scrutiny, Into her mutiny, Rash and undutiful ; Past all dishonor, Death has left on her Only the beautiful. 5. Still, for all slips of hers — One of Eve's family — » Im port' u nate, over-pressing in 5 Cere' ment, cloth dipped in request or demand; troublesomely melted wax, and wrapped about dead urgent. bodies previous to embalming. Wipe those poor lips of hers, Oozing so clammily. Loop up her tresses Escaped from the comb — Her fair auburn tresses — While wonderment guesses, Where was her home ? 6. Who was her father ? Who was her mother ? Had she a sister ? Had she a brother ? Or was there a dearer one Still, and a nearer one Yet, than all other ? 7. Alas ! for the rarity Of Christian charity Under the sun ! Oh ! it was pitiful ! Near a whole city full, Home she had none. 8. Sisterly, brotherly, Fatherly, motherly Feelings had changed — Love, by harsh evidence, Throw r n from its eminence ; Even God's j)rovidenco Seeming estranged. 9. Where the lamps quiver So far in the river, THE BRIDGE OF 6IGHS. U) With many a light From window and casement, From garret to basement, She stood, with amazement, Houseless by night. 10. The bleak wind ot March Made her tremble and shiver; But not the dark arch, Or the black, flowing river : Mad from life's history, Glad to death's mystery, Swift to be hurled — Any where — any where Out of the world ! 11, In she plunged boldly — No matter how coldly The rough river ran — Over the brink of it! Picture it — think of it ! Dissolute Man ! Lave in it, drink of it, Then, if you can ! — Take her up tenderly, Lift her with care ! Fashioned so slenderly, Young, and so fair. 12. Ere her limbs, frigidly, Stiffen too rigidly, Decentlv, kindlv, Smooth and compose them ; And her eyes, close them, Staring so blindly I 13. Dreadfully staring Through muddy impurity, As when with the daring Last look of despairing Fixed on futurity. 14. Perishing gloomily, Spurred by contumely, 1 Cold inhumanity, Burning insanity, Into her rest ! Cross her hands humblv, As if praying dumbly, Over her breast ! Owning her weakness, Her evil behavior, And leaving with meekness Her sins to her Saviour ! Thomas Hood. Thomas Hood, humorist and poet, was born at London, in 179$. The best incident of his early boyhood was his instruction by a schoolmaster who appre- ciated his talents, and was so interested in teaching as to render it impossible not to interest his pupil. At this period he earned his first fee — a few guineas— by revising for the press a new edition of " Paul and Virginia.'' In his fifteenth year, after receiving a miscellaneous education, he was placed in the counting- house of a Russian merchant; but, soon after learned the art of engraving. In 1821, having already written fugitive papers for periodicals, he became sub- editor of the "London Magazine," a position which at once introduced him to the best literary society of the time. " Odes and Addresses " soon after appear ed. " Whims and Oddities," "National Tales/' "Tylncy Hall," a novel, and u The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies," followed. In these, the humorous lac- 1 C3n' tu me ly, rudeness or reproach compounded of haughtiness and contempt ; despiteful treatment. 142 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. ulty not only predominated, but expressed itself with a freshness, originality, and power, which the poetical element could not claim. There was, however, much true poetry in the verse, and much sound sense and keen observation in the prose of these works. After publishing several annuals, he started a maga- zine in his own name. Though aided by men of reputation and authority, this work, which he conducted with surprising energy, was mainly sustained by his own intellectual activity. At this time, confined to a sick-bed, from which he never rose, in his anxiety to provide for his wife and children, he composed those poems, too few in number, but immortal in the English language, sv^h as the " Song of the Shirt," the " Song of the Laborer," and the " Bridge of Sighs." His death occurred on the 3d of May, 1845. vn. 26. SELECT PASSAGES IN VERSE. I. SUCCESSION OF HUMAN BEINGS. LIKE leaves on trees the life of man is found, Now green in youth, now withering on the ground ; Another race the following spring supplies, They fall successive, and successive rise : So generations in their course decay ; So nourish these, when those have passed away. II. DEATH OF THE YOUNG AND FAIR. She died in beauty, like a rose blown from its parent stem ; She died in beauty, like a pearl dropped from some diadem ; She died in beauty, like a lay along a moonlit lake ; She died in beauty, like the song of birds amid the brake ; She died in beauty, like the snow on flowers dissolved away ; She died in beauty, like a star lost on the brow of day ; — She lives in glory, like Night's gems set round the silver moon ; She lives in glory, like the sun amid the blue of June. TIL A LADY DROWNED.— Procter. Is she dead ? . . . Why so shall I be, — ere these autumn blasts Have blown on the beard of Winter. Is she dead ? Ay, she is dead, — quite dead! The wild Sea kissed her Wifli its cold white lips, and then — put her to sleep : She has a sand pillow, and a water sheet, And never turns her head or knows 'tis morning ! IV. LIFE OF MAN. -Beaumont. Like to the falling of a star, Or as the flights of eagles are, SELECT PASSAGES IX VERSE. 14;j Or like the fresh spring's gaudy hue, Or silver drops of morning dew, Or like a wind that chafes the flood, Or bubbles which on water stood : E'en such is man, whose borrowed light Is straight called in and paid to-night : The wind blows out, the bubble dies ; The spring entombed in autumn lies ; The dew's dried up, the star is shot, The flight is past, and man forgot. V. CORONACH.'— Scott. He is gone on the mountain, he is lost to the forest, Like a summer-dried fountain, when our need was the sorest ; The fount, reappearing, from the rain-drops shall borrow, But to us comes no cheering, to Duncan no morrow ! The hand of the reaper takes the ears that are hoary, But the voice of the weeper wails manhood in glory ; The autumn winds rushing waft the leaves that are serest, But our flower was in flushing when blighting was nearest. — Fleet foot on the correi, 3 sage counsel in cumber,' Bed hand in the foray, 4 how sound is thy slumber ! Like the dew on the mountain, like the foam on the river, Like the bubble on the fountain, thou art gone, and forever ! VI. IMMORTALITY.— It. II. Dana. "Man, thou shalt never die !" Celestial voices Hymn it unto our souls : according harps, By angel fingers touched, when the mild stars Of morning sang together, sound forth still The song of our great immortality ! Thick-clustering orbs on this our fair domain, The tall, dark mountains, and the deep-toned seas, Join in this solemn, universal song. O listen, ye our spirits ! drink it in From all the air ! 'Tis in the gentle moonlight ; 'Tis floating mid day's setting glories ; night, Wrapped in her sable 5 robe, with silent step, J Coronach, (koV o uak), a song of 3 Cum' ber, perplexity ; distress, lamentation . a lament. 4 Fo' ray, a sudden pillaging in- ' Correi, (kor' ra), the side of a cmsion in peace or war. hill where game usually lies. * Sa' ble, dark ; black. 144 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Comes to our bed, and breathes it in our ears. Night and the dawn, bright day and thoughtful eve, All time, all bounds, the limitless expanse, As one vast mystic l instrument, are touched By an unseen, living hand, and conscious chords Quiver with joy in this great jubilee : 2 The dying hear it ; and, as sounds of earth Grow dull and distant, wake their passing souls To mingle in this heavenly harmony. vni. 27. SELECTED EXTRACTS. THE man who carries a lantern in a dark night, can have friends all around him, walking safely by the help of its rays, and he be not defrauded. So he who has the God-given light of hope in his breast, can help on many others in this world's darkness, not to his own loss, but to his precious gain. 2. As a rose after a shower, bent down by tear-drops, waits for a passing breeze or a kindly hand to shake its branches, that, lightened, it may stand once more upon its stem, — so one who is bowed down with affliction longs for a friend to lift him out of his sorrow, and bid him once more rejoice. Happ} r is the man who has that in his soul which acts upon the dejected like April airs upon violet roots. 3. Have you ever seen a cactus growing ? "What a dry, ugly, spiny thing it is ! But suppose your gardener takes it when just sprouting forth with buds, and lets it stand a week or two, and then brings it to you, and lo ! it is a blaze of light, glorious above all flowers. So the poor and lowly, when God's time comes, and they begin to stand up and blossom, how beautiful they will be ! 4. The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world's joy. The lonely pine upon the mountain-top waves its somber boughs, and cries, " Thou art my sun." And the little meadow violet lifts its cup of blue, and whispers with its perfumed breath, " Thou art my sun." And the grain in a thousand fields rustles in the wind, and makes answer, " Thou 1 Mys' tic, obscure ; involving fiftieth year, when the bondsmen some secret meaning. were all set free and lauds restored 3 Ju' bi lee, among the Jews every to their former owners. SELECTED EXTRACTS. 145 art my sun." And so God sits effulgent in heaven, not for a fa- vored few, but for the universe of life ; and there is no creature so poor or so low that he may not look up with child-like con- fidence and say, "My Father! Thou art mine." 5. I think the human heart is like an artist's studio. You can tell what the artist is doing, not so much by his completed pictures, for they are mostly scattered at once, but by the half- finished sketches and designs which are hanging on his wall. And so you can tell the course of a man's life, not so much by his well-defined purposes, as by the half-formed plans — the faint day-dreams, which are hung in all the chambers of his heart. G. Men are like birds that build their nests in trees that hang over rivers. And the birds sing in the tree-top, and the river sings underneath, undermining and undermining, and in the moment when the bird thinks not, it comes crashing down, and the nest is scattered, and all goes floating down the flood. If we build to ambition, we arc like men who build beforo the track of a volcano's eruption, suro to be overtaken and burnt up by its hot lava. If we build to wealth, we are as those who build upon the ice. The spring will melt our foundations from under us. 7. Shall we build to earthly affections ? If we can not trans- figure 2 those whom we love — if we can not behold the eternal world shining through the faces of father and mother, of hus- band and wife — if we can not behold them all irradiated with the glory of tho supernal 3 sphere, it were not best to build for love. Death erects his batteries right over against our homes, and in the hour when we think not, the missile ilies and explodes, carrying destruction all around. 8. I think it is a sad sight to look at one of the receiving hulks at the Navy Yard. To think that that was the ship which once went so fearlessly across the ocean ! It has come back to be anchored in the quiet bay, and to roll this way and that with the tide. Yet that is what manv men set before them as tho end of life — that the} 1- may come to that pass where they may be able to cast out an anchor this way and an anchor that way, and never move again, but rock lazily with the tide — without a sail — without a voyage — waiting simply for decay to take their 1 Trans fig' ure, change the out- * Su per' nal, being in a higher ward form or appearance of. region or place; heaveulv. 7 14:6 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. timbers apart. And this is what men call, "retiring from busi- ness " — to become simply an empty old hulk. 9. We are beleaguered by Time, and parallel after pai'allel is drawn around us, and then a change is made, and we see the enemy's flag waving on some outpost. And as the sense of hearing, and touch, and sight fails, and a man finds all these marks of time upon him, oh woe ! if he has no Hereafter, as a final citadel into which to retreat. 10. Would that I could break this Gospel as a bread of life to all of you ! My best presentations of it to you are so incom- plete ! Sometimes, when I am alone, I have such sweet and rapturous visions of the love of God and the truths of His word, that I think if I could speak to you then, I should move your hearts. I am like a child, who, walking forth some sunny sum- mer's morning, sees grass and flowers all shining with drops of dew, that reflect every hue of the rainbow. " Oh !" he cries, " 111 carry these beautiful things to my mother," and eagerly shakes them off into his little palm. But the charm is gone — they are no more water-pearls. 11. There are days when my blood flows like wine ; when all is ease and prosperity ; when the sky is blue, and the birds sing, and flowers blossom, and every thing speaks to me ; and my life is an anthem, walking in time and tune ; and then this world's joy and affection suffice. But when a change comes — when I am weary and disappointed — when the skies lower into the somber night — when there is no song of bird, and the per'- fume of flowers is but their dying breath breathed away — when all is sunsetting and autumn, then I yearn for Him who sits with the summer of love in His soul, and know that all earthly affec- tion is but a glow-worm light compared to that which blazes with such effulgence in the heart of God. 12. I think that in the life to come my heart will have feel ings like God's. The little bell that a babe can hold in its fim gers may strike the same note as the great bell of Mos'cow. 1 Its 1 MbV cow, a famous city of Rus- kol, or the Monarch, weighing near- sia, formerly capital of the whole ly one hundred and eighty tons, is Russian Empire. It is situated four about twenty -one and a-half feet in hundred miles S. E. of St. Peters- height, and twenty-two and a-half burg, with which it is connected by in diameter. A Inure fragment was a first-class railroad. The stupendous broken from it, more than a century bell here alluded to,called Czar Kolo- ago, when the bell-tower was burned. FULLER'S BIRD. 147 note may be soft as a bird's -whisper, and yet it is the same. And so God may have a feeling-, and I, standing by him, shall have the same feeling. Where he loves, I shall love. All the processes of the Divine mind will be reflected in mine. And there will be this companionship with him to eternity. What else can bo the meaning of those expressions that all we have is Christ's, and God is ours, and we are heirs of God ? To inherit God — who can conceive of it ? It is the growing marvel, and will be the growing wonder of eternity. 13. We are glad that there is a bosom of God to which we can go and find refuge. As prisoners in castles look out of their grated windows at the smiling landscape, where the sun comes and goes, so we from this life, as from dungeon bars, look forth to the heavenly land, and are refreshed with sweet visions of the home that shall be ours when we are free. Henry Ward Beecuer. SECTION VI. I. 28. FULLER'S BIRD. 1 THE wild-winged creature, clad in gore (His bloody human meal being o'er), Comes down to the water's brink : Tis the first time he there hath gazed, And straight he shrinks — alarmed — amazed, And dares not drink. 2. " Have I till now," he sadly said, " Preyed on my brother's blood, and made His flesh my meal to-day?" — Once more he glances in the brook, And once more sees his victim's look ; Then turns away. 1 Puller's Bird, " I have read of a there by reflection that he had killed bird, which hath a face like, and yet one like himself, pineth away by de- will prey upon, a man ; who, coming grees, and never afterward enjoyrth to the water to drink, and finding itself." — Fuller's WorViits. 148 NATIONAL FIFTH HEADER. 3. With such sharp pain as human hearts May feel, the drooping thing departs Unto the dark, -wild wood ; And there, midst briers and sheltering weeds, He hideth his remorse, and feeds No more on blood. 4 And in that weedy brake he lies, And pines, and pines, until he dies ; And, when all's 6'cr, What follows ? — Naught ! his brothers slake Their thirst in blood in that same brake, Fierce as before ! 5. So fable flows ! — But would you find Its moral wrought in human kind, Its tale made worse ; Turn straight to Man, and in his fame And forehead read " Tlie Harpy's" 1 name ; But no remorse ! B. W. Procter. Brtan Walter Procter, better known by his assumed name of Barry Corn- wall, is a graceful and accomplished "writer, and a true poet. "If it be the province of poetry to give delight," says Lord Jeffery, "this author should rank very high among the poets." He is a genuine poet of love. There is an intense and passionate beauty, a depth of affection, in his little dramatic poems, which appear even in the affectionate triflings of his gentle characters. He, is chiefly noted, however, as a song-writer. " The fair blosoms of his genius, though light and trembling as the breeze, spring from a wide, and deep, and robust stock, which will sustain far taller branches without being exhausted." H. 29. THE BARBARITIES OF WAR. THE first great obstacle to the extinction of war, is the way in which the heart of man is carried oft* from its barbarities and its horrors by the splendor of its deceitful accompaniments. There is a feeling of the sublime in content 'plating the shock of armies, just as there is in contenrplating the devouring energy of a tempest ; and this so elevates and engrosses the whole man, 1 HaVpy, in antiquity, the harjrics with sharp claws. They were thrco ■were fabulous winged monsters, rav- in number, Aello, Ocypetc, and Cele- enous and filthy, having the face of no. The name harpy is often applied a woman and the body of a vulture, to an extortioner, a plunderer, or with their feet and fingers armed ravenous animals. THE BARBARITIES OF WAR. 149 that his eye is blind to the tears of bereaved parents, and his ear is deaf to the piteous moan of the dying, and the shriek of their desolated families. 2. There is a gracefulness in the picture of a youthful warrior, burning for distinction on the field, and lured by this generous aspiration to the deepest of the animated throng, where, in the Lll work of death, the opposing sons of valor struggle for a re- membrance and a name ; and this side of the picture is so much the exclusive object of our regard, as to disguise from our view the mangled carcases of the fallen, and the writhing agonies of the hundreds and the hundreds more who have been laid on the cold ground, where they are left to languish and to die. 3. There no eye pities them. No sister is there to weep over them. There no gentle hand is present to ease the dying pos- ture, or bind up the wounds which, in the maddening fury of the combat, have been given and received by the children of one common Father. There death spreads its pale ensigns over every countenance, and when night comes on, and darkness around them, how many a despairing wretch must take up with the bloody field as the untended bed of his last sufferings, with- out one friend to bear the message of tenderness to his distant home, without one companion to close his eyes ! 4. I avow it. On every side of me I sec causes at work which go to spread a most delusive coloring over war, and to remove its shocking barbarities to the background of our contempla'- tions altogether. I see it in the history, which tells me of the superb appearance of the troops, and the brilliancy of their suc- cessive charges. I see it in the poetry, which lends the magic of its numbers to the narrative of blood, and transports its many admirers, as by its images, and its figures, and its nodding plumes of chivalry it throws its treacherous embellishments over a scene of legalized slaughter. 5. I see it in the music, which represents the progress of the battle ; and where, after being inspired by the trumpet notes cf preparation, the whole beauty and tenderness of a drawing-room are seen to bend over the sentimental entertainment : nor elo I hear the utterance of a single sigh to interrupt the death-tones of the thickening contest, and the moans of the wounded men as they fade away upon the ear and sink into lifeless silence. All, all goes to prove what strange and half-sighted creatures we 150 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. are. Were it not so, war could never have been seen in any other aspect than that of unmingled hatefulness : and I can look to nothing but to the progress of Christian sentiment upon earth to arrest the strong current of its popular and prevailing par- tiality for war. 6. Then only will an imperious sense of duty lay the check of severe principle on all the subordinate tastes and faculties of our nature. Then will glory be reduced to its right estimate, and the wakeful benevolence of the Gospel, chasing away every spell, will be turned by the treachery of no delusion whatever from its sublime enterprises for the good of the species. Then the reign of truth and quietness will be ushered into the world, and war, cruel, atrocious, unrelenting war, will be stripped of its many and its bewildering fascinations. Thomas Chalmers. Thomas Chalmers, D.D., LL.D., the celebrated pulpit orator and divine, was born on 17th March, 1780, at Anstruther, in Fifeshire, Scotland, of respectable and pious, though humble, parents. He was entered a student in St. Andrews College at the early age of twelve; and soon gave indications of that strong predilection for the physical sciences which he retained through life. He ob- tained license to preach in connection with the Established Church of Scotland, while only 19, on the express ground that he was "a lad of pregnant parts;" though, at that early age, he considered the functions of the sacred office to be subordinate to scientilic pursuits. By long personal illness, and severe domestic bereavements, he was brought from making religion a secondary concern with him to regard it as a subject of paramount importance. In 1815 he took charge of the Tron Church and Parish, Glasgow, from which time his reputation con- tinued to advance, until the sensation produced by his preaching surpassed all that was ever known or heard of in the annals of pulpit eloquence. In 1824 he became professor of moral philosophy in the University of St. Andrews ; and in 1828 he was translated to the chair of divinity in the university at Edinburgh. Dr. Chalmers now commenced a career of authorship, by which he still further extended his reputation as a divine. The most ilattcring honors were now heaped upon him ; for he was chosen President of the Royal Society of Edin- burgh, created Doctor of Laws by the University of Oxford, and appointed cor- responding member of the Royal Institute of France — a compliment which no clergyman in Britain had ever previously enjoyed. His collected works, including sermons, theological lectures, &c., amount to 25 volumes. Died May 30, 1847. in. 30. BINGEN ON THE RHINE. 1. SOLDIER of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, A There was lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth of woman's tears ; Ihit a comrade stood beside him, while his life-blood ebbed away, BINGEN ON THE RHINE. 151 And bent, wim pitying glances, to hear what ho might say. The dying soldier faltered, as he took that comrade's hand, And he said, " I never more shall see my own, my native land ; Take a message, and a token, to some distant friends of mine, For I was born at Bing'en — at Bingen on the Rhine. 2. " Tell my brothers and companions, when they meet and crowd around To hear my mournful story in the pleasant vineyard ground, That we fought the battle bravely, and when the day was done, Full many a corse Jay ghastly pale, beneath the setting sun. And midst the dead and dying, were some grown old in wars, The death-wound on their gallant breasts, the last of many scars: But some were young — and suddenly beheld life's morn decline ; And one had come from Bingen — fair Bingen on the Rhine ! 3. " Tell my mother that her other sons shall comfort her old age, And I was aye a truant bird, that thought his home a cage : For my father was a soldier, and even as a child My heart leaped forth to hear him tell of struggles fierce and wild; And when he died, and left us to divide his scanty hoard, I let them take whate'er they would, but kept my father's sword, And with boyish love I hung it where the bright light used to shine, On the cottage-wall at Bingen — calm Bingen on the Rhine ! o o o 4. " TeU my sister not to weep for me, and sob with drooping head, When the troops are marching home again, with glad and gal- lant tread ; But to look upon them proudly, with a calm and steadfast eye, For her brother was a soldier too, and not afraid to die. And if a comrade seek her love, I ask her in my name To listen to him kindly, without regret or shame ; And to hang the old Btoord in its place (my father's sword and mine), For the honor of old Bincren — dear Bingen on the Rhine ! 5. " There's another — not a sister ; in the happy days gone by, You'd have known her by the merriment that sparkled in her eye; 152 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Too innocent for coquetry, — too fond for idle scorning, — Oh ! friend, I fear the lightest heart makes sometimes heaviest mourning ; Tell her the last night of my life (for ere the moon be risen My body will be out of pain — my soul be out of prison), I dreamed I stood with her, and saw tho yellow sunlight shine On tho vine-clad hills of Bingen — fair Bingen on the Rhine ! 6. " I saw the blue Rhine sweep along — I heard, or seemed to hear The German songs wo used to sing, in chorus sweet and clear ; And down tho pleasant river, and up the slanting hill, The echoing chorus sounded, through the evening calm and still ; And her glad blue eyes were on me as we £>assed with friendly talk Down many a path beloved of yore, and w ell-remembered walk, And her little hand lay lightly, confidingly in mine : But we'll meet no" more at Bingen — loved Bingen on the Rhine !" 7. His voice grew faint and hoarser, — his grasp was childish weak, — His eyes put on a dying look, — he sighed and ceased to speak: His comrade bent to lift him, but the spark of life had fled, — The soldier of the Legion, in a foreign land — was dead ! And the soft moon rose up slowly, and calmly she looked down On the red sand of tho battle-field, with bloody corpses strown ; Yea, calmly on that dreadful scene her pale light seemed to shine, As it shone on distant Bingen — fair Bingen on the Rhine ! Mrs. Norton. Mrs. Norton, Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Sheridan, was grand-daugter of Rich- ard Brinsley Sheridan. The family of Sheridan has been proliGc of genius and she has -well sustained the family honors. In her seventeenth year, this lady had composed her poem, "The Sorrows of Rosalie." She termed her next poem, founded on the ancient legend of the Wandering Jew, " The Undying One." Her third volume, entitled "The Dream, and other Poems," appeared in 1840. " This lady," says a writer in the Quarterly Review, " is the Byron of our modern poetesses. She has very much of that intense personal passion by which Byron's poetry is distinguished from the larger grasp and deeper communion with man and naturo of Wordsworth. She has also Byron's beautiful intervals of tender- ness, his strong practical thought, and his forceful expression. It is not an arti- ficial imitation, but a natural parallel." She was married at the age of nineteen to the Hon. George Chappie Norton, brother to Lord Grantley, and himself a police magistrate in London. After being the object of suspicion and persecu- tion of the most painful description, the union was dissolved in 1S40. LOCHIEL'S WARNING. 153 IV. 81. LOCIIIEI/S WARNING. SEER. Locliicl, Locliiel, bewaro of the day "When tho Lowlands shall meet thee in battle array I For a field of the dead rushes red on my sight, And tho clan3 of Cullo'den ' are scattered in fight ; They rally, they bleed, for their kingdom and crown ; Woe, woe, to the riders that trample them down ! Proud Cumberland prances, insulting the slain, And their hoof-beaten bosoms 1 arc trod to the plain. But hark ! through tho fast-flashing lightning of war What steed to tho desert flies frantic and far ? 'Tis thine, O Glenullin ! whose bride shall await, Like a love-lighted watch-fire, all night at the gate. A steed comes at morning — no rider is there ; But its bridle is red with the sign of despair. Weep, Albin ! to death and captivity led ! O weep ! but thy tears can not number the dead ; For a merciless sword on Culloden shall wave — Culloden, that reeks with the blood of the brave ! Lochiel. Go preach to the coward, thou death-telling seer ! Or, if gory Cullo'den so dreadful appear, Draw, dotard, around thy old wavering sight, This mantle, to cover the phantoms of fright. Seer. Ha ! laugh'st thou, Lochiel, my vision to scorn ? Proud bird of the mountain, thy plume shall be torn ! Say, rushed the bold eagle exultingly forth From his home in the dark-rolling clouds of the north ? Lo ! the death-shot of focmen out-speeding, he rode Companionless, bearing destruction abroad ; But down let him stoop from his havoc on high ! Ah ! home let him speed, for the spoiler is nigh. Why flames the far summit ? Why shoot to the blast Those embers, like stars from tho firmament cast ? 'Tis the fire-shower of ruin, all dreadfully driven From his eyry (a/ri), that beacons the darknt-ss of heaven. 1 Cul 13' den, a wide, moory ridge army, on the lGth of April, 1740, by in Scotland, county of Inverness, in the royal troops under the Duke of the parish of Croy, memorable for Cumberland, the total defeat of Prince Charles's ■ Bosoms, (buz' umz). 154 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. crested Locliiel ! tlie peerless in might, Whose banners arise on the battlements' height, Heaven's fire is around thee to blast and to burn : Return ' to thy dwelling ; all lonely return ! For the blackness of ashes shall mark where it stood, And a wild mother scream o'er her famishing brood ! Lochiel. False wizard, avaunt ! 3 I have marshalled my clan : Their swords are a thousand ; their bosoms are one. Thev are true to the last of their blood and their breath, And like reapers descend to the harvest of death. Then welcome be Cumberland's steed to the shock ! Let him dash his proud foam like a wave on the rock ! But woo to his kindred, and woe to his cause, When Albin her claymore 3 indignantly draws ; When her bonneted chieftains to victory crowd, Clanranald the dauntless, and Moray the proud, All plaided and plumed in their tartan array Seer. Lochiel, Lochiel, beware of the day ! For, dark and despairing, my sight I may seal, Yet man can not cover what God would reveal ? 'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore, And corainp- events cast their shadows before. O 1 tell thee, Cullo'den's dread echoes shall ring With the bloodhounds that bark for thy fugitive king. Lo ! anointed by Heaven with the vials of wrath, 4 Behold where he flies on his desolate path ! Now in darkness and billows he sweeps from my sight : Rise ! rise ! ye wild tempests, and cover his flight ! — 'Tis finished. Their thunders are hushed on the moors ; Culloden is lost, and my country deplores. But where is the iron-bound prisoner ? Where ? For the red eye of battle is shut in despair. Say, mounts he the ocean-wave, banished, forlorn, Like a limb from his country cast bleeding and torn ? Ah ! no ; for a darker departure is near ; The war-drum is muffled, and black is the bier ; His death-bell is tolling : O, mercy, dispel Yon sight, that it freezes my spirit to tell ! 1 Return, (re tern'). sword, formerly used by the Scottish 5 Avaunt, (avant'). Highlanders. 1 C12y r moi*e, a large, tvro-handed * Wrath, (rath). LOCHIEL'S WARNING. 155 Life flutters, convulsed, in his quivering limbs, And bis blood-streaming nostril in agony swims ! Accursed be the fagots that blaze at his feet, Where his heart shall be thrown, ere it ceases to beat, With the smoke of its ashes to poison the gale Lochiel. Down, soothless insnlter ! I trust not the talo ! For never shall Albin a destiny meet So black with dishonor, so foul with retreat ! Though his perishing ranks should be strewed in their gore, Like ocean-weeds heaped on the surf-beaten shore, Lochiel, untainted by flight or by chains, While the kindling of life in his bosom remains, Shall victor exult, or in death be laid low, With his back to the field, and his feet to the foe ! And, leaving in battle no blot on his name, Look proudly to heaven from the death-bed of fame ! Thomas Campbell. TnoMAS Campbell, the distinguished poet, was born in Glasgow, on the 27th of July, 1T77. Owing to the straightened circumstances of his father young Campbell was obliged, while attending college, to have recourse to private teach- ing as a tutor. Notwithstanding this additional labor, he made rapid progress in his studies, and attained considerable distinction at the university of his native city. He very early gave proofs of his aptitude for literary composition, especial- ly in the department of poetry. At the age of twenty, he occasionally labored for the booksellers, while attending lectures at the university in Edinburgh. In 17'.»0, his first extended poem, "The Pleasures of Hope," was published. Its success was instantaneous and without parallel. It is not too much to say, that it is, without an exception, the finest didactic poem in the English language. In 1809, he published "Gertrude of Wyoming," which holds the second place among his lengthier poems, and to which were attached the most celebrated of his grand and powerful lyrics. Though Campbell was too frequently timid, and noted more for beauties of expression than for high inventive power and vigorous ex- ecution, yet his lyrical pieces, particularly "The Battle of the Baltic," "Mariners of England," "Hohenlindcn," and " Lochicl's Warning," which appear to have been struck off at a heat, prove conclusively that his conception*, when not too much subjected to elaboration, were glowing, bold, and powerful. In the latter part of the poet's life his circumstances were materially improved. In 1S2C, he was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow. He died July 15th, 1S44, and his remains were solemnly interred in Westminster Abbey. V. 32. BATTLE OF WARSAW. O SACRED Truth ! thy triumph ceased awhile, And Hope, thy sister, ceased with thee to smile, When leagued oppression poured to northern wars 156 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Her whiskered pandoors, and her fierce hussars, Waved her dread standard to the breeze of morn, Pealed her loud drum, and twanged her trumpet horn ! Tumultuous horror brooded o'er her van, . Presa<nncf wrath to Poland and to man. o o 2. "Warsaw's last champion from her height surveyed, Wide o'er the fields, a waste of ruin laid ; Heaven ! he cried, my bleeding country save ! Is there no hand on hisfh to shield the brave ? Yet, though destruction sweep these lovely plains, Rise, fellow-men ! our country yet remains ! By that dread name, wo wave the su'Ord on high, And swear for her to live, with her to die ! 3. He said, and on the rampart heights arrayed His trusty warriors — few, but undismayed ; Firm-paced and slow, a horrid front they form, Still as the breeze, but dreadful as the storm ; Low, murmuring sounds along their banners fly, Revenge or death ! — the watchword and reply : Then pealed the notes omnipotent to charm, And the loud tocsin tulled their last alarm. 4. In vain, alas ! in vain, ye gallant f ew ! Prom rank to rank your volleyed thunder i!ev, r : Oh, bloodiest picture in the "book of time!" Sarmatia 1 fell, unwept, without a crime ! Pound not a generous friend, a pityiog foe, Strength in her arms, nor mercy in her woe ! Dropped from her nerveless grasp the shattered spear, Closed her bright eye, and curbed her high career : Hope, for a season, bade the world farewell, And Freedom shrieked as Kosciusko 3 fell ! 1 Sarmatia, (sax mi' sli! a), the clas- and a third in 1 795. The Poles have eical name of Poland. For many made several attempts to recover centuries Poland existed as an hide- their liberty, the last of which was pendent and powerful State, but hav- in 18C0. ing fallen a prey to internal disscn- 3 Thaddeus K6s x ci us' ko, a noble sions, it was violently seized by Rus- Pole, was born in 1756. When young, sin , Prussia, and Austria, and divided he served the United States in their between them. The first partition war of independence against Eng- took place in 1772, a second in 179:3, land, where he rose to the rank ef THE SIEGE OP LEYDEX. 157 5. Tho sun went down, nor ceased tho carnage there, Tumultuous murder shook the midnight ah' ! On Prague's proud arch tho fires of ruin glow, His blood-dyed waters murmuring far below ; The storm prevails, the rampart yields away. Bursts the wild cry of horror and dismay ! Hark! as the smouldering piles with thunder fall, A thousand shrieks for hopeless mercy call : Earth shook — red meteors flashed aloncr the sky, And conscious nature shuddered at the cry. Campbell. VI. 33. THE SIEGE OF LEYDEX. MEANTIME the besieged city was at its last ga^). Tho burghers had been in a state of uncertainty for many days ; being aware that the fleet had set forth for their relief, but knowing full well the thousand obstacles which it had to surmount. They had guessed its progress by the illumination from the blazing villages ; they had heard its salvos ' of artillery on its arrival at North Aa ; 2 but since then, all had been dark and mournful again, hope and fear, in sickening alternation, distracting every breast. 2. They knew that the wind was unfavorable, and at the dawn of each day every eye was turned wistfully to the vanes of the steeples. So long as the easterly breeze prevailed, they felt, they anxiously stood on towers and housetops, that they must look in vain for the welcome ocean. Yet, while thus patiently waiting, they were literally starving. Bread, malt-cake, horse- flesh, had entirely disappeared ; dogs, cats, rats, and other ver- min, were esteemed luxuries. A small number of cows, kept as long as possible, for their milk, still remained ; but a few were killed from day to day, and distributed in minute propor- general. He returned to Poland, and battle of Maciovice, October 1st, 1704. signalized himself at the head of one and the complete downfall of his of her armies in 1792 and 1793 ; and country soon followed. He closed when the Poles rose up against their his unstained and noble life in Swit- oppresscrs in 1794, he was made zerland in 1817. their generalissimo, and their dicta- 'SaTvo, a general discharge of tor. He was wounded and taken fire-arms ; a volley, prisoner by the Russians at the fatal ? North Aa, (a). 158 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. tions, hardly sufficient to support life among the famishing population. 3. Starving "wretches swarmed daily around the shambles -where these cattle were slaughtered, contending for any morsel which might fall, and lapping eagerly the blood as it ran along the pavement ; while the hides, chopped and boiled, were greedily devoured. Women and children, all day long, were seen searching gutters and dunghills for morsels of food, which they disputed fiercely with the famishing dogs. The green leaves were stripped from the trees, every living herb was converted into human food ; but these expedients could not avert starvation. 4. The daily mortality was frightful : infants starved to death on the maternal breasts which famine had parched and with- ered ; mothers dropped dead in the streets, with their dead children in their arms. In many a house the watchmen, in their rounds, found a whole family of corpses, — father, mother, children, side by side ; for a disorder called the plague, natur- ally engendered of hardship and famine, now came, as if in kindness, to abridge the agony of the people. The pestilence stalked at noonday through the city, and the doomed inhabit- ant s fell like grass beneath the scythe. From six thousand to eight thousand human beings sank before this scourge alone ; yet the people resolutely held out, — women and men mutually encouraging each other to resist the entrance of their foreign foe, — an evil more horrible than pest or famine. 5. Ley den w r as sublime in its despair. A few murmurs were, however, occasionally heard at the steadfastness of the magis- trates, and a dead body was placed at the door of the burgo- master, as a silent witness against his inflexibility, A party of the more faint-hearted even assailed the heroic Adrian Yan der Werf with threats and reproaches as he passed through the streets. A crowd had gathered around him as he reached a tri- o angular place in the center of the town, into which many of the principal streets emptied themselves, and upon one side of which stood the church of Saint Pancras. There stood the burgo- master, a tall, haggard, imposing figure, with dark visage and a tranquil but commanding eye. He waved his broad-leaved felt hat for silence, and then exclaimed, in language which has been almost literally preserved : C. " What v> r ould ye, my friends ? Why do ye murmur that THE SIEGE OF LEYDEN. 159 3 do not break our vows and surrender the city to the Span- irds ? — a fate more horrible than the agony which she now en- rres. I tell you I have made an oath to hold the city ; and . .ay God give me strength to keep my oath ! I can die but once, whether by your hands, the enemy's, or by the hand of God. My own fate is indifferent to mc ; not so that of the city intrusted to my care. I know that we shall starve if not soon relieved ; but starvation is preferablo to the dishonored death which is the only alternative. Your menaces move me not ; my life is at your disposal ; here is my sword, plunge it into my breast, and divide my flesh among you. Take my body to appease your hun- ger, but expect no surrender so long as I remain alive." 7. Ou the 28th of September, a dove flew into the city, bring- ing a letter from Admiral Boisot. In this despatch, the position of the fleet at North Aa was described in encouraging terms, and the inhabitants were assured that, in a very few days at farthest, the long-expected relief would enter their gates. The tempest came to their relief. A violent equinoctial gale, on the night of the 1st and 2d of October, came storming from the northwest, shifting after a few hours full eight points, and then blowing still more violently from the southwest. The waters of the North Sea were piled in vast masses upon the southern coast of Holland, and then dashed furiously landward, the ocean ris- ing over the earth and sweeping with unrestrained power across the rained dykes. 8. In the course of twenty-four hours, the fleet at North Aa, instead of nine inches, had more than two feet of water. On it went, sweeping over the broad waters which lay between Zoe- terwoude and Zwieten ; and as they approached some shallows which led into the great mere, the Zealandera dashed into the sea, and with sheer strength shouldered every vessel through. On again the fleet of Boisot still went, and, overcoming everv obstacle, entered the city on the morning of the 3d of October. Leyden was relieved. Motley. John Latiikop Motley, the distinguished historian, was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1814, and was graduated at Harvard College in ISol. Soon after, he spent several years in Germany, studying in its universities. In 1S41, he was appointed Secretary of Legation to Russia, which post he resigned in less than two years, having written in the meantime for the N. A. Review a lead- ing article on Peter the. Great. He has written numerous papers for leading periodicals, — two anonymous novels, Morton's Hope, and Merrymount, — " The Rise of the Dutch Republic," in 1850, — and quite recently, the "United Neth- erlands." &~ 160 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. VII. 34. THE HAPPY WARRIOR WHO is the happy warrior ? "Who is he That every Man in arms should wish to be ? It is the generous Spirit, who, when brought Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought : — "Whose high endeavors are an inward light That makes the path before him always bright ; "Who, with a natural instinct to discern "What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn ; Abides by this resolve, and stops not there, But makes his moral being his prime care : — 2. "Who, doomed to go in company with Pain, And Fear, and Bloodshed (miserable train!) Turns his necessity to glorious gain ; In face of these doth exercise a power "Which is our human nature's highest dower ; Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves Of their bad influence, and their good receives : — By objects which might force the soul to abato Her feeling, rendered more compassionate ; Is placable, — because occasions rise So of/en that demand such sacrifice ; More skillful in self-knowledge, e'en more pure, As tempted more ; more able to endure, As more exposed to suffering and distress, Thence, also, more alive to tenderness. 3. 'T is ho whose law is reason ; who depends Upon that law as on the best of friends ; "Whence, in a state where men are tempted still To evil for a guard against worse ill, — (And what in quality or act is best Doth seldom on a right foundation rest,) He Axes good on good alone, and owes To virtue every triumph that ho knows : — 4. Who, if he rise to station of command, Rises by open means ; and there will stand THE HAPPY WARRIOR, 1(31 On honorable terms, or else retire, And in himself possess his own desire : — "Who comprehends his trust, and to the same Kcep3 faithful with a singleness of aim ; And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait For wealth, or honors, or for worldly state ; — "Whom they must follow ; on whose head must fall, Like showers of manna, if they come at all : — 5, "Whose powers shed round him in the common strife, Or mild concerns of ordinary life, A constant influence, a peculiar grace ; I3ut who, if he be called upon to face Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined Great issues, good or bad, for human kind, Is happy a3 a lover ; and attired "With sudden brightness, like a man inspired ; And through the heat of conflict, keeps the law In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw ; Or, if an unexpected call succeed, Come when it will, is equal to the need : — G. He who, though thus endued as with a sense And faculty for storm and turbulence, Is yet a soul whose master-bias leans To homcfclt pleasures and to gentle scenes ; Sweet images! which, whereso'er he be, Are at his heart ; and such fidelity It is his darling passion to aj^prove ; More brave for this, that he hath much to love : — 7. 'T is finally the Man, who, lifted high, Conspicuous object in a Nation's eye, Or left un thought of in obscurity, — And with a toward or untoward lot, Prosperous or adverse to his wish or not, — Plays in the many games of life that one "Where what he most doth value must be won ! "Whoin neither shape of danger can dismay, Tsor thought of tender happiness betray ; Who, not content that former worth stand fast, Looks forward, persevering to the last, From well to better, daily self-surpassed : — 162 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 8. Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth, Forever, and to noble deeds give birth, Or he must go to dust without his fame, And leave a dead, unprofitable name, — Finds comfort in himself and in his cause ; And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause ! This is the happy WARRIOR ; this is he Whom every Man in arms should wish to be. Wordsworth. William Wordsworth, the greatest of metaphysical poets, and one of the purest and most blameless of men, was born at Cockerinouth, Cumberland coun- ty, England, April 7th, 1770. He read much in boyhood, and wrote some verses, lie received his early education at the endowed school of Hawkshead ; entered St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1787, and though he disliked the system of the university, and attended little to the studies of the place, graduated with his degree of B. A. in 1791. In the close of the same year he went to France, where he" passed nearly a year; and there he wrote the poem called "Descriptive Sketches," which, with " The Evening Walk," was published in 1793. In 1795 he received a legacy of £900 from his friend, Raisley Calvert, and at the close of the same began to live with his sister, their first residence being at Racedown, Dorsetshire. He here made the acquaintance of Coleridge, and wrote many of the fine passages that afterward appeared in " The Excursion." In the autumn of 179S he published the first edition of his "Lyrical Ballads," and then went to Germany with his sister and Coleridge ; and, the party separating, Miss Words- worth and her brother passed the winter at Goslar, in Hanover. Here were written "Lucy Gray," and several beautiful pieces. His long residence among the lakes of his native district began immediately after his return to England. His second volume of " Lyrical Ballads " appeared at the close of 1800. In 1802 he married Mary Hutchinson, of Penrith, to whose amiability his poems pay warm and beautiful tributes. In the spring of 1313, after various changes of residence, he took up his abode at Rydal Mount, two miles from Grasmcre, which was his home for thirty-seven years, and the scene of his death. There, too, he was ap- pointed distributor of stamps for Westmoreland ; an office which was executed by a clerk, and yielded about £500 a year. In the summer of 1814 was published " The Excursion," a poem which, if judged by its best passages, has hardly an equal in our language. The following year appeared "The White Doe of Ryl- stonc." From his fiftieth to his eightieth year the poet traveled much, suffered a great deal, and wrote but little. In 1842 he resigned his distributorship in favor of one of his two sons, and received from Sir Robert Peel, a pension of £300 a year. In 1843 he was appointed poet-laureate. He died on the 23d of April, 1850. vm. 35. THE CONQUEROR'S GRAVE. "TXT^ITHIN this lowly grave a conqueror lies ; VV And yet the monument proclaims it not, Nor round the sleeper's name hath chisel wrought THE CONQUEROR'S GRAVE. 1C3 The emblems of a fame that never dies — Ivy and amaranth in a graceful sheaf Twined wifh the laurel's fair, imperial leaf. A simple name alone, To the great world unknown, Is graven here, and wild flowers rising round, Meek meadow-sweet and violets of the ground, Lean lovingly against the humble stone. 2. Here, in the quiet earth, they laid apart No man of iron mold and bloody hands, Who sought to wreak upon the cowering lands The passions that consumed his restless heart ; But one of tender spirit and delicate frame, Gentlest in mien and mind Of gentle womankind, Timidly shrinking from the breath of blame ; One in whose eyes the smile of kindness made Its haunt, like flowers by sunny brooks in May ; Yet at the thought of others' pain, a shade Of sweeter sadness chased the smile away. 3. Nor deem that when the hand that moldcrs here Was raised in menace, realms were chilled with fear, And armies mustered at the sign, as when Clouds rise on clouds before the rainy east, — Gray captains leading bands of veteran men And fiery youths to be the vultures' feast. Not thus were waged the mighty wars that gave The victory to her who fills this grave ; Alone her task was wrought ; Alone the battle fought ; Through that long strife her constant hope was staid On God alone, nor looked for other aid. 4. She met the hosts of sorrow with a look That altered not beneath the frown they wore ; And soon the lowering brood were tamed, and took Meekly her gentle rule, and frowned no more. Her soft hand put aside the assaults of wrath, And calmly broke in twain The fiery shafts of pain, 164 "NATIONAL FIFTH READER. And rent the nets of passion from her path. By that victorious hand despair was slain : "With love she vanquished hate, and overcame 'Evil with good in her great Master's name. 5. Her glory is not of this shadowy state, Glory that with the fleeting season dies ; But when she entered at the sapphire gate, "What joy was radiant in celestial eyes ! How heaven's bright depths with sounding welcomes rung, And flowers of heaven by shining hands were flung ! And He who, long before, Pain, scorn, and sorrow bore, The mighty Sufferer, with aspect sweet, Smiled on the timid stranger from His seat — He who, returning glorious from the grave, Dragged death, disarmed, in chains, a crouching slave. 6. See, as I linger here, the sun grows low ; Cool airs are murmuring that the night is near. O gentle sleeper, from thy grave I go Consoled, though sad, in hope, and yet in fear. Biief is the time, I know, The warfare scarce begun ; Yet all may win the triumphs thou hast won ; Still flows the fount whose waters strengthened thee. The victors' names are yet too few to fill Heaven's mighty roll ; the glorious armory That ministered to thee is open still. William Cullen Bryant. SECTION VII. I 8G. DESTINY OF AMERICA. THE Muse, disgusted at an age and clime Barren of every glorious theme, In distant lands now waits a better time Producing subjects worthy fame : CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 105 2. la happy climes, -where, from the genial sun And virgin earth, such scenes ensue ; The force of art by nature seems outdone, And fancied beauties by the true : 3. In happy climes, the seat of innocence, Where nature guides, and virtue rules ; Where men shall not impose for truth and sense The pedantry of courts and schools : 4. There shall be sung another golden age, The rise of empire and of arts ; The good and great inspiring epic rage, The wisest heads and noblest hearts. 5. Not such a3 Europe breeds in her decay : Such as she bred when fresh and young, When heavenly flame did animate her clay, By future poets shall be sung. 6. Westward the course of empire takes its way : The four first acts already past, A fifth shall close the drama with the day Time's noblest offspring is the last. Berkeley. George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, waa born at Thomastown, County ot Kilkenny, Ireland, in 1GS4, and died at Oxford, England, in 1753. He waa the author of several works, principally on metaphysical science. He visited Amer- ica in 1728 for the purpose of founding a college for the conversion of the In- dians; but failing to obtain the promised funds from the government, after remaining seven years in Rhode Island, he returned to Europe. While inspired with his transatlantic mission, he penned the above fine moral verses, so truly prophetic of the progress of the United States. n. 37. CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. H E was decidedly a visionary, 1 but a visionary of an un- common and successful kind. The manner in which his ardent imagination and mercurial nature were controlled by a powerful judgment, and directed by an acute sagacity, is the most extraordinary 3 feature 3 in his character. Thus governed, 1 Visionary, (viz' un a ri), one who 3 Extraordinary, (eks trir' c! na- 13 confident of success in a project t\\ beyond or out of the common which others perceive or think to be method or order ; remarkable. idle and fanciful ; a dreamer. 3 Feature, (let' y3r). 166 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. his imagination, instead of wasting itself in idle soarings, lent wings to his judgment, and bore it away to conclusions at which common minds could never have arrived ; nay, which they could not perceive when pointed out. 2. To his intellectual vision it was given to read, in the signs of the times and the reveries of past ages, the indications of an unknown world, as soothsayers were said to read predictions in the stars, and to foretell events from the visions of the night. " His soul," observes a Spanish writer, " was superior to the age in which he lived. For him was reserved the great enterprise to plow the sea which had given rise to so many fables, and to decipher the mystery of his time." 3. With all the visionary fervor of his imagination, its fondest dreams fell short of the reality. He died in ignorance ol the real grandeur of his discovery. Until his last breath, he enter- tained the idea that he had merely opened a new way to the old resorts of opulent commerce, and had discovered some of the wild regions of the East. He supposed Hispaniola to be the ancient Ophir which had been visited by the ships of Solomon, and that Cuba and Terra Firma were but remote parts of Asia. 4. What visions of glory would have broke upon his mind, could he have known that he had indeed discovered a new con- tinent, equal tc the whole of the old world in magnitude, and separated, by two vast oceans, from all the earth hitherto known by civilized man ! And how would his magnanimous spirit have been consoled, amid the chills of age and cares of penury, the neglect of a fickle public and the injustice ot an ungrateful king, could he have anticipated the splendid empires which were to spread over the beautiful world he had discovered, and the nations and tongues and languages which were to fill its lands with his renown, and to revere and bless his name to the latest posterity' Washington Irving in. 38. RETURN OF COLUMBUS. IN the spring of 1493, while the court was still at Barcelona, letters were received from Christopher Columbus, announ- cing his return to Spain, and the successful achievement of his great enterprise, by the discovery of land beyond the western RETURN OF COLUMBUS. 107 ocean. The delight and astonishment, raised by this intelligence, were proportioned to the skepticism with which his project had been originally viewed. The sovereigns (suv'ermz) were now filled with a natural impatience to ascertain the extent and other particulars of the important discovery : and they transmitted instant instructions to the admiral to repair to Barcelona, as soon as he should have made the preliminary arrangements for the further prosecution of his enterprise. 2. The great navigator had succeeded, as is well known, after a voyage, the natural difficulties of which had been much aug- mented by the distrust and mutinous spirit of his followers, in descrying land on Friday, the 12th of October, 1492. After some months spent in exploring the delightful regions, now for the first time thrown open to the eyes of a Europe 'an, he em- barked in the month of January, 1493, for Spain. One of his yessels had previously foundered, and another had deserted him, so that he was left alone to retrace his course across the Atlantic. 3. After a most tempestuous voyage, he was compelled to take shelter in the Tagus, sorely against his inclination. He expe- rienced, however, the most honorable reception from the Portu- guese monarch, John the Second, who did ample justice to the great qualities of Columbus, although he had failed to profit by them. After a brief delay, the admiral resumed his voyage, and crossing the bar of Saltes, entered the harbor of Palos about noon, on the loth of March, 1493, being exactly seven months and eleven days since his departure from that port. 4. Great was the agitation in the little community at Palos, as they beheld the well-known vessel of the admiral reentering their harbor. Their desponding imaginations had long since consigned him to a watery grave ; for, in addition to the preter- natural horrors which hung over the voyage, they had experienced the most stormy and disastrous winter within the recollection of the oldest mariners. Most of them had relatives or friends on board. They thronged immediately to the shore, to assure themselves with their own eves of the truth of their return. 5. "When they beheld their faces once more, and saw them accompanied by the numerous evielences which they brought back of the success of the expedition, they burst forth in accla- mations of joy and gratulation. They awaited the landing of Columbus, when the whole population of the place accompanied 168 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. him and his crew to tho principal church, where solemn thanks- givings were offered up for their return ; while every bell in the village sent forth a joyous peal in honor of the glorious event. 6. The admiral was too desirous of presenting himself before the sovereigns, to protract his stay long at Palos. He took with him on his journey specimens of the multifarious products of the newly-discovered regions. He was accompanied by several of the native islanders, arrayed in their simple barbaric costume', and decorated, as he passed through tho principal cities, with collars, bracelets, and other ornaments of gold, rudely fashioned : he exhibited, also, considerable quantities of the same metal in dust, or in crude masses, numerous vegetable exotics, 1 possessed of aromatic 2 or medicinal virtue, and several kinds of quad- rupeds unknown in Europe, and birds, whose varieties of gaudy plumage gave a brilliant effect to the pageant. 7. The admiral's progress through the country was everywhere impeded by the multitudes thronging forth to gaze at the ex- traordinary spectacle, and the more extraordinary man, who, in the emphatic language of that time, which has now lost its force from its familiarity, first revealed the existence of a "New World." As he passed through the busy, populous city of SeVille, every window, bal'cony, and housetop, which could afford a glimpse of him, is described to have been crowded with spectators. 8. It was the middle of April before Columbus reached Bar- celona. The nobility and cavaliers in attendance on the court, together with the authorities of the city, came to the gates to receive him, and escorted him to the royal presence. Ferdinand and Isabella were seated, with their son, Prince John, under a superb canopy of state, awaiting his arrival. On his approach, they rose from their seats, and extending their hands to him to salute, caused him to be seated before them. 9. These were unprecedented marks of condescension to a per- son of Columbus's rank, in the haughty and ceremonious court of Castile (kas teT). It was, indeed, the proudest moment in the life of Columbus. He had fully established the truth of his long-contested theory, in the face of argument, sophistry, sneer, skepticism, and contempt. He had achieved this, not by chance, but by calculation, supported through the most adverse circuru- 1 Exotic, ( egz 6t' ik ) a foreign " Ar v o mXt' ic, spicy ; fragrant ; plant or production. odoriferous ; etrong-pcented. RETURN OF COLUMBUS. KJ9 etanco3 by consum'mate conduct. The honors paid him, which had hitherto been reserved only for rank, or fortune, or military success, purchased by the blood and tears of thousands, were, in his case, a homage to intellectual power, successfully exerted in behalf of the noblest interests of humanity. 10. After a brief interval, tho sovereigns requested from Columbus a recital of his adventures. His manner was sedate and dignified, but warmed by the glow of natural enthusiasm. He enumerated tho several islands which he had visited, expa- tiated on the temperate character of the climate, and the capacity of the soil for every variety of agricultural production, appeal- ing to the samples imported by him, as evidence of their natural fruitfulncss. He dwelt more at large on the precious metals to be found in these islands, which he inferred, less from the speci- mens actually obtained, than from the uniform testimony of the natives to their abundance in the unexplored regions of the in- terior. Lastly, he pointed out the wide scope afforded to Chris- tian zeal, in the illumination of a race of men, whose minds, far from being wedded to any system of idolatry, were prepared, by their extreme simplicity, for the reception of pure and uncor- rupted doctrine. 11. The last consideration touched Isabella's heart most sensi- bly ; and the whole audience, kindled with various emotions by the speaker's eloquence, filled up the perspective with tho gor- geous coloring of their own fancies, as ambition, or avarice, or devotional feeling predominated in their bosoms. When Colum- bus ceased, the king and queen, together w T ith all present, pros- trated themselves on their knees in grateful thanksgivings, while the solemn strains of the To Deum ' were poured forth by the choir of tho royal chapel, as in commemoration of some glorious victory. William II. Prbscott. "William IT. Pkescott, the eminent historian, was horn in Balem, Massachu setts, on the 4th of May, 17%. His father, William Prescott, LL.D., a distin guished lawyer and judge, noted for intellectual and moral worth, died in the last mouth of 1844, at the advanced age of 84. His grandfather was the cele- brated Colonel William Prescott, who commanded the American forces at Bun- ker Hill on the memorable 17th of June, 1775. But Mr. Frcscott needs none of the pride of ancestry to stamp him as one of nature's noblemen. An untoward accident in college, by which he lost the sight of one eye, and the sympathy subsequently excited in the other, rendered him almost totally blind; but, not- 1 Te Deum, (te de' urn), a hymn of thanksgiving, so called from the first Words, " Te Deum laudar.ms" Thee, God, we praise. 8 170 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. ■withstanding, his indefatigable industry, united with fine taste and a well-stored mind, elevated him to the highest rank in that diliieult department, historical composition. Indeed, it is the concurrent judgment of the best European crit- ics that he had no superior, if he had an equal, among contemporary historians. His first work, " Ferdinand and Isabella," was published in the beginning of 1838, and was soon republished in nearly all the great cities of Europe. That, with his second work, " The Conquest of Mexico," are not only among the finest models of historical composition, but in a very genuine sense they are national works. The choicest words of panegyric can not do injustice to the exquisite 44 beauty of Mr. Prescott's descriptions, the just proportion and dramatic interest of his narrative, his skill as a character writer, the expansiveness and complete- ness of his views, and that careful and intelligent research which enabled him to make his works as valuable for their accuracy as they are attractive by all the graces of style." In private life Mr. Prescott was as much admired for his amiability, simplicity, and highbred courtesy as for his remarkable abilities and acquirements. He died January 28th, 1859. IV. 39. THE REVOLUTIONARY ALARM. DARKNESS closed upon the country and upon the town, but it was no night for sleep. Heralds on swift relays of horses transmitted the war-message from hand to hand, till village repeated it to village ; the sea to the backwoods ; the plains to the highlands ; and it was never suffered to droop, till it had been borne North, and South, and East, and West, throughout the land. 2. It spread over the bays that receive the Saco 1 and the Penobscot. Its loud reveille 8 broke the rest of the trappers of New Hampshire, and ringing like bugle-notes from peak to peak, overleap t the Green Mountains, swept onward to Mon- treal, and descended the ocean river, till the responses were echoed from the cliffs of Quebec. The hills along the Hudson told to one another the tale. 3. As the summons hurried to the South, it was one day at New York ; in one more at Philadelphia ; the next it lighted a watchfire at Baltimore ; thence it waked an answer at Annap- olis. Crossing the Potomac near Mount Vernon, it was sent forward without a halt to Williamsburg. It traversed the Dis- mal Swamp 3 to Nansemond, along the route 4 of the first emi- 1 Saco, (sa' ko). to rise, and for the sentinels to stop 5 Reveille, (re val' yi), the beat of challenging. drum about break of day, to give 9 Swamp, (swoinp). notice that it is time for the soldiers * Route, (rot). THE REVOLUTIONARY ALARM. 171 grants to North Carolina. It moved onwards and still onwards through boundless groves of evergreen to Newbern and to Wilmington. 4. " For God's sake, forward it by night and by day," wrote Cornelius Harnett, by the express which sped for Brunswick. Patriots of South Carolina caught up its tones at the border and despatched it to Charleston, and through pines and palmet- tos and moss-clad live oaks, further to the South, till it re- sounded among the New England settlements beyond the Savannah. 5. The Blue Ridge took up the voice and made it heard from one end to the other of tho valley of Virginia. The Allegha- nies, as they listened, opened their barriers that the " loud call" might pass through to the hardy riflemen on the Holston, the Watauga and the French Broad. Ever renewing its strength, powerful enough even to create a commonwealth, it breathed its inspiring word to the first settlers of Kentucky ; so that hunters who made their halt in the matchless valley of the Elk- horn, commemorated the 19th day of April, 177(3, by naming their encampment Lexington. 6. With one impulse the colonies sprung to arms ; with one spirit they pledged themselves to each other " to be ready for the extreme event." With one heart the continent cried, " Lib- erty or Death." Bancroft. George Banckoft, the eminent historian, was born in 1S00, in Worcester, Massachusetts. He graduated at Harvard College at the early age of seventeen. The next year he went to Europe, and studied for four years at Gottingen and Berlin, and traveled in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and England. On bis return, in 1833, he published a volume of poems, which were principally written while he was abroad. He soon after established the academy at Round Bill, at North- ampton. He was appointed collector of Boston in 1838; was made secretary of the navy in 1845; was sent as minister plenipotentiary to England in 1^4»">; and on his return, in 1S10, became a resident of New York, where he has since de- voted himself principally to the composition of his "History of the United States," the ninth volume of which appeared in 1886. He has also lately pub- lished a volume of "Literary and Historical Miscellanies." Ills" History of the United States" has been published in its original language in London and Paris, and has been translated into several foreign languages. It is a work of great labor, originality, and ability, and eminently American, in the best sense of that word as used in regard to literature. It is the most accurate and philo- sophical account that has been given of the United States ; and is elaborately and strongly, yet elegantly written. ** 172 NATIONAL FIFTH HEADER. V. 40. THE REVOLUTIONARY RISING. OUT of the North the wild news came, Far flashing on its wings of flame, Swift as the boreal ' light which flies At midnight through the startled skies. And there was tumult in the air, The fife's shrill note, the drum's loud beat, And through the wide land everywhere The answering tread of hurrying feet ; While the first 6ath of Freedom's gun Came on the blast from Lexington ; And Concord roused, no longer tame, Forgot her old baptismal name, Made bare her patriot arm of power, And swelled the di.cord of the hour. 2. Within its shade of elm and oak The church of Berkley Manor stood ; There Sunday found the rural folk, And some esteemed of gentle blood. In vain their feet with loitering tread Passed mid the graves where rank is naught ; All could not read the lesson taught In that republic of the dead. 8. How sweet the hour of Sabbath talk, The vale with peace and sunshine full, Where all the happy people walk, Decked in their homespun flax and wool ! Where youth's gay hats with blossoms bloom ; And every maid, with simple art, Wears on her breast, like her own heart, A bud whose depths are all perfume ; While every garment's gentle stir Is breathing rose and lavender. 4- The pastor came ; hi3 snowy locks Hallowed his brow of thought and care ; 1 B5' re al, northern ; pertaining to the north, or the north wind. THE REVOLUTIONARY RISING. 173 And calmly, as shepherds lead their flocks, He led into the house of prayer. Then soon he rose ; the prayer was strong ; The psalm was warrior David's song ; The text, a few short words of might, — " The Lord of hods shall arm Ihe rigid !" He spoke of wrongs too long endured, Of sacred rights to be secured ; Then from his patriot tongue of flame The startling words for Freedom came. The stirring sentences he spake Compelled the heart to glow or quake, And, rising on his theme's broad wing, And grasping in his nervous hand The imaginary battle-brand, In face of death he dared to fliug Defiance to a tyrant king. 5. Even as he spoke, his frame, renewed In eloquence of attitude, Rose, as it seemed, a shoulder higher ; Then swept his kindling glance of fire From startled pew to breathless choir ; When suddenly his mantle wide His hands impatient flung aside, And, lo ! he met their wondering eyes Complete in all a warrior's guise. 6. A moment there was awful pause, — When Berkley cried, "Cease, traitor! cease! God's temple is the house of peace!" The other shouted, " Nay, not so, When God is with our righteous cause ; His holiest places then are ours, His temples are our forts and towers That frown upon the tyrant foe ; In this, the dawn of Freedom's day, There is a time to fight and pray !" 7. And now before the open door — The warrior priest had ordered so — The enlisting trumpet's sudden roar 174 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Rang through the chapel, o'er and o'er, Its long reverberating blow, So loud and clear, it seemed the ear Of dusty death must wake and hear. And there the startling drum and fife Fired the living with fiercer life ; "While overhead, with wild increase, Forgetting its ancient toll of peace, The great bell swung as ne'er before : It seemed as it would never cease ; And every word its ardor flung From off its jubilant iron tongue Was, " War ! War ! WAR !" 8. " Who dares ?" — this was the patriot's cry, As striding from the desk he came, — " Come out with me, in Freedom's name, For her to live, for her to die ?" A hundred hands flung up reply, A hundred voices answered, " I !" Read. Thomas Buchanan Read was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, March 12th, 1822. In 1839 he went to Cincinnati, where he was employed in the studio of Clevenger, the sculptor, and here his attention was first called to painting, which he chose for his profession, and soon practiced with marked skill and success. He settled in New York City in 1841. After a few months he removed to Boston, where he remained until 184G, and then went to Philadelphia, where he practiced his profession, writing occasionally for periodicals, until 1850, when he first visited Europe. In the summer of 1853 he went abroad a second time, and settled in Florence, where until recently he has resided. In 1853 he issred an illustrated edition of his poems, comprising, with some new pieces, all he wished to preserve of volumes previously printed. In 1855, he published " The House by the Sea" and "The New Pastoral," — the latter, in thirty-seven books, being the longest of his poems. The above is from his latest work, "The Wag- oner of the Allcghanies." Mr. Read's distinguishing characteristic is a delicate and varied play of fancy. His verse, though sometimes irregular, is always musical. He excels in homely descriptions. The flowers by the dusty wayside, the cheerful murmur of the meadow brook, the village tavern, and rustic mill, and all tender impulses and affections, are his choice sources of inspiration. H VI. 41. THE SETTLER. IS echoing ax the settler swung Amid the sea-like solitude, And rushing, thundering, down were flung THE SETTLER. 175 The Titans ' of the wood ; Loud shrieked the eagle as he dashed From out his mossy nest, which crashed With its supporting bough, And the first sunlight, leaping, flashed On the wolfs haunt below. 2. Rude was the garb, and strong the frame Of him who plied his ceaseless toil : To form that garb, the wild-wood game Contributed their spoil ; The soul that warmed that frame, disdained The tinsel, gaud, and glare, that reigned "Where men their crowds collect ; The simple fur, untrimmed, unstained, This forest tamer decked. 3. The paths which wound mid gorgeous trees, The streams whose bright lips kissed their flowers, The winds that swelled their harmonies Through those sun-hiding bowers, The temple vast — the green arcade, The nestling vale, the grassy glade, Dark cave and swampy lair ; These scenes and sounds majestic, made His world, his pleasures, there. 4. His roof adorned a pleasant spot, Mid the black logs green glowed the grain, And /ierbs and plants the woods knew not, Throve in the sun and rain. The smoke-wreath curling o'er the dell, The low — the bleat — the tinkling bell, All made a landscape strange, Which was the living chronicle Of deeds that wrought the change. 5. The violet sprung at Spring's first tinge, The rose of summer spread its glow, The maize hung on its Autumn fringe, Rude Winter brought his snow ; 1 TV tans, fabled giants of ancient mythology ; hence, whatever is enor» mous in size or strength. 176 NATIONAL FIFTH HEADER. And still the settler labored there, His shout and whistle woke the air, As cheerily he plied His garden spade, or drove his share Along the hillock's side. 6. He marked the fire-storm's blazing flood Roaring and crackling on its path, And scorching earth, and melting wood, Beneath its greedy wrath ; He marked the rapid whirlwind shoot, Trampling the pine-tree with its foot, And darkening thick the dav With streaming bough and severed root, Hurled whizzing on its way. 7. His gaunt hound yelled, his rifle flashed, The grim bear hushed its savage growl, In blood and foam the panther gnashed Its fangs with dying howl ; The fleet deer ceased its flying bound, Its snarling wolf foe bit the ground, And with its moaning cry, The beaver sank beneath the wound, Its pond-built Venice ! by. 8. Humble the lot, yet his the race, When Liberty sent forth her cry, Who thronged in conflict's deadliest place, To fight — to bleed — to die ; Who cumbered Bunker's 2 height of red, By hope, through weary years were led, And witnessed Yorktown's 3 sun 1 Pond-built Venice. The city of Charlcstown, Massachusetts, celebra- Venice, one of the finest in Europe, ted as the place where the first great is built on eighty-two small islands, battlo was fought between the Brit- separated by one hundred and fifty ish and Americans, on thememorable canals, which are crossed by three 17th of June, 1775. hundred and sixty bridges. Tho 3 Yorktown, Virginia, whero was beaver constructs his habitation in fought tho final battle of the Revo- the water, and the different parts lutionary war, resulting in tho sur- bavo no communication except by render of Lord Cornwallis to Gen- water,and hence the poetical all usioii. oral Washington, on the 19th of 9 Bunker Hill, a height near October, 1781. THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER. 177 Blaze on a nation's banner spread, A nation's freedom won. Street. Albert B. Street was born in Poughkecpsic, a large and beautiful town on the Hudson, on the ISth of December, 1811. His father, Geu. Randall S. Street, was an officer in active service during our second war with England, and subse- quently several years a representative in Congress. "When the poet was about fourteen years of age his father removed to Mouticello, Sullivan County, then what i3 called a "wild county," though extremely fertile. Its magniGccnt scenery, deep forests, clear streams, gorges of piled rocks and black shade, and mountains and valleys, called into life all the faculties that slumbered in tho brain of the young poet. He studied law in the office of his father, and attended lhe courts of Sullivan County for one year after his admission to the bar; but in the winter of 1839 he removed to Albany, where he successfully practiced his profession. For several years past he has been State Librarian. The most com- plete edition of his poems was published in New York, in 1845. Mr. Street is a descriptive poet, and in his peculiar department he has, perhaps, no superior in this country. He writes with apparent case and freedom, from the impulses of hia own heart, and from actual observations of life and nature. VII. 42. THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER. 1. SAY, can you sec, by the dawn's early light, o "What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming ; Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there ; O, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave ? 2. On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep, Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze o'er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses ? Now it catehes the gleam of the morning's first beam ; Its full glory, reflected, now shines on the stream ; Tis the star-spangled banner, oh ! long may it wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. 3. And where is the band who so vauntingly swore, 'Mid the havoc of war and the battle's confusion, 178 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. A home and a country they'd leave us no more ? Their blood hath washed out their foul footsteps' pollution ; No refuge could save the hireling" and slave From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave ; And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. L Oh ! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between our loved home and the war's desolation ; Blessed with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land Praise the power that hath made and preserved us a nation ' Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just, And this be our motto, " In God is our. Tkust ;" And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. Key. Francis Scott Key, son of an army officer of the Revolution, -was born in Frederick County, Maryland, in 1779. He commenced the practice of law at Frcdcricktown in 1801, but soon removed to Washington, D. C, "where he became District-Attorney for the city. He died January 11th, 1S-13. A small volume of his poems was published in 1S57. vm. 43. THE AMERICAN FLAG. \ \ I IIHN Freedom from her mountain height V V Unfurled her standard to the air, She tore the azure robe of night, And set the stars of glory there : She mingled wi«h its gorgeous dyes The milky baldric of the skies, And striped its pure celestial white, "With streaking3 of the morning light ; Then from his mansion in the sun She called her eagle-bearer down, And gave into his mighty hand The symbol of her chosen land. 2. Majestic monarch of the cloud ! "Who rear'st aloft thy regal form, To hear the tempest-trumpings loud, And see the lightning lances driven, "When strive the warriors of the storm, THE AMERICAN FLAG. 179 And rolls the thunder drum of heaven — Child of the sun ! to thee 'tis given To guard the banner of the free, To hover in the sulphur smoke, To ward away the battle-stroke, And bid its blendings shine afar, Like rainbows on the cloud of war, The harbingers of victory ! 3. Flag of the brave ! thy folds shall fiy, The sign of hope and triumph high, AVhen speaks the signal trumpet tone, And the long lino comes gleaming on. Ere yet the life-blood, warm and wet, Has dimmed the glistening bayonet, Each soldier's eye shall brightly turn To where thy sky-born glories burn ; And, as his springing steps advance, Catch war and vengeance from the glance : And when the cannon-mouthings loud Heave in wild wreaths the battle-shroud, And gory sabers rise and fall Like shoots of flame on midnight's pall ; There shall thy meteor glances glow, And cowering foes shall sink beneath Each gallant arm that strikes below That lovely messenger of death. 4. Flag of the seas ! on ocean wave Thy stars shall glitter o'er the brave ; When Death, careering on the gale, Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail, And frighted waves rush wildly back Before the broadside's reeling rack, Each dying wanderer of the sea Shall look at once to heaven and thee, And smile to sec thy splendors fly In triumph o'er his closing eye. 5. Flag of the free heart's hope and home, By angel hands to valor given ! Thy stars have lit the welkin dome, And all thy hues were born in heaven. 180 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Forever float that standard sheet ! Where breathes the foe but falls before us, With Freedom's soil beneath our feet, And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us ! Drake. Joseph Rodman Drake, author of "The Culprit Fay," was horn in the city of New York, August 7th, 1795. He entered Columbia College at an early period, through which he passed with a reputation for scholarship, taste, and admirable social qualities. He soon after made choice of the medical profession, and com- pleted his professional studies in his native city. Immediately after he was married to Miss Sarah Eckford, a daughter of the noted marine architect, Henry Eckford, through whom he inherited a moderate fortune. His health, about the same time, began to decline ; and in the winter of 1S19 he visited New Orleans. He had anticipated some benefit from the sea-voyage and the mild climate of Louisiana, but was disappointed, and in the spring of 1S20, he returned to New York. His disease — consumption — had now become deeply seated. He lingered through the summer, and died near the close of September, in the twenty-sixth year of his age. He began to write verses when very young, and was a contrib- utor to several gazettes before he was sixteen years old. The secrets of his authorship, however, were only known to his most intimate friends. His longest poem, " The Culprit Fay," was composed in the summer of 1819, though it was not printed until several years after his death. It exhibits the most delicate fancy, and much artistic taste. Drake placed a very modest estimate on his own productions, and it is thought that but a small portion of them has been pre- served. A collection of them appeared in 1836. It includes, besides "The Cul- prit Fay," eighteen short pieces, some of which are very beautiful. SECTION VIII. I. 44. WANTS. PART TIRST. EVERYBODY, young and old, children and gray-beards, lias heard of the renowned Haroun Al Baschid, 1 the hero of Eastern history and Eastern romance', and the most illustrious of the caliphs 9 of Bagdad, 3 that famous city on which the light of 1 Haroun al Raschid, (ha ron^-al- tativc of Mohammed ; one vested rash' id), a celebrated caliph of the with supreme dignity and power in Saracens, ascended the throne in 78G, all matters relating to religion and and was a contemporary of Charlc- civil policy. This title is borne by magne. He was brave, munificent, the grand seignior in Turkey, and and fond of letters, but cruel and by the sophi of Persia, perfidious. s Bagdad, (bag dad'), a large and 9 Ca' liph, a successor or roprcscn- celebrated city of Asiatic Turkey, WANTS. 181 learning and science shone, long ere it dawned on the benighted regions of Europe, which has since succeeded to the diadem that once glittered on the brow of Asia. Though as the successor of the Prophet he exercised a despotic sway over the lives and for- tunes of his subjects, yet did ho not, like the Eastern despots of more modern times, shut himself up within the walls of his palace, hearing nothing but the adulation of his dependents ; seeing nothing but the shadows which surrounded him ; and knowing nothing but what he received through the medium of interested deception or malignant falsehood. 2. That he miedit sec with his own eves and hear with his own ears, he was accustomed to go about through the streets of Bagdad' by night, in disguise, accompanied by (1 infer the Bar- mecide, his grand vizier, 1 and Mcsrour, his executioner ; one to give him his counsel, the other to fulfill his commands promptly, on all occasions. If he saw any commotion among the people, he mixed with them and learned its cause ; and if in passing a house he heard the moanings of distress or the complaints of suffering, he entered, for the purpose of administering relief. Thus ho made himself acquainted with the condition of his sub- jects, and often heard those salutary truths which never reached his ears through the walls of his palace, or from the lrps of the slaves that surrounded him. 3. On one of these occasions, as Al Haschid was thus peram- bulating the streets at night, in disguise, accompanied by his vizier and his executioner, in passing a splendid mansion he overheard, through the lattico of a window, the complaints of some one who seemed in the deepest distress, and silently ap- proaching, looked into an apartment exhibiting all the signs of wealth and luxury. On a sofa of satin embroidered with gold, and sparkling with brilliant gems, he beheld a man richly dressed, in whom he rec'ognized his favorite boon-companion Bedrcddin, on whom he had showered wealth and honors with more than Eastern prodigality. He was stretched out on the sofa, slapping his forehead, tearing his beard, and moaning piteously, as if in the extremity of suffering. At length starting up on his feet, he formerly capital of the empire of tlic its junction with the Euphrates, caliphs, now capital of the pashalic l Vizier, (viz' yer), a councilor of of the same name, on both banks of state ; a high executive officer in the Tigris, about 100 miles above Turkev and other Eastern countries. 182 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. exclaimed in tones of despair, " O Allah (God) ! I beseech thee to relieve me from my misery, and take away my life !" 4. The Commander of the Faithful, who loved Bedreddin, pitied his sorrows, and being desirous to know their cause, that he might relieve them, knocked at the door, which was opened by a black slave, who, on being informed that they were stran- gers in want of food and rest, at once admitted them, and in- formed his master, who called them into his presence and bade them welcome. A plentiful feast was spread before them, at which the master of the house sat down with his guests, but of which he did not partake, but looked on, sighing bitterly all the while. 5. The Commander of the Faithful at length ventured to ask him what caused his distress, and why he refrained from partak- ing in the feast with his guests, in proof that they were welcome. " Has Allah afflicted thee with disease, that thou canst not enjoy the blessings he has bestowed ? Thou art surrounded by all the splendor that wealth can procure ; thy dwelling is a palace, and its apartments are adorned with all the luxuries which captivate the eye, or administer to the gratification of the senses. "Why is it, then, O my brother, that thou art miserable r" 6. " True, O stranger," replied Bedreddin. " I have all these ; I have health of body ; I am rich enough to purchase all that wealth can bestow, and if I required more wealth and honors, I am the favorite companion of the Commander of the Faithful, on whose head lie the blessings of Allah, and of whom I have only to ask, to obtain all I desire, save one thing only." 7. " And what is that ?" asked the caliph. " Alas ! I adore the beautiful Zuleima, whose face is like the full moon, whose eyes are brighter and softer than those of the gazelle, and whose mouth is like the seal of Solomon. But she loves another, end all my wealth and honors are as nothing. The want of one thing renders the possession of every other of no value. I am the most wretched of men ; my life is a burden, and my death would be a blessing." 8. " By the beard of the Prophet," cried the caliph, " I swear, thy case is a hard one. But Allah is great and powerful, and will, I trust, either deliver thee from thy burden or give thee strength to bear it." Then thanking Bedreddin for his hospi- tality, the Commander of the Faithful departed, with his com- panions. WANTS. 133 n. 45. WANTS. PART SECOND. TAKING their way toward that part of the city inhabited by the poorer classes of people, the caliph stumbled over something, in the obscurity of night, and was nigh falling to the ground : at the same moment a voice cried out, " Allah, preserve me ! Am I not wretched enough already, that I must be trodden under foot by a wandering beggar like myself, in the darkness of night!" 2. Mesrour the executioner, indignant at this insult to the Commindcr of the Faithful, was preparing to cut off his head, when Ali II ischid interposed, and inquired of the beggar his name, and why he was there Bleeping in the streets, at that hour of the ni^ht. 3. " Mashallah," replied he, " I sleep in the street because I have nowhere else to sleep ; and if I lie on a satin sofa, my joains and infirmities would rob mo of rest. Whether on divans' of silk or in the dirt, all one to me, for neither by day nor by night do I know any rest. If I close my eyes for a moment, my dreams arc of nothing but feasting, and I awake only to feel more bitterly the pangs of hunger and disease." 4. " Hast thou no home to shelter thee, no friends or kindred to relieve thy necessities, or administer to thy infirmities ?" 5. " No," replied the beggar ; " my house was consumed by fire ; my kindred are all dead, and my friends have djscrted me. Alas ! stranger, I am in want of everything — health, food, cloth- ing, home, kindred, and friends. I am the most wretched of mankind, and death alone can relieve me." 6. " Of one thing, at least, I can relieve thee," said the caliph, giving him his purse. " Go and provide thyself food and shel- ter, and may Allah restore thy health." 7. The beggar took the purse, but instead of calling down blessings on the head of his benefactor, exclaimed, " Of what use is money ? it can not cure disease ;"and the caliph again went on his way with Giafcr his vizier, and Mesrour his executioner. 184 NATIONAL FIFTH READER m. 46. WANTS. PAST THIRD. ASSING from the abodes of want and misery, they at length p reached a splendid palace, and seeing lights glimmering from the windows, the caliph approached, and looking through the silken curtains, beheld a man walking backward and forward, with languid step, as if oppressed with a load of cares. At length casting himself down on a sofa, he stretched out his limbs, and yawning desperately, exclaimed, " O Allah ! what shall I do ? what will become of me ! I am weary of life ; it is nothing but a cheat, promising what it never purposes, and affording only hopes that end in disappointment, or, if realized, only in disgust." 2. The curiosity of the caliph being awakened to know the cause of his despair, he ordered Mesrour to knock at the door ; which being opened, they pleaded the privilege of strangers to enter, for rest and refreshments. Again, in accordance with the precepts of the Ko'ran and the customs of the East, the stran- gers were admitted to the presence of the lord of the palace, who received them with welcome, and directed refreshments to be brought. But though he treated his guests with kindness, he neither sat down with them nor asked any questions, nor joined in their discourse, walking back and forth languidly, and seeming oppressed with a heavy burden of sorrows. 3. At length the caliph approached him reverently, and said : " Thou seemest sorrowful, O my brother ! If thy suffering is of the body, I am a physician, and per adventure can afford thee relief ; for I have traveled into distant lands, and collected very choice remedies for human infirmity." 4. " My sufferings are not of the body, but of the mind," an- swered the other. 5. " Hast thou lost the beloved of thy heart, the friend of thy bosom, or been disappointed in the attainment of that on which thou hast rested all thy hopes of happiness ?" 6. " Alas ! no. I have been disappointed, not in the means, but in the attainment of happiness. I want nothing but a want. I am cursed with the gratification of all my wishes, and the fruition of all my hopes. I have wasted my life in the acquisition THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 185 of riches, that only awakened new desires, and honors that no longer gratify my pride or repay me for the labor of sustaining them. I have been cheated in the pursuit of pleasures that weary me in the enjoyment, and am perishing for lack of the excitement of some new want. I have every thing I wish, yet enjoy nothing." 7. " Thy case is beyond my skill," replied the caliph ; and the man cursed with the fruition of all his desires turned his back on him in despair. The caliph, after thanking him for his hospitality, departed with his companions, and when they hud reached the street exclaimed — 8. "Allah preserve me! I will no longer fatigue myself in a vain pursuit, for it is impossible to confer haj^piness on such a perverse generation. I see it is all the same, whether a mail wants one thing, every thing, or nothing. Let us go home and sleep." Paulding. James Kirke Paulding was born August 2~, 1770, in the town of Pawling, on the Hudson, so named from one of his ancestors. After receiving a liberal edu- cation, he removed to New York City, where he has since principally rc-sided. After writing some trifles for the gazettes, Mr. Paulding, with Washington Irving, established a periodical entitled "Salmagundi,'' in 1S07. It met with extraordinary success, and was, perhaps, the determining cause of the author's subsequent devotion to literature. In 1819, Mr. Paulding published a second series of the "Salmagundi," of which he was the sole author. He is a volumin- ous writer. His various works, including stories, essays, and other papers, which he has published in periodicals, make more than thirty volumes. " The Dutch man's Fireside," published in 1831, and "Westward Ho," published the next year, arc regarded as his best novels. They arc distinguished for considerable descriptive powers, skill in character-writing, natural humor, and a strong na- tional feeling, which gives a tone to all his works. Mr. Paulding was many years navy agent for the port of New York. When President Van Burin formed his cabinet, in the spring of 1837, he was selected to be the head of the navy department, in which ofhec he continued for four years. lie died at his country seat in Hyde Park, in his native county, in l^. IV. 47. THE DESERTED VILLAGE. PABT FIRST. SWEET Auburn ! loveliest village of the plain, YVTiere health and plenty cheered the laboring swain, Where smiling Spring its earliest visit paid, And parting Summer's lingering blooms delayed : Bear, lovely bowers of innocence and ease, 186 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Seats of my youth, when every sport could please, How often have I loitered o'er thy green, Where humble happiness endeared each scene ! How often have I paused on every charm, — The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm, The never-failing brook, the busy mill, The decent church that topped the neighboring hill, The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade, For talking age and whispering lovers made ! 2. How often have I blessed the coming day, When toil remitting lent its aid to play, And all the village train, from labor free, Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree ! While many a pastime circled in the shade, The young contending as the old surveyed ; And many a gambol frolicked 6'er the ground, And sleights of art and feats of strength went round. And still, as each repeated pleasure tired, Succeeding sports the mirthful band inspired : The dancing pair, that simply sought renown By holding out to tire each other down ; The swain, mistrustless of his smutted face, W T hile secret laughter tittered round the place ; The bashful virgin's sidelong looks of love, The matron's glance that would these looks reprove : These were thy charms, sweet village ! sports like these, With sweet succession, taught e'en toil to please ; These round thy bowers their cheerful influence shed, These were thy charms ; — but all these charms are fled. 3. Sweet, smiling village, loveliest of the lawn, Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn : Amid thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen, And desolation saddens all thy green ; One only master grasps the whole domain, And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain. No more thy glassy brook reflects the day, But, choked with sedges, works its weedy way ; Along thy glades, a solitary guest, The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest ; THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 187 Amid tliy desert walks tlie lapwing flics, And tires their echoes with unvaried cries. Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all, And the long grass o'ertops the moldering wall ; And, trembling, shrinking from the spoiler's hand, Far, far away thy children leave the land 4. HI fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay : Princes and lords may nourish or may fade ; A breath can make them, as a breath has made, But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, When once destroyed can never be supplied. A time there was, ere England's griefs began, When every rood of ground maintained its man ; For him light labor spread her wholesome store, Just gave what life required, but gave no more ; His best companions, innocence and health ; And his best riches, ignorance of wealth. But times are altered : trade's unfeeling train Usurp the land, and dispossess the swain ; Along the lawn, where scattered hamlets rose, Un wieldly wealth and cumbrous pomp repose ; And every want to luxury allied, And every pang that folly pays to pride. Those gentle hours that plenty bade to bloom, Those calm desires that asked but little room, Those healthful sports that graced the peaceful scene, Lived in each look, and brightened all the green ; — These, far departing, seek a kinder shore, And rural mirth and manners are no more. 5. Sweet Aubum ! parent of the blissful hour, Thy glades forlorn confess the tyrant's power. Here, as I take my solitary rounds, Amid thy tangling walks and ruined grounds, And, many a year elapsed, return to view Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew, Bemembrance wakes with all her busy train, Swells at my breast, and tarns the past to pain. In all my wanderings round this world of care, In all my griefs — and God has given my share — 188 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. I still had hopes, my latest hours to crown, Amid these humble bowers to lay me down ; To husband out life's taper at the close, And keep the ilame from wasting by repose : I still had hopes, — for pride attends us still, — Amid the swains to show my book-learned skill *, Around my fire an evening group to draw, And tell of all I felt and all I saw ; And as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue, Pants to the place from whence at first she flew, I still had hopes, my long vexations past, Here to return — and die at home at last. 6. O blessed retirement ! friend to life's decline, Retreat from care, that never must be mine, How blessed is he who crowns, in shades like these, A youth of labor with an age of ease ; "Who quits a world where strong temptations try, And, since 'tis hard to combat, learns to fly ! For him no wretches, born to work and weep, Explore the mine, or tempt the dangerous deep ; Nor surly porter stands, in guilty state, To spurn imploring famine from the gate ; But on he moves to meet his latter end, Angels around befriending virtue's friend ; Sinks to the grave with unperceived decay, While resignation gently slopes the way ; And all his prospects brightening to the last, His heaven commences ere the world be past. 7. Sweet was the sound, when 6ft, at evening's close, Up yonder hill the village murmur rose : There, as I passed with careless steps and slow The mingling notes came softened from below ; The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung, The sober herd that lowed to meet their young , The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool, The playful children just let loose from school ; The watch-dog's voice that bayed the whispering wind, And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind : These all in sweet confusion sought the shade, And filled each pause the nightingale had made. THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 189 8. But now the sounds of population fail, No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale, No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread, But all the bloomy Hush of life is fled : All but yon widowed, solitary thing, That feebly bends beside the plashy spring : She, wretched matron, forced in age, for bread, To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread, To pick her wintry fagot from the thorn, To seek her nightly shed, and weep till morn — She only left of all the harmless train, The sad historian of the pensive plain. V. 48. THE DESERTED VILLAGE. PART SECOND. NEAR yonder copse, where once the garden smiled, And still where many a garden-flower grows wild, There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose, The village preacher's modest mansion rose. A man he was to all the country dear, And passing rich witli forty pounds a year ; Remote from towns he ran his godly race, Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change, his place. Unskillful ho to fawn or seek for power, By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour : Far other aims his heart had learned to prize, More bent to raise the wretched than to rise. 2. His house was known to all the vagrant train : He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain ; The long-remembered beggar was his guest, "Whose beard, descending, swept his aged breast : The ruined spendthrift, now no longer proud, Claimed kindred there, and had his claims allowed. The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay. Sat by his fire, and talked the niefht away. "Wept o'er his wounds, or, tales of sorrow done, Shouldered his crutch, and showed how fields were won. Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow, And quite forgot their vices in their woe ; 190 NATIONAL FIFTH READER, Careless their merits or their faults to scan, His pity gave ere charity began. 3. Thus, to relieve the wretched was his pride, And e'en his failings leaned to virtue's side ; But in his duty prompt at every call, He watched and wept, he prayed and felt, for alL And, as a bird each fond endearment tries To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies, He tried each art, reproved each dull delay, Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way. Beside the bed where parting life was laid, And sorrow, guilt, and pain by turns dismayed, The reverend champion stood. At his control, Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul ; Comfort came down the trembling wretch to raise, And his last faltering accents whispered praise. 4. At church, with meek and unaffected grace, His looks adorned the venerable place ; Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway, And fools, who came to scuff, remained to pray. The service past, around the pious man, "With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran ; E'en children followed with endearing wile, And plucked his gown to share the good man's smile. His ready smile a parent's warmth expressed ; Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distressed : To them his heart, his love, his griefs, were given, . But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven. As some tall cliff, that lifts its awful form, Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm, Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, Eternal sunshine settles on its head. 5. Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way, With blossomed furze unprofitably gay, There, in his noisy mansion, skilled to rule, The village master taught his little school : A man severe he was, and stern to view : I knew him well, and every truant knew ; "Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace The day's disasters in his morning face ; THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 191 Full well tlicy laughed with counterfeited glee At all Lis jokes, for many a joke had he ; Full well the busy whisper, circling round, Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned. G. Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught, The love he bore to learning was in fault ; The village all declared how much he knew — 'Twas certain he could write, and cipher too ; Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage, And e'en the story ran that he could gauge. In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill, For e'en though vanquished, he could argue still ; "While words of learned length and thundering sound Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around ; And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, That one small head could carry all he knew. But past is all his fame. The very spot "Where many a time he triumphed is forgot. 7. Near yonder thorn, that lifts its head on high, "Where once the sign-post caught the passing eye, Low lies that house where nut-brown draughts inspired. Where graybeard mirth and smiling toil retired, "Where village statesmen talked with looks profound, And news much older than their ale went round. Imagination fondly stops to trace The parlor splendors of that festive place ; The white-washed wall, the nicely-sanded iloor, The varnished clock that clicked behind the door ; The chest, contrived a double debt to pay, A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day ; The pictures placed for ornament and use, The twelve good rules, the royal game of goose ; The hearth, except when winter chilled the day, "With aspen boughs, and flowers, and fennel gay ; "While broken teacups, wisely kept for show, Ranged O'er the chimney, glistened in a row. 8. Vain, transitory splendors ! could not all Reprieve the tottering mansion from its fall ? Obscure it sinks, nor shall it more impart An hour's importance to the poor man's heart ; 192 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Thither no more the peasant shall repair To sweet oblivion of his daily care ; No more the farmer's news, the barber's tale, No more the w T ooclman's ballad shall prevail ; No more the smith his dusky brow shall clear, Eelax his ponderous strength, and learn to hear ; The host himself no longer shall be found Careful to see the mantling bliss go round ; Nor the coy maid, half willing to be pressed, Shall kiss the cup to pass it to the rest. 9. Yes ! let the rich deride, the proud disdain, These simple blessings of the lowly train ; To me more dear, congenial to my heart, One native charm than all the gloss of art ; Spontaneous joys, where nature has its play, The soul adopts, and owns their first-born sway ; Lightly they frolic o'er the vacant mind, Unenvied, unmolested, unconfined. But the long pomp, the midnight masquerade, "With all the freaks of wanton wealth arrayed, In these, ere triflers half their wish obtain, The toiling pleasure sickens into pain ; And e'en while fashion's brightest arts decoy, The heart, distrusting, asks if this be joy. VI. 49. THE DESERTED VILLAGE. PART THIRD. YE friends to truth, ye statesmen, who survey The rich man's joys increase, the poor's decay, 'Tis yours to judge how wide the limits stand Between a splendid and a happy land. Proud swells the tide with loads of freighted ore, And shouting Folly hails them from her shore ; Hoards e'en beyond the miser's wish abound, And rich men flock from all the world around. Yet count our gains. This wealth is but a name, That leaves our useful products still the same. THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 193 Kot so the loss. The man of wealth and pride Takes up a space that many poor supplied ; Space for his lake, his park's extended bounds, Space for his horses, eq'uipage, and hounds ; The robe that wraps his limbs in silken sloth Has robbed the neighboring fields of half their growth ; His seat, where solitary sports arc seen, Indignant spurns the cottage from the green ; Around the world each needful product flies, For all the luxuries the world supplies, While thus the land, adorned for pleasure all, In barren splendor feebly waits the fall. 2. As some fair female, unadorned and plain, Secure to please while youth confirms her reign, Slights every borrowed charm that dress supplies, Nor shares with art the triumph of her eyes ; But when those charms are past — for charms are frail — When time advances, and when lovers fail, She then shines forth, solicitous to bless, In all the glaring impotence of dress ; — Thus fares the land by luxury betrayed, In nature's simplest charms at first arrayed ; But, verging to decline, its splendors rise, Its vistas strike, its palaces surprise ; While, scourged by famine from the smiling land, The mournful peasant leads his humble band ; And while he sinks, without one arm to save, The country blooms — a garden and a grave. 3. Where, then, ah ! where shall Poverty reside, To escape the pressure of contiguous Pride ? If to some common's fenceless limits strayed, He drives his flock to pick the scanty blade, Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide. And e'en the bare-worn common is denied. If to the city sped — what waits him thero ? To see profusion that he must not share ; To see ten thousand baneful arts combined To pamper luxury and thin mankind ; To see each joy the sons of Pleasure know Extorted from his fellow-creature's woe. 9 194 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Here, while the courtier glitters in brocade, There, the. pale artist plies the sickly trade ; Here, while the proud their long-drawn pomp display, There, the black gibbet glooms beside the way ; The dome where Pleasure holds her midnight reign, Here, richly decked, admits the gorgeous train ; Tumultuous Grandeur crowds the blazing square, The rattling chariots clash, the torches glare. 4. Sure scenes like these no troubles e'er annoy ! Sure these denote one universal joy ! Are these thy serious thoughts ? — Ah ! turn thine eyes Where the poor, houseless, shivering female lies : She once, perhaps, in village plenty blessed, Has wept at tales of innocence distrest ; Her modest looks the cottage might adorn, Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn ; Now lost to all, her friends, her virtue fled, Near her betrayer's door she lays her head, And, pinched with cold, and shrinking from the shower. With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour, When idly first, ambitious of the town, She left her wheel and robes of country brown. 5. Do thine, sweet Auburn, thine, the loveliest train, Do thy fair tribes participate her pain ? E'en now, perhaps, by cold and hunger led, At proud men's doors they ask a little bread ! Ah, no. To distant climes, a dreary scene, Where half the convex world intrudes between, Through torrid tracts with fainting steps they go, Where wild Altama murmurs to their woe. Far different there from all that charmed before, The various terrors of that horrid shore ; Those blazing suns that dart a downward ray, And fiercely shed intolerable day ; Those matted woods where birds forget to sing, But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling ; Those poisonous fields with rank luxuriance crowned, Where the dark scorpion gathers death around : Where at each step the stranger fears to wako The rattling terrors of the vengeful snake ; the deserted village. 1<j; Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey, And savage men, mure murderous still than they ; While 6ft in whirls the mad tornado flies, Mingling the ravaged landscape with the skies. 6. Far different these from every former scene, — The cooling brook, the grassy-vested green, The breezy covert of the warbling grove, That Only sheltered thefts of harmless love. Good Heaven ! what sorrows gloomed that parting day That called them from their native walks away ; When the poor exiles, every pleasure past, Hung round the bowers, and fondly looked their last, And took a long farewell, and wished in vain For seats like these beyond the western main ; And shuddering still to face the distant deep, Returned and wept, and still rehu*ned to weep ! 7. The good old sire the first prepared to go To new-found worlds, and wept for others' woe ; But for himself, in conscious virtue brave, He only wished for worlds beyond the grave. His lovely daughter, lovelier in her tears, The fond companion of his helpless years, Silent went next, neglectful of her charms, And left a lover's for her father's arms. With louder plaints the mother spoke her woes, And blessed the cot where every pleasure rose ; And kissed her thoughtless babes with manv a tear, And clasped them close, in sorrow doubly dear ; While her fond husband strove to lend relief, In all the silent manliness of grief. 8. Oh, Luxury ! thou cursed by Heaven's decree, How ill-exchanged are things like these for thee ! How do thy potions, with insidious joy, Diffuse their pleasures only to destroy ! Kingdoms by thee to sickly greatness grown, Baast of a florid vigor not their own. At every draught more large and large they grow, A bloated mass of rank, unwieldy woe ; Till, sapped their strength, and every part unsound, Down, down they sink, and spread a ruin round. 196 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 9. E'en now the devastation is begun, And half the business of destruction done ; E'en now, methinks, as pondering here I stand, I see the rural virtues leave the land. Down where yon anchoring vessel spreads the sail, That, idly waiting, flaps with every gale, Downward they move, a melancholy band, Pass from the shore, and darken all the strand. Contented Toil, and hospitable Care, And kind connubial Tenderness, are there ; And Piety, with wishes placed above And steady Loyalty, and faithful Love. 10. And thou, sweet Poetry ! thou loveliest maid, Still first to fly, where sensual joys invade ! Unfit, in these degenerate times of shame, To catch the heart, or strike for honest Fame : Dear, charming nymph, neglected and decried, My shame in crowds, my solitary pride ; Thou source of all my bliss and all my woe, That found'st me poor at first, and keep's t me so, Thou guide by which the nobler arts excel, Thou nurse of every virtue, fare thee well. 11. Farewell ; and oh ! where'er thy voice be tried, On Torno's cliffs or Pambamarca's side, Whether where equinoctial fervors glow, Or winter wraps the polar world in snow, Still let thy voice, prevailing over time, Redress the rigors of the inclement clime ; And slighted Truth, with thy persuasive strain, Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain ; Teach him, that States, of native strength possessed, Though very poor, may still be very blessed ; That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay, As ocean sweeps the labored mole away ; While self-dependent power can time defy. As rocks resist the billows and the sky. Goldsmith. Oliveu GoLDSMiTn, one of the most pleasing English writers of the eighteenth century, was horn at Pallas, Ireland, in Novemher, 1728. He was of a Protestant and Saxon family which had long been settled in Ireland. At the time of Oli- ver's birth, his father with difficulty supported his family on what he could earn, partly as a curate and partly as a farmer. Soon after, he was presented with a THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 197 living, worth about £200 a-ycar, near the village ofLissoy, in Westmcatfa County, where the boy passed his youth and received his preparatory instruction. In his seventeenth year Oliver went up to Trinity College, Dublin, as a sizar. He was quartered, not alone, in a garret, on the window of which hi- nanie, -crawled by himself, is still read with interest. He neglected the Btudiea of the place, stood low at the examinations, and led a life divided between squalid distress and squalid dissipation. His father died, leaving a mere pittance. Oliver ob- tained his bachelor's degree, and left the university. He was now in his twenty- first year; it was necessary that he should do something; and his education seemed to have litted him to do nothing of moment. He tried five or six pro fessions, in turn, without success. He went to Edinburgh in his twenty-fourth year, where he passed eighteen months in nominal attendance on lectures, and picked up some superficial information about chemistry and natural history. Thence he went to Lcyden, still pretending to study physic. He left that cele- brated university in his twenty-seventh year, without a degree, and with no property but his clothes and his flute. His flute, however, proved a useful friend. He rambled on foot through Flanders, France, and Switzerland, playing tunes which everywhere set the peasantry dancing, and which often procured for him a supper and a bed. In 17oG the wanderer landed at Dover, England, without a shilling, without a friend, and without a calling. After several expedients had failed, the unlucky adventurer, at thirty, took a garret in a miserable court in London, and sat down to the lowest drudgery of literature. In the succeeding six years he produced articles for reviews, magazines, and newspapers; chil drcn's books; "An Inquiry into the State of Polite Learning in Europe," a "Life of Beau Nash," an excellent work of its kind; a superficial, but very readable "History of England ;" and "Sketches of London Society." All these works were anonymous; but some of them were well known to be Goldsmith's. He gradually rose in the estimation of the booksellers, and became a popular writer. He took chambers in the more civilized region of the Inns of Court, and became intimate with Johnson, Reynolds, Burke, and other eminent men. In 1704 he published a poem, entitled "The Traveler." It was the first work to which he put his name; and it at once raised him to the rank of a legitimate English classic. Its execution, though deserving of much praise, is far inferior to the design. No philosophic poem, ancient or modern, has a plan so noble, and at the same time so simple. Soon after his novel, the " Vicar of Wakefield," appeared, and rapidly obtained a popularity which is likely to last as long as our language. This was followed by a dramatic piece, entitled the u Good-natured Man." It was acted at Covent Garden in 1708, but was coldly received. The author, however, cleared by his benefit nights, and by the sale of the copyright, no less than £500. In 1770 appeared the "Deserted Village.* 1 In diction and versification, this celebrated poem is fully equal, perhaps superior, to "The Traveler." In 1773, Goldsmith tried his chance at Covent Garden with "She Stoops to Conquer," an incomparable farce in five acts, which met with unpre- cedented success. While writing the " Deserted Village," and "She Stoops to Conquer," he compiled, for the use of schools, a "History of Rome," by which he made £300; a "History of England, 11 by which he made £000; a "History of Greece," for which he received £250; and a "Natural History," for which the booksellers covenanted to pay him 800 guineas. He produced these works by selecting, abridging, and translating into his own clear, pure, and flowing lan- guage, what he found in books well known to the world, but too bulky or too dry for boys and girls. He was a great, perhaps an unequaled master of the arts of selection and condensation. He died on the 4th of April, 1774, in hi* forty, sixth year. 198 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. SECTION IX. I. 50. THE POWER OF ART. "TTTHEN, from the sacred garden driven, V V Man fled before his Maker's wrath, An angel left her place in heaven, And crossed the wanderer's sunless path. 'Twas Art ! sweet Art ! — new radiance broke Where her light foot flew o'er the ground ; And thus with seraph voice she spoke, — " Tlie curse a blessing zhall be found." 2. She led him through the trackless wild, Where noontide sunbeams never blazed ; The thistle shrank, the harvest smiled, And nature gladdened as she gazed. Earth's thousand tribes of living things, At Art's command to him are given ; The village grows, the city springs, And point their spires of faith to heaven. 3. He rends the oak, and bids it ride, To guard the shores its beauty graced ; He smites the rock, upheaved in pride, — See towers of strength and domes of taste ! Earth's teeming caves their wealth reveal ; Fire bears his banner on the wave ; He bids the mortal poison heal ; And leaps triumphant o'er the grave. 4. He plucks the pearls that stud the deep, Admiring beauty's lap to fill ; He breaks the stubborn marble's sleep, And mocks his own Creator's skill. W T ith thoughts that fill his glowing soul, He bids the ore illume the page ; And, proudly scorning Time's control, Commerces with an unborn age. 5. In fields of air he writes his name, And treads the chambers of the sky ; WORK. 199 Ho reads tho stars, and grasps the ilame That quivers round the throne on high. In war renowned, in peace sublime, Ho moves in greatness and in grace ; His power, subduing space and time, Links realm to realm, and race to race. Sfragtje Charles Sfbague was born in Boston, on the 2Gth day of October, 1791. lie Was educated In the schools of his native city, which be left at an early period to acquire a practical knowledge of trade. At twenty-one years of age, he com- menced the business of merchant on his own account, and continued in it until 1820, when he was elected cashier of the Globe Bank. lie is still connected with that institution. In this period he has found leisure to study tbe works of the greatest authors, particularly those of tbe masters of English poetry, and to write tbe admirable poems on which is based bis own reputation. Mr. Spragu first productions that attracted much attention, were a series of brilliant pro- logues, the lirst of which was written for the Park Theater, in New York, in 1821. "Shakspeore Ode," delivered in Boston Theater, in 1^2:;, at the exhibition of a pageant in honor of Shakspcare, is one of the most vigorous and exquisite lyrics In the English language. " Curiosity," the longest and best of his poems, was delivered before tbe Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, in August, 1829. Several of his short poems evince great skill in the use of language, and show him to be a master of the poetic art. II. 51. WORK. THERE is a perennial 1 nobleness, and oven saercdnesa, in work. Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnest lv works ; in idleness alone is there perpetual despair. Work, never so Mammonish, 3 mean, is in commimication witli Nature : the real desire to get work done will itself lead one more and more to truth, to Nature's appointments and regulations which are truth. 2. Blessed is he who has found his work ; let him ask no other blessedness. He has a work, a life-puqiosc ; he has found it, and will follow it. How, as a free flowing channel, dug and torn by noble force through the sour mud-swamp of one's exist- ence, like an ever-deepening river there, it runs and flows !— draining off the sour festering water gradually from the root of the remotest grass blade ; making, instead of pestilential swamp, a green fruitful meadow with its clear flowing stream. How 1 Per en' ni al, literally, through or a Mam' mon ish, relating to Mam- beyond a year ; hence, enduring ; mon, the Syrian god of riches : mer- lasting perpetually. cenary, or procured by monoy. 200 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. blessed for the meadow itself, let the stream and its value be great or small ! 3. Labor is life ; from the inmost heart of the worker rises his God-given force, the sacred celestial life-essence, breathed into him by Almighty God ; from his inmost heart awakens him to all nobleness, to all knowledge, " self-knowledge," and much else, so soon as work fitly begins. Knowledge ! the knowledge that will hold good in working, cleave thou to that ; for Nature her- self accredits that, says Yea to that. Properly, thou hast no other knowledge but what thou hast got by working : the rest is yet all a hypothesis ' of knowledge ; a thing to be argued of in schools, a thing floating in the clouds in endless logic vor'tices 2 till we try it and fix it. " Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone." 4. Older than all preached gospels 3 was this unpreached, in- articulate, but ineradicable, 4 for-ever-enduring gospel : work, and therein have well-being. Man, Son of Earth and Heaven, lies there not, in the innermost heart of thee, a spirit of active method, a force for work : — and burns like a painfully smoldering fire, giving thee no rest till thou unfold it, till thou write it down in beneficent b facts around thee ! What is immethodic, 6 waste, thou shalt make methodic, regulated, arable, 7 obedient and pro- ductive to thee. Wheresoever thou findest disorder, there is thy eternal enemy : attack him swiftly, subdue him ; make order of him, tho subject not of chaos, but of intelligence, divinity, and thee ! The thistle that grows in thy path, dig it out that a blade of useful grass, a drop of nourishing milk, may grow there instead. The waste cotton-shrub, gather its waste white down, spin it, weave it ; that, in place of idle litter, there may be folded webs, and the naked skin of man be covered. i Hy p8th' e sis, a proposition or the great truths of Christianity, principle assumed for tho purpose of * In^ e racT i ca ble, that can not argument ; a supposition. he uprooted or destroyed. 3 Vor'tices, whirlpools; whirl- 'Beneficent, doing good; a- winds ; hence, logical vortices are hounding in acts of goodness ; char- intricate arguments, or arguments itahle. that contain so many windings as to * Im'me th5d' ic, having no meth- bewilder. od ; without systematic arrangement, 3 G5s' pel, good news, hence the order, or regularity, four books which relato the history 7 Ar' a ble, fit for tillage or plow- of the Saviour are called gospels ; ing ; plowed ; productive. WORK. 201 5. But, above all, where thou fmdest ignorance, stupidity, brute-mindodness — attack it, I say ; smite it wisely, unwearied]}*, and rest not whilo thou Hvest and it lives ; but smite, smite in the name of God ! Tho highest God, as I understand ic, does audibly so command thee : still audibly, if thou have ears to hear. He, even He, with his unsj)okcn voice, is fuller than any Sinai ' thunders, or syllabled speech of whirlwinds ; for the silence of deep eternities, of worlds from beyond the morning stars, does it not speak to thee ? Tho unborn ages ; the old graves, with their long-nioldering dust, the very tears that wetted it, now all dry — do not these speak to thee what ear hath not heard ? Tho deep death-kingdoms, the stars in their never-resting courses, all space and all time, proclaim it to thee in continual silent admo- nition. Thou, too, if ever man should, shalt work while it is called to-day ; for the night conieth, wherein no man can work. 6. All true work is sacred ; in all true work, were it but true hand-labor, there i3 something of dlvmeness. Labor, wide as the earth, has its summit in heaven. Sweat of the brow ; and up from that to sweat of the brain, sweat of the heart ; which includes all Kepler 2 calculations, Newton 3 meditations, all sci- ences, all spoken epics, all acted heroism, martyrdoms — up to that " agony of bloody sweat," which all men have called divine ! O brother, if this is not " worship," then I say, the more pit v for worship ; for this is the noblest thing yet discovered under God's sky. 7. AYho art thou that complainest of thy life of toil ? Com- plain not. Look up, my wearied brother ; see thy fellow-work- men there, in God's eternity ; surviving there, they alone surviv- ing : sacred band of the immortals, celestial body-guard of the empire of mind. Even in the weak human memory they sur- vive so long, as saints, as heroes, as gods ; they alone surviving : 1 Si' nai, a mountain of Arabia was born in Lincolnshire, England, Petraea, famous in Scripture. Height December 25, 1642. His investiga- above the sea, 7,497 feet. tions have completely revolutionized 2 John Kepler, a distinguished modern science. His three great mathematician and astronomer, was discoveries, of fluxions, the nature born at Wiel, in Wirtemberg, on the of light and colors, and the laws of 21st of December, 1571, and died gravitation, have given him a nam<' November 5th, o. s.. 1631. which will last as long as civilization 3 Sir Isaac Newton, the greatest exists. His " Principia "unfolds the of philosophers and mathematicians, theoryof theuniverse. He died in 172 7. 202 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. peopling, they alone, the imnieasured solitudes of Time ! To thee Heaven, though severe, is not unkind ; Heaven is kind — as a noble mother ; as that Spartan mother, saying while she gave her son his shield, " With it, my son, or upon it !" Thou, too, shalt return home, in honor to thy far-distant home, in honor ; doubt it not — if in the battle thou keep thy shield ! Thou, in the eternities and deepest death-kingdoms, art not an alien ; l thou everywhere art a den'izen ! 2 Complain not ; the very Spar- tans did not complain. Carlyle. Tiiomas Carltle, the eminent essayist, reviewer, and historian, was born at Middlebic, in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, in 1796. He received the rudiments of a classical education at a school in Annan, a town about sixty miles south of Ed- inburgh. At the University of Edinburgh, which he entered at the age of seven- teen, he was distinguished for his attainments in mathematics. For some years after leaving the universitj*, he supported himself by teaching, and writing for booksellers. He is the author of various works and translations — " Life of Schil- ler," "Sartor Hesartus," 1S36; "The French Revolution," a history in three volumes, 1S37; " Chartism," 1S39 ; "Critical and Miscellaneous Essays," from reviews and magazines, in 5 vols., 1839 ; " Hero Worship," a scries of lectures, 1841; "Past and Present," 1843; "Life of Oliver Cromwell," "Latter-day Pamphlets," "Life of John Sterling," &e., &c. The peculiar style and diction of Mr. Carlyle have with some retarded, and with others advanced his popularity. It is more German than English, angular, objective, and unidiomatic : at times, however, highly graphic, and swelling out into periods of fine imager}' and elo- quence. He is an original and subtle thinker, and combines with his powers of analysis and reasoning a vivid and brilliant imagination. His opinions and writings tend to enlarge our sympathies and feelings — to stir the heart with benevolence and affection — to unite man to man — and to build upon this love of our fellow-beings a system of mental energy and purity far removed from the operations of sense, and pregnant with high hopes and aspirations. III. 52. ADDRESS TO THE INDOLENT. IS not the field with lively culture green A sight more joyous than the dead morass'? Do not the skies, with active e'ther clean, And fanned by sprightly zephyrs, far surpass The foul November fogs, and slumberous mass, "With which sad Nature vails her drooping face ? Does not the mountain-stream, as clear as glass, Gay dancing on, the putrid pool disgrace ? — The same in all holds true, but chief in human race. * Alien, (&!' yen), a foreigner who 3 Den' i zen, a naturalized for* has not been naturalized ; a stranger, eiguer ADDRESS TO THE INDOLENT. 203 2. It was not by vile loitering in ease That Greece obtained the brighter palm of art, That soft yet ardent Ath'ens learnt to please, To keen the wit, and to sublime the heart, In all supreme ! complete in every part ! It was not thence majestic Rome arose, And o'er the nations shook her conquering dart! For sluggard's brow the laurel never grows ; Renown is not the child of indolent repose. 3. Had unambitious mortals minded naught But in loose joy their time to wear away, — Had they alone the lap of dalliance sought, Pleased on her pillow their dull heads to lay, — Rude Nature's state had been our state to-day : No cities e'er their towery fronts had raised, No arts had made us opulent and gay ; "With brother-brutes the human race had grazed ; None e'er had soared to fame, none honored been, none praised. 4. But should your hearts to fame unfeeling be, If right I read, you pleasure all require : Then see how best may be obtained this fee, How best enjoyed this, nature's wide desire. Toil and be glad! let In'dustry inspire Into your quickened limbs her buoyant breath ! Who does not act is dead ; — absorpt entire In miry sloth, no pride, no joy he hath : O leaden-hearted men, to be in love with death ! 5. Ah ! what avail the largest gifts of Heaven, "When drooping health and spirits go amiss? How tasteless then whatever can be given ! Health is the vital principle of bliss, And exercise of health. In proof of this, Behold the wretch who slugs his life away, Soon swallowed in disease's sad abyss, "While he whom toil has braced, or manly play, Has light as air each limb, each thought as clear as day. 6. O, who can speak the vigorous joy of health, — Unelogged the body, unobseured the mind ? The morning rises gay, with pleasing stealth, 204 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. The temperate evening falls serene and kind. In health the wiser brutes true gladness find See ! how the younglings frisk along the meads, As May comes on, and wakes the balmy wind ; Rampant with life, their joy all joy exceeds ; Yet what but high-strung health this dancing pleasaunce breeds? 7. There are, I see, who listen to my lay, Who wretched sigh for virtue, yet despair. " All may be done," methinks I hear them say, " Even death despised by generous actions fair, — All, but for those who to these bowers repair ! Their every power dissolved in luxury, To quit of torpid sluggishness the lair, And from the powerful arms of sloth get free — 'Tis rising from the dead : — Alas ! — it can not be !" 8. Would you, then, learn to dissipate the band Of these huge threatening difficulties dire, That in the weak man's wav like lions stand, His soul appall, and damp his rising fire ? Resolve — resolve ! and to be men aspire. Exert that noblest privilege, — alone Here to mankind indulged ; — control desire : Let godlike Reason, from her sovereign throne, Speak the commanding word, I will ! — and it is done. James Thomson. IV. 53. STUDY. rjlHE favorite idea of a genius among us, is of one who never JL studies, or who studies, nobody can tell when — at midnight, or at odd times and intervals — and now and then strikes out, at a heat, as the phrase is, some wonderful production. This is a character that has figured largely in the history of our literature, in the persons of our Moldings, our Savages, 1 and our Steeles 2 — 1 Richard Savage, a poet of con- ■ Richard Steele, the principal siderahle merit, born 1G99, in Lon- author of the " Tattler," the " Spec- don, died 1743. He was intimate tator," the " Guardian/' and other with Johnson, who wrote an admir- periodical papers, an Irishman by able Life of him. birth, born in 1671. and died in 1729. STUDY. 205 u loose fellows about town," or loungers in the country, who slept in ale-houses and wrote in bar-rooms, who took up the pen as a magician's ' wand to supply their wants, and when the pressure of necessity was relieved, resorted again to their carousals. 2. Your real genius is an idle, irregular, vagabond sort of personage, who muses in the fields or dreams by the fireside ; whose strong impulses — that is the cant of it — must needs hurry him into wild irregularities or foolish eccentricity ; who abhors order, and can bear no restraint, and eschews all labor : such a one, for instance, as Newton or Milton ! What ! they must have been irregular, else they were no geniuses ! 3. "The young man," it is often said, "has genius enough, if he would only study." Now the truth is, as I shall take the liberty to state it, that genius will study, it is that in the mind which does study ; that is the very nature of it. I care not to say that it will always use books. All study is not reading, any more than all reading is study. Study, says Cicero, 5 is the vol- untary and vigorous application of the mind to any subject. 4. Such study, such intense mental action, and nothing else, is genius. And so far as there is any native predisposition about this enviable character of mind, it is a predisposition to that action. This is the only test of the original bias ; and he who does not come to that point, though he may have shrewdness, and readiness, and parte, never had a genius. 5. No need to waste regrets upon him, as that he never could be induced to give his attention or study to any thing ; he nevei- had that which he is supposed to have lost. For attention it is — though other qualities belong to this transcendent 3 power — attention it is, that is the very soul of genius : not the fixed eye, not the poiing over a book, but the fixed thought. It is, in fact, an action of the mind which is steadily concentrated upon one ide'a or one series of ideas, — which collects in one point the rays of the soul till they search, penetrate, and fire the whole train of its thoughts. 1 Magician, (ma jlsh' an), one who of Rome, a distinguished orator, is skilled in the art and science of writer, rhetorician, and philosopher, putting into action the power of born at Arpinum in B. c. 106, be- epirits or the secret operation of headed b. c. 43. natural causes. 3 Trans cend' ent, surpassing ,• 8 Marcus Tullius Cicero, Consul very excellent. 206 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 6. And while the fire burns within, the outward man may indeed be cold, indifferent, and negligent, — absent in appear- ance ; he may be an idler, or a wanderer, apparently without aim or intent ; but still the fire burns within. And what though " it bursts forth " at length, as has been said, " like volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force?" It only shows the intenser action of the elements beneath. "What though it breaks like lightning from the cloud ? The electric fire had been collect- ing in the firmament through many a silent, calm, and clear day. 7. What though the might of genius appears in one decisive blow, struck in some moment of high debate, or at the crisis of a nation's peril? That mighty energy, though it may have heaved in the breast of a Demosthenes, 1 was once a feeble in- fant's thought. A mother's eye watched over its dawning. A father's care guarded its early growth. It soon trod with youth- ful steps the halls of learning, and found other fathers to wake and to watch for it, — even as it finds them here. 8. It went on ; but silence was upon its path, and the deep stragglings of the inward soul marked its progress, and the cherishing powers of nature silently ministered to it. The ele- ments around breathed upon it and " touched it to finer issues." The golden ray of heaven fell upon it, and ripened its expand- ing faculties. The slow revolutions of years slowly added to its collected treasures and energies ; till in its hour of glory, it stood forth embodied in the form of living, commanding, irre- sistible eloquence ! 9. The world wonders at the manifestation, and says, " Strange, strange, that it should come thus unsought, unpremeditated, un- prepared!" But the truth is, there is no more a miracle in it, than there is in the towering of the preeminent forest-tree, or in the flowing of the mighty and irresistible river, or in the wealth and the waving of the boundless harvest. Dewey. Ouville Dewey, D.D., was born in Sheffield, Berkshire County, Massachu- setts, March 28th, 1794. His father ■was a farmer, occupying a highly respecta- ble position as a citizen. He entered Williams College, in his native county, at the age of seventeen, where he gained a high position. He was thorough in all his studies. Rhetoric he cultivated with uncommon perseverance. He was critical and severe upon his own literary productions, revising and pruning with __^ *. ^ . , 1 De mos' the nes, the greatest of His orations present to us the mod- Greek orators, was born at Athens, els which approach the nearest to B. c. 382, and died b. C. about o22. perfection of all human productions. LETTERS. 207 a fidelity which gained him preeminence in his cla-s, as already attaining a style of classic strength and purity, lie was graduated in 1*14, with the higl honors of the institution, having received the appointment of Valedictorian. He pursued his professional studies at Andover Theological Seminary. In 1^:J he received and accepted a call to become pastor of a Unitarian Church in New- Bedford, where he remained ten years. During this period he lectured frequently, and wrote for the press. He lirst visited Europe for the improvement of his health in June, 1833, where he spent a year. After his return, lie published some results of his travels in a volume entitled, "The Old World and the New.'' This book contains some of the best criticisms on painting, on music, on sculp- ture, on men, things, and places ; and more than all, views of society, of govern- ment, of the tendency of monarchical institutions, and of the condition of the European people, which arc sound, comprehensive, and deeply interesting. On his return from Europe he was settled over "The Second Congregational Unita- rian Society" of New York. In 1842 he again went abroad for his health, taking his family with him. He passed two years in France, Italy, Switzerland, and England. In 1848, his health again failing, he dissolved his connection with his church. Since that time he has occasionally preached and lectured in nearly all the large cities of the Union. All, except his late writings, arc bound in one volume, published at London, in 1844. His productions since that period are published in New York, in three volumes, except his latest, "The Problem of Human Destiny," which appeared in 1804. Dr. Dewey has gnat depth of thought. His imagination is rich, but not superfluous ; ready, but not obtrusive. His style is artistic and scholarly. His periods are perfectly complete and rounded, yet tilled by the thought; the variety is great, yet a symmetry pre- vails ; and in general we find that harmony between the thoughts and their form which should always obtain. SECTION X. I. 54. LETTERS. BLESSED be letters! — they are the monitors, they are also the eomforters, and they are the only true heart-talkers. Your speech, and their speeches, are conventional ; they are molded by circumstances ; they are suggested by the observa- tion, remark, and influence of the parties to whom the speaking is addressed, or by whom it may be overheard. Your truest thought is modified half through its utteranco by a look, a sign, a smile, or a sneer. It is not individual : it is not integral : it is social and mixed, — half of you, and half of others. It bends, it sways, it multiplies, it retires, and it advances, as the talk of others presses, relaxes, or quickens. 2. But it is not so with Letters : — there you are, with only 208 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. the soulless pen, and the snow-white, virgin paper. Your soul is measuring itself by itself, and saying its own sayings : there are no sneers to modify its utterance, — no scowl to scare ; nothing is present but you and your thought. Utter it then freely — write it down — stamp it — burn it in the ink ! — There it is, a true soul-print ! 3. Oh, the glory, the freedom, the passion of a letter ! It is worth all the lip-talk of the world. Do you say, it is studied, made up, acted, rehearsed, contrived, artistic? Let me see it then ; let me run it over : tell me age, sex, cir'cuinstances, and I will tell you if it be studied or real ; if it be the merest lip-slang j)ut into words, or heart-talk blazing on the paper. 4. I have a little packet, not Very large, tied up with narrow crimson ribbon, now soiled with frequent handling, which far into some winter's night I take down from its nook upon my shelf, and untie, and open, and run over, with such sorrow and such joy, such tears and such smiles, as I am sure make me, for weeks after, a kinder and holier man. 5. There are in this little packet letters in the familiar hand of a mother : what gentle admonition — what tender affection ! God have mercy on him who outlives the tears that such ad- monitions and such affection c?4i up to the eye ! There are others in the budget, in the delicate and unformed hand of a loved and lost sister ; — written when she and you were full of glee, and the best mirth of youthfuiness : does it harm you to recall that mirthfulncss ? or to trace again, for the hundredth time, that scrawling postscript at the bottom, with its i's so carefully dotted, and its gigantic t's ?o carefully crossed, by the childish hand of a little brother ? 6. I have added latterly to that packet of letters : I almost need a new and longer ribbon ; the old one is getting too short. Not a few of these new and cherished letters, a former Reverie has brought to me ; not letters of cold praise, saying it was well done, artfully executed, prettily imagined — no such thing ; but letters of sympathy — of sympathy which means sympathy. 7. It would be cold and dastardly work to copy them ; I am too selfish for that. It is enough to say that they, the kind writers, have seen a heart in tho Reverie — have felt that it was real, true. They know it : a secret influence has told it. "What matters it, pray, if literally there was no wifo, and no dead child, LETTERS. 209 and no coffin, in the house ? Is not feeling, feeling ; and heart, heart ? Are not these fancies thronging on my brain, bringing tears to my eyes, bringing joy to my soul, as living as any thing human can be living ? What if they have no material type — no objective form ? All that is crude, — a mere reduction of ideality to sense — a transformation of the spiritual to the earthy — a leveling of soul to matter. 8. Are we not creatures of thought and passion ? Is any thing about us more earnest than that same thought and passion ? Is there any thing more real, — more characteristic of that great and dim destiny to which we are born, and which may be writ- ten down in that terrible word — Foeever ? Let those who will, then, sneer at what in their wisdom they call untruth — at what is false, because it has no material presence : this does not create falsity ; would to Heaven that it did ! 9. And yet, if there was actual, material truth, superadded to Reverie, would such objectors sympathize the more ? No ! — a thousand times, no ; the heart that has no sympathy with thoughts and feelings that scorch the soul, is dead also — what- ever its mocking tears and gestures may say — to a coffin or a grave ! Let them pass, and we will come back to these cher- ished letters. 10. A mother who has lost a child, has. she says, shed a tear ■ — not one, but many — over the dead boy's coldness. And another, who has not, but who trembles lest she lose, has found the words failing as she reads, and a dim, sorrow-borne mist spreading over the page. Another, yet rejoicing in all those family ties that make life a charm, has listened nervously to careful reading, until the husband is called home, and the coffin is in the house — " Stop !" she says ; and a gush of tears tells the rest. Yet the cold critic will say — "It was artfully done." A curse on him ! it was not art ; it was nature. 11 Another, a young, fresh, healthful girl-mind, has seen something in the love-picture — albeit so weak — of truth ; and has kindly believed that it must be earnest. Ay, indeed is it, fair and generous one, — earnest as life and hope ! AVho, indeed, with a heart at all, that has not yet slipped away irrep'arably and forever from the shores of youth — from that fairy-land which young enthusiasm creates, and over which bright dreams hover — but knows it to be real? And so such things will be 210 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. real, till hopes are dashed, and Death is come. Another, a father, has laid down the book in tears. — God bless them all! How far better this, than the cold praise of newspaper para- graphs, or the critically contrived approval of colder friends ! 12. Let me gather up these letters carefully, — to be read when the heart is faint, and sick of all that there is unreal and selfish in the world. Let me tie them together, with a new, and longer bit of ribbon, — not by a love knot, that is too hard — but by an easy slipping knot, that so I may get at them the better. And now they are all together, a snug packet, and we will label them, not sentimentally (I pity the one who thinks it), but earnestly, and in the best meaning of the term — Remem- BKA.NCEKS OF THE HEART. D. G. MITCHELL. II. 53. SELECT PASSAGES IN PROSE. I. GOOD USE OF MEMORY. I CAN not too strongly urge upon the young the advantage of committing to memory the choicest passages in prose and poetry in English literature. What we learn thoroughly when young, remains by us through life. " Sir," said the great Dr. Johnson to Boswell, 1 "in my early days I read very hard. It is a sad reflection, but a true one, that I knew almost as much at eighteen as I do now. My judgment, to be sure, was not so good ; but I had all the facts. I remember very well when I was at Oxford, an old gentleman said to me, ' Young man, ply your book diligently now, and acquire a stock of knowledge ; for when years come unto you, you will find that poring upon books will be but an irksome task.' " II. INJUDICIOUS HASTE IN STUDY.— Locke.' The eagerness and strong bent of the mind after knowledge, if not warily regulated, is often a hinderance to it. It still presses into further discoveries and new objects, and catches at 1 James Boswell, the friend and celebrated " Essay Concerning the biographer of Dr. Johnson, born Human Understanding," was born 1740, and died 1795. at Wrington, near Bristol, England, 3 John Locke, a name than which on the 29th of August, 1G32, and there is none higher in English phil- died at Oates, in Essex, on the 28th osophical literature, author of the of October, 1704. SELECT PASSAGES IN PROSE. 211 the variety of knowledge, and therefore often stays not long enough on what is before it, to look into it as it should, for haste to pursue what is yet out of sight. He that rides post through a country may be able, from the transient view, to tell in general how the parts he, and may be able to give some loose descrip- tion of here a mountain and there a plain, here a morass' and there a river ; woodland in one part and savannas in another. Such superficial ideas and observations as these he may collect in galloping over it ; but the more useful observations of the soil, plants, animals, and inhabitants, with their several sorts and properties, must necessarily escape him ; and it is seldom men ever discover the rich mines without some digging. Nature commonly lodges her treasures and jewels in rocky ground. If the matter be knotty, and the sense lies deep, the mind must stop and buckle to it, and stick upon it with labor, and thought, and close contemplation, and not leave it until it has mastered the difficulty and got possession of truth. But here, care must be taken to avoid the other extreme : a man must not stick at every useless nicety, and expect mysteries of science in every trivial question or scrapie that he may raise. He that will stand to pick up and examine every pebble that comes in his way, is as unlikely to return enriched and laded with jewels, as the other that traveled full speed. Truths are not the better nor the worse for their obviousness or difficulty, but their value is to be measured by their usefulness and ten- dency. Insignificant observations should not take up any of our minutes ; and those that enlarge our view, and give light toward further and useful discoveries, should not be neglected, though they stop our course, and spend some of our time in a fixed attention. III. STUDIES.— Bacon.' Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in piivateness and retiring ; for orna- 1 Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor ment of labor, or species of activity, of England under James I., author belonged to him peculiarly. From of the " Instauratio Magna," was early manhood Bacon was immersed born in London on 22d of January, in public affairs, intrusted with very 1561, and died in 162G. The immor- onerous functions : in the first rank tal Englishman possessed a mind so of jurisconsult, he moved in the work vast, with powers so varied, that it of reforming and arranging the laws can not be said that any one depart- of England ; as a statesman, he la- 212 NATIONAL FIFTH HEADER. raent, is in discourse ; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business ; for expert men can execute, and per- haps judge of particulars, one by cno ; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshaling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies, is sloth ; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation ; to make judg- ment wholly by their rules, is the humor of a scholar : they per'- feet nature, and are perfected by experience — for natural abili- ties are like natural plants, that need pruning by study ; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them ; for they teach not their own use ; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Head not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested : that is, some books are to be read only in parts ; others to be read, but not curi- ously ; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others ; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books ; else dis- tilled books are, like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man : and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory ; if he confer little, he need have a present wit ; and if he read little, he had need have much , cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. IV. BOOKS.— ClIANNING. It is chiefly through books that we enjoy inter course with superior minds, and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach of all. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God bo thanked for books. They are the voices of "the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of bored effectively in promotion of tho viz., the " Reign of Henry VII. ;" as British treaty of Union ; as a his- orator and Avriter, he had no equal torian, ho produced the first nierito- in his age ; nm\, besides, he renovated rious history in English literature, Philosophy. SELECT PASSAGES IN PROSE. 2L3 past ages. Books are the true levelers. They give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am, — no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling, — if the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof, if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and Shakspeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin ' to enrich me with his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live. V. THE BIBLE.— Hall.' The Bible is the treasure of the poor, the solace of the sick, and the support of the dying ; and while other books may amuse and instruct in a leisure hour, it is the peculiar triumph of that book to create light in the midst of darkness, to allevi- ate the sorrow which admits of no other alleviation, to direct a beam of hope to the heart which no other topic of consolation can reach ; while guilt, despair, and death vanish at the touch of its holy inspiration. There is something in the spirit and diction of the Bible which is found peculiarly adapted to arrest the attention of the plainest and most uncultivated minds. The simple structure of its sentences, combined with a lofty spirit of poetry — its famil- iar allusions to the scenes of nature and the transactions of common life — the delightful intermixture of narration with the doctrinal and preceptive parts — and the profusion of inlrac'ulous facts, which convert it into a sort of enchanted ground — its constant advertence to the Deity, whoso perfections it renders almost visible and palpable — unite in bsstowing upon it an in'- terest which attaches to no other performance, and which, after 1 Benjamin Franklin, on eminent various erudition, and a thorough American moralist, statesman, and intellectual training ; master alike of philosopher, was born in Boston, the sternest weapons of logic, and Mass., January Gth, 1 TOG, and died " the dazzling fence of rhetoric;" in in Philadelphia, April 17th, 1790. style, combining the, sweetness of 5 Robert Hall, an eminent Baptist Addison with the sublimity of Burke; clergyman, was born at Arnsby, he was regarded as the most eloquent England, in 1764. Splendid, grace- preacher of modern times. He died fill, and majestic, with a large and in February, 1831. 214 NATIONAL FIFTH HEADER. assiduous and repeated perusal, invests it with much of the charm of novelty ; like the great orb of day, at which we are wont 1 to gaze with unabated astonishment from infancy to old age. What other book besides the Biole could be heard in public assemblies from year to year, with an attention that never tires, and an interest that never cloys ? With few exceptions, let a portion of the sacred volume be recited in a mixed multitude, and though it has been heard a thousand times, a universal stillness ensues, every eye is fixed, and every ear is awake and attentive. Select, if you can, any other composition, and let it be rendered equally familiar to the mind, and see whether it will produce this effect. in. 56. BUYING BOOKS. HOW easily one may distinguish a genuine lover of books from the worldly man ! With what subdued and yet glow- ing enthusiasm does he gaze upon the costly front of a thousand embattled volumes ! How gently he draws them down, as if they were little children ! how tenderly he handles them ! He peers at the title-page, at the text, or the notes, with the nicety of a bird examining a flower. He studies the binding : the leather, — Russia, English calf, morocco ; the lettering, the gild- ing, the edging, the hinge of the cover ! He opens it, and shuts it, he holds it off, and brings it nigh. It suffuses his whole body with book-magnetism. He walks up and down, in amaze at the mysterious allotments of Providence that gives so much money to men who spend it upon their appetites, and so little to men who would spend it in benevolence, or upon their refined tastes ! It is astonishing, too, how one's necessities multiply in the presence of the supply. One never knows how many things it is impossible to do without till he goes to the house-furnishing stores. One is surprised to perceive, at some bazaar, or fancy and variety store, how many conveniences he needs. He is sat- isfied that his life must have been utterly inconvenient aforetime. And thus, too, one is inwardly convicted, at a bookstore, of having lived for years without books which he is now satisfied that one can not live without ! 1 Wont, (v/unt), used ; accustomed. BUYING BOOKS. 215 • ) 2. Then, too, the subtle process by which the man convinces himself that he can afford to buy. No subtle manager or 1 >r< >ker ever saw through a maze of financial embarrassmi uts half so quick as a poor book-buyer sees his way clear to pay for what he must have. He promises with himself marvels of retrench- ment ; he will eat less, or less costly viands, that he may buy more food for the mind. He will take an extra patch, and go on with his raiment another year, and buy books instead of coats. Yea, he will write books, that he may buy books. He will lecture, teach, trade — he will do any honest thing for mom y to buy books ! 3. The appetite is insatiable. Feeding does not satisfy it. It rages by the fuel which is put upon it. As a hungry man rats first, and pays afterward, so the book-buyer purchases, and then works at the debt afterward. This paying is rather medicinal. It cures for a time. But a relapse takes place. The same long- ing, the same promises of self-denial. He promises himself to put spurs on both heels of his in'dustry ; and then, besides all this, he will somehow get along when the time for payment comes ! Ah ! this Somehow ! That word is as big as a whole world, and is stuffed with all the vaga'ries and fantasies that Fancy ever bred upon Hope. 4. And yet, is there not some comfort in buying books, to be paid for ? We have heard of a sot, who wished his neck as long as the worm of a still, that he might so much the longer enjoy the flavor of the draught ! Thus, it is a prolonged excitement of purchase, if you feel for six months in a slight doubt whether the book is honestly your own or not. Had you paid down, that would have been the end of it. There would have been no affectionate and beseeching look of your books at you, every time you saw them, saying, as plain as a book's eyes can say. "Do not let me be taken from you." 5. Moreover, buying books before you can pay for them, pro- motes caution. You do not feel quite at liberty to take them home. You are married. Your wife keeps an account-book. She knows to a penny what you can and what you can not afford. She has no " speculation " in her eyes. Plain figures make des- perate work with airy "somehows". It is a matter of no small skill and experience to get your books home, and into their proper places, undiscovered. Perhaps the blundering Express 216 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. brings tliem to the door just at evening. " What is it, my deal* ?" she says to you. " Oh ! nothing — a few books that I can not do without." 6. That smile ! A true housewife that loves her husband, can smile a whole arithmetic at him in one look ! Of course she insists, in the kindest way, in sympathizing with you in your literary acquisition. She cuts the strings of the bundle (and of your heart), and out comes the whole story. You have bought a complete set of costly English books, full bound in calf, extra gilt ! You are caught, and feel very much as if bound in calf yourself, and admirably lettered. 7. Now, this must not happen frequently. The books must be smuggled home. Let them be sent to some near place. Then, when your wife has a headache, or is out making a call, or has lain down, run the books across the frontier and threshold, hastily undo them, stop only for one loving glance as you put them away in the closet, or behind other books on the shelf, or on the top- most shelf. Clear away the twine and wrapping-paper, and every suspicious circumstance. Be very careful not to be too kind. That often brings on detection. Only the other day we heard it said, somewhere, "Why, how good you have been, lately. I am really afraid that you have been carrying on mischief secretly." Our heart smote us. It was a fact. That very day we had bought a few books which " we could not do without." 8. After a while, you can bring out one volume, accidentally, and leave it on the table. " Why, my dear, what a beautiful book ! Where did you borrow it '?" You glance over the news- paper, with the quietest tone you can command : " Tliat ! oh ! that is mine. Have you not seen it before ? It has been in the house these two months ; " and you rush on with anecdote and incident, and point out the binding, and that peculiar trick of gilding, and every thing else you can think of : but it all will not do ; you can not rub out that roguish, arithmetical smile. People may talk about the equality of the sexes ! They are not equal. The silent smile of a sensible, loving woman, will van- quish ten men. Of course you repent, and in time form a habit of repenting. 9. Another method, which will bo found peculiarly effective, is, to make a present of some fine work to your wife. Of course, whether she or you have the name of buying it, it will go into SELECTED EXTRACTS. 017 your collection and be yours to all intents and purposes. But, it stops remark in the presentation. A wife could not reprove you for so kindly thinking of her. No matter what she suspects, she will say nothing. And then if there are three or four more works, which have come home with the gift-book — they will pass, through the favor of the other. 10. These are pleasures denied to wealth and old bachelors. Indeed, one can not imagine the peculiar pleasure of buying books, if one is rich and stupid. There must be some pleasure, or so many would not do it. But the full flavor, the whole rel- ish of delight only comes to those who are so poor that they must engineer for every book. They set down before them, and besiege them. They are captured. Each book has a secret history of ways and means. It reminds you of subtle devices by which you insured and made it yours, in spite of poverty I II. W. Beeches. IV. 57. SELECTED EXTRACTS. ALL novels whatever, the best equally with the worst, have faded almost with the generation that produced them. This is a curse written as a superscription above the whole class. The modes of combining characters, the particular objects selected for sympathy, the diction, and often the manners, hold up an imperfect mirror to any generation that is not their own. And the reader of novels belonging to an obsolete era, whilst acknowledging the skill of the groupings, or the beauty of the situations, misses the echo to that particular revelation of human nature which has met him in the social aspects of his own day ; or too often ho is perplexed by an expression which, having dropped into a lower use, disturbs the unity of the impression, or is revolted by a coarse sentiment, which increasing refine- ment has made unsuitable to the sex or to the rank of the character. 2. Too constantly, when reviewing his own efforts for improve- ment, a man has reason to say (indignantly, as one injured by others ; penitentially, as contributing to this injury himself,) "Much of my studies have been thrown away; many books which were useless, or worse than useless, I have read ; manv 10 218 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. books which ought to have been read, I have left unread ; such is the sad necessity under the absence of all preconceived plan ; and the proper road is first ascertained when the journey is drawing to its close." 3. In a wilderness so vast as that of books, to go astray often and widely is pardonable, because it is inevitable ; and in proportion as the errors on this primary field of study have been great, it is important to have reaped some compen- satory benefits on the secondary field of conversation. Books teach by one machinery, conversation by another ; and, if these resources were trained into correspondence to their own separate ide'als, they might become reciprocally the comple- ments of each other. 4. It had happened that amongst our nursery collection of books was the Bible illustrated with many pictures. And in long dark evenings, as my three sisters with myself sat by the firelight round the guard of our nursery, no book was so much in request amongst us. It ruled us and swayed us as mysteri- ously as music. One young nurse, whom we all loved, before any candle was lighted, would often strain her eyes to read it for us ; and, sometimes, according to her simple powers, would endeavor to explain what we found obscure. We, the children, were all constitutionally touched with pensiveness ; the fitful gloom and sudden lambencies of the room by firelight suited our evening state of feelings ; and they suited, also, the divine revelations of power and mysterious beauty which awed us. Above all, the story of a just man — man and yet not man, real above all things, and yet shadowy above all things, who had suffered the passion of death in Palestine — slept upon our minds like early dawn upon the waters. 5. A man of original genius, shown to us as revolving through the leisurely stages of a biographical memoir, lays open, to readers prepared for sympathy, two separate theaters of in- terest ; one in his personal career : the other in his works and his intellectual development. Both unfold together ; and each borrows a secondary interest from the other : the life from the recollection of the works — the works from the joy and sorrow of the life. There have, indeed, been authors whose great crea- tions, severely preconceived in a region of thought transcen- dent to all impulses of earth, would have been pretty nearly SELECTED EXTRACTS. 219 what they are under any possible changes in the dramatic ar- rangement of their lives. Happy or not happy — gay or sad — these authors would equally have fulfilled a mission too solemn and too stern in its obligations to suffer any warping from chance, or to bend before the accidents of life, whether dressed in sun- shine or in wintry gloom. 6. But generally this is otherwise. Children of Paradise, like the Miltons of our planet, have the privilege of stars — to " dwell apart." But the children of hesh, whose pulses beat too sympathetically with the agitations of mother-earth, can not sequester themselves in that way. They walk in no such altitudes, but at elevations easily reached by ground-winds of humble calamity. And from that cup of sorrow, which upon all lips is pressed in some proportion, they must submit, by the very tenure on which they hold their gifts, to drink, if not more profoundly than others, yet always with more bitterness. 7. " Put not your trust in princes, nor in the sons of princes," — this has been the warning, — this has been the farewell moral, winding up and pointing the experience of dying statesmen. Not less truly it might be said, " Put not your trust in the in- tellectual princes of your age :" form no connections too close with any who live only in the atmosphere of admiration and praise. The love or the friendship of such people rarely con- tracts itself into the narrow circle of individuals. You, if you are brilliant like themselves, they will hate ; you, if you are dull, they will despise. Gaze, therefore, on the splendor of such idols as a passing stranger. Look for a moment as one sharing in the idolatry ; but pass on before the splendor has been sullied by human frailty, or before your own generous homage has been confounded with offerings of weeds. 8. Gkief ! thou art classed amongst the depressing passions. And true it is that thou humblest to the dust, but also thou ex- altest to the clouds. Thou shakest as with ague, but also thou steadiest like frost. Thou sickenest the heart, but also thou healest its infirmities. 9. Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is, like light, the mightiest of agencies ; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone ; all leave it alone. Even a little child has a dread, whispering consciousness, that, if he should be summoned to travel into God's presence, no gentle nurse 220 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. will be allowed to lead him by the hand, nor mother to carry him in her arms, nor little sister to share his trepidations. King and priest, warrior and maiden, philosopher and child, all must walk those mighty galleries alone. The solitude, therefore, which in this world appalls or fascinates a child's heart, is but the echo of a far deeper solitude, through which already he has passed, and of another solitude deeper still, through which he lias to pass : reflex of one solitude — prefigur- ation of another. 10. Deep is the solitude of millions who, with hearts welling forth love, have none (nun) to love them. Deep is the solitude of those who, under secret griefs, have none to pity them. Deep is the solitude of those who, fighting with doubts or dark- ness, have none to counsel them. But deeper than the deepest of these solitudes is that which broods over childhood under the passion of sorrow — bringing before it, at intervals, the final solitude which watches for it, and is waiting for it within the gates of death. O mighty and essential solitude, that wast, and art, and art to be, thy kingdom is made perfect in the grave ; but even over those that keep watch outside the grave, thou stretchest out a scepter of fascination. 11. The dream commenced with a music which now I offcn heard in dreams — a music of preparation and of awakening suspense ; a music like the opening of the Coronation Anthem, and which, like that, gave the feeling of a vast march, of infinite cavalcades filing off, and the tread of innumerable armies. The morning was come of a mighty day — a day of crisis and of final hope for human nature, then suffering some mysterious eclipse, and laboring in some dread extremity. Somewhere, I knew not where — somehow, I knew not how — by some beings, I knew not whom — a battle, a strife, an agony, was conducting, — was evolving like a great drama, or piece of music ; with which my sympathy was the more insupportable from my con- fusion as to its place, its cause, its nature, and its possible issue. I, as is usual in dreams (where, of necessity, we make ourselves central to every movement), had the power, and yet had not the power, to decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself, to will it ; and yet again had not the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. " Deeper than ever plummet sounded," I lay inactive. GIL BLAS AND THE OLD ARCHBISHOP. 2*21 12. Then, liko a chorus, the passion deepened. Some greater interest was at stake ; some mightier cause than ever yet the sword had pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed. Then came sudden alarms ; hurryings to and fro ; trepidations of innu- merable fugitives. I knew not whether from the good cause or the bad ; darkness and lights ; tempest and human faces ; and at last, with the sense that all was lost, female forms, and tho features that were worth all the world to me, and but a moment allowed, — and clasped hands, and heart-breaking partings, and then — everlasting farewells ! and, with a sigh, such as the caves of hell sighed when the incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of Death, the sound was reverberated — everlasting fare- wells ! and again, and yet again reverberated — everlasting fare- wells! And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud — "I will SLEEP NO MOKE!" De QUIKCBT, SECTION XI. I. 58. GIL BLAS AND THE OLD ARCHBISHOP. A RCHBISHOP. "Well, young man, what is your business i \ with me ? Gil Bias. I am the young man whom your nephew, Don Fer- nando, was pleased to mention to you. ^I?*c/i. Oh! you are the person, then, of whom he spoke so handsomely. I engage you in my service, and consider you a valuable acquisition. From the specimens he showed me of your powers, you must be pretty well acquainted with the Greek and Latin authors. It is very evident your education has not been neglected. I am satisfied with your handwriting, and still more with your understanding. I thank my nephew, Don Fernando, for having given me such an able young man, whom I consider a rich acquisition. You transcribe so well, you must certainly understand grammar. Tell me, ingenuously, my friend, did you find nothing that shocked you in writing over the homily I sent you on trial, — some neglect, perhaps, in style, or some improper term ? 222 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Gil B. Oh! sir, I am not learned enough to make critical observations ; and if I was, I am persuaded the works of your grace would escape my censure. Arch. Young man, you are disposed to natter ; but tell me, which parts of it did you think most strikingly beautiful. Gil B. If, where all was excellent, any parts were particularly so, I should say they were the personification of hope, and the description of a good man's death. Arch. I see you have a delicate knowledge of the truly beau- tiful. This is what I call having taste and sentiment. Gil Bias, 1 henceforth give thyself no uneasiness about thy fortune, I will take care of that. I love thee, and as a proof of my affection, I will make thee my confidant : yes, my child, thou shalt be the repository of my most secret thoughts. Listen with attention to what I am going to say. My chief pleasure consists in preaching, and the Lord gives a blessing to my homilies, but I confess my weakness. The honor of being thought a perfect orator has charmed my imagination ; my performances are thought equally nervous and delicate ; but I would of all things avoid the fault of good authors, who write too long. Where- fore, my dear Gil Bias, one thing that I exact of thy zeal, is, whenever thou shalt perceive my pen smack of old age, and my genius flag, don't fail to advertise' me of it, for I don't trust to my own judgment, which may be seduced by self-love. That observation must proceed from a disinterested understanding, and I make choice of thine, which I know is good, and am resolved to stand by thy decision. Gil B. Thank heaven, sir, that time is far off. Besides, a genius like that of your grace, will preserve its vigor much better than any other ; or, to speak more justly, will be always the same. I look upon you as another Cardinal Ximenes," whose superior genius, instead of being weakened, seemed to acquire new strength by age. Arch. No flattery, friend : I know I am liable to sink all at once. People at my ago begin to feel infirmities, and the in- 1 Gil Bias, (zel bill). arose from his efforts to advance the 1 Francis Ximenes, (zi mo' nez), interests of the Church. He was a archbishop of Toledo, confessor to great patron of letters, and by his Queen Isabella of Spain, was born exertions and expenditure produced in 1437. He received the cardinal's the earliest edition of a polyglot BU feat, in 1507. His chief influence ble. He died November 8th, 1517. GIL BLAS AND THE OLD ARCHBISHOP. 223 firmities of the body often affect the understanding. I repeat it to thee again, Gil Bias, as soon as thou shalt judge mine in the least impaired, be sure to give me notice. And be not afraid of speaking freely and sincerely, for I shall receive thy advice as a mark of thy affection. Gil B. Your grace may always depend upon my fidelity. Arch. I know thy sincerity, Gil Bias ; and now tell me plainly, hast thou not heard tho people make some remarks upon my late homilies ? Gil B. Your homilies have always been admired, but it seems to me that tho last did not appear to have had so powerful an effect upon the audience as former ones. Arch. How, sir, has it met with any Aristarchus? Gil B. No, sir, by no means, such works as yours are not to be criticised ; everybody is charmed with them. Nevertheless, since you have laid your injunctions upon me to bo free and sin- cere, I will take the liberty to tell you that your last discourse, in my judgment, has not altogether the energy of your other performances. Did you not think so, sir, yourself ? Arch. So, then, Mr. Gil Bias, this piece is not to your taste ? Gil B. I don't say so, sir : I think it excellent, although a little inferior to your other works. Arch. I understand you ; you think I flag, don't you? Come, be plain ; you believe it is time for me to think of retiring. Gil B. I should not have been so bold as to speak so freely, if your grace had not commanded me ; I do no more, there- fore, than obey you ; and I most humbly beg that you will not be offended at my freedom. Arch. God forbid ! God forbid that I should find fault with it. I don't at all take it ill that you should sneak vour sentiments, it is your sentiment itself, only, that I find bad. I have been most egregiously deceived in your narrow understanding. Gil B. Your grace will pardon me for obeying — Arch. Say no more, my child, you are yet too raw to make proper distinctions. Be it known to you, I never composed a better homily than that which you disapprove ; for, my genius, thank Heaven, hath, as yet, lost nothing of its vigor : henceforth i Ar N is tar'chus was a celebrated revised the poems of Homer with grammarian of Samos. He was fa- such severity, that, ever after, all se- mous for his critical powers ; and he vere critics were called Aristarchi. 224 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. I will make a better choice of a confidant. Go ! go, Mr. Gil Bias, and tell my treasurer to give you a hundred ducats, and may Heaven conduct you with that sum. Adieu, Mr. Gil Bias ! I wish you all manner of prosperity, with a little more taste. Le Sage. Alain Le Sage, a French novelist and dramatist, was born in 1668. In 1692, after having studied at the Jesuit College of Vannes, he came to Paris, where he was admitted as an advocate, but soon betook himself exclusively to litera- ture. Few of his plays were successful ; and for many years his career was very obscure. Entering on the study of Spanish literature, he used models from that language for his comic novels, some of which are among the liveliest and witti- est of their class. His most celebrated work is " Gil Bias," from which the above is taken. He died at Boulogne, in 1747. II. 59. THE POET AND HIS CRITICS. THE poem was at length published. Alas, who that knows the heart of an author — of an aspiring one — will need be told what were the feelings of Maldura, when day after day, week after week passed on, and still no tidings of his book. To think it had failed, was wormwood to his soul. " No, that was impossible." Still the suspense, the uncertainty of its fate were insupportable. At last, to relieve his distress, he fastened the blamo on his unfortunate publisher ; though how he was in fault he knew not. Full of this thought, he was just saUying forth to vent his spleen on him, when his servant announced the Count Piccini. 1 2. " Now," thought Maldura, "I shall hear my fate :" and he was not mistaken ; for the Count was a kind of talking gazette. The poem was soon introduced, and Piccini rattled on wifh all he had heard of it. He had lately been piqued 3 by Maldura, and cared not to spare him. After a few hollow professions of regard, and a careless remark about the pain it gave him to repeat un- pleasant things, Piccini proceeded to p5ur them out one upon another with ruthless volubility. Then, stopping as if to take breath, he continued, " I see you are surprised at all this ; but indeed, my friend, I can not help thinking it principaUy owing to your not having suppressed your name ; for your high repu- tation, it seems, has raised such extravagant expectations as none but a first-rate genius could satisfy." 1 Piccini, (pit che' ne). 3 Piqued, (pekt), offended. THE POET AND HIS CRITICS. 225 3. "By which," observed Maldura, "lam to conclude that my work has failed? " Why, no — not exactly that ; it has Only not been praised — that is, I mean in the way you might have wished. But do not be depressed ; there'3 no knowing but the tide may yet turn in your favor." " Then I suppose the book is hardly as yet known?" "I beg your pardon — quite the con- trary. When your friend the Marquis introduced it at his last conversazione 1 every one present seemed quite an fait 7 on it, at least they all talked as if they had read it." 4. Maldura bit his lips. "Pray, who were the company?" " Oh, all your friends, I assure you : Guattani, Martello, Pessuti, the mathematician, Alfieri, Benuci, the Venetian Castelli, and the old Ferraresc Carnesecchi : these were the principal, but there were twenty others who had each something to say." Maldura could not but perceive the malice of this enumeration ; but he checked his rising choler. " Well," said he, " if I under- stand you, there was but one opinion respecting my poem with all this company?" 5. "Oh, by no means. Their opinions were as various aa their characters." " Well, Pessuti — what said he ?" " Why you know he's a mathematician, and should not regard him. But yet, to do him justice, he is a very nice critic, and not unskilled in poetry." " Go on, sir, I can bear it." " Why then, it was Pessuti's opinion that the poem had more learning than genius." "Proceed, sir." "Martello denied it both ; but he, you know, is a disappointed author. Guattani differed but little from Pessuti as to its learning, but contended that you eertainly showed great invention in your fable — which was like nothing that ever did, or could happen. But I fear I annoy you." 6. " Go on, I beg, sir." " The next who spoke was old Carnesecchi, who confessed that he had no doubt he should have been delighted with the poem, could he have taken hold of it ; but it was so en regie, 3 and like a hundred others, that it put him in mind of what is called a polished gentleman, who talks and bows, and slips through a great crowd without leaving any impression. Another person, whose name I have forgotten, praised the versification, but objected to the thoughts." 1 Conversazione, (kon'ver safsc- a Au fait, (6 fa'), expert; well in- b y na), a meeting for conversation, structed. particularly on literary subjects. 3 En regie, according to rule ; stiff 226 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 7. " Because they -were absurd ?" " Oh, no, for the opposite reason — because they had all been long ago known to be good. Castelli thought that a bad reason ; for his part, he said, he liked them all the better for that — it was like shaking hands with an Id acquaintance in every line. Another observed, that at least no critical court could lawfully condemn them, as they could each plead an alibi. 1 Not an alibi, said a third, but a double; so they should be burnt for sorcery "With all my heart, said a fourth ; but not the poor author, for he has certainly satisfied us that he is no conjuror. 8. " Then Castelli — but, 'faith, I don't know how to proceed." " You are over-delicate, sir. Speak out, I pray you." " Well, Benuci finished by the most extravagant eulogy I ever heard." Maldura took breath. "For he compared your hero to the Apollo Belvedere, 2 your heroine to the Venus 3 de Medicis, and your subordinate characters to the Diana, 4 the Hercules, 5 the Antln'ous, 6 and twenty other celebrated antiques ; declared them all equally well wrought, and beautiful — and like them too, equally cold, hard, and motionless. In short, he maintained that you were the boldest and most original poet he had ever known ; for none but a hardy genius, who consulted nobody's taste but his own, would have dared, like you, to draw his animal life from a statue gallery, and his vegetable from a hortus siccus. 7 9. Maldura's heart stiffened within him, but his pride con- trolled him, and he masked his thoughts with something like composure. Yet he dared not trust himself to speak, but stood looking at Piccini, as if waiting for him to go on. " I believe 1 Al r i bi, elsewhere. To plead an beauty. It was discovered in the alibi is to show that the accused was villa of Adrian, at Tivoli, the favorite in some other place when the crime country-seat of the ancient Romans, was committed. and carried to Florence in 1695. 3 Apollo Belvedere, a statue of 4 Dl a' na, an ancient Italian di- the Greek divinity Apollo. In this vinity, whom the Romans identified the god is represented with com- with the Greek Artemis. mandingbut serene majesty; sublime 6 Her' cu les, the most celebrated intellect and physical beauty are of all the heroes of antiquity, combined in the most wonderful • Antinous, (an tin' o us), a beauti- manner. It was discovered in 1503 ful youth, celebrated as the compan- at Rett uno, and is now in the Vatican ion and favorite of Adrian, the Ro- at Rome. man emperor, drowned in 132. 3 Venus de Medicis, a statue ad- 7 Hortus siccus, a dry or unpro. mired as the perfection of female ductive garden. THE SENSITIVE AUTHOR. 227 that's all," said the count, carelessly twirling his hat, and rising to take leave. Maldura roused himself, and, making an effort, said, " No, sir, there is one person whom you have only named — Alfieri ; what did he say ?" — " Nothing !" Piccini pronounced this word with a graver tone than usual : it was his fiercest bolt, and he knew that a show of feeling would send it home. Then, after pausing a moment, he hurried out of the room. Allston. Washington Allston, universally acknowledged as of the first eminence among American painters, was born in Charleston, South Carolina, November 5th, 1779. He received his early education at the school of Mr. Robert Rogers, in Newport, Rhode Island, entered Harvard College in 17%, and received his baccalaureate degree in 1800. Immediately after leaving college he chose his vocation, embarked for London in 1801, and became a student of the Royal Academy, of which Benjamin West, the distinguished American painter, was then president. Here he remained three years, and then, after a sojourn at Paris, went to Rome, where he resided four years, and became the intimate associate- of Coleridge. In 1809 he returned to America for a period of two years, which he passed in Boston, where he married the sister of the Rev. Dr. Charming. In 1811 he went a second time to England, where his reputation as a painter was now well established. He received by his picture of the " Dead Man raised by the Bones of Elisha" a prize of two hundred guineas, at the British Institute, where the first artists in the world were his competitors. Here he published a small volume, "The Sylphs of the Seasons, and other Poems," which was re- printed in Boston the same year. This year his wife died, an event which af- fected him deeply. He returned home in 1818, and resumed his residence at Boston. In 1830 he married a sister of Richard II. Dana, and removed to Cam- bridgeport. His lectures on art were commenced about the same period, four only of which were completed, and these did not appear until after his decease. Besides his lectures, his poems, and many short pieces which have since been given to the public, Mr. Allston was the author of u Monaldi," a story of extra- ordinary power and interest, from which the above extract is taken. He died very suddenly, on the night of the 8th of July, 1843, leaving but one painting incomplete, " Belshazzar's Feast, or the Handwriting on the Wall," upon which he had been engaged at intervals for nearly twenty years. m. 60. THE SENSITIVE AUTHOR. 1 Dangle, Sneer, Sir Fretful Plagiary. DANGLE. Ah, my dear friend ! AVe v>-ere just speaking of your tragedy. Admirable, Sir Fretful, admirable ! Sneer. You never did anything beyond it, Sir Fretful, — never in your life. ■ ~~ — ■ • 1 In this scene from " The Critic, Cumberland, a vain and sensitive, or a Tragedy Rehearsed," Sheridan though excellent man, a writer of caricatured the foibles of Richard several plays, who died in 1811. 228 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Sir F. Sincerely, then, — you do like the piece ? Sneer. Wonderfully! Sir F. But come now, there must be something that you think might be mended, hey ? — Mr. Dangle, has nothing struck you ? Dan. Why, faith, it is but an ungracious thing, for the most part, to Sir F. Yv 7 ith most authors it is just so indeed ; they are in general strangely tenacious ! But, for my part, I am never so well pleased as when a judicious critic points out any defect in me ; for what is the purpose of showing a work to a friend, if you don't mean to profit by his opinion ? Sneer. Very true. Why, then, though I seriously admire the piece upon the whole, yet there is one small objection ; which, if you'll give me leave, I'll mention. Sir F. Sir, you can't oblige me more. Sneer. I think it wants incident. Sir F. You surprise me! — wants incident? Sneer. Yes ; I own, I think the incidents arc too few. Sir F. Believe me, Mr. Sneer, there is no person for whose judgment I have a more implicit deference. But I protest to you, Mr. Sneer, I am only apprehensive that the incidents are too crowded. — My dear Dangle, how does it strike yon ? Dan. Really, I can't agree with my friend Sneer. I think the plot quite sufficient ; and the first four acts by many degrees the best I ever read or saw in my life. If I might venture to sug- gest anything, it is that the in'terest rather falls off in the fifth. Sir F. Rises, I believe, you mean, sir Dan. No ; I don't, upon my word. Sir F. Yes, }*es, you do, upon my word, — it certainly don't fall off, I assure you. No, no, it don't fall off. Dan. Well, Sir Fretful, I wish 3*011 may be ablo to get rid as easily of the newspaper criticisms as you do of ours. Sir F. The newspapers ! — Sir, they are the most villainous — ■ licentious — abominable — infernal — Not that I ever read them ! No ! I make it a rule never to look into a newspaper. Dan. You are quite right, — for it certainly must hurt an author of delicate feelings to see the liberties they take. Sir F. No ! — quite the contrary ; their abuse is, in fact, the best panegyric — I like it of all things. An author's reputation is only in danger from their support. THE SENSITIVE AUTHOR. 2?0 Surer. Wh}-, that's true, — and that attack now on you the other day SirF. What? where? Dan. Ay, you moan in a paper of Thursday ; it was com- pletely ill-natured, to be sure. SirF. O, so much the better — Ha! ha! ha! — I wouldn't have it otherwise. Dan. Certainly, it's only to be laughed at • (or Sir F. You don't happen to recollect what the fellow said, do you ? Sneer. Pray, Danq-le — Sir Fretful seems a little anxious Sir F. O no ! — anxious, — not I, — not the least. I — But ono may as well hear, you know. Dan. Sneer, do you recollect? — [Aside to Sneer.] Make out fjometking. Sneer. [Aside to Dangle.] I will. [Aloud.] Yc.% yea, I re- member perfectly. Sir F. Well, and pray now — not that it signifies — what might the gentleman say ? Sheer. Why, he roundly asserts that you have not the slightest invention or original genius whatever ; though you aro the greatest traducer of all other authors living. Sir F. Ha ! ha ! ha ! Very good ! Sneer. That, as to comedy, you have not one idea of your own, he believes, even in your commonplace-book, where stray jokes and pilfered witticisms are kept with as much method a3 tho ledger of the Lost and Stolen Office. Sir F. Ha ! ha ! ha ! Very pleasant ! Sneer. Nay, that you are so unlucky as not to have the skill even to steal with taste : but that you glean from the refuse of obscure volumes, where more judicious plagiarists have been before you ; so that the body of your work is a composition of dregs and sediments, — like a bad tavern's worst wine. Sir F. Ha ! ha ! Sneer. In your more serious efforts, he says, your bombast (bum'bast) would be less intolerable, if the thoughts were ever suited to the expression ; but the homeliness of the sentiment stares through the fantastic encumbrance of its fine language, like a clown in one of the new uniforms ! Sir F. Ha ! ha ! 230 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Sneer. That your occasional tropes and flowers suit the gen- eral coarseness of your style, as tambour sprigs would a ground of linsey-wolsey ; while your imitations of Shakspeare resem- ble the mimicry of FalstafPs Page, and are about as near the standard of the original. SirF. Ha! Sneer. In short, that even the finest passages you steal are of no service to you ; for the poverty of your own language pre- vents their assimilating ; so that they lie on the surface like lumps of marl on a barren moor, encumbering what it is not in their power to fertilize ! Sir F. [After great agitation.] Now, another person would be vexed at this. Sneer. Oh ! but I wouldn't have told you, only to divert' you. Sir F. I know it — I am diverted — Ha ! ha ! ha ! — not the least invention ! — Ha ! ha ! ha ! very good ! very good ! Sneer. Yes — no genius ! Ha ! ha ! ha ! Dan. A severe rogue ! ha ! ha ! But you are quite right, Sir Fretful, never to read such nonsense. You are quite right. Sir F. To be sure — for, if there is anything to one's praise, it is a foolish vanity to be gratified at it ; and if it is abuse, — why, one is always sure to hear of it from one good-natured friend or another ! _ _, R. B. Sheridan. SECTION XII. I. 61. ANCIENT AND MODERN WRITERS. THE classics possess a peculiar charm, from the circumstance that they have been the models, I might almost say the masters, of composition and thought in all ages. In the con- templation of these august teachers of mankind, wo are filled with conflicting emotions. 2. They are the early voice of the world, better remembered and more cherished still than all the intermediate words that have been uttered ; as the lessons of childhood still haunt us when the impressions of later years have been effaced from the ANCIENT AND MODERN WRITERS. 231 mind. But they show with most unwelcome frequency the tokens of the world's childhood, before passion had yielded to the sway of reason and the affections. They want the highest charm of purity, of righteousness, of elevated sentiments, of love to God and man. 3. It is not in the frigid philosoj^hj' of the Porch and the Academy that wo are to seek these ; not in the marvelous teachings of Socrates, 1 as they come mended by the mellifluous words of Plato ; not in the resounciing lino of Homer, on whose inspiring tale of blood Alexander 3 pillowed his head ; not in the animated strain of Pindar,* where virtue is pictured in the suc- cessful strife of an ath'leto 5 at the Isthmian games ; not in the torrent of Demosthenes, dark with self-love and the spirit of vengeance ; not in the fitful philosophy and intemperate elo- quence of Tully," not in the genial libertiuism of Horace, 7 or the stately atheism of Lucretius. 8 No : these must not be our mas- ters ; in none of these are we to seek the way of life. 4. For eighteen hundred years the spirit of these writers has been engaged in weaponless contest with the Sermon on the Mount, and those two sublime commandments on which hang all the law and the prophets. The strife is still pending. Heathenism, which has £>ossessed itself of such siren forms, is not yet exorcised. It still tempts the young, controls the affairs of active life, and haunts the meditations of age. 5. Our own productions, though they may yield to those of the ancients in the arrangement of ideas, in method, in beauty 1 S5c' rates, an illustrious Grecian in May or June, b. c. 323. philosopher and teacher of youth, < Pindar, the greatest of the Greek was born at Athens, in the year 4G8 lyric poets, born b. c. 518, and died B. c. Though the best of all the b. c. 439. men of his time, and one of the wisest ■ Ath' lete, a contender for victory and most just of all men, he unjustly in wrestling or other games, suffered the punishment of death e Tully, Marcus Tullius Cicero, for impiety, at the age of seventy. 7 H5r r ace, the Roman poet, bom 2 Mel liTlu ous, flowing with hon- on the 8th of December, b. c. Go, ey ; sweetly flowing ; smooth. and died on the 19th of November, 3 Alexander the Great, son of b. c. 8. Philip, king of Macedonia, one of 8 Lucretius, (lu kreT shi us), an em- the States of Greece, was born in the inent philosopher and poet ; born at autumn, b. c. 35G. lie made so manv Rome about 9G B. c., and said to have conquests that he was styled the died by his own hands in the forty- Conqueror of the World. He died fourth year of his age, about 62. 232 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. of form, and in freshness of illustration, are immeasurably superior in the truth, delicacy, and elevation of their sentiments ; above all, in the benign recognition of that great Christian reve- lation, the brotherhood of man. How vain are eloquence and poetry, compared with this heaven-descended truth! Put in one scale that simole utterance, and in the other the lore of an- tiquity, with its accumulating glosses and commentaries, and the last will be light and trivial in the balance. Greet poetry has been likened to the song of the nightingale, as she sits in the rich, symmetrical crown of the palm-tree, trilling her thick- warbled notes ; but even this is less sweet and tender than the music of the human heart. Sumner. Charles Sumner, son of Charles Pinckney Sumner, sheriff of Suffolk, Massa- chusetts, was born in Boston, 1811. lie is widely known for the extent of his legal knowledge and general attainments. As an orator and writer, he 6tands deservedly high. His style is rapid and energetic, with much fullness of thought and illustration. He has a great deal of enthusiasm and courage, as is shown by his discourse on the "True Grandeur of Nations." On the death of Judge- Story, in 1845, he was offered the vacant seat on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, which honor he persisted in declining. He was elected to the Senate of the United States in 1851, to fill the vacancy created by the resig- nation of Daniel Webster, and still retains that position (18GG). II. C2. LANGUAGE. SOME words on Language may be well applied ; And take them kindly, though they touch your pride : Words lead to things ; a scale is more precise, — Coarse speech, bad grammar, swearing, drinking, vice. Our cold Northeaster's icy fetter clips The native freedom of the Saxon lips : See the brown peasant of the plastic South, How all his passions play about his mouth ! "With us, the feature that transmits the soul, A frozen, passive, palsied breathing-hole. 2. The crampy shackles of the ploughboy's walk Tie the small muscles, when he strives to talk ; Not all the pumice of the polished town Can smooth this roughness of the barnyard down Iiich, honored, titled, he betrays his race By this one mark — he's awkward in tho face ; — LANGUAGE. 233 Nature's rude impress, long before he knew The sunny street that holds the sifted few. 3. It can't be helped, though, if we're taken young, We gain some freedom of the lips and tongue ; But school and college often try in vain To break the padlock of our boyhood's chain : One stubborn word will prove this axiom true — No late-caught rustic can enunciate view (vu). 4. A few brief stanzas may be well employed To speak of errors we can all avoid. Learning condemns beyond the reach of hope Tho careless churl that speaks of soap for soap : Her edict exiles from her fair abode The clownish voice that utters road for road, Less stem to him who calls his coat a coat, And steers his boat believing it a boat, She pardoned one, our classic city's boast, Who said, at Cambridge, most instead of most ; But knit her brows, and stamped her angry foot, To hear a teacher call a root ' a root. 2 5. Once more : speak clearly, if you speak at all ; Carve every word before you let it fall ; Don't, like a lecturer or dramatic star, Try over hard to roll the British E ; Do put your accents in the proper spot ; Don't— let me beg you— don't say " How?" for " Whatf* And, when you stick on conversation's burrs, Don't strew the pathway with those dreadful ur$S Holmes. Oliver "Wendell Holmes, son of the late Abiel Holmes, D.D., was bom at Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the 29th of August, 1S09. He received his early education at Phillips Exeter Academy, and entered Harvard University in \> - On being graduated, after a year's application to the study of law, he relinquished it, and devoted himself with ardor and industry to the pursuit of medicine. He visited Europe in the spring of 1S33, principally residing at Paris while abroad, where he attended the hospitals, became personally acquainted with many of : Root, (rot). Paying its place by the unmeaning a Root, (rut). syllable " ur," is here happily con- s Urs, the drawling style in which demned. Such habits may easily be many persons are in tho habit of corrected by a little presence of mind, talking,heedlesslyhesitatingtothink or by following the direction, Think of a word, and the meanwhile 6iip- twice before you speak once. 234 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. the most eminent physicians of France, and acquired an intimate knowledge of the language. He returned to Boston near the close of 1835, and in the follow- ing spring commenced the practice of medicine in that city. He soon acquired a large and lucrative practice, and in 1847 succeeded Dr. Warren as Professor of Anatomy in the medical department of Harvard University. His earlier poems appeared in " The Collegian," a monthly miscellany, published in 1830, by the under-graduates at Cambridge. His longest poem, " Poetry, a Metrical Essay," was delivered before a literary society at Cambridge in 1835. He published M Terpsichore," a poem read at the annual dinner of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, in 1843 ; and in 1846, " Urania, a Rhyme Lesson," pronounced before the Mer- cantile Library Association. Since the " Atlantic Monthly" was started in 1855, he has been a leading contributor, both in prose and verse ; and here first ap- peared his " Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," and " Elsie Venner." A completo edition of his poems was published in 1862. Dr. Holmes is a poet of art and humor and genial sentiment, with a style remarkable for its purity, terseness, and point, and for an exquisite finish and grace. "His lyrics ring and sparkle like cataracts of silver, and his serious pieces arrest the attention by touches of the most genuine pathos and tenderness." m. 63. SOUND AND SENSE. THAT, in the formation of language, men have been much influenced by a regard to the nature of the things and ac- tions meant to be represented, is a fact of which every known speech gives proof. In our own language, for instance, who does not perceive in the sound of the words thunder, boundless, terri- ble, a something appropriate to the sublime ideas intended to be conveyed ? In the word crash we hear the very action implied. Imp, elf, — how descriptive of the miniature beings to which we apply them ! Fairy, — how light and tripping, just like the fairy herself ! — the word, no more than the thing, seems fit to bend the grass-blade, or shake the tear from the blue-eyed flower. 2. Pea is another of those words expressive of light, diminu- tive objects ; any man born without sight and touch, if such ever are, could tell what kind of thing a pea was from the sound of the word alone. Of picturesque 1 words, sylvan and crystal are among our greatest favorites. Sylvan I — what vis- ions of beautiful old sunlit forests, with huntsmen and bugle- horns, arise at the sound! Crystal! — does it not glitter like the very thing it stands for ? Yet crystal is not so beautiful as its own adjective. Crystalline ! — why, the whole mind is light- 1 Picf ur Ssque', expressing that peculiar kind of beauty that is pleas- ing in a picture, natural or artificial. SOUND AND SENSE. 235 ened up with its shine. And this superiority is as it should be ; for crystal can only bo one comparatively small object, -while crystalline may refer to a mass — to a world of crystals. 3. It will be found that natural objects have a larger propor- tion of expressive names among them than any other things. The eagle, — what appropriate daring and sublimity ! the dove, — what softness ! the linnet, — what fluttering gentleness ! " That which men call a rose" would not by any other name, or at least by many other names, smell as sweet. Lily, — what tall, cool, pale, lady-like beauty have we here! Violet, jessamine, hya- cinth, a-nem'onc, geranium ! — beauties, all of them, to the ear as well as the eye. 4. The names of the precious stones have also a beauty and magnificence above most common things. Diamond, sajtpfiire, am'ethyst, btr'yl, ruby, ag'ate, pearl, jasper, topaz, garnet, cnvrald, — what a caskanet of sparkling sounds! Diadem and coronet glitter with gold and precious stones, like the objects they rep- resent. It is almost unnecessary to bring forward instances of the fine things which are represented in English by fine words. Let us take any sublime passage of our poetry, and we shall hardly find a word which is inappropriate in sound. For ex- ample : — The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack l behind. The "gorgeous palaces," "the solemn temples," — how ad'mira- bly do these lofty sounds harmonize with the objects ! 5. The relation between the sound and sense of certain words is to be ascribed to more than ono cause. Many are evidently imitative representations of the things, movements, and acts, which are meant to bo expressed. Others, in which we only find a general relation, as between a beautiful thing, and a beau- tiful word, a ridiculous thing and a ridiculous word, or a sublime idea and a sublime word, must be attributed to those faculties, 1 Rack, properly, moisture ; clamp- quently read, "Leave not a wreck ness ; hence, thin, flying, broken behind." It is manifest, however, clouds, or any portion of floating that Shakspeare wrote rack, a more vapor in the sky. This line is fre- poetical and descriptive epithet. 236 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. native to every mind, which enable us to perceive and enjoy the beautiful, the ridiculous, and the sublime. 6. Doctor Wallis, who wrote upon English grammar in the reign of Charles II., represented it as a peculiar excellence of our language, that, beyond all others, it expressed the nature of the objects which it names, by employing sounds sharper, softer, weaker, stronger, more obscure, or more stridulous, 1 according as the idea which is to be suggested requires. He gives various examples. Thus, words formed upon st always deuote firmness and strength, analogous 2 to the Latin sto ; as, stand, stay, staff, stop, stout, steady, stake, stamp, &c. 7. Words beginning with str intimate violent force and energy ; as, strive, strength, stress, stripe, &c. TJir implies forcible mo- tion : as, throw, throb, thrust, threaten, thraldom, thrill : gl, smoothness or silent motion ; as, glib, glide : tor, obliquity or distortion ; as, wry, wrest, wrestle, wring, wrong, wrangle, wrath, &c. : siv, silent agitation, or lateral 3 motion ; as sway, swing, swerve, sweep, swim : si, a gentle fall or less observable motion ; as, slide, slip, sly, slit, slow, slack, sling : sp, dissipation or ex- pansion ; as, spread, sprout, sprinkle, split, spill, spring. 8. Terminations in ash indicate something acting nimbly and sharply ; as, crash, dash, rash, flash, lash, slash : terminations in ash, something acting more obtusely and dully ; as, crush, brush, hush, gush, blush. The learned author produces a great many more examples of the same kind, which seem to leave no doubt that the analogies of sound ha've had some influence on the formation of words. At the same time, in all speculations of this kind, there is so much room for fancy to operate, that they ought to be adopted with much caution in forming any general theory. Chambers. Robert Chambers, a noted Scottish writer and publisher, remarkable for his energy and industry, -was born in 1801. He, with his brother William, com- menced trade in book-shops in Edinburgh ; and, subsequently, became author and publisber. The brothers arc completely identified with the cheap and useful literature of the day, in this country, as well as in the United Kingdom. 1 Strid' u lous, making a creaking form, design, effects, etc., or in the Bound. relations borne to other objects. 2 A nal' o gous, correspondent ; s Lat' er al, pertaining or belong- having a similarity with regard to ing to the sido ; from side to side. THE POWER OF WORDS. 237 IV. 64. THE POWER OF WORDS. WORDS arc most effective when arranged in that order which is called style. The great secret of a good style, we are told, is to have proper words in proper places. To mar- shal one's verbal battalions in such order that they must bear at once upon all quarters of a subject, is certainly a great art. This is done in different ways. Swift, 1 Temple, 2 Addison, Hume, 3 Gibbon, Johnson, Burke,* are all great generals in the discipline of their verbal armies, and the conduct of their paper wars. Each has a system of tactics of his own, and excels in the use of some particular weapon. 2. The tread of Johnson's style is heavy and sonorous, resem- bling that of an elephant or a mail-clad warrior. He is fond of leveling an obstacle by a polysyllabic battering-ram. Burke's words are continually practicing the broad sword exercise, and sweeping down adversaries with every stroke. Arbuthnot, 1 ' " plays his weapon like a tongue of flame." Addison draws up his light infantry in orderly array, and marches through sen- tence after sentence, without having his ranks disordered or his line broken. 3. Luther is different. His words arc "half battle;" "his smiting idiomatic phrases seem to cleave into the very secret of 1 Jonathan Swift, of English de- Edinburgh, Scotland, April 2Gtli, scent, author of the" Travels of Lem- 1711, and died in August, 177G. uel Gulliver," was born at Dublin, in * Edmund Burke, a celebrated November, 1GG7. In the spring of British orator, statesman, and philos- 1713 he was appointed Dean of St. ophcr, was born at Dublin, Jan. 1st, Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. As a 1730, and died July 8th, 1797. writer of plain, pure, vigorous, idio- 6 John Arbuthnot, an eminent matic English, Swift had no equal ; English physician of the 17th cen- and he had hardly any superior as a tury, but more distinguished as a satirist. He died in October, 1745. man of wit and letters ; the associate 3 Sir William Temple, an eminent of Popeand Swift, and the companion statesman and writer, born at Lon- of Bolingbroke at the court of Queen don, in 1628, and died in 1700. Anne : born in 1G75, and died in 1735. 3 David Hume, one of the most 6 Martin Luther, the great Ger- celebrated historians and philoso- man reformer, was born November phers of Great Britain, author of a 10th, 1483, and died on the 18th of "Historv of England," was born at February, 1546. 238 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. the matter." Gibbon's legions are heavily armed, and march with precision and dignity to the music of their own tramp. They are splendidly equipped, but a nice eye can discern a little rust beneath their fine apparel, and there are suttlers in his camp who lie, cog, and talk gross obscenity. Macaulay, brisk, livery, keen, and energetic, runs his thoughts rapidly through his sentence, and kicks out of the way every word which obstructs his passage. He reins in his steed only when he has reached his goal, and then does it with such celerity that he is nearly thrown backward by the suddenness of his stoppage. 4. Gifford's ' words are moss-troopers, that waylay innocent travelers and murder them for hire. Jeffrey is a fine ''lance," with a sort of Ar'ab swiftness in his movement, and runs an iron-clad horseman through the eye before he has had time to close his helmet. John Wilson's 2 camp is a disorganized mass, who might do effectual service under better discipline, but who under his lead are suffered to carry on a rambling and predatory warfare, and disgrace their general by flagitious excesses. Some- times they steal, sometimes swear, sometimes drink, and some- times pray. 5. Swift's words are porcupine's quills, which he throws with unerring aim at whoever approaches his lair. All of Ebenezer Elliot's 3 words are gifted with huge fists, to pummel and bruise. Chatham 4 and Mirabeau 5 throw hot shot into their opponents' magazines. Talfourd's 6 forces are orderly and disciplined, and march to the music of the Dorian flute ; those of Keats 7 keep time to the tones of the pipe of Phcebus ; 8 and the hard, harsh- 1 William Gifford, a celebrated greatest orators and writers of France, English writer, was born in 1756, and a leader of the revolution, was and died in 182G. born in 1749, and died in 1791. 8 John Wilson, a well-known and 6 Thomas Noon Talfourd, an able very eminent Scottish writer, was English poet and prose writer, an born in 1785, and died in 1854. advocate, judge, and member of Par- 8 Ebenezer Elliot, a genuine poet, liament,beloved for his social virtues, the celebrated " Corn Law Rhymer," was born in 1795, and died in 1854. was born in 1781, and died in 1849. 7 John Keats, a true poet, born in 4 Chatham, William Pitt, Earl of London, in 1796, and died at Rome, Chatham, one of the most celebrated in 1820. of British statesmen and orators, 8 Phoebus, the Bright or Pure, an born November 15th, 1708, and died epithet of Apollo, used to signify the May 11th, 1778. brightness and purity of youth, also * Mirabeau, (me N ra bo'), one of the applied to him as the Sun-god. THE POWER OF WORDS 1>,'J9 featured battalions of Maginn, 1 are always preceded by a brass band. Hallam's* word-infantry can do much execution, when they are not in each other's way. Pope's phrases are cither daggers or rapiers. 6. Willis's words are often tipsy with the champagne of the fancy, but even when they reel and stagger they keep the line of grace and beauty, and though scattered at first by a fierce onset from graver cohorts, soon reunite without wound or loss.j John Neal's forces are multitudinous, and fire briskly at every thing. They occupy all the provinces of letters, and are nearly useless from being spread over too much ground. Everett's weapons are ever kept in good order, and shine well in the sun, but they are little calculated for warfare, and rarely kill when they strike. Webster's words are thunder-bolts, which some- times miss the Titans at whom they are hurled, but always leave enduring marks when they strike. 7. Hazlitt's 1 verbal army is sometimes drunk and surly, some- times foaming with passion, sometimes cool and malignant ; but drunk or sober, are ever dangerous to cope with. Some of Tom Moore's words are shining dirt, which he flings with excellent aim. This hst might be indefinitely extended, and arranged with more regard to merit and chronology. My own words, in this connection, might be compared to ragged, undisciplined militia, w T hich could be easily routed by a charge of horse, and which are apt to fire into each other's faces. WnirpLE. E. P. Wniri'LE, one of the youngest and most brilliant of American writers, was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, on tbe 8th of March, 1B11>. "When four years of age, his family removed to Salem, ■where he attended various schools until he was fifteen, when he entered the Bank of General Interest in that city as a clerk. In his eighteenth year, he went to Boston, where he has ever since been occupied mainly with commercial pursuits. Although, from the age of fourteen, Mr. Whipple has been a writer for the press, occasionally writing re- markably well, he was only known as a writer to his few associates and confidants until 1843, when he published in the Boston Miscellany a paper on Macaulay, rivaling in analysis, and reflection, and richness of diction, the best productions 1 William Maginn, L.L.D., an able ar, one of the greatest British his- British writer of prose and poetry, a torians, author of " View of the State frequentcontributor to "Blackwood's of Europe during the Middle Ages," Magazine," the founder of " Frazer's born in 1TT7, and died Jan. 21st, 18o9. Magazine," was born at Cork, in s William Hazlitt, a well-known 1794, and died at Walton-on-the and very able British essayist and Thames, in 1842. critic of art and poetry, born in 1778, * Henry Hallam, a profound schol- and died in 1830. 240 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. of that brilliant essayist. He has since published, in the North American lie- view, articles on the Puritans, American Poets, Daniel Webster as an Author, Old English Dramatists, British Critics, South's Sermons, Byron, Wordsworth, Talfourd, Sydney Smith, and other subjects; in the American Review, on Beaumont and Fletcher, English Poets of the Nineteenth Century, etc. ; and in other periodicals, essays and reviewals enough to form several volumes. As a critic, he writes with keen discrimination, cheerful confidence, and unhesitating freedom ; illustrating truth with almost unerring precision, and producing a fair and distinct impression of an author. His style is sensuous, flowing, and idio- matic, abounding in unforced antitheses, apt illustrations, and natural grace. V. 65. FROM THE ESSAY ON CRITICISM. ~YXT"KOEVER thinks a faultless piece to sec V V Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be. In every work regard the writer's end, Since none can compass more than they intend ; And, if the means be just, the conduct true, Applause, in spite of trivial faults, is due. As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit, To avoid great errors must the less commit ; Neglect the rules each verbal critic lays ; For not to know some trifles, is a praise. Most critics, fond of some subservient art, Still make the whole depend upon a part : They talk of principles, but notions prize, And all to one loved folly sacrifice. 2. Some to conceit alone their taste confine, And glittering thoughts struck out at every line ; Pleased with a work where nothing's just or fit ; One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit. Poets, like painters, thus unskilled to trace The naked nature, and the living grace, With gold and jewels cover every part. And hide with ornaments their want of art. True wit is Nature to advantage dressed, What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed ; Something, whoso truth convinced at sight we find, That gives us back the image of our mind. As shades more sweetly recommend the light, So modest plainness sefes off sprightly wit ; FROM THE ESSAY ON CRITICISM. '241 For works may have more wit than does them good, As bodies perish through excess of blood. 3. Others for language all their care express, And value books, as women men — for dress : Their praise is still — the style is excellent : The sense, they humbly take upon content. Words are like leaves ; and where they most abound, Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found. False eloquence, like the prismatic glass, Its gaudy colors spreads on every place ; The face of Nature we no more survey, All glares alike, without distinction gay : But true expression, like the unchanging sun, Clears and improves whate'er it shines upon ; It gilds all objects, but it alters none. 4. Expression is the dress of thought, and still Appears more decent, as more suitable : A vile conceit in pompous words expressed, Is like a clown in regal purple dressed ; For different styles with different subjects sort, As several garbs, with country, town, and court. In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold ; Alike fantastic, if too new or old : Be not the first bv whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside. 5. But most by numbers judge a poet's song ; And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong. In the bright Muse though thousand charms conspire, Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire ; "Who haunt Parnassus ' but to please their ear, Not mend their minds ; as some to church repair, Not for the doctrine, but the music thero. These, equal syllables alone require, Though oft the ear tho open vowels tire ; "While expletives their feeble aid do join, And ten slow words oft creep in one dull lino : "While they ring round the same unvaried chimes, "With sure returns of still expected rhymes ; 1 Par nas' sus, a celebrated mountain in Greece, considered in mythology as sacred to Apollo and the Muses. 11 242 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Where'er you find the " cooling western breeze," In the next line it "whispers through the trees :" If crystal streams " with pleasing murmurs creep,' The reader's threatened (not in Tain) with " sleep :' Then at the last and only couplet, fraught With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, A needless Alexandrine 1 ends the song, That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along. 6. Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know What's roundly smooth or languishingly slow ; And praise the easy vigor of a line, Where Denham's 2 strength and Waller's 3 sweetness join. True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learned to dance. Tis not enough no harshness gives offence ; The sound must seem an echo to the sense : Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows, And the cool stream in smoother numbers flows ; But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar. 7. When Ajax 4 strives some rock's vast weight to throw; The line too labors, and the words move slow : Not so when swift Camilla 6 scours the plain, Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main : Hear how Timutheiis' G varied lays surprise, Aud bids altern'ate passions fall and rise ! While, at each change, the son of Libyan Jove T i Al ex an' drine, a verso or lino num, was one of the swift-footed ser of twelve syllables, so called from a vants of Diana, accustomed to the poem written in French, on the life chase and to war. Virgil represents of Alexander. her as so swift and light of foot, that 3 Sir J. Denham, an English wri- she could run over a field of corn with- ter of verse, born in 1C15, and died out bending the stalks, or over the in 1GG8. sea without wetting her feet. 3 Edmund Waller, one of the most c Ti mo' the us, a fr mous musician famous of the early English poets, and poet, born at Miletus, B. C. 446, born in 1G03, and died in 1G8T. and died in 357, in the ninetieth 4 Ajax, one of the Grecian princes year of his age. Also the name of a in the Trojan war, and, next to distinguished flute-player, the favor- Achilles, the bravest. ite of Alexander the Great. 6 Camilla., daughter of King Meta- 7 Son of Libyan Jove, a name bus, of the Volsoian town of Triver- which Alexander theGreatarrogated. PARALLEL BETWEEN POPE AND DRYDEN. 213 Now burns with glory, and then melts with love ; Now his tierce eyes with sparkling fury glow ; Now sighs steal out, and tears begin to flow : Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found, And the world's victor stood subdued by sound. Por-E. Alexander PorE, the poet, to whom English poetry and the English language are greatly Indebted, was born May 22d, 1688, In London. He was a very sickly child; and his bodily infirmities remained through life. He never grew to be taller than about four feet; and his deformity and weakness of limbs were so great, that, for several years before his death, he could not dress or undress him- self. Yet, after his twelfth year, he attended no school, but educated himself. The whole of his early life was that of a severe 6tudent. lie was a poet in infancy. The "Ode to Solitude" dates from his twelfth yc~r. At the age of sixteen he wrote his Rutonzfc, and his imitation of Chaucer. lie soon became acquainted with most of the eminent persons of the day, both In politics and literature. His " Essay on Criticism," which was composed when he was only twenty-one, is regarded by many as the finest piece of argumentative poetry In the English language. His celebrity was effectually and deservedly secured in 1712, by his first edition of the " Rape of the Lock." He soon after published "The Messiah," "The Temple of Fame," "Ode on St. Cecilia's Day," and " Windsor Forest." His translation of the Iliad, published by subscription, from 1715 to 1720, produced to the author more than £5,000. His edition of Bhakspeare, and his Odyssey, appeared in 1725. The "Essay on Man," and several other valuable poems, appeared in 1738. He died In May, 1744. For a description of Pope's fine poetic endowments, sec the next exercise. VI. GG. PARALLEL BETWEEN POPE AND DRYDEN. POPE professed to have learned Lis poetry from Dryden, whom, whenever an opportunity was presented, he praised through his whole life wife unvaried liberality ; and perhaps his character may receive some illustration, if he be compared with his master. 2. Integrity of understanding, and nicety of discernment, were not allotted in a ^?ss proportion to Dryden than to Pope. The rectitude of Dryden's mind was sufficiently shown by the dis- mission of his poetical prejudices, and the rejection of unnatural thoughts and rugged numbers. But Dryden never desired to apply all the judgment that he had. He wrote, and professed to write, merely for the people ; and when he pleased others, he contented himself. 3. He spent no time in struggles to rouse latent j)Owers ; ho never attempted to make that better which was already good, nor often to mend what he must havo known to be faulty. He 244 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. wrote, as he tells us, with very little consideration : when occa- sion or necessity called upon him, ho poured out what the pres- ent moment happened to supply, and, when once it had passed the press, ejected it from his mind ; for, when he had no pecu- niary interest he had no further solicitude. 4. Pope was not content to satisfy ; he desired to excel, and therefore always endeavored to do his best ; he did not court the candor, but dared the judgment of his reader, and, expecting no indulgence from others, he showed none to himself. He ex- amined lines and words with minute and punctilious observa- tion, and retouched every part with indefatigable diligence, till he had left nothing (nuth'ing) to be forgiven. 5. For this reason he kept his pieces very long in his hands, while he considered and reconsidered them. The only poems which can be supposed to have been written with such regard to the times as might hasten their publication, were the two satires of Thirty-eight : of which Dodsley ' told me, that they were brought to him by the author, that they might be fairly copied. "Every line," said he, "was then written twice over : I gave him a clean transcript, which he sent some time after- ward to me for the press, with every line written twice over a second time." 6. His declaration, that his care for his works ceased at their publication, was not strictly true. His parental attention never abandoned them : what he found amiss in the first edition, he silently corrected in those that followed. He appears to have revised the Hi'dd, and freed it from some of its imperfections ; and the Essay on Criticism received many improvements after its first appearance. It will seldom be found that he altered without adding clearness, elegance, or vigor Pope had per- haps the judgment of Dryden ; but Dryden certainly wanted the diligence of Pope. 7. In acquired knowledge, the superiority must be allowed to Dryden, whose education was more scholastic, and who, before he became an author, had been allowed more time for study, with better means of information. His mind has a larger range, and he collects his images and illustrations from a more exten- sive circumference of science. Dryden knew more of man in 1 Robert Dodsley, an able miscellaneous ■writer and well-known London bookseller, was born at Mansfield, 1703, and died 1764. PARALLEL BETWEEN POPE AND DRYDEN. 2-45 his general nature, and Pope in his local manners. The notions of Dryden were formed by comprehensive speculation, and those of Pope by minute attention. There is more dignity in the knowledge of Dryden, and more certainty in that of Pope. 8. Poetry was not the sole praise of either ; for both excelled likewise in prose ; but Pope did not borrow his prose from his predecessor. The stylo of Dryden is capricious and varied ; that of Pope is cautious and uniform. Dryden obeys the motions of his own mind ; Pope constrains his mind to his own rules of composition. Dryden is sometimes ve'hement and rajnd ; Pope is always smooth, uniform, and gentle. Dryden's page is a nat- ural field, rising into inequalities, and diver'sified by the varied exuberance of abundant vegetation ; Pope's is a velvet lawn, shaven by the scythe, and leveled by the roller. 9. Of genius, — that power which constitutes a poet — that quality without which judgment is cold, and knowledge is inert — -that energy which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates, — the superiority must, with some hesitation, bo allowed to Dry- den. It is not to be inferred, that of this poetical vigor Pope had only a little, because Dryden had more ; for every other writer since Milton must give place to Pope ; and even of Dry- den it must be said, that if he has brighter paragraphs, he has not better poems. 10. Dryden's performances were always hasty, either excited by some external occasion or extorted by domestic necessity ; he composed without consideration, and published without cor- rection. What his mind could supply at call, or gather in one excursion, was all that he sought, and all that he gave. The dilatory caution of Pope enabled him to condense his sentiments, to multiply his images, and to accumulate all that study might produce, or chance might supply. If the flights of Dryden, therefore, are higher, Pope continues longer on the wing. If of Dryden's fire the blaze is brighter, of Pope's the heat is more regular and constant. Dryden often surpasses expectation, and Pope never falls below it. Dryden is read with frequent aston- ishment, and Pope with perpetual delight. 11. This parallel will, I hope, when it is well considered, be found just ; and if the reader should suspect me, as I suspect myself, of some partial fondness for the memory of Dryden, let him not too hastily condemn me ; for meditation and inqui'ry 246 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. may, psrhap3, sliow hiin the reasonableness of ray determin- ation. Johnson. Dr. Samuel Johnson, one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of the literary men of the eighteenth century, was born at LitchQeld, England, on the ISth of September, 1700. In the child, the peculiarities which afterward distinguished the man were plainly discernible ;— great muscular strength, accompanied by much awkwardness, and many iutirmitics ; great quickness of parts, with a mor- bid propensity to sloth and procrastination; a kind and generous heart, with a gloomy and irritable temper. Indolent as he was, he acquired knowledge with such ease and rapidity, that at every school to which he was sent he was soon the best scholar. From sixteen to eighteen he resided at home, and learned much, though his studies were without guidance and without plan. When the young scholar presentod himself at Pembroke College, Oxford, he amazed the rulers of that society not more by his ungainly figure and eccentric manners than by tho quantity of his extensive and curious information. "While here, he early made himself known by turning Pope's Messiah into Latin verse. He was poor, how- ever, even to raggedness ; and his appearance excited a mirth and a pity which were equally intolerable to his haughty spirit. After residing at Oxford about three years, Johnson's resources failed; and he was under the necessity of quit- ting the university without a degree, in the autumn of 1731. In the following winter his father died. The old man left but a pittance; and of that pittance, Samuel received not more than twenty pounds. He became usher of a grammar- school in Leicestershire ; he soon after married, took a house in the neighbor- hood of his native town, and advertised for pupils. But eighteen months passed away, and only three pupils came to his academy, one of whom was the cele- brated David Garrick. At length, in the twenty-eighth year of his age, he went to London to seek his fortune as a literary adventurer. Some time elapsed before he was able to form any literary connection from which he could expect more than bread for the day that was passing over him. The effect of the privations and sufferings which he endured at this time was discernible to the last in his temper and deportment. His manners had never been courtly. They now be- came almost savage. About a year after Johnson had begun to reside in London, he fortunately obtained regular employment as a reporter, or rather writer of parliamentary speeches for the " Gentleman's Magazine." A few weeks after he had entered on these obscure labors, he published a stately and vigorous poem, entitled " London," which at once placed him high among the writers of his age. From this period till 1763 he was subjected to anxiety and drudgery ; and was only able to gain a bare subsistence by the most intense daily toil. This was, however, in part owing to his having been singularly unskillful and un- lucky in his literary bargains, as in the mean time he had published the "Vanity of Human Wishes," in 1740; a "Dictionary of the English Language," in 1755; ( and " Rassclas," in 1750. He also published a paper, entitled the " Rambler," every Tuesday and Saturday, from March, 1750, to March, 1753; and a series of weekly essays, entitled "The Idler," for two years, commencing in the spring- of 175*3. Able judges have pronounced these periodicals equal, if not superior to the " Speetator." In 1703, through the influence of Lord Bute, he received a pension of £300 a year; and from t'.iat period a great change in his circum- stances took place. The University of Oxford honored him with a doctor's de- gree, and the Royal Academy with a professorship. I!e was now free to indulge his constitutional idleness; still, though he wrote but little, his tongUO was active. The influence exercised by his conversation, directly upon the members of the celebrated olub over which he predominated, and iudircctly upon the CHARGE AGAINST LORD BYRON. 247 ■whole literary world, was altogether without a parallel. Tlis colloquial powers •were of the highest order, lie had 6trong sense, quick discernment, humor, wit, immense knowledge of literature and of life, and an infinite store of curious anecdotes. Every sentence that fell from h'13 lips was correct in structure. All was simplicity, ease, and vigor. Of all his numerous writings, those that arc now most popular are the " Vanity of Human Wishes" and the " Lives of the. Poets." In a serene frame of mind, he died on the 13th of Dcccmher, 17S4 5 and a week later was laid in Wcstmiuster Abbey. SECTION XIII. I. G7. CHARGE AGAINST LORD BYRON. THE charge we bring against Lord Byron is, that his writings have a tendency to destroy all belief in the reality of virtue, and to make all enthusiasm and constancy of affection ridicu- lous : and this, not so much by direct maxims and examples of an imposing or seducing kind, as by the constant exhibition of the most profligate hcartlcssncss in the persons who had been transiently represented as actuated by the purest and most exalted emotions ; and in the lessons of that very teacher who had been, but a moment before, so beautifully pathetic in tho expression of the loftiest conceptions. 2. When a gay voluptuary descants, somewhat too freely, on the intoxications of love and wine, wo ascribe his excesses to tho effervescence of youthful spirits, and do not consider him as seriously impeaching cither the value or the reality of the severer virtues ; and, in the same way, when the satirist deals out his sarcasms against the sincerity of human professions, and unmasks the secret infirmities of our bosoms, we consider this as aimed at hypocrisy, and not at mankind : or, at all events, and in tiihcr case, we consider the sensualist and mis'anthrope as wandering, each in his own delusion, and are contented to pity those who have never known the charms of a tender or generous affection. 3. The true antidote to such seductive or revolting views of human nature, is to turn to the scenes of its nobleness and at- traction ; and to reconcile ourselves again to our kind, by listen- ing to the accents of pure affection and incorruptible honor. But, if those accents have flowed in all their sweetness from the 248 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. very lips that instantly open again to mock and blaspheme them, the antidote is mingled with the poison, and the draught is the more deadly for the mixture ! 4. The reveler may pursue his orgies, and the wanton display her enchantments, with comparative safety to those around them, as long as they know or believe, that there are purer and higher enjoyments, and teachers and followers of a happier way. But, if the priest pass from the altar, with persuasive exhorta- tions to peace and purity still trembling on his tongue, to join familiarly in the grossest and most profane debauchery — if the matron, who has charmed all hearts by the lovely sanctimonies of her con'jugal and maternal endearments, glides out from the circle of her children, and gives bold and shameless way to the most abandoned and degrading vices, our notions of right and wrong are at once confounded, our confidence in virtue shaken to the foundation, and our reliance on truth and fidelity at an end forever. 5. This is the charge which we bring against Lord Byron. We say, that under some strange misapprehension as to the truth, and the duty of proclaiming it, he has exerted all the powers of his powerful mind to convince his readers, both di- rectly and indirectly, that all ennobling pursuits and disinter- ested virtues are mere deceits or illusions — hollow and des'picable mockeries, for the most part, and, at best, but laborious follies. Religion, love, patriotism, valor, devotion, constancy, ambition — all are to be laughed at, disbelieved in, and despised! and nothing is really good, so far as we can gather, but a succession of dangers to stir the blood, and of banquets and intrigues to soothe it again (a gen') ! 6. If this doctrine stood alone with its examples, it would revolt, wo believe, more than it would seduce. But the author has the unlucky gift of personating all those sweet and lofty illusions, and that with such grace and force, and truth to nature, that it is impossible not to suppose, for the time, that he is among the most devoted of their votaries — till he casts off the character with a jerk, and, the moment after he has moved and exalted us to the very height of our conception, resumes his mockery at all things serious or sublime, and lets us down at once on some coarse joke, hard-hearted sarcasm, or fierce and relentless personality, — as if on purpose to show " whoo'er was LOUD BYRON. 249 edified, himself was not," or to demon'strate, practically as it wore, and by example, how possible it is to havo all line and noble feelings, or their appearance, for a moment, and yet re- tain no particle of respect for them, or of belief in their intrinsic worth or permanent reality. Jeffrey. Francis Jeffrey, one of the most eloquent writers and most masterly critics in the English language, an eminent jurist and orator, was born at Edinburgh, Scotland, on the 23d of October, 177a. He passed six years at the High School of Edinburgh, studied at the University of Glasgow for two sessions of six months each, and in his eighteenth year resided for a few months at Oxford. His read- ing in his youth embraced classics, history, ethics, criticism, and the belle* h'trcs: he was indefatigable in practicing composition, and in early manhood wrote many verses. He was admitted to the Scottish bar at the age of twenty- one. The first number of the " Edinburgh Review," which contained five papers of Jeffrey's, appeared in October, ISO'J, when he was twenty-nine years old; and he became its editor after the first two or three numbers. The celebrity which the Review at once attained, was owing far more to him than any other of the contributors. His professional practice became very great ; and from IMG till he ceased to practice, he was the acknowledged leader of the Scottish bar. In 1820, and again in 1821, he was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glas- gow. He was appointed president of the Faculty of Advocates in 1829, when he resigned the editorship of the Review, a position which he had held for twenty- seven years. During that period he contributed more than two hundred articles. In 1830 he was appoiuted Lord Advocate, an office which, besides many other duties, involved those of Secretary of State for Scotland. He thus entered par- liament in his fifty-eighth year. In 1834 he was raised to the bench, and became an eminent judge, assuming the title of Lord Jeffrey. In 1843 he published three volumes, containing selections from his " Contributions to the Edinburgh Jicvkw." He died at Edinburgh, January 2Gth, 1850. n. G3. LORD BYROX. A MAN of rank, and of capacious soul, AVho riches had, and fame, beyond desire • An heir of flattery, to titles born, And reputation, and luxurious life : Yet, not content with ancestorial name, Or to be known, because his fathers were, He on this height hereditary stood, And gazing higher, purposed in his heart To take another step. 2. Above him seemed, Alone, the inount of song, the lofty seat Of canonized bards, and thitherward, 250 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. is By Nature taught, and inward melody, In prime of youth, ho bent his eagle eye. No cost was spared. What books he wished, he read ; "What sago to hear, ho heard ; what scenes to see, He saw. And first in rambling school-boy days, Britannia's mountain-walks, and heath-girt lakes, And story-telling glens, and founts, and brooks, And maids, as dew-drops, pure and fair, his soul With grandeur filled, and melody, and love. 3. Then travel came, and took him where he wished. He cities saw, and courts, and princely pomp ; And mused alone on ancient mountain-brows ; And mused on battle-fields, where valor fought In other days ; and mused on ruins gray With years ; and drank from old and fabulous wells, And plucked the vine that first-born prophets plucked ; And mused on famous tombs, and on the wave Of ocean mused, and on the desert waste ; The heavens and earth of every country saw. "Where'er the old-inspiring Genii dwelt, Aught that could rouse, expand, refine the soul, Thither he went, and meditated there. 4- He touched his harp, and nations heard entranced. As some vast river of unfailing source, Bapid, exhaustless, deep, his numbers flowed, And oped new fountains in the human heart. Where fancy halted, weary in her flight, In other men, his, fresh as morning, rose, And soared untrodden heights, and seemed at home, WTiere angels bashful looked. Others, though great, Beneath their argument seemed struggling ; whiles He from above descending, stooped to touch The loftiest thought ; and proudly stooped, as though It scarce deserved his verse. 5. With Nature's self He seemed an old acquaintance, free to jest At will with all her glorious majesty. He laid his hand upon " the Ocean's mane," And played familiar with his hoary locks. LORD BYRON. 251 Stood on tho Alps, stood on tho Apennines, And with tho thunder talked, as friend to friend ; And wovo his garland of tho lightning's wing, In sportive twist, — tho lightning's fiery wing, Which, as the footsteps of tho dreadful God, Marching upon the storm in vcngeanco seemed : Then turned, and with the grasshopper, that sung His evening song beneam his feet, conversed. C. Suns, moons, and stars, and clouds his sisters were ; Rocks, mountains, meteors, seas, and winds, and storms, His brothers, — younger brothers, whom ho scarce As equals deemed. All passions of all men, — The wild and tame — tho gentle and severe ; All thoughts, all maxims, sacred and profano ; All creeds ; all seasons, Time, Eternity ; All that was hated, and all that was dear ; All that was hoped, all that was feared by man, Ho tossed about, as tempest-withered leaves, Then smiling looked upon the wreck ho made. 7. With terror now he froze the cowering blood ; And now dissolved the heart in tenderness : Yet would not tremble, would not weep himself ; Rut back into his soul retired, alone, Dark, sullen, proud, — gazing contemptuously On hearts and passions prostrate at his feet. So Ocean from the plains his waves had late To desolation swept, retired in pride, Exulting in the glory of his might, And seemed to mock the ruin he had wrought 8. As some fierce comet of tremendous size, To which the stars did reverence as it passed, So he through learning and through fancy took His flight sublime ; and on the loftiest top Of Fame's dread mountain sat : not soiled and worn, As if he from the earth had labored up ; Rut, as some bird of heavenly plumage fan- He looked, which down from higher regions came, And perched it there, to see what lay beneath. 9. The nations gazed, and wondered much, and praised : 252 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Critics before him fell in humble plight, — Confounded fell, — and made debasing signs To catch his eye ; and stretched, and swelled themselves, To bursting nigh, to utter bulky words Of admiration vast : and many, too, Many that aimed to imitate his flight, With weaker wing, unearthly fluttering made, And gave abundant sport to after days. 10. Great man ! The nations gazed, and wondered much, And praised ; and many called his evil good. Wits wrote in favor of his wickedness ; And kings to do him honor took delight. Thus full of titles, flattery, honor, fame,— ■ Beyond desire, beyond ambition, full, — He died : he died of what ? Of wretchedness. Drank every cup of joy, heard every trump Of fame ; drank early, deeply drank ; drank draughts That common millions might have quenched, then died Of thirst, because there was no more to drink. His goddess, Nature, wooed, embraced, enjoyed, Fell from his arms, abhorred ; his passions died,— Died, all but dreary, solitary pride ; And all his sympathies in being died. 11. As some ill-guided bark, well-built, and tall, Which angry tides cast out on desert shore, And then, retiring, left it there to rot And molder in the winds and rains of heaven ; So he, cut from the sympathies of life, And cast ashore from pleasure's boisterous surge, A wandering, weary, worn, and wretched thing, Scorched, and desolate, and blasted soul, A gloomy wilderness of dying thought, Repined and groaned, and withered from the earth. His groanings filled the land his numbers filled ; And yet he seemed ashamed to groan : Poor man ! — Ashamed to ask, and yet he needed help. Pollok. Robert Pollok was born in 1709, In Renfrewshire, Scotland, where his lather was a small farmer. After receiving the usual elementary education, he entered, at the age of nineteen, on a five years' course of study in the University of Glasgow. His ambitious and energetic poem, " Course of Time," appeared in the spring of 1827, and speedily obtained a popularity which it is not likely soon MIDNIGHT— THE COLISEUM. 253 to lose. Its deeply religious character recommended it to serious person* ; and it was admired by critics for the many flashes of original genius which light up the crude and un wieldly design, and atone for the narrow range of thought and knowledge, as well as for the stiff pomposity that pervades the diction. A few of its passages arc strikingly and most poetically imaginative, and some arc beautifully touching. Immediately after the publication of his poem, he was admitted as a preacher in the United Secession Church. He died of consump- tion in September of the same year, before the age of thirty. III. CO. MIDNIGHT— THE COLISEUM. THE stars are forth, the moon above the tops Of the snow-shining mountains. Beautiful! I linger yet with Nature, for the night Hath been to me a more familiar face Than that of man ; and in her starry shade Of dim and solitary loveliness, I learned the language of another world. 2. I do remember me, that in my youth, "When I was wandering, upon such a night, I stood within the Colise'um's ' wall, 'Midst the chief relics of all-mighty Rome : The trees which grew along the broken arches Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars Shone through the rents of ruin ; from afar The watch-dog bayed beyond the Tiber ; and More near, from out of the Crcsar's palace came The owl's long cry, and, interruptedly, Of distant sentinels the fitful song Begun and died upon the gentle wind. 3. Some cypresses beyond the time-worn breach Appeared to skirt the hori'zon, yet they stood "Within a bow-shot. Where the Cresars dwelt, And dwell the tuneless birds of night, amidst 1 C5rise'um, the amphitheatre Jews. It was called the Coliseum,, of Vespasian, at Rome, the largest from the colossal statue of Nero, in the world, said to have held which was placed in it. In this 110,000 spectators. The ruins are amphitheater were exhibited the still standing. It is said to have contests of gladiators and wild ani- been built in one year, by the com- mals, and other savage spectacles in pulsory labor of twelve thousand which the Romans delighted. 254 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. A grove vrhich springs through leveled battlements, And twine3 its roots with the imperial hearths/ Ivy usurps the laurel's place of growth ; But the glad'iatorV bloody circus stands A noble wreck in ruinous perfection ! "While Caesar's chambers and the Augustan halls Grovel on earth in indistinct decay. 4 And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon, upon All this, and cast a wide and tender light, Which softened down the hoar austerity Of rugged desolation, and filled up, As 'twere anew, the gaps of centuries ; Leaving that beautiful which still was so, And making that which was not, till the place Became religion, and the heart ran o'er With silent worship of the great of old — The dead, but sceptered sovereigns, who still rule Our spirits from their urns ! Lord Byron. George Gordon Byron, the descendant and head of an ancient and noble family, was born in London, January 22nd, 17S8. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, 1805, with a rare reputation for general information, having read an almost incredible list of works in various departments of literature before the age of fifteen. He neglected the prescribed course of study at the university, but his genius kept him ever active. His first work, " The Hours of Idleness," ap- peared in 1S07. It received a castigation from the " Edinburgh Review," to which we owe the first spirited outbreak of his talents, in the able and vigorous satire entitled, "English Bards and Scotish Reviewers," published in 1809. He took his scat in the House of Lords a few days before the appearance of this satire; but soon left for the Continent. He returned home in 1S11, with two cantos of " Childe Harold," which he had written abroad. They were published in March, 1812, and were immediately received with such unbounded admira- tion, as to justify the poet's terse remark, "I awoke one morning, and found myself famous." In May of the next year, appeared his "Giaour;" in Novem- ber, the "Bride of Abydos," written in a week; and, about three months after, the " Corsair," written in the almost incredible space of ten days. January 2d, 1815, he was married to Miss Milbankc, the only daughter and heiress of Sir Ralph Milbankc ; and his daughter, Augusta Ada, was born in December of that year. The husband and wife, for an unknown cause, separated forever, on the 15th of January of the nc:;t year. He quitted England for the last time on the 25th of April, 1810, and passed through Elandcrs, and along the Rhine to Swit- zerland, where he resided until the close of the year. He here composed the third canto of "Childe Harold," the "Prisoner of Chillon," "Darkness," "The Dream," and a part of "Manfred." The next year he went to Italy, where he resided several years, and where he wrote the fourth canto of " Childe Harold," "Mazeppa," "The Lament of Tasso," "Beppo," "Don Juan," and his dramatic 1 Hearth, (birth). 2 Glad' i a tor, a swordplayor ; a prize-fighter. VIEW OF THE COLISEUM. 255 poems. In 1S23 he interested himself in the struggle of the Greeks to throw off the Turkish yoke and gain their independence. In December of that year, after making his arrangements with judgment and generosity, he sailed fur Greece, and arrived at Missolonghi on the 5th of January, 1S24, where he WU received with great enthusiasm. In threw months he did much to produce harmony and introduce order; but he had scarcely arranged hie plans to aid the nation, when he was seized with a fever, and expired on the 19th of April, 1824, soon after having celebrated, in affecting verses, the completion of his thirty-sixth year. IV. 70. VIEW OF THE COLISEUM. I WENT to sec the Colise'um by moonlight It is the mon- arch, the majesty of all ruins ; there is nothing like it. All the associations of tho place, too, give it the most impressive character. When you enter within this stupendous circle of ruinous walls and arches, and grand terraces of masonry, rising one above another, you stand upon the arena of the old gladia- torial combats and Christian martyrdoms ; and as you lift your eyes to the vast amphitheater, you meet, in imagination, the eyes of a hundred thousand Romans, assembled to witness these bloody spectacles. What a multitude and mighty array of hu- man beings ! and how little do we know in modern times of great assemblies ! One, two, and three, and at its last enlarge- ment by Constantine, 1 more than three hundred thousand per- sons could be seated in tho Circus Maximus ! 2. But to return to the Colise'um ; we went up under the con- duct of a guide, upon the walls and terraces, or embankments which supported the ranges of seats. The seats have long since disappeared ; and grass overgrows the spots where the pride, and power, and wealth, and beauty of Rome sat down to its bar- barous entertainments. What thronging life was here then — what voices, what greetings, what hurrying footsteps up the staircases of the eighty arches of entrance ! And now, as we picked our way carefully through the decayed passages, or cautiously ascended some nioldering flight of steps, or stood by the lonely walls — ourselves silent, and, for a wonder, the guide silent too — there was no sound here but of the bat, and none came from without, but the roll of a distant carriage or the convent bell from the summit of the neighboring Esquiline. 1 Constantine I., called the Great, was born A.D. 271 proclaimed emperor of Home by the army in 806, and died in 337 256 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 3. It is scarcely possible to describe the effect of moonlight upon this ruin. Through a hundred rents in the broken walls, through a hundred lonely arches and blackened passage-ways, it streamed in,, pure, bright, soft, lambent, and yet distinct and clear, as if it came there at once to reveal, and cheer, and pity the mighty desolation. But if the Colise'um is a mournful and desolate spectacle as seen from within — without, and especially on the side which is in best preservation, it is glorious. W6 passed around it ; and, as we looked upward, the moon shining through its arches, from the opposite side it appeared as if it were the coronet of the heavens, so vast was it — or like a glori- ous crown upon the brow of night. 4. I feel that I do not and can not describe this mighty ruin I can only say that I came away paralyzed, and as passive as a child. A soldier stretched out his hand for a gratuity, as we passed the guard ; and when my companion said I did wrong to give, I told him that I should have given my cloak, if the man had asked it. Would you break any spell that worldly feeling or selfish sorrow may have spread over your mind, go and see the Colise'um by moonlight. Okville Dewey. V. 71. THE DYING GLADIATOR. THE seal is set. — Now welcome, thou dread power ! Nameless, yet thus omnipotent, which here Walk'st in the shadow of the midnight hour "With a deep awe, yet all distinct froni fear ; Thy haunts are ever where the dead walls rear Their ivy mantles, and the solemn scene Derives from thee a sense so deep and clear, That we become a part of what has been, And grow unto the spot, all-seeing, but unseen. 2. And here the buzz of eager nations ran, In murmured pity, or loud-roared applause, As man was slaughtered by his fellow-man. And wherefore slaughtered ? wherefore, but because Such were the bloody circus' genial laws, And the imperial pleasure. Wherefore not ? What matters where we fall to fill tho maws SCENE WITH A PANTHER. 257 Of worms — on battle-plains or listed spot ? BcJth are but theaters where the chief actors rot. 3. I see before me the gladiator lie : He leans upon his hand ; his manly brow Consents to death, but conquers agony, And his drooped head sinks gradually low ; And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one, Like the first of a thunder-shower ; and now Tho arena swims around him : he is gone, Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won 4. He heard it, but he heeded not ; his eyes Were with his heart, and that was far away : Ho recked not of tho life he lust, nor prize ; But where his rude hut by the Danube lay, There were his young barbarians all at play, There was their Dacian l mother — he, their sire, Butchered to make a Bom an holiday. All this rushed with his blood. Shall he expire, And unavenged? Arise, ye Goths, 2 and glut your ire ! Lord Byron. SECTION XIV. I. 72. SCENE WITH A PANTHER. AS soon as I had effected my dangerous passage, I screened myself behind a cliff, and gave myself up to reflection. While thu3 occupied, my eyes were fixed upon the opposite steeps. The tops of tho trees, waving to and fro in the wildest commotion, and their trunks occasionally bending to the blast, J _ , , , m * 1 Daeian, (d&' slian), from Dacia, a quest by Trajan, in the year 103, af- country of ancient Germany form- ter a war of fifteen years, ing the modern countries, Hungary, 2 Goths, a celebrated nation of YVallachia, Moldavia, and Transyl- Germans, warriors by profession, vania. Many of the gladiators camo who, in the year 410, under their from Dacia, especially after its con- king, Alaric, plundered Rome. 258 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. which, in these lofty regions, blew with a violence unknown in the tracts below, exhibited an awful spectacle. 2. At length my attention was attracted by the trunk which lay across the gulf, and which I had converted into a bridge. I perceived that it had already somewhat swerved from its original position, that every blast broke or loosened some of the fibers by which its roots were connected with the opposite bank, and that, if the storm did not v speedily abate, there was imminent danger of its being torn from the rock and precipitated into the chasm. Thus my retreat would be cut off, and the evils from which I was endeavoring to rescue another, would be experienced by myself. 3. I believed my destiny to hang upon the expedition with which I should recross this gulf. The moments that were spent in these deliberations were critical, and I shuddered to observe that the trunk was held in its place by one or two fibers which were already stretched almost to breaking. To pass along the trunk, rendered slippery by the wet and unsteadfast by the wind was eminently dangerous. To maintain my hold in pass- ing, in defiance of the whirlwind, required the most vigorous exertions. For this end, it was necessary to discommode myself of my cloak. 4. Just as I had disposed of this encumbrance, and had risen from my seat, my attention was again called to the opposite steep, by the most unwelcome object that at this time could possibly present itself. Something was perceived moving among the bushes and rocks, which, for a time, I hoped was no more than a raccoon or opossum, but which presently appeared to be a panther. His gray coat, extended claws, fiery eyes, and a cry which he at that moment uttered, and which, by its reseinblanco to the human voice, is peculiarly terrific, denoted him to be the most ferocious and untamable of that detested race. 5. The in'dustry of our hunters lias nearly banished animals of prey from these precincts. The fastnesses of Norwalk, how- ever, could not but afford refuge to some of them. Of lato I had met them so rarelr, that my fears were seldom alive, and I trod, without caution, the rnggedest and most solitary haunts. Still, however, I had seldom been unfurnished in my rambles with the means of defense. 6. The unfrequency with which I had lately encountered this foe, and the encumbrance of provision, made mo neglect, on this SCENE WITH A PANTHER 259 occasion, to bring with mo my usual arms. The beast tliat was now before mo, when stimulated by hunger, was accustomed to assail whatever could provide him with a banquet of blood. Ho would set upon man and tho deer with equal and irresistible ferocity. His sagacity was equal to his strength, and he seemed able to discover when his antagonist was armed. 7. My past experience enabled me to estimate the full extent of my danger. Ho sat on tho brow of tho steep, eyeing tho bridge, and apj^arcntly deliberating whether ho should cross it. It was probable that ho had scented my footsteps thus far, and should he pass over, his vigilance could scarcely fail of detecting my asy'lura. 8. Should ho retain his present station, my dinger was scarcely lessened. To pass over in the face of a famished tiger was only to rush upon my fate. The falling of the trunk, which had lately been so anxiously deprecated, was now, with no less solicitude, desired. Every new gust I hoped would tear asunder its remaining bands, and, by cutting oil* all communication be- tween the opposite steeps, place ino in security. My hopes, however, were destined to be frustrated. The fibers of tho prostrato tree were obstinately tenacious of their hold, and presently the animal scrambled down the rock and proceeded to cross it. 9. Of all hinds of death, that which now menaced mo was tho most abhorred. To die by disease, or by the hand of a fellow- creature, was lenient in comparison with being rent to pieces by tho fangs of this savage. To perish in this obscure retreat, by means so impervious to the anxious curiosity of my friends, to loso my portion of existence by so untoward and ignoble a destiny, was insupportable. I bitterly deplored my rashness in coming hither unprovided for an encounter like thi . 10. Tho evil of my present circumstances consisted chiefly in suspense. My death was unavoidable, but my imagination had leisure to torment itself by anticipations. One foot of t savage was slowly and cautiously moved after tho other. He struck his claws so deeply into the bark that they were with difficulty withdrawn. At length ho leaped upon the ground. We wero now separated by an interval of sca-veiy eight feet. To leavo tho spot where I crouched was impossible. Behind and beside mo the cliff rose perpendicularly, and before mo was 260 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. this grim and terrific visage. I shrunk still closer to the ground and closed my eyes. 11. From this pause of horror I was aroused by the noise occasioned by a second spring of the animal. He leaped into the pit in which I had so deeply regretted that I had not taken refuge, and disappeared. My rescue was so sudden, and so much beyond my belief or my hope, that I doubted for a moment whether my senses did not deceive me. This opportunity of escapo was not to be neglected. I left my place and scrambled over the trunk with a precipitation which had liked to have proved fatal. The tree groaned and shook under me, the wind blew with unexampled violence, and I had scarcely reached the opposite steep when the roots were severed from the rock, and the whole fell thundering to the bottom of the chasm. 12. My trepidations were not cpeedily quieted. I looked back with wonder on my hair-breadth escape, and on that singular concurrence of events which had placed me in so short a period in absolute security. Had the trunk fallen a moment earlier, I should have been imprisoned on the hill or thrown headlong. Had its fall been delayed another moment, I should have been pursued ; for the beast now issued from his den, and testified his surprise and disappointment by tokens, the sight of which made my blood run cold. 13. He saw me, and hastened to the verge of the chasm. He squatted on his hind-legs, and assumed the attitude of one pre- paring to leap. My consternation was excited afresh by these appearances. It seemed, at first, as if the rift was too wide for any power of muscles to carry him in safety over ; but I knew the unparalleled agility of this animal, and that his experience had made him a better judge of the practicability of this exploit than I was. 11. Still, there was hopo that he would relinquish this design as desperate. This hope was quickly at an end. He sprung, and his fore-legs touched the verge of the rock on which I stood. In spite of vc'hemcnt exertions, however, the surface was too smooth and too hard to allow him to make good his hold. He fell, and a piercing cry, uttered below, showed that nothing had obstructed his descent to the bottom. Brown. Charles Brockden Brown, the first American who chose literature as a pro- fession, was born in Philadelphia on the 17th of January, 1771, and died the 22d of February, 1810. He was a gentle, unobtrusive enthusiast, who, though he COUNT FATHOM'S ADVENTURE. 261 resided principally in cities, passed a large portion of his life as a recluse. He lived in an ideal, and had little sympathy with the actual world. lie had more genius than talent, and more imagination than fancy. His works, which were rapidly written, arc incomplete, and deficient in method. Though he disre- garded rules, and cared little for criticism, his style was clear and nervous, with little ornament, free of affectations, and indicated a singular sincerity and depth of feeling. " Wicland, or the Transformed," the first of a series of brilliant nov- els by which Brown gained his enduring reputation, was published in 1708. It is in all respects a remarkable book. Its plot, characters, and style arc original and peculiar. The novel from which the above extract was taken is entitled, " Edgar Huntley, the Memoirs of a Somnambulist.' 1 The scene is located near the forks of the Delaware, in Pennsylvania. Clithero, the sleep-walker, has be- come insane, and has lied into one of the wild mountain fastnesses of Norwalk. Edgar Huntley, when endeavoring to discover his retreat, meets with the adven- ture described above. This description is written with a freedom, minuteness, and truthfulness to nature, that render it fearfully interesting and effective. n. 73. COUNT FATHOM'S ADVENTURE. PART FIRST. FATHOM departed from the village that same afternoon under the au'spices of his conductor, and found himself benighted in the midst of a forest, far from the habitations of men. The darkness of the night, the silence and solitude of the place, the indistinct images of the trees that appeared on every side stretching their extravagant arms athwart the gloom, con- spired with the dejection of spirits occasioned by his loss to disturb his fancy, and raise strange phantoms in his imagination. Although he was not naturally superstitious, his mind began to be invaded with an awful horror, that gradually prevailed over all the consolations of reason and philosophy ; nor was his heart free from the terrors of assassination. 2. In order to dissipate these disagreeable reveries, he had re- course to the conversation of his guide, by whom he was enter- tained with the history of divers travelers who had been robbed and murdered by ruffians (riif'yanz), whose retreat was in the recesses of that very wood. In the midst of this communication, which did not at all tend to the elevation of our hero's spirits, the conductor made an excuse for dropping behind, while our traveler jogged on in expectation of being joined again by him in a few minutes. He was, however, disappointed in that hope : the sound of the horse's feet by degrees grew more and more faint, and at last altogether died away. 262 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 3. Alarmed at this circumstance, Fathom halted in the read, and listened •with the most fearful attention ; but his sense of hearing was saluted with naught but the dismal sighings of the trees, that seemed to foretell an approaching storm. Accord- ingly, the heavens contracted a mure dreary aspect, the lightning began to gleam, the thunder to roll, and the tempest, raising its voice to a tremendous roar, descended in a torrent of rain. 4. In this emergency, the fortitude of our hero was almost quite overcome. So many concurring circumstances of danger and distress might have appalled the most undaunted breast ; what impression then must they have made upon the mind of Ferdinand, who was by no means a man to set fear at defiance ! Indeed, he had well-nigh lost the use of his reflection, and was actually invaded to the skin, before he could recollect himself so far as to quit the road, and seek for shelter among the thick- ets that surrounded him. 5. Having rode some furlongs into the forest, he took his sta- tion under a tuft of tall trees, that screened him from the storm, and in that situation called a council with himself, to deliberate upon his next excursion. He persuaded himself that his guido had deserted him for the present, in order to give intelligence of a traveler to some gang of robbers with whom he was connected ; and that he must of necessity fall a prey to those banditti, un- less he should have the good fortune to elude their search, and disentangle himself from the mazes of the wood. 6. Harrowed with these apprehensions, he resolved to com- mit himself to the mercy of the hurricane, as of two evils tho least, and penetrate straight forward through some devious open- ing, until he should be delivered from the forest. For this pur- pose he turned his horse's head in a line quite contrary to the direction of the high road which he had left, on the supposition that the robbers would pursue that tract in quest of him, and that they would never dream of his deserting the highway to traverse an unknown forest amidst the darkness of such a boisterous night. 7. After he had continued in this progress through a succes- sion of groves, and bogs, and thorns, and brakes, by which not only his clothes, but also his skin suffered in a grievous manner while every nerve quivered with eagerness and dismay, he at length reached an open plain, and pursuing his course, in full hope of arriving at some village where his life would be safe, ho COUNT FATHOM'S ADVENTURE. 203 descried a rushlight, at a distance, which he looked upon as iho star of his good fortune ; and riding toward it at full speed, ar- rived at the door of a lone cottage, into which he was admitted by an old woman, who, understanding ho was a bewildered traveler, received him with great hospitality. 8. When he learned from his hostess that there was not another house within three leagues, and that she could accom- modate him with a tolerable bed, and his horse with lodging and oats, ho thanked Heaven for his good fortune in stumbling upon this humble habitation, and determined to pass the night under the protection of the old cottager, who gave him to un- derstand, that her husband, who was a fagot-maker, had gone to the next town to dispose of his merchandise, and that in all probability he would not return till the next morning, on ac- count of the tempestuous night. 9. Ferdinand sounded the beldam with a thousand artful in- terrogations, and she answered with such an appearance of truth and simplicity, that he concluded his person was quite secure ; and, after having been regaled with a dish of eggs and bacon, desired she would conduct him into the chamber where she pro- posed he should take his repose. He was accordingly usher* d up by a sort of ladder into an apartment furnished with a stand- ing bed, and almost half filled with trusses of straw. He seemed extremely well pleased with his lodging, which in reality ex* ceeded his expectations ; and his kind landlady, cautioning him against letting the candle approach the combustibles, took her leave, and locked the door on the outside. III. 74. COUNT FATHOM'S ADVENTURE. TART SECOND. FATHOM, whose own principles taught him to be suspicious, and ever upon his guard against the treachery of his fellow- creatures, covdd have dispensed with this instance of her care in confining her guest to her chamber ; and began to be seized with strange fancies, when he observed that there was no bolt on tho inside of the door, by which he might secure himself from intru- sion. In consequence of these suggestions, he proposed to take an accurate sur'vey of every object in the aparment, and, in the 264: NATIONAL FIFTH READER. course of his inqui'ry, had the mortification to find the dead body of a man, still warm, who had been lately stabbed, and concealed beneath several bundles of straw. 2. Such a discovery could not fail to fill the breast of our hero with unspeakable horror ; for he concluded that he himself would undergo the same fate before morning, without the interposition of a miracle in his favor. In the first transports of his dread ho ran to the window, with a view to escape by that outlet, and found his flight effectually obstructed by divers strong bars of iron. Then his heart began to palpitate, his hair to bristle up, and his knees to totter : his thoughts teemed with presages of death and destruction ; his conscience rose up in judgment against him ; and he underwent a severe paroxysm of dismay and distraction. His spirits were agitated into a state of fer- mentation that produced an energy akin to that which is inspired by brandy or other strong liquors ; and, by an impulse that seemed supernatural, he was immediately hurried into measures for his own preservation. 3. What upon a less interesting occasion his imagination durst not propose, he now executed without scruple or remorse. He undressed the corpse that lay bleeding among the straw, and conveying it to the bed in his arms, deposited it in the attitude of a person who sleeps at his ease ; then he extinguished the light, took possession of the place from whence the body had been removed, and holding a pistol ready cocked in each hand, waited for the sequel with that determined purpose which is often the immediate production of despair. 4. About midnight he heard the sound of feet ascending the ladder ; the door was softly opened ; he saw the shadow of two men stalking toward the bed ; a dark lantern being unshrouded, directed their aim to the supposed sleeper ; and he that held it thrust a poniard to his heart. The force of the blow mado a compression on the chest, and a sort of groan issued from the windpipe of the defunct : the stroke was repeated without pro- ducing a repetition of the note, so that the assassins concluded the work was effectually done, and retired for the present, with a design to return and rifle the deceased at their leisure. 5. Never had our hero spent a moment in such agony as he felt during this operation. The whole surface of his body was covered with a cold sweat, and his nerves were relaxed with a COUNT FATHOM'S ADVENTURE. 265 universal palsy. In short, he remained in a trance, that in all probability contributed to his safety ; for had he retained the uso of his senses, he might have been discovered by the transports of his fear. The first use he made of his retrieved recollection, was to perceive that the assassins had left the door open in their retreat ; and he would have instantly availed himself of this their neglect, by sallying out upon them at the hazard of his life, had not he been restrained by a conversation he overheard in the room below, importing that the ruffians were going to set out upon another expedition, in hopes of finding more prey. G. They accordingly departed, after having laid strong injunc- tions on the old woman to keep the door fast locked during their absence ; and Ferdinand took his resolution without further delay. So soon as, by his conjecture, the robbers were at a suf- ficient distance from the house, he rose from his lurking-place, moved softly toward the bed, and rummaging the pockets of the deceased, found a purse well stored with ducats, of which, together with a silver watch and a diamond ring, he immediately possessed himself without scruple ; and then, descending with great care and circumspection into the lower apartment, stood before the old beldam, before she had the least intimation of his approach. 7. Accustomed as she was to the trade of blood, the hoary hag did not behold this apparation without giving signs of infi- nite terror and astonishment. Believing it was no other than the spirit of her second guest, who had been murdered, she feQ upon her knees, and began to recommend herself to the protec- tion of the saints, crossing herself with as much devotion as if she had been entitled to the particular care and attention of Heaven. Nor did her anxiety abate when she was undeceived in this her supposition, and understood it was no phantom, but the real substance of the stranger ; who, without staying to upbraid her with the enormity of her crimes, commanded her, on pain of immediate death, to produce his horse ; to which being conducted, ho set her on the saddle without delay, and mounting behind, invested her with the management of the reins, swearing, in a most peremptory tone., that the only chance for her life was in directing him to the next town ; and that as soon as she should give him the least cause to doubt her fidelity in the performance of that task, he would on the instant act the part of her executioner. ,« 266 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 8. This declaration had its effect on the withered Hec'ate, 1 who, with many supplications for mercy and forgiveness, promised to guide him in safety to a certain village at the distance of two leagues, where he might lodge in security, and be provided with a fresh horse, or other conveniences for pursuing his route. On these conditions he told her she might deserve his clemency ; and they accordingly took their departure together, she being placed astride upon the saddle, holding the bridle in one hand, and a switch in the other, and our adventurer sitting on the I crupper superintending her conduct, and keeping the muzzle of a pistol close to her ear. In this equipage 2 they traveled across part of the same wood in which his guide had forsaken him ; and it is not to be supposed that he passed his time in the most agreeable reverie, while he found himself involved in the laby- rinth of those shades, which he considered as the haunts of robbery and assassination. 9. Common fear was a comfortable sensation to what he felt in this excursion. 3 The first steps he had taken for his preser- vation were the effect of mere instinct, while his faculties were extinguished or suppressed by despair ; but now, as his reflection began to recur, he was haunted by the most intolerable appre- hensions. Every whisper of the wind through the thickets was swelled into the hoarse menaces of murder ; the shaking of the boughs was construed into the brandishing of poniards ; and every shadow of a tree became the apparition of a ruffian eager for blood. In short, at each of these occurrences he felt what was infinitely more tormenting than the stab of a real dagger ; and at every fresh fillip of his fear, he acted as a remembrancer to his conductress in a new volley of imprecations, 4 importing, that her life was absolutely connected with his opinion of his own safety. 10. Human nature could not long subsist under such compli- cated terror ; but at last he found himself clear of the forest, 1 H&c' ate, represented in mythol- being, regardless of demons end tcr- ©gy as a mysterious divinity who rible phantoms from the lower world, ruled in heaven, on the earth, and in who taught sorcery, witchcraft, nnd the sea,bestowing on mortalswealth, dwelt at places where two reads victory, wisdom ; good luck to sailors crossed, on tombs, and near the blood and hunters, and prosperity to youth of murdered persons, and to the flocks of cattle. She was - Equipage, (£k' we ] ;\j). afterward, however, regarded by the 3 Excursion, (eke kSr' shun). Athenians and others as a spectral * Im v pro ca' tions, curses. DARKNESS. 2G7 and was blessed with a distant view of an inhabited place. He yielded to the first importunity of the beldam, whom he dis- missed at a very small distance from the village, after he had earnestly exhorted her to quit such an atrocious course of life, and atone for her past crimes by sacrificing her associates to the demands of justice. She did not fail to vow a perfect reforma- tion, and to prostrate herself before him for the favor she had found ; then she betook herself to her habitation, with the full purpose of advising her fellOw-murderers to repair with all dis- patch to the village and impeach our hero ; who, wisely distrust- ing her professions, stayed no longer in the place than to hire a guide for the next stage, which brought him to the city of Chalons-sur-Marne. ' Smollett. Tobias George Smollett was born in the County of Dumbarton, Scotland, in 1721. His father, a younger son of Sir James Smollett, of Bonhill, having died early, he was educated by his grandfather, in Glasgow, for the medical profes- sion. At nineteen, his grandfather having died without making a provision for him, the young author proceeded to London with his first work, "The Regi- cide," which he attempted to bring out at the theaters. Foiled in this juvenile effort, in 1741 he became a surgeon's mate in the navy, and was present in the unfortunate expedition to Carthagcna, spent some time elsewhere in the West Indies, and returned to England in 174G. Thenceforth he resided chiefly in London, and became an author for life. His first novel, "Roderick Random," appeared in 174S. From this date to that of his last production, Smollett im- proved in taste and judgment, but his power of invention, his native humor, and his knowledge of life and character, are as conspicuous in this as in any of his works. He had fine poetic talents, but wrote no extended poem. His novel of " Count Fathom" appeared in 1753. The above scene, extracted from this work, is universally regarded as a masterpiece of interest ; a mixture of the terrible and the probable that has never been surpassed. The writing is as fine as the con- ception. In 1770, Smollett was compelled to seek for health In a warm climate. He took up his residence in a cottage near Leghorn. Here, just before his death, in the autumn of 1771, he finished his "Humphrey Clinker," the most rich, varied, and agreeable of all his novels. IV. 75, DARKNESS. I HAD a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguished, and the §tars Did wander, darkling, in the eternal space, Rayless and pathless, arid the icy earth 1 Chalons-sur-Marne, (shilling' eer marn\ a city of France, capital of the department of Marne, on the right bank of the river Marne, ninety miles E of Paris. 2c>8 national fifth reader. Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air. Morn came, and went — and came, and brought no day, And men forgot their passions, in the dread Of this their desolation ; and all hearts "Were chilled into a selfish prayer for light. And they did live by watch-fires ; and the thrones, The palaces of crowned kings, the huts, The habitations of all things which dwell, Were burnt for beacons : cities were consumed, And men were gathered round their blazing homes, To look once more into each other's face. Happy were those who dwelt within the eye Of the volcanoes and their mountain torch. 2. A fearful hope was all the world contained : Forests were set on fire ; but, hour by hour, They fell and faded ; and the crackling trunks Extinguished with a crash — and all was black. The brows of men, by their despairing light, Wore an unearthly aspect, as, by fits, The flashes fell upon them. Some lay down, And hid their eyes, and wept ; and some did rest Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled ; And others hurried to and fro, and fed Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up, With mad disquietude, on the dull sky, The pall of a past world ; and then again With curses, cast them down upon the dust, And gnashed their teeth, and howled. The wild birds shrieked, And, terrified, did flutter on the ground, And flap their useless wings : the wildest brutes Came tame, and tremulous ; and vipers crawled And twined themselves among the multitude, Hissing, but stingless — they were slain for food. 3, And War, which for a moment was no more, Did glut himself again : — a meal was bought With blood, and each sat sullenly apart, Gorging himself in gloom ; ng love was left ; All earth was but one thought — and that was death, Immediate and inglorious ; and the pang Of famine fed upon all entrails. Men DARKNESS. 269 Died ; and their bones were tombless as their flesh The meager by the meager were devoured. Even dogs assailed their masters, — all save one, And he was faithful to a corse, and kept The birds, and beasts, and famished men at bay, Till hunger clung them, or the drooping dead Lured their lank jaws : himself sought out no food, But, with a piteous, and perpetual moan, And a quick, desolate cry, licking the hand "Which answered not with a caress — he died. 4. The crowd was famished by degrees. But two Of an enormous city did survive, And they were enemies. They met beside The dying embers of an altar-place, "Where had been heaped a mass of holy things For an unholy usage. They raked up, And, shivering, scraped with their cold, skeleton hands, The feeble ashes : and their feeble breath Blew for a little life, and made a flame, "Which was a mockery. Then they lifted Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld Each other's aspects— saw, and shrieked, and died ; Even of their mutual hideousness they died, Unknowing who he was, upon whose brow Famine had written Fiend. 5. The world was void : The populous and the powerful was a lump, Seasonltss, /icrbless, treeless, manless, lifeless ; A lump of death, a chaos of hard clay. The rivers, lakes, and ocean, all stood still, And nothing stirred within their silent depths. Ships, sailorless, lay rotting on the sea, And their masts fell down piecemeal : as they dropped They slept on the abyss, without a surge, — The waves were dead ; the tides were in their grave ; The moon, their mistress, had expired before ; The winds were withered in the stagnant air, And the clouds perished : Darkness had no need Of aid from them — she was the universe. Lord Byron. 270 NATIONAL FIFTH READER, V. 76. THE RATTLESNAKE. 1 " "T J"E does not come — lie does not come," she murmured, as 1 1 she stood contemplating the thick copse spreading be- fore her, and forming the barrier which terminated the beautiful range of oaks which constituted the grove. How beautiful were the green and garniture of that little copse of wood ! The leaves were thick, and the grass around lay folded over and over in bunches, with here and there a wild flower, gleaming from its green, and making of it a beautiful carpet of the richest and most various texture. A small tree rose from the center of a clump, around which a wild grape gadded luxuriantly ; and, with an incoherent sense of what she saw, she lingered before the little cluster, seeming to survey' that which, though it seemed to fix her eye, yet failed to fill her thought. Her mind wan- dered — her soul was far away ; and the objects in her vision were far other than those which occupied her imagination. 2. Things grew indistinct beneath her eye. The eye rather slept than saw. The musing spirit had given holiday to the ordinary senses, and took no heed of the forms that rose, and floated, or glided away before them. In this way, the leaf de- tached made no impression upon the sight that was yet bent upon it ; she saw not the bird, though it whirled, untroubled by a fear, in wanton circles around her head ; and the blacksnake, with the rapidity of an arrow, darted over her path without arousing a single terror in the form that otherwise would have shivered at its mere appearance. And yet, though thus indistinct were all things around her to the musing eye of the maiden, her eye was yet singularly fixed — fastened, as it were, to a single spot — gathered and controled by a single object, and glazed, apparently, beneath a curious fascination. 3. Before the maiden rose a little clump of bushes, — bright tangled leaves flaunting wide in glossiest green, with vines trail- ing over them, thickly decked with blue and crimson flowers. Her eye communed vacantly with these ; fastened by a star-like shining glance, a subtle ray, that shot out from the circle of 1 From " The Yemassee." The heroine, Bess Mathews, in the woods waits the coming of her lover. THE RATTLESNAKE. 271 green leaves — seeming to be their very eye — and sending out a lurid luster that seemed to stream across the space between, and find its way into her own eyes. Very piercing and beautiful was that subtle brightness, of the sweetest, strangest power. And now the leaves quivered and seemed to float away, only to return ; and the vines waved and swung around in fantastic mazes, unfolding ever-changing varieties of form and color to her gaze : but the star-like eye was ever steadfast, bright, and gorgeous, gleaming in their midst, and still fastened, with strange fondness, upon her own. How beautiful with wondrous inten- sity did it gleam and dilate, growing larger and more lustrous with every ray which it sent forth ! 4. And her own glance became intense, fixed also ; but with a dre:iming sense that conjured up the wildest fancies, terribly beautiful, that took her soul away from her, and wrapt it about as with a spell. She would have fled, she would have flown ; but she had not the power to move. The will w r as wanting to her flight. She felt that she could have bent forward to pluck the gem-like thing from the bosom of the leaf in which it seemed to grow, and which it irradiated with its bright white gleam ; but ever as she aimed to stretch forth her hand, and bend forward, she heard a rush of wings, and a shrill scream from the tree above her, — such a scream as the mock-bird makes, when angrily it raises its dusky crest, and flaps its wings furiously against its slender sides. Such a scream seemed like a warning, and though yet unawakencd to full consciousness, it startled her and forbade her effort. More than once, in her sur'vev of this strange object, had she heard that shrill note, and still had it carried to her ear the same note of warning, and to her mind the same vague consciousness of an evil presence. 5. But the star-like eye was yet upon her own — a small, bright eye, quick, like that of a bird, now steady in its place, and observant seemingly only of hers, now darting forward with all the clustering leaves about it, and shooting up toward her, as if wooing her to seize. At another moment riveted to the vine which lav around it, it would whirl round and round, dazzlinglv bright and beautiful, even as a torch, waving hurriedly by night in the hands of some playful boy. But, in all this time, the glance was never taken from her own : there it grew, fixed — a very principle of light *, and such a light — a subtle, burning, 272 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. piercing, fascinating gleam, such as gathers in vapor above the old grave, and binds us as we look — shooting, darting directly into her eye, dazzling her gaze, defeating its sense of discrimi- nation, and confusing strangely that of perception. 6. She felt dizzy, for, as she looked, a cloud of colors — bright, gay, various colors — floated and hung like so much drapery around the single object that had so secured her attention and spell-bound her feet. Her hmbs felt momently more and more insecure : her blood grew cold, and she seemed to feci the gradual freeze of vein by vein, throughout her person. At that moment a rustling was heard in the branches of the tree beside her, and the bird, which had repeatedly uttered a single cry above her, as it were of warning, flew away from his station with a scream more piercing than ever. This movement had the effect for which it really seemed intended, of bringing back to her a portion of the consciousness she seemed so totally to have been deprived of before. 7. She strove to move from before the beautiful but terrible presence, but for a while she strove in vain. The rich, star-like glance still riveted her own, and the subtle fascination kept her bound. The mental energies, however, with the moment of their greatest trial, now gathered suddenly to her aid ; and, with a desperate effort, but with a feeling still of annoying uncertainty and dread, she succeeded partly in the attempt, and threw her arms backward, her hands grasping the neighboring tree, — feeble, tottering, and depending upon it for that support which her own Hmbs almost entirely denied her. "With her movement, however, came the full development of the powerful spell and dreadful mystery before her. As her feet receded, though but a single pace, to the tree against which she now rested, the audibly articulated ring, like that of a watch when wound up with the verge broken, announced the nature of that splendid yet dangerous presence, in the form of tho monstrous rattle- snake, now but a few feet before her, lying coiled at the bottom of a beautiful shrub, with which, to her dreaming eye, many of its own glorious hues had become associated. 8. She was, at length, conscious enough to perceive and to feel all her danger ; but terror had denied her the strength necessary to fly from her dreadful enemy. There still the eye glared beautifully bright and piercing upon her own ; and, seem- tiie rattlesnake. 273 ingly in a spirit of sport, tho insidious reptile slowly unwound himself from his coil, but only to gather himself up again into his muscular rings, his great Hat head rising in the midst, and slowly nodding, as it were, toward her, the eye still peering deeply into her own ; — the rattle still slightly ringing at inter- vals, and giving forth that paralyzing sound, which, once heard, is remembered forever. The reptile all this while appeared to be conscious of, and to sport with, while seeking to excite, her terrors. Now, with his flat head, distended mouth, and curving neck, would it dart forward its long form toward her, — its fatal teeth, unfolding on either side of its upper jaws, seeming to threaten her with instantaneous death ; while its powerful eye shot forth glances of that fatal power of fascination, malignantly bright, which, by paralyzing, with a novel form of terror and of beauty, may readily account for the spell it possesses of binding the feat of the timid, and denying to fear even the privilege of flight. 9. Could she have fled ! She felt the necessity ; but the j)ower of her limbs was gone ! and there still it lay, coiling and uncoiling, its arching neck glittering like a ring of brazed cop- per, bright and lurid ; and the dreadful beauty of its eye still fastened, eagerly contemplating the victim, while the pendulous rattle still rang the death-note, as if to prepare the conscious mind for the fate which is momently approaching to the blow. Meanwhile the stillness became death-like with all surrounding objects. The bird had gone, with its scream and rush. The breeze was silent. The vines ceased to wave. The leaves faintly quiv- ered on their stems. The serpent once more lay still ; but the eve was never once turned away from the victim. Its corded mus- cles are all in coil. They have but to unclasp suddenly, and tho dreadful folds will be upon her, its full length, r.nd the fatal teeth will strike, and the deadly venom which they secrete will mingle with the life-blood in her veins. 10. The terrified damsel, her full consciousness restored, but not her strength, feels all the danger. She sees that the spurt of the terrible reptile is at an end. She can not now mistake the horrid expression of its eye. She strives to scream, but the voice dies away, a feeble gurgling in her throat. Her tongue is paralyzed ; her lips are sealed. Once more she strives for flight, but her limbs refuse their office. She has nothing left of life but its fearful consciousness. It is in her despair, that, a last *274 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. effort, she succeeds to scream, — a single wild cry, forced from hef by the accumulated agony : she sinks down upon the grass before her enemy, — her eyes, however, still open, and still look- ing upon those which he directs forever upon them. She sees him approach — now advancing, now receding — now swelling in every part with something of anger, while his neck is arched beautifully, like that of a wild horse under the curb ; until, at length, tired as it were of play, like the cat with its victim, she sees his neck growing larger and becoming completely bronzed, as about to strike, — the huge jaws unclosing almost directly above her, the long tubulated fang, charged with venom, pro- truding from the cav'emous mouth ; and she sees no more. Insensibility came to her aid, and she lay almost lifeless under the very folds of the monster. 11. In that moment the copse parted ; and an arrow, piercing the monster through and through the neck, bore his head for- ward to the ground, alongside the maiden, while his spiral ex- tremities, now unfolding in his own agony, were actually, in part, writhing upon her person. The arrow came from the fugitive Occonestoga, who had fortunately reached the spot in season, on the way to the Block-House. He rushed from the copse as the snake fell, and, with a stick, fearlessly approached him where he lay tossing in agony upon the grass. Seeing him advance, the courageous reptile made an effort to regain his coil, shaking the fearful rattle violently at every evolution which he took for that purpose ; but the arrow, completely passing through his neck, opposed an unyielding obstacle to the endeavor ; and ■finding it hopeless, and seeing the new enemy about to assault him, with something of the spirit of the white man under like circumstances, he turned desperately round, and striking his charged fangs, so that they were riveted in the wound they made, into a susceptible part of his own body, he threw himself over with a single convulsion, and, a moment after, lay dead be- side the utterly unconscious maiden. Simms. "William Gilmoke Simms was born at Charleston, South Carolina, April 17th, 1S0G. His mother died while he was an infant, and his father, failing 60011 after as a merchant, emigrated to the West, leaving him to the earc of an aged and penurious grandmother, who withheld the appropriations necessary for his edu- cation. His love of books, industry, and richly endowed intellect, however, triumphed over every obstacle, lie wrote for the press, at an early age, on a great variety of subjects, and was admitted to the bar, in his native city, at the oge of twenty-one. He did not long practice law, but turned his peculiar traiu* IRVING AND MACAULAY. 275 Ing to the uses of literature. He bceame editor and proprietor of the " Charles- ton City Gazette," which, though conducted with industry and spirit, proved a failure, owing to his opposition to the then popular doctrine of nullification. He published his first book, "Lyrical and other Poems," in 1826, when about eighteen years of age, followed the same year by "Early Lays." k> Atalantis," the third work following, a successful poem with the publishers, a rarity at the time, was published in New York, in 1832. It is written In smooth blank verse, interspersed with frequent lyrics. The next year appeared in New York his first tale, " Martin Faber," written in the intense passionate style, which secured at once public attention. Since that period he has written numerous novels, histories, biographies, and poems, and has contributed largely to reviews and magazines. In 1849 he became editor of "The Southern Quarterly Review," which was revived by his able contributions and personal influence. His writings are characterized by their earnestness, sincerity, and thoroughness. His shorter stories are his best works. Though somewhat wanting in elegance, they have unity, completeness, and strength. Mr. Simms now resides on his plantation at Midway, a town about seventy miles southwest of Charleston. SECTION XV. I. 77. IRVING AND MACAULAY. PAKT FIRST. ALMOST the last words which Sir Walter Scott spoke to Lockhart, his son-in-law and biographer, were, "Be a good man, my dear !" and with the last flicker of breath on his dying lips, he sighed a farewell to his family, and passed away blessing them. Two men, famous, admired, beloved, have just left us, the Goldsmith and the Gibbon of our time. Ere a few weeks are over, many a critic's pen will be at work, reviewing their lives, and passing judgment on their works. 2. This is no review, or historv, or criticism ; onlv a word in testimony of respect and regard from a man of letters, who owes to his own professional labor the honor of becoming acquainted with these two eminent literary men. One was the first ambas- sador whom the New "World of Letters sent to the Old. He was born almost with the Republic ; the pater patrice ' had laid his hand on the child's head. He bore "Washington's 2 name : 1 Pa' ter pat' ri ae, father of his er-in-chief of the army of independ- country. enceduringthe American Revolution, « George Washington, command- first President of the United States, 276 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. he cams among U3 bringing tho kindest sympathy, the most artless, smiling good-will. 3. His new country (which some people here might be dis- posed to regard rather superciliously) could send us, as he showed in his own person, a gentleman, who, though himself born in no very high sphere, was most finished, polished, easy, witty, quiet, and, socially, the equal of the most refined Europe'- ans. If Irving's welcome in England was a kind one, was it not also gratefully remembered ? If he ate our salt, did he not pay us with a thankful heart ? 4. In America the love and regard for Irving was a national sentiment. It seemed to me, during a year's travel in the country, as if no one ever aimed a blow at Irving. All men held their hand from that harmless, friendly peacemaker. I had the good fortune to see him at New York, Philadelphia, Balti- more, and Washington, and remarked how in every place he was honored and welcomed. Every large city has its " Irving House." The country takes pride in the fame of its men of letters. 5. The gate of his own charming little domain on the beautiful Hudson River was forever swinging before visitors who came to him. He shut out no one. I had seen many pictures of his house, and read descriptions of it, in both of which it was treated with a not unusual American exaggeration. It was but a pretty little cabin of a place ; the gentleman of the press who took notes of it, while his kind old host w r as sleeping, might have visited the house in a couple of minutes. 6. And how came it that this house was so small, when Mr. Irving's books were sold by hundreds of thousands, nay, millions, — when his profits were known to be large, and the habits of life of the good old bachelor were notoriously modest and sim- ple ? Ho had loved once in his life. The lady he loved died ; and he, whom all the world loved, never sought to replace her. 7. I can't say how much the thought of that fidelity has touched me. Does not the very cheerfulness of his after life add to the pathos of that untold story ? To grieve always was not in his nature ; or, when he had his sorrow, to bring all tho world in to condole wdth him and bemoan it. Deep and quiet styled the " Father of his Country," He retired from public life in 179G, was born in Westmoreland, Yir- and died December 14th, 1700, lcav- ginio, on the $38 of February, 17^. ing a reputation without a stain. ' IRVING AND MACAULAY. 277 ho lays the lovo of Iris heart, and buries it, and grass and flowers grow over the scarred ground in duo time. J 8. Irving had sueh a small house and such narrow rooms be- cause there was a great number of people to occupy them. He could only live very modestly because the w T ifeless, childless man had a number of children to whom he was as a father. He had as many as nine nieces, I am told, — I saw two of these ladies at his house, — with all of whom the dear old man had shared the produce of his labor and genius. " Be a good man, my dear." One can't but think of these last words of the veteran Chief of Letters, who had tasted and tested the value of worldly success, admiration, prosperity. Was Irving not good, and, of his works, was not his life the best part ? 9. In his family, gentle, generous, good-humored, affectionate, self-denying ; in society, a delightful example of complete g< n- tlemanhood ; quite unspoiled by prosperity ; never obsequious to the great (or, worse still, to the base and mean, as some public men are forced to be in his and other countries) ; eager to ac- knowledge every contemporary's merit ; always kind and affa- ble with the young members of his calling ; in his professional bargains and iner'cantile dealings delicately honest and grateful; he was at the same time one of the must charming masters of our lighter language ; the constant friend to us and our nation ; to men of letters doubly dear, not for his wit and genius merely, but as an exemplar of goodness, probity, and a pure life ! n. 78. IRVING AND MACAULAY. PART SECOND. AS for Macaulay, whose departure many friends, some few most dearly-loved relatives, and multitudes of admiring readers deplore, our Republic 1 has already decreed his statue, and he must have known that he had earned this post'hunious* honor. He was not a poet and man of letters merely, but a citizen, a statesman, a great British worthy. All sorts of suc- cesses are easy to him : as a lad he goes down into the arena 1 Our Republic, meaning " the 2 Pfist' hu mous, continuing after Republic of letters." one's death. 278 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. with others, and wins all the prizes to which he has a mind. A place in the Senate is straightway offered to the young man. He takes his seat there ; he speaks, when so minded, without party anger or intrigue, but not without party faith and a sort of heroic enthusiasm for his cause. Still he is poet and philo- sopher even more than orator. 2. If a company of giants were got together, very likely one or two of the mere six-feet-six people might be angry at the in* contestable superiority of the very tallest of the party ; and so I have heard some London wits, rather peevish at Macaulay's superiority, complain that he occupied too much of the talk, and so forth. Now that wonderful tongue is to speak no more, will not many a man grieve that he no longer has the chance to listen ? To remember the talk is to wonder ; to think not only of the treasures he had in his memory, but of the trifles he had stored there, and could produce with equal readiness. 3. Many Londoners — not all — have seen the British Muse'uni Library, — the dome where our million volumes are housed. What peace, what love, what truth, what beauty, what happiness for all, what generous kindness for you and me, are here spread out ! It seems to me one can not sit down in that place without a heart full of grateful reverence. I own to have said my grace at the table and to have thanked Heaven for this my English birthright, freely to partake of these bountiful books, and to speak the truth I find there. 4. Under the dome which held Macaulay's brain, and from which his solemn eyes looked out on the world but a fortnight since, what a vast, brilliant, and wonderful store of learning was ranged ! — what strange lore would he not fetch for you at your bidding ! A volume of law or history, a book of poetry familiar or forgotten (except by himself, who forgot nothing), a novel ever so old, and he had it at hand ! 5. "With regard to Macaulay's style, there may be faults of course ; but we are not talking about faults. Take at hazard any three pages of his Essays or of his History ; and, glimmer- ing below the stream of the narrative, as it were, you, an average reader, see one, two, three, a half-score of allusions to other his- toric facts, characters, literature, poetry, with which you are not acquainted. "Why is this epithet used ? AVhence is that simile drawn ? How does he manage, in two or three words, to paint IRVING AND MACAULAY. 279 an individual, or to indicato a landscape? He reads twenty books to write a sentence ; ho travels a hundred miles to make a lino of description ! 6. One paper I have read regarding Lord Macaulay says "he had no heart." Why, a man's books may not always speak tho truth, but they speak his mind in spite of himself ; and it seems to me this man's heart is beating through every page he penned. He is always in a storm of revolt and indignation against wrong, craft, tyranny. How he cheers heroic resistance ; how he backs and applauds freedom struggling for its own ; how he hates scoundrels, ever so victorious and successful ; how he recognizes genius, though selfish villains possess it ! 7. Tho critic who says Macaulay had no heart, might say that Johnson had none ; and two men more generous, and more loving, and more hating, and more partial, and more noble, do not live in our history. Those who knew Lord Maeaulav knew how ad'mirably tender, and generous, and affectionate he was. It was not his business to bring his family before the theater footlights, and call for bouquets from the gallery as he wept over them. 8. If any young man of letters reads this little sermon, — and to him, indeed, it is addressed, — I would say to him, "Bear Scott's words in your mind, and ' be good, my dear.' n Here are two literary men gone to their account, and, hits Deo, 1 as far as we know, that account is fair, and open, and clear. Here is no need of apologies for shortcomings, or explanations of vices which would have been virtues but for unavoidable et cetera.' 1 9. Here arc two examples of men most differently gifted : each pursuing his calling ; each speaking his truth as God bade him ; each honest in life ; just and irreproachable in his deal- ings ; dear to his friends ; honored by his country ; beloved at his fireside. It has been the fortunate lot of both to give incal- culable happiness and delight to the world, which thanks them in return with an immense kindliness, respect, affection. It may not be our chance, brother scribe, to bo endowed with such merit, or rewarded with such fame. But the rewards of these men are rewards paid to our service. We may not win the baton 3 • Laus De' o, praise to God. 4 Baton, ihtl tong 7 ), a truncheon of ■ Et Jet' era, and the rest ; Sso. staff; a marshal's staff 280 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. or epaulettes, 1 but Heaven give us strength to guard the honor of the flag 1 Tiiackeray. William Makepeace Tiiackeray, an English novelist, essayist, and humor, ist, was bern in Calcutta in 1811. His father, who descended from an old family of Yorkshire, was engaged in the civil service of the East India Company. Ho was sent to England in his seventh year, and placed at the Charterhouse School, London, from which he went to the university of Cambridge, but did not take his degree. He traveled and studied for several years in France, Italy, and Ger- many. He contributed to several leading magazines^ind published works both in prose and verse, commencing before his thirtieth year; but his name was not generally known until he published " Vanity Fair," which was finished in 1848, when he was generally accounted, with Dickens and Bulwcr, among the first British novelists. His " Pendennis," concluded in 1850, and " The Ncwcomcs," in 1S55, fully sustained his reputation. In the summer of 1851, he lectured in London before brilliant audiences on " The English Humorists of the 18th Century," the success of which induced him to prepare another series, " The Four Georges," which were first delivered in the principal cities of the United States in 1855-'6, and afterward in London and most of the large towns of Eng- land and Scotland. In January, 1860, appeared the first number of the " Corn- hill Magazine," under his editorial charge, which soon reached a circulation of some one hundred thousand copies. He died December 24th, 1863. ^ III. 79. THE PURITANS. THE Puritans 5 were men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging, in gen- eral terms, an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing (nuth'ing) was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To know him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was with them the great end of existence. 2. They rejected with contempt the ceremonious homage which other sects substituted for the pure worship of the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the Deity through an obscuring vail, they aspired to gaze full on the intolerable bright- ness, and to commune with him face to face. Hence originated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. The difference be- tween the greatest and meanest of mankind seemed to vanish, when compared with the boundless interval which separated the 1 Epaulettes, (ftp' a lot""). rision, because they professed to a Pu' ri tans, persons, in the time follow the pure word of God, and of Queen Elizabeth and her immc- rejected the ceremonies and govern- diate successors, so called in <!c- meat of the Episcopal Church. THE PURITANS. 281 whole race from Him on whom their own eyes were constantly fixed. They recognized no title to superiority but his favor ; and, confident of that favor, they despised ah the accomplish- ments and all the dignities of the world. 3. If they were unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, they were deeply read in the oracles of God ; if their names were not found in the registers of heralds, they felt as- sured that they were recorded in the Book of Life ; if their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials, legions of ministering angels had charge over them. Their palaces were houses not made with hands : their diadems, crowns of glory which should, never fade away ! 4. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt ; for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime lan- guage — nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a being to whoso fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged — on whose slightest actions the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious interest — who had been destined, before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity which should continue when heaven and earth should have passed away. 5. Events which short-sighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes, had been ordained on his account. For his sake, em- pires had risen, and flourished, and decayed ; for his sake, the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the pen of the evangelist and the harp of the prophet. He had been rescued by no com- mon deliverer from the grasp of no common foe ; he had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the blcod of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him that the sun had been dark- ened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had arisen, that all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God! Macailay. Thomas Batvbtngton Macati.av, the mo>t attractive, and one of the most {earned and eloquent of the essayists and eritics of the age, was educated at the University of Cambridge, England, where he took his degree in 1822, after having achieved the highest honors of the university. After leaving the univer- sity, he studied law at Lincoln's Inn, and was admitted to the bar in 1826. He has been distinguished in politics, as an orator in parliament, and as an able officer of the Supreme Council in Calcutta, India. He returned to England in 1838j and a few years later was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, lie is very meritorious as a poet ; but his poetical merit dwindles into insignifi- cance in comparison With' the unrivaled brilliancy of his \ rose. His" Ess- ys 282 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. fi ora the Edinburgh Review" have been published in three volumes. They havt attained a greater popularity than any other contributions to the periodical works of the day. His last publication, the " History of England." is written in a style of great clearness, force, and eloquence, and is as popular among all classes as any history of the present century. He was raised to the peerage, as a tribute to his eminent literary merit, in 1857. He died December 28th, 1S59. 80. THE PILGRIM'S VISION. 1. I SAW in the naked forest our scattered remnant cast — A screen of shivering branches between them and the blast ; The snow was falling round them, the dying fell as fast ; I looked to see them perish, when lo ! the vision passed. 2. Again mine eyes were opened — the feeble had waxed strong ; The babes had grown to sturdy men, the remnant was a throng. By shadowed lake and winding stream, and all the shores along, The howling demons quaked to hear the Christian's godly song. 3. They slept — the village fathers — by river, lake, and shore, When far adown the steep of Time the vision rose once more : I saw along the winter snow a spectral column pour ; And high above their broken ranks a tattered flag they bore. 4. Their Leader rode before them, of bearing calm and high, The light of Heaven's own kindling throned in his awful eye : These were a Nation's champions Her dread appeal to try ; " God for the right !" I faltered, And lo ! the train passed by 5. Once more ; the strife was ended, the solemn issue tried ; The Lord of Hosts, his mighty arm had helped our Israel's side : Gray stone and grassy hillock, told where her martyrs died ; And peace was in the borders of victory's chosen bride 6. A crash — as when some swolfcn cloud cracks o'er the tangled trees ! With side to side, and spar to spar, whose smoking decks are these ? I know Saint George's blood-red cross, thou Mistress of the Seas ; But what is she, whose streaming bars roll out beforo the breoze. THE ROCK OF THE PILGRIMS. 283 7. Ah ! well her iron ribs are knit, whose thunders strive to quell The bellowing throats, the blazing lips that pealed the Armada's knell ! The mist was cleared, a wreath of stars rose o'er the crimsoned swell, And wavering from its haughty peak, the cross of England fell 1 8. O, trembling Faith ! though dark the morn, a heavenly torch is thine ; While feebler races melt away, and paler orbs decline, Still shall the fiery pillar's ray along thy jmthway shine, To light the chosen tribe that sought this Western Palestine ! 9. I see the living tide roll on, it crowns with flaming towers The icy capes of Labrador, the Spaniard's " land of flowers ;" It streams beyond the splintered ridge that parts the Northern showers — From eastern rock to sunset wave the Continent is ours ! Oliver Wendell Holmes. V. 81. THE ROCK OF THE PILGRIMS. A ROCK in the wilderness welcomed our sires, From bondage far over the dark rolling sea ; On that holy altar they kindled the fires, Jehovah, which glow in our bosoms for Thee. 2. Thy blessings descended in sunshine and shower, Or rose from the soil that was sown by Thy hand ; The mountain and valley rejoiced in Thy power, And Heaven encircled and smiled on the land. 3. The Pilgrims of old an example have given Of mild resignation, devotion, and love, Which beams like a star in the blue vault of heaven, A beacon-light hung in their mansion above. 4. In church and cathedral we kneel in our prayer— - Their temple and chapel were valley and hill : But God is the same in the aisle or the ah*, And He is the Rock that we lean upon still. Mortus. 284 NATIONAL FIFTH READER George P. Morris, the popular song-writer, -was born at Philadelphia, in 1801. He commenced his literary career by contributions to the journals at the early age of fifteen. In 18:23, with Mr. Woodworth, he established the "New York Mirror," a Meekly miscellany, which was conducted with much taste and ability for nearly nineteen years. In conjunction with Mr. Willis, he reestablished " The Mirror" in 1843, which was soon after succeeded by " The Home Journal," which he aided in conducting until a short time before his death. In 1827, his play, in five acts, entitled " Brier Cliff, a tale of the American Revolution," was brought out by Mr. Wallack, and acted forty nights successively. So great was its popularity, that it was played at four theaters in New York on the same evening, to full houses, and yielded its author a profit of three thousand five hundred dollars. The last complete edition of his works appeared in 18G0. He died in New York, July Gth, 1864, VI. 82. ADVANTAGES OF ADVERSITY. FROM the dark portals of the star-chamber, and in the stern text of the acts of uniformity, the Pilgrims received a com- mission, more efficient than any that ever bore the royal seal. Their banishment to Holland was fortunate ; the decline of their little company in the strange land was fortunate ; the difficulties which they experienced in getting the royal consent to banish themselves to this wilderness were fortunate ; all the tears and heart-breakings of that ever memorable parting at Delfthaven ' had the happiest influence on the rising destinies of New Eng- land. All this purified the ranks of the settlers. These rough touches of fortune brushed off the light, uncertain, selfish spirits. They made it a grave, solemn, self-denying expedition, and re- quired of those who engaged in it to be so too. They cast a broad shadow of thought and seriousness over the cause ; and, if this sometimes deepened into melancholy and bitterness, can we find no apology for such a human weakness ? 2. It is sad, indeed, to reflect on the disasters which the little band of Pilgrims encountered ; sad to see a portion of them, the prey of unrelenting cupidity, treacherously embarked in an unsound, unseaworthy ship, which they are soon obliged to aban- don, and crowd themselves into one vessel ; one hundred per- sons, besides the ship's company, in a vessel of one hundred and sixty tons. One is touched at the story of the long, cold, and 1 Delft ha' ven, a fortified town this place the Pilgrims of New Eug- in South Holland (now Belgium), be- land took their last farewell of their tween Rotterdam and Schiedam. At European friends. ADVANTAGES OF ADVERSITY. v>85 weary autumnal passage ; of the landing on the inhospitable rocks at this dismal season ; where they are deserted, before long, by the ship which had brought them, and which seemed their only hold upon the world of fellow-men, a prey to the elements and to want, and fearfully ignorant of the numb, the power, and the temper of the savage tribes, that filled the unexplored continent, upon whose verge they had ventured. 3. Bat all this wrought together for good. These trials of wandering and exile, of the ocean, the winter, the wilderness, and the savage foe, were the final assurances of success. It was these that put far away from our fathers' cause all patrician softness, all hcreditar} r claims to preeminence. No effeminate nobility crowded into the dark and austere ranks of the Pilgrims. No Carr nor Villiers ' would lead on the ill-provided band of despised Puritans. No well-endowed clergy were on the alert to quit their cathedrals, and set up a pompous hierarchy in the frozen wilderness. No craving governors were anxious to bo sent over to our cheerless El Dorados 2 of ice and snow. 4. No ; they could not say they had encouraged, patronized, or helped the Pilgrims : their own cares, their own labors, their own councils, their own blood, contrived all, achieved ail, bore all, sealed all. They could not afterward fairly pretend to reap where they had not strewn ; and, as our fathers reared this broad and solid fabric with pains and watchfulness, unaided, barely tolerated, it did not fall when the favor, which had always be?n withholden, was changed into wrath ; when the arm, which had never supported, was raised to destroy. 5. Methinks I see it now, that one solitary, adventurous vessel, the Mayflower 3 of a forlorn hope, freighted with the prospects of a future State, and bound across the unknown sea. I behold it pursuing, with a thousand misgivings, the uncertain, the tedious voyage. Suns rise and set, and weeks and months pass, and winter surprises them on the deep, but brings them not the sight of the wished-for shore. 1 Carr and Villiers, the unworthy in the interior cf South America, favorites of James I., the English supposed to be immensely rich in monarch. Villiers is better known gold, gems, etc. inhistoryastheDukeof Buckingham, 3 Mayflower, the name of the ves- and Carr, as the Earl of Somerset. sel in whiehthe settlers of Plymouth, * El Dora' do, a fabulous region in Mass.. came to America, in 1620. 28G NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 6. I see them now scantily supplied with provisions ; crowded almost to suffocation in their ill-stored prison ; delayed by calms, pursuing a circuitous route, — and now driven in fury before tho raging tempest, on the high and giddy waves. The awful voice of the storm howls through the rigging. The laboring masts seem straining from their base ; the dismal sounds of the pumps is heard ; the ship leaps, as it were, madly, from billow to billow ; the ocean breaks, and settles with ingulfing floods over the float- ing deck, and beats, with deadening, shivering weight, against the staggered vessel. 7. I see them, escaped from these perils, pursuing their all but desperate undertaking, and landed at last, after a five months' passage, on the ice-clad rocks of Plymouth, — weak and weary from the voyage, poorly armed, scantily provisioned, depending on the charity of their shipmaster for a draught of beer on board, drinking nothing but water on shore, — without shelter, without means,— surrounded by hostile tribes. 8. Shut now the volume of history, and tell me, on any prin- ciple of human probability, what shall be the fate of this handful of adventurers. Tell me, man of military science, in how many months were they all swept off by the thirty savage tribes, enu- merated within the early limits of New England? Tell me, politician, how long did this shadow of a colony, on which your conventions and treaties had not smiled, languish on the distant coast ? Student of history, compare for me the baffled projects, the deserted settlements, the abandoned adventures of other times, and find the parallel of this. 9. Was it the winter's storm, beating upon the houseless heads of women and children ; was it hard labor and spare meals ; was it disease ; was it the tomahawk ; was it the deep malady of a blighted hope, a ruined enterprise, and a broken heart, aching in its last moments at the recollection of the loved and left beyond the sea ; — was it some, or all of these united, that hurried this forsaken company to their melancholy fate ? And is it possible that neither of these causes, that not all combined, were able to blast this bud of hope ? Is it possible, that, from a beginning so feeble, so frail, so worthy, not so much of admiration as of pity, there has gone forth a progress so steady, a growth so wonderful, an expansion so ample, a reality so important, a promise, yet to be fulfilled, so glorious ? Edward Everett. THE GRAVES OF THE PATRIOTS. 287 Edward Everett, an American statesman, orator, and man of letters, wa| born in Dorchester, near Boston, Mass., April 11th, 1794. He entered Harvard College in 1807, where he graduated with the highest honors at the carlj age of seventeen. He studied theology; was settled as pastor over the Brattle Street Church in Boston; and in 1815, elected Greek Professor at Harvard College. He now visited Europe, where he devoted four years to study and travel, and made the acquaintance of Scott, Byron, Campbell, Jeffrey, and other noted persons. He was subsequently a member of both houses of Congn •—, Governor of Massachusetts, Embassador to England, President of Harvard College, and Secretary of State. As a scholar, rhetorician, and orator, he has had but few equals. Through his individual efforts, chiefly as lecturer, the sum of about $90,000 was realized and paid over to the Mount Vernon fund, and sundry charitable associations. Ho died in January, 1805. VII. 83. THE GRAVES OF THE PATRIOTS. HERE rest the great and good. Here they repose After their generous toil. A sacred band, They take their sleep together, while the year Comes with its early flowers to deck their graves, And gathers them again, as Winter frowns. Theirs is no vulgar sepulchre — green sods Are all their monument, and yet it tells A nobler history than pillared piles, Or the eternal pyramids. 2. They need No statue nor inscription to reveal Their greatness. It is round them ; and the joy With which their children tread the hallowed ground That holds their venerated bones, the peace That smiles on all they fought for, and the wealth That clothes the land they rescued — these, though mute As feeling ever is when deepest — these Are monuments more lasting than the fanes Reared to the kings and demigods of old. 3. Touch not the ancient elms, that bend their shade Over their lowly graves ; beneath their boughs There is a solemn darkness even at noon, Suited to such as visit at the shrine Of serious Liberty. No factious voice Called them unto the field of generous fame, But the pure consecrated love of home. No deeper feeling sways us, when it wakes 290 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Have forged thy chain ; yet while he deems thee bound. The links are shivered, and the prison walls Fall outward : terribly thou springest forth, As springs the flame above a burning pile, And shoutest to the nations, who return Thy shoutings, while the pale oppressor flies. 4. Thy birth-right was not given by human hands : Thou wert twin-bom with man. In pleasant fields, "While yet our race was few, thou sat'st with him, To tend the quiet flock and watch the stars, And teach the reed to utter simple airs. Thou by his side, amid the tangled wood, Didst war upon the panther and the wolf, His only foes ; and thou with him didst draw The earliest furrows on the mountain side, Soft with the Deluge. Tyranny himself, The enemy, although of reverend look, Hoary with many years, and far obeyed, Is later born than thou ; and as he meets The grave defiance of thine elder eye, The usurper trembles in his fastnesses. 5. Thou shalt wax stronger with the lapse of years, But he shall fade into a feebler age ; Feebler, yet subtler : he shall weave his snares, And spring them on thy careless steps, and clap His withered hands, and from their ambush call His hordes to fall upon thee. He shall send Quaint maskers, forms of fair and gallant mien, To catch thy gaze, and uttering graceful words To charm thy ear ; while his sly imps, by stealth, Twine round thee threads of steel, light thread on thread, That grow to fetters ; or bind down thy arms With chains concealed in chaplets. 6. Oh! not yet Mayst thou unbrace thy corslet, nor lay by Thy sword, nor yet, O Freedom ! close thy lids In slumber ; for thine enemy never sleeps. And thou must watch and combat, till the day Of the new Earth and Heaven. But wouldst thou rest Awhile from tumult and the frauds of men, LIBERTY. 291 These old and friendly solitudes invite Thy visit. They, while yet the forest trees AVere young upon the unviolated earth, And yet the moss-stains on tho rock were new, Beheld thy glorious childhood, and rejoiced. Bryant. IX. 85. LIBERTY. LIBERTY, gentlemen, is a solemn thing — a welcome, a joyous, a glorious thing, if you please ; but it is a solemn thing. A free people must be a thoughtful people. The subjects of a despot may be reckless and gay if they can. A free peoplo must be serious ; for it has to do the greatest thing that ever was done in the world — to govern itself. 2. That hour in human life is most serious, when it passes from parental control, into free manhood : then must the man bind the righteous law upon himself, mure strongly than father or mother ever bound it upon him. And when a people leaves the leading-strings of prescriptive authority, and enters upon the ground of freedom, that ground must be fenced with law ; it must be tilled with wisdom ; it must be hallowed with prayer. The tribunal of justice, the free school, the holy church must bo built there, to intrench, to defend, and to keep the sacred heritage. 3. Liberty, I repeat, is a solemn tiling. The world, up to this time, has regarded it as a boon — not as a bond. And there is nothing, I seriously believe, in the present crises of human affairs — there is no point in the great human welfare, on which men's ideas so much need to be cleared up — to be advanced — to be raised to a higher standard, as this grand and terrible responsi- bility of freedom. 4. In the universe there is no trust so awful as mural freedom ; and all good civil freedom depends upon the use of that. But look at it. Around every human, every rational being, is drawn a circle ; the space within is cleared from obstruction, or, at least, from all coercion ; it is sacred to the being himself who stands there ; it is secured and consecrated to his own respon- sibility. May I say it ? — God himself does not penetrate there with any absolute, any coercive power ! He compels the winds and waves to obey him ; he compels animal instincts to obey 292 NATIONAL FIFTH READER him ; but he does not compel man to obey. That sphere he leaves free ; he brings influences to bear upon it ; but the last, final, solemn, infinite question between right and wrong, he leaves to man himself. 5. Ah ! instead of madly delighting in his freedom, I could imagine a man to protest, to complain, to tremble that such a tremendous prerogative l is accorded to him. But it is accorded to him ; and nothing but willing obedience can discharge that solemn trust ; nothing but a heroism greater than that which fights battles, and pours out its blood on its country's altar — the heroism of self-renunciation a and self-control. 6. Come that liberty ! I invoke it with all the ardor of the poets and orators of freedom ; with Spenser 3 and Milton, with Hampden 4 and Sydney, 5 with Bienzi 6 and Dante, 7 with Hamil- ton 8 and Washington, I invoke it. Come that liberty ! come 1 Pre rog' a tive, an exclusive or death with iron resolution. His very peculiar privilege or right. able "Discourses concerning Govern- a Renunciation, fnun^shi a' shun), ment " was a posthumous work. 'Edmund Spenser, excepting 6 Rienzi, (reen'ze), the orator, Shakspeare, the greatest poet of his famous in Roman history for his time, author of the " Faerie Queene," assumption of dictatorship in that was born in London about 1553, where capital, born about 1310, was distin he died on the 16th of January, 1599. guished by his love of the ancient * John Hampden, celebrated for republican institutions of Rome, and his resistance to the imposition of by his profound knowledge of anti- taxes without authority of parlia- quity. He was massacred in 1354. ment, and to the royal prerogative 7 Dante, (dan' te), the poet, author of Charles I., commander of a troop of the " Divina Commedia," was in the parliamentary army, was born born at Florence in 1265, and died at London in 1594, and was mortally at Ravenna, in 1321. wounded in an affair with Prince 8 Alexander Hamilton, distin- Rupert on 18th of June, 1643. guished asa statesman, jurist, soldier, * Algernon Sydney, second son of and financier, one of the ablest offi- Robert, Earl of Leicester, England, cersinthe American Revolution, was was born about the year 1621. In born in the West Indies, in 1757. In early youth ho fought in the ranks 1782 he was a member of Congress of the parliamentary forces. A thor- fromNew York. In 1789, Washington, ough republican, he was inimical to the first President, placed him at the all monarchy, and opposed to the as- head of the Treasury. On the death cendancy of Cromwell. Ho was of Washington, in 1799, his rank abroad at the Restoration, and was made him commander-in-chief of the permitted to return to England in American army. He was challenged 1677. For his supposed connection by Aaron Burr, and a duel was the with the Ryehouse Plot, he was be- consequence, in which he was mortal- headed December 7th, 1683. He met 1 v wounded, at the aire of fort v seven. THE INQUIRY. 293 none that docs not lead to that ! Come the liberty that shall strike off every chain, not only of iron, and iron-law, but of painful constriction, of fear, of enslaving passion, of mad self- will ; the liberty of perfect truth and love, of holy faith and glad obedience! Orville Dewey. SECTION XVI. I. 86. THE INQUIRY. TELL me, ye winged winds, that round my pathway roar, Do ye not know some spot where mortals weep no more ? Some lone and pleasant dell, some valley in the west, Where, free from toil and pain, the weary soul may rest ? The loud wind dwindled to a whisper low, And sighed for pity as it answered — " No." 2. Tell me, thou mighty deep, whose billows round me play, Know'st thou some favored spot, some island far away, Where weary man may find the bliss for which he sighs, — Where sorrow never lives, and friendship never dies ? The loud waves, rolling in perpetual flow, Stopped for a while, and sighed to answer — "No." 3. And thou, serenest moon, that, with such lovely face, Dost look upon the earth, asleep in night's embrace ; Tell me, in all thy round, hast thou not seen some spot, Where miserable man might find a happier lot ? Behind a cloud the moon withdrew in woe, And a voice, sweet, but sad, responded — " No." 4. Tell me, my secret soul ; — oh ! tell me, Hope and Faith, Is there no resting-place from sorrow, sin, and death ? — Is there no happy spot, where mortals may be blessed, Where grief may find a balm, and weariness a rest ? Faith, Hope, and Love, best boons to mortals given, Waved their bright wings, and whispered — "Yes, rx Heaven l" Chaeles Mackat. 294: NATIONAL FIFTH READER. n. 87. THE DEATH OF HAMILTON. A SHORT time since, and he, who is the occasion of oar sorrows, was the ornament of his country. He stood on an eminence, and glory covered him. From that eminence ho has fallen : suddenly, forever fallen. His intercourse with the living world is now ended ; and those who would hereafter find him, must seek him in the grave. There, cold and lifeless, is the heart which just now was the seat of friendship ; there, dim and sightless, is the eye, whose radiant and enlivening orb beamed with intelligence ; and there, closed forever, are those lips, on whose persuasive accents we have so often, and so lately hung with transport ! 2. From the darkness which rests upon his tomb there pro- ceeds, methinks, a light, in which it is clearly seen, that those gaudy objects which men pursue are only phantoms. In this light how dimly shines the splendor of victory — how humble appears the majesty of grandeur! The bubble, which seemed to have so much solidity, has burst ; and we again see, that all below the sun is vanity. 3. True, the funeral eulogy has been pronounced, the sad and solemn procession has moved, the badge of mourning has al- ready been decreed, and presently the sculptured marble will lift up its front, proud to perpetuate the name of Hamilton, and rehearse to the passing traveler his virtues (just tributes of re- spect, and to the living useful) ; but to him, moldering in his narrow and humble habitation, what are they? How vain! how unavailing ! 4. Approach, and behold, while I lift from his sepulcher its covering! Ye admirers of his greatness! ye emulous of his talents and his fame ! approach and behold him now. How pale ! how silent ! No martial bands admire the adroitness of his movements ; no fascinating throng weep, and melt, and tremble at his eloquence ! Amazing change ! a shroud ! a cof- fin ! a narrow, subterraneous cabin ! — this is all that now re- mains of Hamilton ! And is this all that remains of Hamilton ? During a life so transitory, what lasting monument, then, can our fondest hopes erect ! PASS ON, RELENTLESS WORLD. 295 5. My brethren, we stand on the borders of an awful gulf, which is swallowing up all thing.s human. And is there, amidst this universal wreck, nothing stable, nothing abiding, nothing immortal, on which poor, frail, dying man can fasten ? Ask the hero, ask the statesman, whose wisdom you have been accus- tomed to revere, and he will tell you. He will tell you, did I say ? He has already told you, from his death-bed ; and his illumined spirit still whispers from the heavens, with well-known eloquence, the solemn admonition : " Mortals hastening to the tomb, and once the companions of my pilgrimage, take warning and avoid my errors ; cultivate the virtues I have recommended ; choose the Saviour I have chosen : live disinterestedly ; live for immortality ; and would you rescue any thing from final dissolution, lay it up in God." Nott. Elipiiai.et Nott, D.D., LL.D., was born in Ashford, Connecticut, In 1773, and passed his youth as a teacher, thereby acquiring the means of educating himself. He received the degree of Master of Arts from Brown University in 1795. He soon after established himself as clergyman and principal of an academy at Cherry Valley, in the State of New York. From 1798 to his election as president of Union College, in 1S03, he was pastor of the Presbyterian Church, at Albany, where he delivered a discourse "On the Death of Hamilton,' 1 from which the above extract is taken. In 1S54, the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. Nott'a presidency was celebrated at Union College, at the Commencement in July. Very many graduates assembled, and addresses were delivered by Dr. "Way land of Brown University, and Judge Campbell of New York. Dr. Nott also spoke with hif old eloquence. His " Addresses to Young Men," M Temperance Addresses," and a collection of " Sermons," are his only published volumes. He died in 1S66. in. 88. PASS OX, RELENTLESS WORLD. SWIFTER and swifter, day by day, Down Time's unquiet current hurled, Thou passest on thy restless way, Tumultuous and unstable world ! Thou passest on ! Time hath not seen Delay upon thy hurried path ; And prayers and tears alike have been In vain to stay thy course of wrath ! 2. Thou passest on, and with thee go The loves of youth, the cares of age ; And smiles and tears, and joy and woe, Are on thy history's troubled page ! 296 NATIONAL FIFTH HEADER. There, every day, like yesterday, Writes hopes that end in mockery ; But who shall tear the veil away Before the abyss of things to be ? 3. Thou passest on, and at thy side, Even as a shade, Oblivion treads, And 6'er the dreams of human prido His misty shroud forever spreads ; Where all thine iron hand hath traced Upon that gloomy scroll to-day, With records ages since effaced, — Like them shall live, like them decay. 4. Thou passest on, with thee the vain, Who sport upon thy flaunting blaze, Pride, framed of dust and folly's train, Who court thy love, and run thy ways : But thou and I, — and be it so, — Press onward to eternity ; Yet not together let us go To that deep-voiced but shoreless sea. 6. Thou hast thy friends, — I would have mine ; Thou hast thy thoughts, — leave me my own ; I kneel not at thy gilded shrine, I bow not at thy slavish throne : I see them pass without a sigh, — They wake no swelling raptures now, The fierce delights that fire thine eye, The triumphs of thy haughty brow. 6. Pass on, relentless world ! I grieve No more for all that thou hast riven ; Pass on, in God's name, — only leave The things thou never yet hast given — A heart at ease, a mind at home, Affections fixed above thy sway, Faith set upon a world to come, And patience through life's little day. Luxt. George Lunt, born at Nc\vbur3'port, Massachusetts, was graduated at Har- vard in 1834; admitted to the bar in 1S81 ; practiced for a while at his native place, and since 1848 has pursued the profession in Boston. He published his THE WORLD FOR SALE. 297 first volume of poems in 1839, followed in 1843 by " The Age of Gold and other Poems," and in 1854 by "Lyric Poems, Sonnets, and Miscellanies." His novel of New England life, entitled "Eastford, or Household Sketches, by Westlcy Brooke," was also published in 1854. rv. 89. THE WORLD FOR SALE. THE Wokld for sale ! — Hang out the sign ; Call every traveler here to mc : Who'll buy this brave estate of mine, And set me from earth's bondage free ? — "lis going ! — yes, I mean to fling The bauble from my soul away ; I'll sell it, whatsoe'er it bring ; — The World at Auction here to-day ! 2. It is a glorious thing to see, — Ah, it has cheated me so sore ! It is not what it seems to be : For sale ! It shall be mine no more. Come, turn it o'er and view it well ; — I would not have you purchase dear : 'Tis going ! going ! — I must sell ! Who bids ?— Who'll buy the splendid Tear? 3. He-re's Wealth in glittering heaps of gold ; — Who bids? — But let me tell you fair, A baser lot was never sold ; — Who'll buy the heavy heaps of care ? And here, spread out in broad domain, A goodly landscape all may trace ; Hall, cottage, tree, field, hill, and plain ; — Who'll buy himself a burial-place ! 4. Here's Love, the dreamy potent spell That beauty flings around the heart ; I know its power, alas ! too well ; — 'Tis going, — Love and I must part! Must part ? — What can I more with Love! — All over the enchanter's reign ; Who'll buy the plumeless, dying dove, — An hour of bliss, — an ago of pain 298 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 5. And Friendship, — rarest gem of earth, — (Who e'er hath found the jewel his ?) Frail, fickle, false, and little worth, — Who bids for Friendship — as it is ! 'Tis going ! going ! — Hear the call : Once, twice, and thrice ! — 'tis very low ! 'Twas once my hope, my stay, my all, — But now the broken staff must go ! 6. Fame! hold the brilliant meteor high ; How dazzling every gilded name ! Ye millions, now's the time to buy ! How much for Fame ? — How much for Fame ? Hear how it thunders ! — Would you stand On high Olympus, 1 far renowned, — Now purchase, and a world command ! — And be with a world's curses crowned ! 7. Sweet star of Hope ! with ray to shine In every sad foreboding breast, Save this desponding one of mine, — Who bids for man's last friend and best ? Ah ! were not mine a bankrupt life, This treasure should my soul sustain ; But Hope and I are now at strife, Nor ever may unite again. 8. And Song ! For sale my tuneless lute ; Sweet solace, mine no more to hold ; The chords that charmed my soul are mute, I can not wake the notes of old ! Or e'en were mine a wizard shell, Could chain a world in rapture high ; Yet now a sad farewell ! — farewell ! Must on its last faint echoes die. 9. Ambition, fashion, show, and pride, — I part from all forever now ; Grief, in an overwhelming tide, Has taught my haughty heart to bow. 1 O lym' pus, a mountain range mcr and other poets as the throne of Thessaly, on the horder of Mac- of tho gods, is estimated to be 9,745 cdoiiia. Its summit, famed by lie- feet high. GLOBY. 299 Poor heart ! distracted, all, so long, — And still its aching throb to bear ; How broken, that was once so strong I How heavy, once so free from care ! 10. No more for mo life's fitful dream ; — Bright vision, vanishing away ! My bark requires a deeper stream ; My sinking soul a surer stay. By Death, stern sheriff! all bereft, I weep, yet humbly kiss the rod ; The best of all I still have left, — My Faith, my Bible, and my God. Hott. Rev. IlALrn Hoyt is a clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church in New York. lie is a native of the city. After passing several years as a teacher, and a "writer for the gazettes, he studied theology, and took orders in the church in 1S42. lie may have written much, but he has acknowledged little. " The Chant of Life and other Poems," appeared in 1844, and the second portion of the same, in 1S45. These works arc principally occupied with passages of personal senti- ment and reflection. His pieces, entitled "Snow," "The World for Sale," "New," and " Old," have attracted considerable attention, and become popular. A sim- ple, natural current of feeling runs through them : the versification grows out of the subject, and the whole clings to us as something written from the heart of the author. A new edition of his " Sketches of Life and Landscape n waa published in 1S53. V. 90. GLORY. THE crumbling tombstone and the gorgeous mausole'um, 1 the sculptured marble, and the venerable cathedral, all bear witness to the instinctive desire within us to be remembered by coming generations. But how short-lived is the immortality which the works of our hands can confer ! The noblest monu- ments of art that the world has ever seen are covered with the soil of twenty centuries. The works of the age of Pericles 3 lie at the foot of the Acrop'olis 3 in indiscriminate ruin. The plow- 1 MaiT so la' urn, a magnificent gree of perfection that has not since tomb or monument. been equaled, and poetry reached the 1 Per' i cles, the greatest of Athcn- highest excellence. He died B. c. 429. ian statesmen, was born about 495 B. 3 A crbp' o lis, the citadel of Ath- c. During his administration archi- ens, built on a rock, and accessible lecture and sculpture attained a de- only on one side. 800 NATIONAL FIFTH READER share turns up the marble which the hand of Phidias ' had chis- eled into beauty, and the Mussulman has folded his flock beneath the falling columns of the temple of Minerva. 3 2. But even the works of our hands too frequently survive the memory of those who have created them. And were it other- wise, could we thus carry down to distant ages the recollection of our existence, it were surely childish to waste the energies of an immortal spirit in the effort to make it known to other times, that a being whose name was written with certain letters of the alphabet, once lived, and nourished, and died. Neither sculp- tured marble, nor stately column, can reveal to other ages the lineaments of the spirit ; and these alone can embalm our mem- ory in the hearts of a grateful posterity. 3. As the stranger stands beneath the dome of St. Paul's, 3 or treads, with religious awe, the silent aisles of Westminster Ab- bey, 4 the sentiment, which is breathed from every object around him, is, the utter emptiness of sublunary 5 glory. The fine arts, obedient to private affection or public gratitude, have hero em- bodied, in every form, the finest conceptions of which their age was capable. Each one of these monuments has been watered by the tears of the widow, the orphan, or the patriot. 4. But generations have passed away, and mourners and mourned have sunk together into forgetfulness. The aged crone, or the smooth-tongued beadle, as now he hurries you through aisles and chapel, utters, with measured cadence and unmeaning tone, for the thousandth time, the name and lineage of the once honored dead ; and then gladly dismisses you, to repeat again his well-conned lesson to another group of idle passers-by. 5. Such, in its most august form, is all the immortality that matter can confer. It is by what we ourselves have done, and 1 Phid' i as, a Greek sculptor, and Christopher Wren in 1718. the most celebrated of antiquity, « Westminster Abbey, a church was born at Athens about 490 b. c., in Westminster, built by Edward the and died 432 b. c. Confessor, in 1050. Henry III. made 2 Mi ner / va, called Athena by the additions and rebuilt a part between Greeks, was usually regarded, in 1220 and 1269. Many of the most heathen my thology, as the goddess of distinguished statesmen, warriors, wisdom, knowledge, and art. scholars, and artists of England He ' St. Paul's, a celebrated church in buried here. London, of very great size. It was 6 SuV lunary, being under the begun about 1675, and finished by moon ; terrestrial ; earthly. PASSING AWAY. 301 not by what others have done for us, that wo shall be remem- bered by after ages. It is by thought that has aroused my in- tellect from its slumbers, which has " given luster to virtue, and dignity to truth," or by those examples which have inflamed my soul with the love of goodness, and not by means of sculptured marble, that I hold communion with Shakspeare and Milton, with Johnson and Burke, with Howard l and "Wilberforce. 3 Dr. Waylaxd. Dr. Francis "Wayland was born in the city of New York, March 11th, 1706, and in the seventeenth year of his age he was graduated at Union College, in Schenectady. After studying medicine for three years, and his admission to practice, he entered the Theological Seminary at Andovcr, which he left at the end of a year, to become a tutor in Union College. In 1831 he became pastor of the First Baptist Church in Boston, where he continued five years. He was elected to the presidency of Brown University, Providence, in 1828. His lir-t publication was a sermon on the Moral Dignity of the Missionary Enterprise, delivered in Boston, in 1823, which had an extraordinary success, passing through many editions, in England and this country. Very many of his discourses, since that period, have been equally popular. He has also written numerous articles in the journals and quarterly reviews. His works on Moral Science, Tblitical Economy, and Intellectual PldlosopJuj, have deservedly met with great success. His very interesting " Life of the Missionary, Dr. Judson," appeared in 1S53. This able thinker is equally popular as an orator and a writer. Clear, exact, and searching in his analysis, he penetrates to the very heart of his subject, and enunciates its ultimate principles in a stvle of transparent clearness, and clas- sical purity and elegance, and not unfrequently rises to strains of impassioned eloquence. He died September 30th, 1SG5. VI. 01. PASSING AWAY. ~VTT*AS it the chime of a tiny bell, V V That came so sweet to my dreaming ear, Like the silvery tones of a fairy's shell, That he winds on the beach so mellow and clear, "When the winds and the waves lie together asleep, And the moon and the fairy are watching the deep, 1 John Howard, the celebrated ons of Europe. On a second tour Christian philanthropist, was born of inquiry, he was seized with a ma- at Hackney, London, in 1720. With lignant fever, of which he died, at a view to the amelioration of pris- Kherson, Russia, Jan. 20th, 1700. oners, in 1777 he visited all the pris- 2 William Wilberforce, a distin- ons in the United Kingdom ; and in guished British statesman, author. 1778, and the four following years, and Christian philanthropist, was he inspected the principal public pris- born in 17o9.and died July 28th, 1833. <J02 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. She dispensing her silvery light, And he his notes as silvery quite, While the boatman listens and ships his oar, To catch the music that comes from the shore ? — Hark ! the notes on my ear that play, Are set to words : as they float, they say, " Passing ' away ! passing away !" 2 But, no ; it was not a fairy's shell, Blown on the beach, so mellow and clear : Nor was it the tongue of a silver bell Striking the hours that fell on my ear, As I lay in my dream : yet was it a chime That told of the flow of the stream of Time ; For a beautiful clock from the ceiling hung, And a plump little girl for a pendulum, swung ; (As you've sometimes seen, in a little ring That hangs in his cage, a canary bird swing ;) And she held to her bosom a budding bouquet ,* And as she enjoyed it, she seemed to say, " Passing away ! passing away !" 3. Oh, how bright were the wheels, that told Of the lapse of time as they moved round slow 1 And the hands, as they swept o'er the dial ot gold, Seemed to point to the girl below. And lo ! she had changed ; — in a few short hours, Her bouquet had become a garland of flowers, That she held in her outstretched hands, and flung This way and that, as she, dancing, swung In the fullness of grace and womanly pride, That told me she soon was to be a bride ; Yet then, when expecting her happiest day, In the same sweet voice I heard her say, " Passing away ! passing away !" 4. "While I gazed on that fair one's cheek, a shade Of thought, or care, stole softly over, Like that by a cloud in a summer's day made, Looking down on a field of blossoming clover. 1 Passing, (p&s' ing), Note 3, p. 22. " Bouquet, (bo k&')- PASSING AWAY. 303 The rose yet lay on her cheek, but its flush Had something lost of its brilliant blush ; And the light in her eye, and the light on the wheels, That marched so calmly round above her, Was a little dimmed — as when evening steals Upon noon's hot face : — yet one couldn't but love her ; For she looked like a mother whoso first babe lay Rocked on her breast, as she swung all day ; And she seemed in the same silver tone to say, " Passing away ! passing away !" 5. "While yet I looked, what a change there came ! Her eye was quenched, and her cheek was wan ; Stooping and staffed was her withered frame, Yet just as busily swung she on : The garland beneafh her had fallen to dust ; The wheels above her were eaten with rust ; The hands, that over the dial swept, Grew crook'd and tarnished, but on they kept ; And still there came that silver tone From the shriveled lips of the toothless crone, (Let me never forget, to my dying day, The tone or the burden of that lay) — " Passing away ! passing away 1" Pierpo^t. Rev. John PiERrbNT, author of the "Airs of Palestine," was born at Litch- field, Connecticut, April 0th, 1785. He entered Yale College when fifteen years old, graduated in 1804, and passed the four subsequent years as a private tutor in the family of Col. Win. Allston, of South Carolina. He then returned home, studied law in the celebrated school of his native town, and was admitted to practice in 1813. About the same period he delivered his poem entitled "The Portrait," before the Washington Benevolent Society, of Xewburyport, to which place he had removed. Impaired health, and the unsettled state of affairs pro- duced by the war, induced him soon after to relinquish his profession. He be- came a merchant, first in Boston, and afterward in Baltimore. The "Airs of Palestine," which he published in Baltimore, in 1818, was well received, and twice reprinted in the course of the following year. In 1810 he was ordained minister of the Hollis Street Unitarian Church, in Boston. He passed a portion of the years 1835-6 in Europe, and in 1840 published a choice edition of his poems. At different periods, he also published several very able discourses. In 1851 he delivered a poem of considerable length at the centennial celebration in Litchfield. He has written in almost every meter, and many of his poems are remarkably elevated, spirited, and melodious. He died suddenly at Medford, Mass., August 26th, 1800. 304: NATIONAL FIFTn READER. SECTION XVII. I. 92. THE STOLEN RIFLE. MACKENZIE offered to cross the river and demand the rifle, if any one would accompany him. It was a hair-brained project, for these villages were noted for the ruffian character of their inhabitants ; yet two volunteers promptly stepped forward, Alfred Seton, the clerk, and Joe de la Pierre, the cook. The tri'o soon reached the opposite side of the river. On landing, they freshly primed their rifles and pistols. A path winding for about a hundred yards among rocks and crags, led to the village. 2. No notice seemed to be taken of their approach. Not a solitary being — man, woman, or child — greeted them. The very dogs, those noisy pests of an Indian town, kept silence. On entering the village a boy made his appearance, and pointed to a house of larger dimensions than the rest. They had to stoop to enter it : as soon as they had passed the threshold, the nar- row passage behind them was filled by a sudden rush of Indians, who had before kept out of sight. 3. Mackenzie and his companions found themselves in a rude chamber of about twenty-five feet long, and twenty wide. A bright fire was blazing at one end, near which sat the chief, about sixty years old. A large number of Indians, wrapped in buffalo robes, were squatted in rows, three deep, forming a semi- circle round three sides of the room. A single glance sufficed to show them the grim and dangerous assembly into which they had intruded, and that all retreat was cut off by the mass which blocked up the entrance. 4. The chief pointed to the vacant side of the room opposito to the door, and motioned for them to take their seats. They complied. A dead pause ensued. The grim warriors around sat like statues ; each muffled in his robe, with his fierce eyes bent on the intruders. The latter felt they were in a perilous predicament. 5. " Keep your eyes on the chief while I am addressing him," said Mackenzie to his companions. " Should he give any sign to his band, shoot him, and make for the door." Mackenzie THE TOMAHAWK SUBMISSIVE TO ELOQUENCE. 305 advanced, and offered the pipe of peace to the chief, but it was refused. He then made a regular speech, explaining the object of their visit, and proposing to give, in exchange for the rifle, two blankets, an ax, some beads, and tobacco. 6. When he had done, the chief rose, began to address him in a low voice, but soon became loud and violent, and ended by working himself up into a furious passion. He upbraided the white men for their sordid conduct, in passing and repassing through their neighborhood without giving them a blanket or any other article of goods, merely because they had no furs to barter in exchange ; and he alluded, with menaces of vengeance, to the death of the Indians, killed by the whites at the skirmish at the Falls. 7. Matters were verging to a crisis. It was evident the sur- rounding savages were only waiting a signal froni the chief to spring upon their prey. Mackenzie and his companions had gradually risen on their feet during the speech, and had brought their rifles to a horizontal position, the barrels resting in their left hands : the muzzle of Mackenzie's piece was within three feet of the speaker's heart. 8. They cocked their rifles ; the click of the locks for a mo- ment suffused the dark cheek of the savage, and there was a pause. They coolly, but promptly advanced to the door ; the Indians fell back in awe, and suffered them to pass. The sun was just setting as they emerged from this dangerous den. They took the precaution to keep along the tops of the rocks as much as possible, on their way back to the canoe, and reached their camp in safety, congratulating themselves on their escape, and feeling no desire to make a second visit to the grim warriors of the ^Yish-ram." Washington Irving. n. 93. THE TOMAHAWK SUBMISSIVE TO ELOQUENCE. riHWENTY tomahawks were raised ; twenty arrows drawn to JL their head. Yet stood Harold stern and collected, at bay — parleying only with his Btoord. He waved his arm. Smitten with a sense of their cow'ardice, perhaps, or by his great dig- nity, more awful for his very youth, their weapons dropped, and their countenances were uplifted upon him, less in hatred than in wonder. 306 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 2. The old men gathered about him : he leaned upon his saber. Their eyes shone with admiration : such heroic deportment, in one so young — a boy ! so intrepid ! so prompt ! so graceful ! so eloquent, too ! — for, knowing the effect of eloquence, and feeling the loftiness of his own nature, the innocence of his own heart, the character of the Indians for hospitality, and their veneration for his blood, Harold dealt out the thunder of his strength to these rude barbarians of the wilderness, till they, young and old, gathering nearer and nearer in their devotion, threw down their weapons at his feet, and formed a rampart of locked arms and hearts about him, through which his eloquence thrilled and lightened like electricity. The old greeted him with a lofty step, as the patriarch welcomes his boy from the triumph of far-off battle ; and the young clave to him and clung to him, and shouted in their self-abandonment, like brothers round a conquering brother. 3. " Warriors !" he said, " Brethren !" — (their tomahawks were brandished simulta'neously, at the sound of his terrible voice, as if preparing for the onset). His tones grew deeper, and less threatening. "Brothers! let us talk together of Logan! 1 Ye who have known him, ye aged men ! bear ye testimony to the deeds of his strength. Who was like him ? Who could resist him? Who may abide the hurricane in its volley? Who may withstand the winds that uproot the great trees of the mountain ? Let him be the foe of Logan. Thrice in one day hath he given battle. Thrice in one day hath he come back victorious. Who may bear up against the strong man — the man of war ? Let them that are young, hear me. Let them follow the course of Logan. He goes in clouds and whirlwind — in the fire and in the smoke. Let them follow him. Warriors ! Logan was the father of Harold !" They fell back in astonishment, but they believed him ; for Harold's word was unquestioned, undoubted evidence, to them that knew him. Neal. JonN Neal was born in Portland, Maine, about 1794. He was brought up as a shop-boy, and in 1815 became a wholesale dry-goods dealer in Baltimore, with John Pierpont, the poet. The concern failed, and Neal commenced the study of law, and with it the profession of literature, by writiog a series of critical es- says on the works of Byron for "The Portico," a monthly magazine. In 1818 he published "Keep Cool," a novel, and in the following year "The Battle of 1 Logan, an Indian chief of the when lie took an Indian's revenge. Cayugas, murdered in 1781. lie was A speech of his, addressed to Lord remarkable for his attachment to the Dunmore, is an eloquent rebuke of whites until cruelly treated by them, the conduct of the whites. THE BARON'S LAST BANQUET. 307 Niagara, Goldau the Maniac Tlarpcr, and other Poem?," and "Otho," a tragedy, lie wrote a large portion of Allen's "History of the American Revolution," which appeared in 183L Four novels, "Logan," "Randolph," "Errata," and " Seventy-six," some of which were republished in London, followed in quick succession. Meanwhile the author had studied law; been admitted, and was practicing as energetically as he was writing. Near the close of 1823 he went abroad; and, soon after his arrival in London, became a contributor to several periodicals, making his first appearance in " Blackwood's Magazine," in " Sketch cf the Five American Presidents and the Five Candidates for the Presidency," a paper which was widely republished. After passing four years in Great Britain and on the Continent, in which time appeared his " Brother Jonathan," a novel, he came back to his native city of Portland, where he now resides. He has since published " Rachel Duer," "Authorship," "The Down Eastcrs," " Ruth Elder," "One Word More," 1S54, and "True Womanhood, a Talc," 18.59; and contributed largely to periodicals. His novels arc original, and written from the impulses of his heart, containing numerous passages marked by dramatic power, and brilliancy of sentiment and cxprcs>ion ; but most of them having been produced rapidly, and without unity, aim, or continuous interest, are now undergoing revision. Mr. Ncal's poems have the unquestionable stamp of genius. His imagination is marked by a degree of sensibility and energy rarely surpassed. m. 91 THE BARON'S LAST BANQUET. 1. O'ER a low coucli the setting sun had thrown its latest ray, "Where, in his last strong agony, a dying warrior lay,— The stern old Baron Rudiger, whose frame had ne'er been bent By wasting pain, till time and toil its iron strength had sj^ent. 2. " They come around me here, and say my days of life are o'er, — That I shall mount my noble steed and lead my band no more ; They come, and, to my beard, they dare to tell me now that I, Their own liege lord aud master born, that I — ha ! ha ! — must die. 3. And what is death ? I've dared him oft, before the Painim ] spenr ; Think ye he's entered at my gate — has come to seek me here ? I've met him, faced him, scorned him, when the fight was rag- ing hot ; — I'll try his might, I'll brave his power ! — defy, and fear him not ! 4. "Ho! sound the tocsin 1 from my tower, and fire the cul'verin,* Bid each retainer arm with speed ; call every vassal in. » FaP nim, pagan ; infidel. s CuT ver in, a long, slender can- * T6c' sin, a bell for giving alarm, non, to carry a ball a great distance* 308 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Up with my banner on the wall, — the banquet-board prepare, — Throw wide the portal of my hall, and bring my armor there J' 1 5. A hundred hands were busy then : the banquet forth was spread, And rung the heavy oaken floor with many a martial tread ; While from the rich, dark tracery, along the vaulted wall, Lights gleamed on harness, plume, and spear, o'er the proud old Gothic hall. 6. Fast hurrying through the outer gate, the mailed retainers poured, On through the portal's frowning arch, and thronged around the board ; While at its head, within his dark, carved, oaken chair of state, Armed cap-a-pie, 1 stern Eudiger, with girded falchion 2 sate. 7. " Fill every beaker up, my men ! — pour forth the cheering wine ! There's life and strength in every drop, — thanksgiving to the vine ! Are ye all there, my vassals true ? — mine eyes are waxing dim : Fill round, my tried and fearless ones, each goblet to the brim ! 8. " Ye're there, but yet I see you not ! — draw forth each trusty sieord, And let me hear your faithful steel clash once around my board ! I hear it faintly : Louder yet ! What clogs my heavy breath ? Up, all! — and shout for Eudiger, 'Defiance unto Death!'" 9. Bowl rang to bowl, steel clanged to steel, and rose a deafening cry, That made the torches flare around, and shook the flags on high •. " Ho ! cravens ! do ye fear him ? Slaves ! traitors ! have ye flown ? Ho ! cowards, have ye left me to meet him here alone ? 10. " But I defy him ! — let him come !" Down rang the massy cup, WTiile from its sheath the ready blade came flashing half-way up; And, with the black and heavy plumes scarce trembling on his head, There, in his dark, carved, oaken chair, old Eudiger sat — dead ! Greene. 1 Cap N apie', from head to foot; shorter than the ordinary military all over. sword, and less heavy, much used 3 Falchion, (fir chun), a broad from the eighth to the fifteenth sword, with a slightly curved point, century. BERNARDO DEL CARPIO. 309 . Mr. Albert G. Greene was born at Providence, Rhode Inland, February 10th, 1803. lie was a graduate at Brown University in 1820, practiced law in his nativo city until 1834, since which time he has held office under the city government. One of his earliest metrical compositions was the popular ballad of " Old Grimes." His poems, which were principally written for periodicals, have never been pub- lished in a collected form. One of his longest serious ballads, entitled " Canon- chet," is published in Updike's "History of the Narraghansett Church." IV. 95. BERNARDO DEL CARPIO. 1 1. rTIHE warrior bowed his crested head, and tamed his heart of fire, _A_ And sued the haughty king to free his long-imprisoned sire ; " I bring thee here my fortress-keys, I bring my captive train, I pledge thee faith, my liege, my lord ! — Oh ! break my father's chain !" 2. " Rise, rise ! even now thy father comes, a ransomed man this day : Mount thy good horse ; and thou and I will meet him on his way." Then lightly rose that loyal son, and bounded on his steed, And urged, as if with lance in rest, the charger's foamy speed. 3. And lo ! from far, as on they pressed, there came a glittering band, With one that 'midst them stately rode, as a leader in the land : " Now haste, Bernardo, haste ! for there, in very truth, is he, The father whom thy faithful heart hath yearned so long to see." 4. His dark eye flashed, his proud breast heaved, his cheek's hue came and went : He reached that gray-haired chieftain's side, and there, dismount- ing, bent ; A lowly knee to earth he bent, his father's hand he took — What was there in its touch that all his fiery spirit shook ? 1 Bernardo del Carpio, a eclcbra- release. Alphonso therefore offered ted Spanish champion, after many in- Bernardo the person of his father in effectual efforts to procure the release exchange for the castle of Carpio. of his father, Count Saldana, whom Bernardo immediately gave up his King Alphonso, of Asturias, had long stronghold with all his captives ; and retainedin prison, at last tookuparms rode forth with the king to meet his in despair. He maintained so de- father, who he was assured was on structive a war that the king's sub- his way from prison. The remainder jects united in demanding Saldanas of the story is related in the ballad. 310 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. * 5. That hand was cold, a frozen thing, — it dropped from his like lead ! He looked up to the face above, — the face was of the dead! A plume waved o'er the noble brow, — the brow was fixed and white : He met, at last, his father's eyes, — but in them was no sight ! 6. Up from the ground he sprang and gazed ; — but who could paint that gaze ? They hushed their very hearts, that saw its horror and amaze : — They might have chained him, as before that stony form he stood ; For the power was stricken from his arm, and from his lip the blood. 7. " Father !" at length he murmured low, and wept like childhood then : Talk not of grief till thou hast seen the tears of warlike men ! He thought on all his glorious hopes, and all his young renown, — He flung his falchion from his side, and in the dust sat down. 8. Then covering with his steel-gloved hands his darkly mournful brow, "No more, there is no more," he said, " to lift the sword for, now ; My king is false — my hope betrayed ! My father — Oh ! the worth, The glory, and the loveliness, are passed away from earth ! 9. "I thoughtto stand wherebanners waved, my sire, beside thee,yet! I would that there our kindred blood on Spain's free soil had met ! Thou wouldst have known my spirit, then ; — for thee my fields were won ; And thou hast perished in thy chains, asthoughthouhadst noson!" 10. Then, starting from the ground once more, he seized the mon- arch's rein, Amidst the pale and wildered looks of all the courtier train ; And, with a fierce, o'ermastering grasp, the rearing war-horse led, Ajid sternly set them face to face — the king before the dead : 11. " Came I not forth, upon thy pledge, my father's hand to kiss ? Be still, and gaze thou on, false king ! and tell me, what is this ? MARIUS IN PRISON. 3H The voice, the glance, the heart I sought, — give answer, where are they ? If thou wouldst dear thy perjured soul, send life through this cold clay ! 12. "Into these glassy eyes put light ; — be still! keep down thine ire! — \Bid these white lips a blessing speak, — this earth is not my sire : 7 Give me back him for whom I strove, for whom my blood was shed ! — Thou canst not ? and a king! — his dust be mountains on thy head!" 13. He loosed the steed, — his slack hand fell; — upon the silent face He cast one long, deep, troubled look, then turned from that sad place : His hope was crushed, his after fate untold in martial strain : — His banner led the spears no more, amidst the hills of Spain. Mrs. II em ax s. Mrs. Hemaks (Felicia Dorothea Browne), the daughter of a Liverpool mer- chant, was born in that town on the 25th of September, 1793. Her father, soon after, experiencing some reverses, removed with his family to Wales, and there the young poetess imbibed that love of nature which is displayed in all her works. She wrote verses from her childhood, and published a poetical volume in her fourteenth year. Her second volume, " The Domestic Affections," which appeared in 1812, established her poetical reputation. In the same year she mar- ried Captain Ilemans, who, after some years, went to reside on the Continent, his wife remaining at home with her five sons. She became more and more de- voted to study and composition. In 1S19 she won a prize of £50, offered by some patriotic Scots for the best poem on Sir William Wallace, and in June, 1821, she obtained the prize awarded by the Royal Society of Literature for the best poem on the subject of Dartmoor. She succeeded well in narrative and dramatic poetry, though the character of her genius was decidedly lyrical and reflective. Her numerous poems arc admirable for purity of sentiment and gentle pathos; and her personal character was amiable, modest, and exemplary. After several changes of residence, she died in Dublin, ou the ICth of May, 1S35. V. 96. MARIUS m PRISON. THE peculiar sublimity of the Roman mind does not express itself, nor is it at all to be sought, in their poetry. Poetry, according to the Roman ideal of it, was not an adequate organ for the grander movements of the national mind. Roman sub- limity must be looked for in Roman acts, and in Roman sayings. Where, again, y\ill you find a more adequate expression of the 312 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Roman majesty, than in the saying of Trajan 1 — Imperalorem oportere stantem mori — that Caesar 3 ought to die standing? — a speech of impsratorial 3 grandeur. Implying that he, who was "the foremost man of all this world," and, in regard to all other nations, the representative of his own, should express its characteristic virtue in his farewell act — should die in procinctu,* and should meet the last enemy as the first, with a Roman countenance and in a soldier's attitude. If this had an imper- atorial, what follows had a consular majesty, and is almost the grandest story upon record. 2. Mariiis, 5 the man who rose to be seven times consul, was in a dungeon, and a slave was sent in with commission to put him to death. These were the persons — the two extremities of ex- alted and forlorn humanity, its vanward and its rearward man, a Roman consul and an abject slave. But their natural relations to each other were, by the caprice of fortune, monstrously in- verted : the consul was in chains ; the slave was for a moment the arbiter of his fate. By what spells, what magic, did Marius reinstate himself in his natural prerogatives ? By what marvels drawn from heaven or from earth, did he, in the twinkling of an eye, again invest himself with the purple, and place between himself and his assassin a host of shadowy lictors ? 3. By the mere blank supremacy of great minds over weak ones. He fascinated the slave, as a rattlesnake does a bird. Standing "like Teneriffe," he smote him with his eye, and said, " Tunc, homo, audes occidere C. Marium ?" — Dost thou, fellow, 1 Tra'jan, one of the most illustri- and died by the hands of assassins, ous emperors of Rome, was born near in the Senate House, in the loth of Seville, in Spain, in the year 53. By March, in the fifty-sixth year of his his great victories over tho Dacians, age. As a warrior, a statesman, and Germans, and Parthians, he fixed sc- a man of letters, he was one of tho curely the boundaries of the Roman most remarkable men of any age. empire on tho banks of the Rhine ■ Im per x a to' ri al, of, or relating and the Tigris. His internal admin- to the office of Imperator, or Com- istration was equally glorious, his mander-in-chief, a title of honor con- reign being celebrated for its great ferred on Roman generals for great clemency, and rigid discipline of military exploits ; commanding, justice, and for its humanity to * In procinctu, about to join bat- Christians. Ho died at Selinus, a tic; ready for action, town in Cilicia, August, 117. 6 Ma'rius, one of the greatest 3 Caius Julius Caesar, Dictator of generals and dictators of the Roman Rome, was born July 12 th, n. c. 100, republic, born about 157, died r$. c. CO. THE ANNOYEB. $13 presumo to kill Caius Marius ? Whereat, the rep'tile, quaking under the voice, nor daring to affront the consular eye, sank gently to the ground, turned round upon his hands and feet, and, crawling out of the prison like any other vermin, left Marius standing in solitude as steadfast and immovable as the capitol. De Quincet. SECTION XVIII. L 97. THE ANNOYER. LOVE knoweth every form of air, And every shape of earth, And comes, unbidden, everywhere, Like thought's mysterious birth. The moonlit sea and the sunset sky Are written with Love's words, And you hear his voice unceasingly, Like song, in the time of birds. 2. He peeps into the warrior's heart From the tip of a stooping plume, And the serried ' spears, and the many men, May not deny him room. He'll come to his tent in the weary night, And be busy in his dream, And he'll float to his eye in the morning light, Like a fay on a silver beam. 3. He hears the sound of the hunter's gun, And rides on the echo back, And sighs in his car like a stirring leaf, And flits in his woodland track. The shade of the wood, and the sheen* of the river, The cloud, and the open sky, — Ho will haunt them all with his subtle quiver, Like the light of your very eye. ■ SSr' rifcd, close ; crowded ; compact. a Shsen, brightness. 14 314 NATIONAL FIFTH HEADER. 4 The fisher hangs over the leaning boat. And ponders the silver sea, For Love is under the surface hid, And a spell of thought has he : He heaves the wave like a bosom sweet, And speaks in the ripple low, Till the bait is gone from the crafty line, And the hook hangs bare below. 5. He blurs the print of the scholar's book, And intrudes in the maiden's prayer, And profanes the cell of the holy man In the shape of a lady fair. In the darkest night, and the bright daylight, In earth, and sea, and sky, In every home of human thought, Will Love be lurking nigh. Willis. Nathaniel Parker Willis, one of the most voluminous and successful of American writers, was born in Portland, Maine, January 20th, 1807. His father, a distinguished journalist, removed to Boston when he was six years of age. He was prepared for college at the Latin School of Boston and at the Phillips Acad- emy at Andover. He graduated with high honors at Yale in 1827. While in college, he distinguished himself by a series of sacred poems, and gained the prize of fifty dollars for the best poem, offered by Lockwood, the publisher of " The Album." After his graduation he edited " The Legendary," a series of volumes of tales, and then established the " American Monthly Magazine," which, after two years and a half, was merged in the " New York Mirror," and the liter- ary fraternity of N. P. Willis and George P. Morris began. Immediately after the partnership was formed, he set sail for a tour in Europe, palatable and piquant reports of which appeared in the " Mirror," entitled "Pencilings by the Way." This first and extended residence abroad led our traveler through all the capitals of Europe, and even to " the poetic altars of the Orient." In 1835, after residing two years in London, and contributing to the "New Monthly Maga- zine" talcs and sketches, republished under the title of " Inklings of Adventure," he married Mary Leighton Stacy, the daughter of a distinguished officer who had won high honors at Waterloo, and was then Commissary-general in com- mand of the arsenal, Woolwich. In 1837, he returned to his native land, and established himself at " Glenmary," in Central New York, near the village of Owego. The portrait of this happy home and the landscape around, is drawn in " Letters from under a Bridge." In 1839, he became one of the editors of 14 The Corsair," a literary gazette, and made a short trip to England. On his return home, "The Corsair" having been discontinued, he revived, with his for- mer partner, Gen. Morris, the "Mirror." Upon the death of his wife, in 1844, he again visited Europe for the improvement of his health. Soon after, the " Mirror" having passed into other hands, the partners established " The Home Journal." In October, 1846, he married Cornelia, only daughter of the Hon. Joseph Grinnell, of Massachusetts, since which time he has resided at "Idle- wild," a romantic place, which he has cultivated and onibelllshed, near Newburg. THE PALM AND THE PINE. 315 on the Hudson. His poems have recently been published in an elegant octavo volume, richly illustrated, and a uniform collection of his prose writings, in twelve volumes, of some live hundred pages each, has also come from the press. Mr, Willis is equally happy as a writer of prose and verse. With a felicitous Style, a warm and exuberant fancy, and a ready and sparkling wit, he wins the admiration of readers of the most refined sentiment and the daintiest fancy, and at the same time commands the full sympathy of the masses. II. 98. THE PALM AND THE PINE. WHEN Peter led the First Cmsade, A Norseman wooed an Ar'ab inaicL He loved her lithe and palmy grace, And the dark beauty of her face : She loved his cheeks, so ruddy fair, His sunny eves and yellow hair. 2. He called : she left her father's tent ; She followed wheresoeer he went. She left the palms of Palestine To sit beneath the Norland pine. She sang the musky Orient strains Where Winter swept tho snowy plains. 3. Their natures met like Night and Morn "What time the morning-star is born. The child that from their meeting grew Hung, like that star, between the two. The glossy night his mother shed From her long hair was on his head : But in its shade thev saw ariso The morning of his father's eyes. 4. Beneath the Orient's tawny stain Wandered the Norseman's crimson vein : Beneath the Northern force was seen The Ar'ab sense, alert and keen. His were the Viking's ' sinewy hands, The arching foot of Eastern lands. 5. And in his soul conflicting strove Northern indifference, Southern love : 1 VY king, one of the pirate chiefs from among the Northmen, who plui> dered the coasts of Europe in the eighth and ninth. centuries, . . 316 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. The chastity of temperate blood, Impetuous passion's fiery flood ; The settled faith that nothing shakes, The jealousy a breath awakes ; The planning Reason's sober gaze, And fancy's meteoric blaze. 6. And stronger, as he grew to man, The contradicting natures ran, — As minified streams from Etna flow, One born of fire, and one of snow. And one impelled, and one withheld, And one obeyed, and one rebelled. One gave him force, the other fire ; This self-control, and that desire. One filled his heart with fierce unrest ; With peace serene the other blessed. 7. He knew the depth and knew the height, The bounds of darkness and of light ; And who these far extremes has seen Must needs know all that lies between. 8. So, with untaught, instinctive art, He read the inyriad-natured heart. He met the men of many a land ; They gave their souls into his hand ; And none of them was long unknown : The hardest lesson was his own. 9. But how he lived, and where, and when, It matters not to other men ; For, as a fountain disappears, To gush again in later years, So hidden blood may find the day, When centuries have rolled away ; And fresher lives betray at last The lineage of a far-off Past. 10. That nature, mixed of sun and snow, Repeats its ancient ebb and now : The children of the Palm and Pino Renew their blended lives — in mine. Taylor. Bayard Taylor, the noted American traveler and poet, was born in the vil- lage of Kennett Square, Chester County, Pennsylvania. January 11th, 1825. At FAIR IKES. 317 the age of seventeen he became an apprentice in a printing office in Westches- ter ; and about the same period wrote verses, which appeurcd in the " New York Mirror" and " Graham's Magazine." He collected and published a small volumo of his poems in 1844, and visited Europe the same year. Having passed two years in Great Britain, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and France, he returned home; published an account of his travels under the title of" Views a-Foot ;" 6Cttled in New York; and in 1848, soon after publishing "Rhymes of Travel," secured a place as a permanent writer for " The Tribune. " He visited California m 1840, returned by the way of Mexico in 1850, and soon after published his "Eldorado, or Adventures in the Path of Empire." His "Book of Romances, Lyrics, and Songs," which appeared in 1851, greatly increased his reputation as a poet. The same year he set out on a protracted tour in the East, upon which he was absent two years and four months) traveling more than fifty thousand miles. His spirited, graphic, and entertaining history of this journey is given in three works, entitled " A Journey to Central Africa, "The Land of the Sara- cen," and " India, Loo Choo, and Japan." " Tocms of the Orient •' appeared in 1854, embracing only such pieces as were written while he was on his passage round the world. They contain passages "rich, sensuous, and impetuous, as the Arab sings in dreams," with others gentle, tender, and exquisitely modulated. A complete edition of his poems appeared in 1864; and his latest novel, "Keu- nett," in 18GG. III. 99. FAIR INES. OSAW ye not fair Ines ? she's gone into the west, To dazzle when the sun is down, and rob the world of rest ; She took our daylight with her, the smiles that we love best, With morning blushes on her cheek, and pearls upon her breast. 2. turn again, fair Ines, before the fall of night, For fear the moon should shine alone, and stars unrivaled bright ; And blessed will the lover be that walks beneath their light, And breathes the love against thy cheek I dare not even write ! 3. Would I had been, fair Ines, that gallant cavalier "W ho rode so gayly by thy side, and whispered thee so near ! — Were there no bonny dames at home, or no true lovers hero, That he should cross the seas to win the dearest of the dear ? 4. 1 saw thee, lovely Ines, descend along the shore, 'With bands of noble gentlemen, and banners waved before ; Andgentle youth andmaidens gay, and snowyplumesthey wore) — It would have been a beauteous dream — if it had been no more ! 318 • NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 5. Alas ! alas ! fair Ines ! slio went away with song, With music waiting on her steps, and shoutings of the throng ; But some were sad, and felt no mirth, but only Music's wrong, In sounds thatsangFarewell, Farewell to her you've loved so long. 6. Farewell, farewell, fair Ines ! that vessel never bore So fair a lady on its deck, nor danced so light before — Alas for pleasure on the sea, and sorrow on the shore I The smile that blest one lover's heart has broken many more ! Thomas Hood. IV. 100. LOVE. ALL thoughts, all passions, all delights, "Whatever stirs this mortal frame, All are but ministers of Love, And feed his sacred flame. 2. Oft in my waking dreams do I Live o'er again that happy hour, "When midway on the mound I lay, Beside the ruined tower. 3. The moonshine, stealing o'er the scene, Had blended with the lights of eve ; And she was there, my hope, my joy, My own dear Genevieve ! 4. She leaned against the armed man, The statue of the armed knight ; She stood and listened to my lay, Amid the lingering light. 5. Few sorrows hath she of her own. My hope ! my joy ! my Genevieve ! She loves me best whene'er I sing The songs that make her grieve. 6. I played a soft and doleful air ; I sang an old and moving story — An old, rude song, that suited well That ruin wild and hoary. love. 319 7. She listened with a flitting blush, With downcast eyes and modest grace ; For well she knew I could not choose But gaze upon her face. #. I told her of the knight that woro Upon his shield a burning brand ; And that for ten long years he wooed The Lady of the Land. 9. I told her how he pined — and ah ! The deep, the low, the pleading tone With winch I sang another's love, Interpreted my own. 10. She listened with a flitting blush, With downcast eyes and modest grace ; And sho forgave me that I gazed Too fondlv on her face ! 11. But when I told the cruel scorn That crazed that bold and lovely knight, And that he crossed the mountain-woods, Nor rested day nor night ; 12. That sometimes from the savage den, And sometimes from the darksome shade, And sometimes starting up at once In green and sunny glade, — 13. There came and looked him in the face An angel beautiful and bright ; And that he knew it was a fiend, This miserable knight ! 14. And that, unknowing what he did, Ho leaped amid a murderous band, And saved from outrage worse than death, The Lady of the Land. 15. And how she wept, and clasped his knees ; And how she tended him in vain — And ever strove to expiate The scorn that crazed his brain ; — 1G. And that she nursed him in a cave ; And how his madness went away, 320 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. When on the yellow forest-leaves A dying man lie lay. 17. His dying words — but when I reached That tenderest strain of all the ditty, My faltering voice and pausing harp Disturbed her soul with pity I 18. All impulses of soul and sense Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve ; The music and the doleful tale, The rich and balmy eve ; 19. And hopes, and fears that kindle hope, An undistinguishable throng, And gentle wishes long subdued, Subdued and cherished long ! 20. She wept with pity and delight — She blushed with love, and virgin shame ; And like the murinur of a dream, I heard her breathe my name. 21. Her bosom heaved ; she stepped aside — As conscious of my look she stept — Then suddenly, with timorous eye, She fled to me and wept. 22. She half inclosed me with her arms : She pressed mo with a meek embrace ; And bending back her head, looked up, And gazed upon my face. 23. 'Twas partly love, and partly fear, And partly 'twas a bashful art, That I might rather feel, than see, The swelling of her heart. 24. I calmed her fears, and she was calm, And told her love with virgin pride ; And so I won my Genevieve, My bright and beauteous bride. Coleridge. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one of the most imaginative and original of poets, the youngest son of the vicar of St. Mary Ottery, in Devonshire, England, was born at that place in October, 1773. Left an orphan in his ninth year, he was educated for seven years at Christ's Hospital; and in 1791 he became student ©f Jesus College, Cambridge. His reading embraced almost numberless books, LADY CLARE. 321 especially on theology, metaphysics, and poetry. In 1794 -was published the drama called "The Fall of Robespierre," of which the first act was Coleridge's, and the other two were Southey's. In 17<J5 he married Bliss Frieker, whose sister soon afterward became Mrs. Southcy ; and In the same year he became acquainted with Wordsworth. About the same period he went to reside in a cottage at Stowey, Somersetshire, about two miles from the residence of the latter; and the poets bound themselves in the closest friendship. He here wrote some of his most beautiful poetry— his "Ode on the Departing Tear," "Tears in Solitude," A France, an Ode," " Frost at Midnight," the first part of "Christabcl," "The Ancient Mariner," and his tragedy of " Remorse.' 1 In 1793 he went to Germany to complete his education, and resided for fourteen months at Ratz- burg and Gottingcn. On his return to England he resided in the lake district near Southcy and Wordsworth, and contributed political articles and poems for the " Morning Post" newspaper, which was followed, some years later, by simi- lar employment in the " Courier." For liftecn months, in 1S01 and 1S05, he was secretary to Sir Alexander Ball, the governor of Malta. In 1S10 he found a quiet and friendly home in the house of Mr. Gillman, surgeon of Iligbgate, where, after a residence of eighteen years, he died in July, 183#. There both mind and body were restored from the excitement and ill health caused by the use of opium, lirst taken in illness, and afterward used habitually. His numerous pro- ductions in prose and verse, as well as his unsurpassed Table-Talk, have since been published, proving a perpetual delight ; and, like Nature, furnishing sub- jects of admiration and imitation for the refined and observing. V. 101. LADY CLARE. IT was the time when lilies blow, And the clouds are highest up in air, Lord Ronald brought a lily-white doe To give his cousin, Lady Clare. 2. I trow they did not part in scorn : Lovers long-betrothed were they : They two shall wed the morrow morn ; God's blessing on the day ! 3. " He does not love me for my birth, Nor for my lands so broad and fair ; Pie loves me for my own true worth, And that is well," said Lady Clare. ■I 4. In there came old Alice the nurse, Said, " Who was this that went from thee ? " It was my cousin," said Lady Clare ; " To-morrow he weds with me." 5. " God be thanked !" said Alice the nurse, " That all comes round so just and fair : 322 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Lord Eonald is heir of all your lands, And you are not the Lady Clare." 6. " Are ye out of your mind, my nurse, my nurse 7" Said Lady Clare, " that ye speak so wild ?" " As God's above," said Alice the nurse, " I speak the truth : you are my child. 7. " The old Earl's daughter died at my breast ; I speak the truth as I live by bread ! I buried her like my own sweet child, And put my child in her stead." 8. " Falsely, falsely have ye done, O mother," she said, " if this be true, To keep the best man under the sun So many years from his due." 9. " Nay now, my child," said Alice the nurse, " But keep the secret for your life, And all you have will be Lord Konald's When you are man and wife." 10. " If I'm a beggar born," she said, " I will speak out, for I dare not lie : Pull off, pull off the brooch of gold, And fling the diamond necklace by." 11. " Nay now, my child," said Alice the nurse, " But keep the secret all ye can." She said, " Not so : but I will know, If there be any faith in man." 12: " Nay now, what faith ?" said Alice the nurse ; " The man will cleave unto his right." " And he shall have it," the lady replied, " Though I should die to-night." 13. " Yet give one kiss to your mother dear ! Alas, my child, I sinned for thee." " O mother, mother, mother," she said, " So strange it seems to me. 14. " Yet here's a kiss for my mother dear, My mother dear, if this be so ; And lay your hand upon my head, And bless me, mother, ere I go." LADY CLARE. - 323 15. She clad herself in a russet gown — She was no longer Lady Clare : She went by dale, and she went by down, AVith a single rose in her hair. 16. The lily-white doe Lord Ronald had brought Leapt up from where she lay, Dropt her head in the maiden's hand, And followed her all the way. 17. Down stept Lord Ronald from his tower " O Lady Clare, you shame your worth ! Why come you drcst like a village maid, That are the flower of all the earth ?" 18. " If I come drest like a village maid, I am but as my fortunes are : I am a beggar born," she said, " And not the Lady Clare." 19. " Play me no tricks," said Lord Ronald, " For I am yours in word and deed. Play me no tricks," said Lord Ronald, " Your riddle is hard to read." 20. Oh, and proudly stood she up ! Her heart within her did not fail : She looked into Lord Ronald's eyes, And told him all her nurse's tale. 21. He — laughed a laugh of merry scorn : He turned and kissed her where she stood : "If you are not the heiress born, And I," said he, " the next of blood — 22. " If you are not the heiress born, And I," said he, " the lawful heir, "We two will wed to-morrow morn, And you shall still be — Lady Clare." Teknyson. Alfred Tennyson, poet laureate of England, the son of a clergyman, was born in Lincolnshire, in 1810. He received his university education at Trinity College, Cambridge. His first volume of poems was published in 1830; his second, three years afterward. Some of his early minor pieces, as well as selec- tions from "The Princess," are simple, true to nature, and exquisitely beautiful. "In Memoriam," one of his most characteristic poems, is the most important contribution which has yet been given to what may strictly be entitled Elegiac Poetry. It first appeared in ISoO, nearly twenty years after the death of young Hallam, the &on of the celebrated historian, to whom he was bound by many 324: NATIONAL FIFTH READER. endearing ties, and to whose memory the work is a tribute. Careful study, and reflection on the reader's own inmost being, are required to fully reveal the imaginative power, the wisdom, and the spiritual beauty of this work. The poet's early fame is fully sustained by his later writings. " The Charge of the Light Brigade" is one of the most spirited and effective poems ever written. "Idyls of the King," for vigor, exquisite utterance, and varied interest, is probably inferior to no corresponding poem in any language. " Lady Clare," the selection here introduced, while well adapted to public reading and poetu? recitation, is especially valuable as an exercise in Personation — see p. 69. VI. 102. MAUD MULLER. MAUD MULLER, on a summer's day, Raked the meadow sweet with hay. Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth Of simple beauty and rustic health. Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee The mock-bird echoed from his tree. 2. But when she glanced to the far-off town, White from its hill-slope looking down, The sweet song died, and a vague unrest And a nameless longing filled her breast — A wish, that she hardly dared to own, For something better than she had known. 3. The Judge rode slowly down the lane, Smoothing his horse's chestnut mane. He drew his bridle in the shade Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid, And ask a draught from the spring that flowed Through the meadow, across the road. 4. She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up, And filled for him her small tin-cup, And blushed as she gave it, looking down On her feet so bare, and her tattered gown. " Thanks I" said tde Judge ; " a sweeter draught From a fairer hand was never quaffed." 5. He spoke of the grass, and flowers, and trees, Of the singing-birds and the humming bees ; Then talked of the haying, and wondered whether The cloud in the west would bring foul weather. MAUD MCLLER. 325 And Maud forgot her brier-torn gown, And her graceful ankles, bare and brown, And listened, while a pleased surprise Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes. At last, liko one who for delay Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away. 6. Maud Miillcr looked and sighed : "Ah me! That I the Judge's bride might be ! He would dress me up in silks so fine, And praise and toast mo at his wine. My father should wear a broadcloth coat, My brother should Bail a painted boat. I'd dress my mother so grand and gay. And the baby should have a new toy each day. And I'd feed the hungry and clothe the poor, And all should bless me who left our door/' 7. The Judgo looked back as he climbed the hill, And saw Maud Muller standing still : " A form more fair, a face more sweet, Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet. And her modest answer and graceful air Show her wise and good as she i3 fair. "Would she were mine, and I to-day, Like her, a harvester of hay : No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs, Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues, But low of cattle and song of birds, And health, and quiet, and loviug words." 8. But he thought of his sister, proud and cold, And his mother, vain of her rank and gold. So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on, And Maud was left in the field alone. But the lawyers smiled that afternoon, "When he hummed in court an old love-tune ; And the young girl mused beside the well, Till the rain on the unrated clover fell. 9. He wedded a wife of richest dower, Who lived for fashion, as he for power. Yet 6ft, in. his marble hearth's bright glow, 326 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. He watched a picture come and go ; And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes Looked out in their innocent surprise. 10. Oft, when the wine in his glass was red, He longed for the wayside well instead ; And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms, To dream of meadows and clover blooms ; And the proud man sighed with a secret pain, — " Ah, that I were free again ! Free as when I rode that day Wnere the barefoot maiden raked the hay." 11. She wedded a man unlearned and poor, And many children played round her door. But care and sorrow, and childbirth pain, Left their traces on heart and brain. And 6ft, when the summer's sun shone hot On the new-mown hay in the meadow lot, And she heard the little spring-brook fall Over the roadside, through the wall, In the shade of the apple-tree again She saw a rider draw his rein, And, gazing down with timid grace, She felt his pleased eyes read her face. 12. Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls Stretched away into' stately halls ; The weary wheel to a spinet ' turned, The tallow candle an astral 2 burned ; And for him who sat by the chimney lug, Dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and mug, A manly form at her side she saw, And joy was duty, and love was law. Then she took up her burden of life again, Saying only, " It might have been." 13. Alas for maiden, alas for Judge, For rich repiner and household drudge ! God pity them both ! and pity us all, Who vainly the dreams of youth recall ; 1 Spinet, a musical instrument re- lamp having the oil in a flattened eembling a harpsichord, but smaller, ring surmounted by a hemisphere * Astral, (as'tral-lamp), an argaud of ground glass. THE DREAM. 327 For all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these : " It might have been !" Ah, well ! for us all some sweet hope lies Deeply buried from human eyes ; And in the hereafter, angels may Roll tho stone from its grave away. Whither. JonN Gkeenleaf Wiiittiek, one of the truest and most worthy of American poets, was born near Haverhill, Massachusetts, in 1S0S. Of a Quaker family, his youth was passed at home, assisting his father on the farm, and attending the district school and Haverhill Academy. In 1828 he went to Boston, and be- came editor of a newspaper entitled the "American Manufacturer," and in 1830 he succeeded George D. Prentice as editor of the " New England Weekly Re- view," at Hartford, and remained connected with it for two years. For several years he was corresponding editor of the Washington " National Era." He has been a prolific and popular writer both in prose and vrrsc. A complete edition of his poems, in two volumes, appeared in 18G3; and "Snow-Bound, a Winter Idyl," in 1806. In 1840 Mr. Whittier removed to Amcsbury, Massachusetts, where all his later publications have been written, and where he still resides. VII. 103. THE DREAM. PART FIRST. OUR life is twofold : sleep hath its own world — A boundary between the things misnamed Death and existence : sleep hath its own world, And a wide realm of wild reality ; And dreams in their development have breath, And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy ; They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts ; They take a weight from off our waking toils ; They do divide our being ; they become A portion of ourselves as of our time, And look like heralds of Eternity ; They pass like spirits of the past, — they speak Like sibyls ' of the future ; they have power — The tyranny of pleasure and of pain ; They make us what we were not — what they will : 1 Sib'yl, a woman supposed to be variously stated ; but among the an- endowed with a spirit of prophecy : cients, they were believed to be ten. hence, a female fortune-teller, or They resided in various parts of Per- gipsy. The number of the sibyls is sia, Greece, and Italy. 328 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 2. They shake us with the vision that's gone by, The dread of vanished shadows — are they so ? Is not the past all shadow ? What are they ? Creations of the mind ? — the mind can niake Substance, and people planets of its own "With beings brighter than have been, and give A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh. I would recall a vision, which I dreamed Perchance in sleep — for in itself a thought, A slumbering thought, is capable of years, And curdles a long life into one hour. — 3. I saw two beings in the hues of youth Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill, Green and of mild declivity ; the last, As 't were the cape, of a long ridge of such, Save that there was no sea to lave its base, But a most living landscape, and the wave Of woods and cornfields, and the abodes of men Scattered at intervals, and wreathing smoke Arising from such rustic roofs ; — the hill "Was crowned with a peculiar diadem Of trees, in circular array — so fixed, Not by the sport of Nature, but of man : These two, a maiden and a youth, were there Gazing — the one on all that was beneath ; Fair as herself — but the boy gazed on her ; And both were young, and one was beautiful ; And both were young — yet not alike in youth. 4. As the sweet moon on the hori'zon's verge, The maid was on the eve of womanhood : The boy had fewer summers ; but his heart Had far outgrown his years, and to his eye There was but one beloved face on earth, And that was shining on him : he had looked Upon it till it could not pass away ; He had no breath, no being, but in hers ; She was his voice ; he did not speak to her, But trembled on her words ; she was his sight, For his eye followed hers, and saw with hers, THE DREAM. 329 Which colored all his objects ; — he had ceased To livo within himself ; she was his life, The ocean to the river of his thoughts, "Which terminated all ; upon a tone, A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow, And his check change tempestuously — his heart Unknowing of its cause of agony. 5. But she in these fond feelings had no sharo : Her sighs were not for him ; to her he was Even as a brother — but no more ; 't was much ; For brotherless she was, save in the name Her infant friendship had bestowed on him — Herself tho solitary scion left Of a time-honored race. — It was a name Which pleased him, and yet pleased him not — and why ? Time taught him a deep answer — when she loved Another. Even now she loved another ; And on the summit of that hill she stood Looking afar, if yet her lover's steed Kept pace with her expectancy, and flew. — 6. A change came o'er the spirit of my dream : There was an ancient mansion ; and before Its walls there was a steed caparisoned. Within an antique oratory stood The Boy of whom I spake — he was alone, And pale, and pacing to and fro. Anon He sate him down, and seized a pen and traced Words which I could not guess of ; then he leaned His bowed head on his hands, and shook, as 't were With a convulsion — then arose again ; And with his teeth and quivering hands did tear What he had written ; but he shed no tears. And ho did calm himself, and fix his brow Into a kind of quiet. 7. As he paused The lady of his love reentered there ; She was serene and smiling then ; and yet She knew she was by him beloved ; she knew — How quickly comes such knowledge ! that his heart Was darkened with her shadow, and she saw 330 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. That he was wretched ; but she saw not all. He rose, and with a cold and gentle grasp He took her hand ; a moment o'er his face A tablet of unutterable thoughts Was traced ; and then it faded as it came. He dropped the hand he held, and with slow steps Retired ; but not as bidding her adieu, For they did part with mutual smiles. He passed From out the massy gate of that old Hall ; And, mounting on his steed, he went his way ; And ne'er repassed that hoary threshold more. VIII. 104. THE DREAM. PART SECOND. A CHANGE came o'er the spirit of my dream : The Boy was sprung to manhood. In the wilds Of fiery climes he made himself a home, And his soul drank their sunbeams ; he was girt Wifti strange and dusky aspects ; he was not Himself like what he had been ; on the sea And on the shore he was a wanderer ; There was a mass of many images Crowded like waves upon me, but he was A part of all ; and in the last he lay, Reposing from the noontide sultriness, Couched among fallen columns, in the shade Of ruined walls that had survived the names Of those who reared them ; by his sleeping side Stood camels grazing, and some goodly steeds Were fastened near a fountain ; and a man Clad in a flowing garb did watch the while, While many of his tribe slumbered around ; And they were canopied by the blue sky — So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful, That God alone was to be seen in Heaven. — 2 A change came o'er the spirit of my dream : The Lady of his love was wed with one Who did not love her better. In her home, THE DREAM. 331 A thousand leagues from his, — her native home — She dwelt, begirt with growing infancy, Daughters and sons of Beauty. But behold ! Upon her face there was the tint of grief, The settled shadow of an inward strife, And an unquiet drooping of the eye, As if its lid were charged with unshed tears. What could her grief be ? — She had all she loved ; And he who had so loved her was not there To trouble with bad hopes, or evil wish, Or ill-repressed affection, her pure thoughts. What could her grief be ? — she had loved him not, Nor given him cause to deem himself beloved ; Nor could he be a part of that which preyed Upon her mind — a spectre of the past. — 3. A change camo 6'er the spirit of my dream : The Wanderer was returned — I saw him stand BefOre an altar, with a gentle bride ; Her face was fair ; but was not that which made The starlight of his Boyhood. As he stood, Even at the altar, o'er his brow there came The self-same aspect, and the quivering shock That in the antique oratory shook His bosom in its solitudo ; and then — As in that hour — a moment o'er his face The tablet of unutterable thoughts Was traced — and then it faded as it came And he stood calm and quiet ; and he spoke The fitting vows, but heard not his own words ; And all things reeled around him ; he could see Not that which was, nor that which should have been — But the old mansion, and the accustomed hall, And the remembered chambers, and the place, The day, the hour, the sunshine, and the shade- All things pertaining to that place and hour, And her who was his destiny — came back And thrust themselves between him and the light : What business had they there at such a time '? — 4. A change came o'er the spirit of my dream : The Ladv of his love — Oh ! she was changed, 332 NATIONAL FIFTH READER, As by the sickness of the soul ; her mind Had wandered from its dwelling ; and her eyes, They had not their own luster, but the look Which is not of the earth ; she was become The queen of a fantastic realm ; her thoughts Were combinations of disjointed things ; And forms impalpable, and unperceived Of others' sight, familiar were to hers. And this the world calls frenzy ; but the wise Have a far deeper madness, and the glance Of melancholy is a fearful gift ; What is it but the telescope of truth ? Which strips the distance of its fantasies, And brings life near in utter nakedness, Making the cold reality too real ! — 5. A change came o'er the spirit of my dream : The Wanderer was alone, as heretofore ; The beings which surrounded him were gone, Or were at war with him ; he was a mark For blight and desolation — compassed round With Hatred and Contention ; Pain was mixed In all which was served up to him ; until, Like to the Pontic monarch of old days, He fed on poisons ; and they had no power, But were a kind of nutriment. 6. He lived Through that which had been death to many men ; And made him friends of mountains. With the stars, And the quick spirit of the Universe, He held his dialogues ! and they did teach To him the magic of their mysteries ; To him the book of Night was opened wide, And voices from the deep abyss revealed A marvel and a secret — Be it so. 7. My dream was past : it had no further change. It was of a strange order, that the doom Of these two creatures should be thus traced out Almost like a reality — the one To end in madness — both in misery. Lord Byeon. SCENE FROM THE LADY OF LYONS. 333 A. 105. SCENE FROM THE LADY OF LYONS. 1 Melnotte's cottage — Widow bustling about. A table spread for supper. ~TT~TLDOW. So — I think that looks very neat. He sent me V V a line, so blotted that I can scarcely read it, to say he would be here almost immediately. She must have loved him well indeed, to have forgotten his birth ; for though he was introduced to her in disguise, he is too honorable not to have revealed to her the artifice which her love onlv could forgive. Well, I do not wonder at it ; for though my son is not a prince, he ought to be one, and that's almost as good- [Knock at the door.'] Ah! here they are. [Enter Melnotte and Pauline.*] Widow. Oh, my boy — the pride of my heart! — welcome, wel- come ! I beg pardon, Ma'am, but I do love him so ! Pauline. Good woman, I really — \Vhy, Prince, what is this? — does the old woman know you ? Oh, I guess you have done her some service. Another proof of your kind heart, is it not ? Melnotte. Of my kind heart, ay ! Pauline. So, you know the prince? Widow. Know him, Madame ? — Ah, I begin to fear it is you who know him not ! Pauline. Do you think she is mad? Can we stay here, my lord ? I think there's something very wild about her. Melnotte. Madame, I — No, I can not tell her! My knee3 knock together : what a coward ij a man who has lost his honor! Speak to her — speak to her — [to his mother] — tell her that — Heaven, that I were dead ! Pauline. How confused he looks! — this strange place — this woman — what can it mean? I half suspect — Who are you, Madame? — who are you? Can't you speak? are you struck dumb? Widow. Claude, you have not deceived her? — Ah, shame upon 1 Claude Melnotte, who had immediate amends; and, impelled received many indignities to his by affection, virtue, and a laudable slighted love, from Pauline, married ambition, finally conquers a posi- her under the false appearance of tion, and becomes, in fact, her an Italian prince. He afterward husband, repents his bitter revenge ; makes 3 Pauline, (pa lcn'). 334 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. you ! I thought that, before you went to the altar, she was to have known all ? Pauline. All ! what ? My blood freezes in my veins ! Widow. Poor lady! — dare I tell her, Claude? [Melnotte makes a sign of assent.] Know you not then, Madame, that this young man is of poor though honest parents ? Know you not that you are wedded to my son, Claude Melnotte ? Pauline. Your son! hold! hold! do not speak to me — [ap- proaches Melnotte and lays her hand on his a7in.] Is this a jest? Is it ? I know it is . only speak — one word — one look — one smile. I can not believe — I, who loved thee so — I can not be- lieve that thou art such a — No, I will not wrong thee by a harsh word. — Speak ! Melnotte. Leave us — have pity on her, on me : leave us. Widow. O Claude ! that I should live to see thee bowed by shame ! thee, of whom I was so proud ! [Exit Widow. Pauline. Her son ! her son ! Melnotte. Now, lady, hear me. Pauline. Hear thee Ay, speak. Her son ! have fiends a parent ? Speak, That thou mayst silence curses — Speak ! Melnotte. No, curse me : Thy curse would blast me less than thy forgiveness. Pauline, [laughing wildly.] " This is thy palace, where the perfumed light Steals through the mist of alabaster lamps, And every air is heavy with the sighs Of orange-groves, and music from the sweet lutes, And murmurs of low fountains, that gush forth I* the midst of roses ! Dost thou like the picture ? This is my bridal home, and tiiou my bridegroom ! fool ! — O dupe ! — O wretch ! — I see it all — The by-word and the jeer of every tongue In Lyons ! Hast thou in thy heart one touch Of human kindness ? If thou hast, why, kill me, And save thy wife from madness. No, it can not, It can not be ! this is some horrid dream : 1 shall wake soon. [ Touching him.] Art flesh ? art man ? or but The shadows seen in sleep ? — It is too real. What have I done to thee — how sinned against thee, SCENE FROM THE LADV OF LYONS. 3&> That thou shouldst crush me thus ? Melnotte. Pauline ! by pride Angels have fallen ere thy time ; by pride — That sole alloy of thy most lovely mold — The evil spirit cf a bitter love, And a revengeful heart, had power upon thee. From my first years, my soul was filled with thee : I saw thee, midst the flowers the lowly boy Tended, unmarked by thee — a spirit of bloom, And joy, and freshness, as if Spring itself Were made a living thing, and wore thy shape ! I saw thee ! and the passionate heart of man Entered the breast of the wild-dreaming boy ; And from that hour I grew — what to the last I shall be — thine adorer ! Well ! this love, Vain, frantic, guilty, if thou wilt, becamo A fountain of ambition and bright hope : I thought of tales that by the winter hearth Old gossips tell — how maidens, sprung from kings, Have stooped from their high sphere ; how Love, like Death, Levels all ranks, and lays the shepherd's crook Beside the scepter. Thus I made my home In the soft palace of a fairy Future ! My father died ; and I, the peasant-born, Was my own lord. Then did I seek to rise Out of the prison of my mean estate ; And, with such jewels as the exploring Mind Brings from the caves of Knowledge, bay my ransom From those twin jailers of the daring heart — Low Birth and iron Fortune. Thy bright image, Glassed in my soul, took all the hues of glury, And lured me on to those inspiring toils By which man masters "man ! For thee I grew A midnight student o'er the dreams of sages : For thee I sought to borrow from each Grace, And every Muse, such attributes as lend Ideal charms to Love. I thought of thee, And Passion taught me poesy — of thee, And on the painter's canvas grew the life Of beauty ! — Art became the shadow 336 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Of the dear star-light of thy haunting eyes ! Men called me vain — some mad : I heeded not, But still toiled on — hoped on — for it was sweet, If not to win, to feel more worthy thee ! Pauline. Has he a magic to exorcise hate? Melnotle. At last, in one mad hour, I dared to pour The thoughts that burst their channels into song, And sent them to thee, — such a tribute, lady, As beauty rarely scorns, even from the meanest. The name — appended by the burning heart That longed to show its idol what bright things It had created — yea, the enthusiast's name That should have been thy triumph, was thy scorn ! That very hour, — when passion, turned to wrath, Resembled hatred most — when thy disdain Made my whole soul a chaos, — in that hour The tempters found me a revengeful tool For their revenge ! Thou hadst trampled on the worm — It turned and stung thee ! Pauline. Love, Sir, hath no sting, What was the slight of a poor powerless girl, To the deep wrong of this most vile revenge ? Oh, how I loved this man ! — a serf! — a slave ! Melnotle. Hold, lady I — No, not slave ! Despair is free. I will not tell thee of the throes — the struggles — The anguish — the remorse. No — let it pass ! And let me come to such most poor atonement Yet in my power. Pauline ! — [Approaching her with great emotion, and about to take her hand % Pauline. No, touch me not ! I know my fate. You are, by law, my tyrant ; And I — O Heaven ! — a peasant's wife ! I'll work, Toil, drudge ; do what thou wilt ; but touch mo not : Let my wrongs make me sacred ! Melnotle. Do not fear me. Thou dost not know me, Madame : at the altar My vengeance ceased — my guilty oath expired ! Henceforth, no imago of some marble saint, Niched in cathedral's aisles, is hallowed more From the rude hand of sacrilegious wrong. SCENE FROM THE LADY OF LYONS. 3^7 I am thy husband — nay, thou need'st not shudder ; — Here, at thy feet, I lay a husband's rights. A marriage thus unholy — unfulfilled — A bond of fraud — i3, by the laws of France, Made void and null. To-night, then, sleep — in peace. To-inorrow, pure and virgin as this morn I bore thee, bathed in blushes, from the altar, Thy father's arms shall take thee to thy home. The Jaw shall do thee justice, and restore Thy right to bless another with thy love, And when thou art happy, and hast half forgot Him who so loved — so wronged thee, think at least Heaven left some remnant of the angel still In that poor peasant's nature ! — Ho ! my mother ! Enter Widow. Conduct this lady (she is not my wife — She is our guest, our honored guest, my mother!) To the poor chamber where the sleep of virtue Never beneath my father's honest roof E'en villains dared to mar ! Now, lady, now, I think thou wilt believe me. — Go, mv mother! Widowi She is not thy wife ! Mdnotte. Hush ! hush ! for mercy sake : Speak not, but go. [Widow ascends the stairs; Pauline follows weeping — turns to look back. Melnotte [sinking down.] All angels bless and guard her! fcYTTON. Sir Edwakd Bi.lweu Lttton, youngest son of the late Gen. Bulwer, of Hey - don Hall, Norwalk, England, who has assumed the surname of his mother's family, was born in 1S05. He exhibited proofs of superior talents at a very early period, having written verses when only live or six yean old. His preliminary studies were conducted under the eye of his mother, a woman of cultivated taste and rare accomplishments. He graduated with honor at Trinity College, Ox- ford, having won the chancellor's medal for the best English poem. In 1S2G he published " Weeds and Wild Flowers," a small volume of poems; and the fol- lowing year his first novel, " Falkland," appeared. Since that time he has been constantly before the public a> an author, both in prose and verse. Of his early novels, perhaps, " Ricnzi" is the most complete, high-toned, and energetic: of his more recent ones his " Caxtons," nnd "My Novel, or Varieties in English Life," arc regarded as the best. About 1S32, he became editor of the " New Monthly Magazine; and to that journal he contributed essays and criticisms, subse- quently published under the title of "The Student." Of his dramas, "The Lady of Lyons," "Richelieu," and " Money." are, perhaps, three of the most popular plays now upon the stage. The lirst of these, from which the preceding extract 338 NATIONAL FIFTH HEADER. is taken, seldom fails of drawing tears when well represented. - Few authors have displayed more versatility. His language and imagery are often exquisite, and his power of delineating certain classes of character and manners superior to that of any of his contemporaries. He commenced his political life in 1831, when he entered parliament, where he became conspicuous for his advocacy of the rights of dramatic authors, and for his liberal opinions on other questions. His speeches in parliament, and his addresses, have served to raise his reputation. His inaugural address as rector of the University of Glasgow, in particular, has b:en greatly admired. SECTION XIX. I. 106. A GREAT MAN DEPARTED. THERE was a festive hall with mirth resounding ; Beauty and wit, and friendliness surrounding ; "With minstrelsy above, and dancing feet rebounding. 2. And at the height came news, that held suspended The sparkling glass ! — till slow the hand descended — And ruddy cheeks grew pale — and all the mirth was ended. 3. Beneath a sunny sky, 'twas heard with wonder, — A flash had cleft a lofty tree asunder, Without a previous cloud, and with no rolling thunder. 4. Strong was the stem — its boughs above all 'thralling — And in its roots and sap no cankers galling — Prosperity was perfect, while Death's hand was falling. 5. Man's body is less safe than any tree ; We build our ship in strong security — A Finger, from the dark, points to the trembling sea. 6. Man, like his knowledge, and his soul's endeavor, Is framed for no fixed altitude ; but ever Moves onward ; the first pause, returns all to the Giver. 7. Riches and health, fine taste, all means of pleasure ; Success in highest efforts — fame's best treasure — All these were thine — o'crtopped and overweighed the measure, 8. But in recording thus life's night-shade warning, We hold the memory of thy kind heart's morning :— Man's intellect is not man's sole nor best adorning. DANIEL WEBSTER 33<J n. 107. DANIEL WEBSTER. 1 PART FIRST. BORN upon tho vorgc of civilization, — his father's house the furthest by four miles on the Indian trail to Canada, — Mr. "Webster retained to the last his love for that pure fresh nature in which he was cradled. Tho dashing streams, which conduct the waters of tho queen of New Hampshire's lakes 2 to the noble Merrimac ; tho superb group of mountains 3 (the Switzerland of tho United States), among which those waters have their sources ; the primeval forest, whose date runs back to the twelfth verso of the first chapter of Genesis,* and never since creation yielded to the settler's ax ; tho gray buttresses of granite which prop tho eternal hills ; the sacred alternation of the seasons, wife its magic play on field and forest and flood ; the gleaming surfaco of lake and stream in summer ; the icy pavement with which they are floored in winter ; the verdure of spring, the prismatic tints of the autumnal woods, the leafless branches of December, glittering like arches and cor'ridors of silver and crystal in the enchanted palaces of fairy -land — sparkling in the morning sun with winter's jewelry, diamond and amethyst, and ruby and sapphire ; the cathedral aisles of pathless woods, — the mournful hemlock, the "cloud-seeking " pine, — hung with drooping creep- ers, like funeral banners pendant from the roof of chancel or transept over the graves of the old lords of the soil ; — these all retained for him to the close of his life an undying charm. 2. But though he ever clun^ with fondness to the wild inoun- tain scenery amidst which he was born and passed his youth, he loved nature in all her other aspects. The simple beauty to which he had brought his farm at Marsh field/ its approaches, its grassy lawns, its well-disposed plantations on the hill-sides, 1 Extract from a speech at the Re- * Genesis, chap, i., v. 12, And the vere House, Boston, Jan. ISth, ISoG, earth brought forth gnus, and herb in commemoration of the 74th anni- yielding seed after his kind, and tho versary of Mr. Webster's birth-day. tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in a Win., (win^ne pissokMu). itself, after his kind. * Mountains, the White Moun- b Marsh' field, a village on Massa- tains, of which Mount Washington chusetts Buy, 28 miles 8. E. by S. of is the principal summit. B<»ston. 340 NATIONAL FIFTH HEADER. unpretending but tasteful, and forming a pleasing interchange with his large corn-fields and turnip-patches, showed his sensi- bility to the milder beauties of civilized culture- 3. He understood, no one better, the secret sympathy of na- ture and art, and often conversed on the principles which govern their relations with each other. He appreciated the infinite bounty with which nature furnishes materials to the artistic powers of man, at once her servant and master ; and he knew not less that the highest exercise of art is but to imitate, inter- pret, select, and combine the properties, affinities, and propor- tions of nature ; that in reality they are parts of one great sys- tem ; for nature is the Divine Creator's art, and art is rational man's creation. 4. But not less than mountain and plain he loved the sea. He loved to walk and ride and drive upon that magnificent beach which stretches from Green Harbor 1 all round to the Gurnet. He loved to pass hours, I may say days, in his little boat. He loved to breathe the healthful air of the salt-water. He loved the music of the ocean, through all the mighty octaves deep and high of its far-resounding register ; from the lazy plash of a midsummer's ripple upon the margin of some oozy creek to the sharp howl of the tempest, which wrenches a light-house from its clamps and bolts, fathoms deep, in the living rock, as easily as a gardener pulls a weed from his flower-border. 5. There was, in fact, a manifest sympathy between his great mind and this world-surrounding, deep-heaving, measureless, everlasting, infinite deep. His thoughts and conversation of/en turned upon it, and its great organic relations with other parts of nature and with man. I have heard him allude to the mvs- terious analogy between the circulation carried on by veins and arteries, heart and lungs, and that wonderful interchange of venous and arterial blood, — that miraculous complication which lies at the basis of animal life, — and that equally complicated and more stupendous circulation of river, ocean, vapor, and rain, which from the fresh currents of the rivers fills the depths of the salt sea ; then by vaporous distillation carries the waters 1 Green Harbor is tho name of Plymouth li^ht-houses are erected. a small creek on the sea-shore of The distance between Ci reen Harbor Marshfield, and the Gurnet is a and the Gurnet is between four and projection or point on which the five miles. DANIEL WEBSTER. 341 •which are under the firmament up to the oioudy cisterns cf the waters above the firmament ; wafts them on the dripping wings of the wind against the mountain sides, precipitates them to the earth in the form of rain, and leads them again through a thou- sand channels, open and secret, to the beds of the rivers, and so back to the sea. HI. 108. DANIEL WEBSTER. PAliT SECOND. W^ERE I to fix upon any one trait as the prominent trait of Mr. Webster's personal character it would be his social disposition, his loving heart. If there ever was a person who felt all the meaning of the divine utterance, " it is not good that man should be alone," it was he. Notwithstanding the vast re- sources of his own mind, and the materials for self-communion laid up in the storehouse of such an intellect, few men whom I have known have been so little addicted to solitary and medita- tive introspection ; l to few have social intercourse, sympathy, and communion with kindred or friendly spirits been so grateful and even necessary. 2. He loved to live with his friends, with "good, pleasant men who loved him." This was his delight, aliko when oppressed with his multiplied cares of office at "Washington, and when enjoying the repose and quiet of Marshficld. He loved to meet his friends at the social board, because it is there that men most cast off the burden of business and thought ; there, as Cicero says, that conversation is sweetest ; there that the kindly affec- tions have the fullest play. 3. By the social sympathies thus cultivated, the genial con- sciousness of individual existence becomes more intense. And who that ever enjoyed it can forget the charm of his hospitality, so liberal, so choice, so thoughtful ? In tho very last days of his life, and when confined to tho couch from which he never rose, he continued to give minute directions for the hospitable entertainment of the anxious and sorrowful Mends who camo to Marshficld. 4. If ho enjoyed society himself, how much he contributed to ' InM-ro spec'tion, a view of the interior or inside. 342 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. its enjoyment in others ! His colloquial powers were, I think, quite equal to his parliamentary and forensic talent. He had something instructive or ingenious to say on the most familiar occasion. In his playful mood he was not afraid to trifle ; but he never prosed, never indulged in common-place, never dogmatized, was never affected. His range of information was so vast, his observation so acute and accurate, his tact in separating the im- portant from the unessential so nice, his memory so retentive, his command of language so great, that his common table-talk, if taken down from his lips, would have stood the test of publication. 5. He had a keen sense of the ludicrous, and repeated or list- ened to a humorous anecdote with infinite glee. He narrated with unsurpassed clearness, brevity, and grace, — no tedious, unneces- sary details to spin out the story, the fault of most professed raconteurs, 1 — but its main points set each in its place, so as often to make a little dinner-table epic, but all naturally and without effort. He delighted in anecdotes of eminent men, especially of eminent Americans, and his memory was stored with them. He would sometimes briefly discuss a question in natural his- tory, relative, for instance, to climate, or the races and habits and breeds of the different domestic animals, or the various kinds of our native game, for he knew the secrets of the forest. 6. He delighted to treat a topic drawn from life, manner, and the great industrial pursuits of the community ; and he did it with such spirit and originality as to throw a charm around subjects which, in common hands, are trivial and uninviting. Nor were the stores of our sterling literature less at his command. He had such an acquaintance with the great writers of our lan- guage, especially the historians and poets, as enabled him to en- rich his conversation with the most apposite allusions and illus- trations. When the occasion and character of the company invited it, his conversation turned on higher themes, and some- times rose to the moral sublime. 7. Ho was not fond of the technical language of metaphysics, but he had grappled, like the giant he was, with its most formi- dable jDroblems. Dr. Johnson was wont (wunt) to say of Burke, that a stranger who should chance to meet him under a shed in a shower of rain, would say, " This was an extraordinary man." A stranger who did not know Mr. Webster, might have passed 9 Raconteur, (ra kon' tor), a relator or teller of stories. FROM A HISTORICAL ADDRESS. 343 a day with him, in his seasons of relaxation, without detecting the jurist or the statesman ; but he could not pass a half hour with him without coming to the conclusion that he was one of the best informed of men. 8. His personal appearance contributed to the attraction of his social Intercourse. His countenance, frame, expression, and presence, arrested and fixed attention. You could not pass him unnoticed in a crowd ; nor fail to observe in him a man of high mark and character. No one could see him and not wish to see more of him, and this alike in public and private. Edward Everett. IV. 109. FROM A HISTORICAL ADDRESS. 1 UNBORN ages and visions of glory crowd upon my soul, the realization of all which, however, is in the hands and good pleasure of Almighty God ; but, under his divine blessing, it will be dependent on the character and the virtues of ourselves, and of our posterity. If classical history has been found to be, is now, and shall continue to be, the concomitant 3 of free institu- tions, and of popular eloquence, what a field is opening to us for another Herod'otus, 3 another Thucydides, 4 and another Livy ! * 1 Delivered before the N. Y. His- * Thu cyd' i des, the historian, an torical Society, February 23, 1852. Athenian citizen, was born about 3 Con cSm' i tant, an attendant; B. c. 471. His immortal history of that which accompanies. the Peloponnesian war is divided 1 He r6d' o tus, called the "Father into eight books. He is regarded as of History," a native of Ilalicarnas- first in the first rank of philosophical bus, in Asia Minor, was born b. c. 484. historians. His style is concise, vig- His history consists of nine books, orous,and energetic; his moral reflec- which bear the name of the nine tions arc searching and profound; his Muses. In the complexity of its speeches abound in political wisdom ; plan, as compared with the simplic- and the simple minuteness of his ity of its execution — in the multi- pictures is often striking and tragic, plicity and heterogeneous nature of i Livy, an illustrious Roman his- its material, and the harmony of torian, was born in Italy, b. c. 59, their combinations — in the grandeur and died, A. D. 18. He has erected of its historical masses, and the to himself an enduring monument minuteness of its illustrative details in his History of Rome. This great — it is without rival or parallel. It work contained tho history of the may be regarded as the perfection Roman State from the earliest period of epic prose. till the death of Prusus, b. c. 9, and 344 NATIONAL FIFTH HEADER. 2. And let roe say, gentlemen, that if we and our posterity shall be true to the Christian religion, — if we and they shall live always in the fear of God, and shall respect his commandments, — if we and they shall maintain just, moral sentiments, and such conscientious convictions of duty as shall control the heart and life, — we may have the highest hopes of the future fortunes of our country ; and if we maintain those institutions of govern- ment and that political union, exceeding all praise as much as it exceeds all former examples of political associations, we may be sure of one thing — that, while our country furnishes materials for a thousand masters of the historic art, it will afford no topic for a Gibbon. It will have no Decline and Fall. It will go on prospering and to prosper. 3. But, if we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the in- junctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political consti- tution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catas'trophe may overwhelm us, that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity. Should that catastrophe happen, let it have no history ! Let the horrible narrative never be written ! Let its fate be like that of the lost books of Livy, which no human eye shall ever read ; or the missing Pleiad, 1 of which no man can ever know more, than that it is lost, and lost forever ! 4. But, gentlemen, I will not take my leave of you in a tone of despondency. "We may trust that Heaven will not forsake us, nor permit us to forsake ourselves. We must strengthen ourselves, and gird up our loins with new resolution ; we must counsel each other ; and, determined to sustain each other in the support of the Constitution, prepare to meet manfully, and united, whatever of difficulty or of danger, whatever of effort or of sacrifice, the providence of God may call upon us to meet. 5. Are we of this generation so derelict, 2 have we so little of the blood of our revolutionary fathers coursing through our originally consisted of 142 books, of seven stars in the neck of the const el- •which only o5 have descended to us. lation Taurus. There are, however, His style may be pronounced almost but six visible to the naked eye, Al- faultless. cyon being the brightest, and hence 1 Pleiad (pie' yad). The Pleiades, the expression the lost Ph iad. in heathen mythology, were the seven a DeV e lici, given up or forsaken daughters of Atlas, "who were trans- by the natural owner or guardian ; lated to the heavens, and formed the unfaithful. FROM A HISTORICAL ADDRESS 345 vela 3, that we c;m not preserve what they achieved? The world will cry out " shame " upon us, if we show ourselves unworthy to bo the descendants of those great and illustrious men, who fought for their liberty, and secured it to their posterity, by the Constitution of the United States. 6. Gentlemen, inspiring auspices, this day, surround us and cheer us. It is the anniversary of the birth of Washington. We should know this, even if we had lost our calendars, for we should be reminded of it by the shouts of joy and gladness. The whole atmosphere is redolent of his name ; hills and forests, rocks and rivers, echo and reecho his praises. All the good, whether learned or unlearned, high or low, rich or poor, feel, this day, that there is one treasure common to them all, and that is the fame and character of Washington. They recount his deods, ponder over his principles and teachings, and resolve to be more and more guided by them in the future. 7. To the old and the young, to all born in the land, and 1<> all whose love of liberty has brought them from foreign shores to make this the home of their adoption, the name of Washing- ton is this day an exhilarating theme. Americans by birth an' proud of his character, and exiles from foreign shores are eager to participate in admiration of him ; and it is true that he is, this day, here, everywhere, all the world over, more an object of love and regard than on any day since his birth. 8. Gentlemen, on Washington's principles, and under the guidance of his example, will we and our children uphold the Constitution. Under his military leadership our fathers con- quered ; and under the outspread banner of his political and constitutional principles will we also conquer. To that standard we shall adhere, and uphold it through evil report and through good report. We will meet danger, we will meet death, if they como, in its protection ; and we will struggle on, in daylight and in darkness, ay, in the thickest darkness, with all the storms which it may bring with it, till " Danger's troubled night is o'er, and the star of Peace return." Webster. D.vniel Webster, one of the greatest, if not the greatest of American orators, jurists, and statesmen, was born in the town of Salisbury, New Hampshire, January 18th, 1783. At the age of fifteen he entered Dartmouth College, where he graduated in due course, exhibiting remarkable faculties of mind. When in his nineteeuth year, he delivered a Fourth of July oration, at the request of the citizens of Hanover, which, energetic, and well stored with historical matter, 346 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. proved hiin, at that early age, something more than a sounder of empty words. Upon graduating, in 1801, he assumed the charge of an academy for a year ; then commenced the study of law in his native village, which he completed in Boston, in 1S05. He first practiced his profession near his early home ; but, not long after, feeling the necessity of a wider sphere of action, he removed to Ports* mouth, where he soon gained a prominent position. In 1812 he was elected to a scat in the National Congress, where he displayed remarkable powers both as a debater and an orator. In lS17he removed to Boston, and resumed the practice of his profession with the highest distinction. In 1822 he was elected to a seat in Congress from the crty of Boston ; and in 1827 was chosen senator of the United States, from Massachusetts. From that period he was seldom out of public life, having been twice Secretary of State, in which office he died. In 1839 he visited England and France, and was received with the greatest distinc- tion in both countries. His works, arranged by his friend, Edward Everett, were published in six volumes, at Boston, in 1851. They bear the impress of a comprehensive intellect and exalted patriotism. He died at Marshfield, sur- rounded by his friends, October 24th, 1852. The last words he uttered were, M I still live." Funeral honors were paid to his memory, in the chief cities of the Union, by processions and orations. A marble block, placed in front of hid tomb, bears the inscription : " Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief." V. 110. PUBLIC VIRTUE. I HOPE, that in all that relates to personal firmness, all that concerns a just appreciation of the insignificance of human life, — whatever may be attempted to threaten or alarm a soul not easily swayed by opposition, or awed or intimidated by menace, — a stout heart and a steady eye, that can survey', unmoved and undaunted, any mere personal perils that assail this poor, tran- sient, perishing frame, — I may, without disparagement, compare with other men. 2. But there is a sort of courage, which, I frankly confess it, I do not possess, — a boldness to which I dare not aspire, a valor which I can not covet. I can not lay myself down in the way of the welfare and happiness of my country. That I can not, I have not the courage to do. I can not interpose the power with which I may be invested — a power conferred, not for my per- sonal benefit, nor for my aggran'dizement, but for my country's good — to check her onward march to greatness and glory. I have not courage enough. I am too cowardly for that. 3. I would not, I dare not, in the exercise of such a trust, lio down, and place my body across the path that leads my country to prosperity and happiness. This is a sort of courage widely different from that which a man may display in his private con- PUBLIC VIRTUE. 347 duct and personal relations. Personal or private courage is to- tally distinct from that higher and nobler courage which prompts the patriot to oiier himself a voluntary sacrifice to his country's good. 4. Apprehensions of the imputation of the "want of firmness sometimes impel us to perform rash and inconsiderate acts. It is the greatest courage to be able to bear the imputation of the want of courage. But pride, vanity, egotism, so unamiablo and offensive in private life, are vices which partake of the character of crimes, in the conduct of public affairs. The unfortunate vic- tim of these passions can not see beyond the little, petty, con- temptible circle of hia own personal interests. All his thoughts are withdrawn from his country, and concentrated on his con- sistency, his firmness, himself. 5. The high, the exalted, the sublime emotions of a patriot- ism, which, soaring toward heaven, rises far above all mean, low, or selfish things, and is absorbed by one soul-transporting thought of the good and the glory of one's country, are never felt in his impenetrable bosom. That patriotism, which, catching its inspirations from the immortal God, and leaving at an im- measurable distance below all lesser, groveling, personal interests and feelings, animates and prompts to deeds of self-sacrifice, of valor, of devotion, and of death itself, — that is public virtue ; that is the noblest, the sublimcst, of all public virtues. II. Clay. Henry Clay, a distinguished statesman of the United States, was born at the Slavics, Hanover County, Virginia, on the 12th of April, 1777. His father, a clergyman, died in 17S1, and Henry acquired the rudiments of an education at a log school-house. At an early age he became clerk of the Court of Chancery in Richmond. He commenced the study of law at the age of nineteen, -was admitted to the bar at the close of one year, and removed to Lexington, Ky., where he practiced his profession with great success. In ISOo he was elected to the legislature of his State, and in 1K)G and 1S09, was appointed to fill vacancies in the national senate. In 1811 he was chosen a member of the House of Repre- sentatives, and was at once elected speaker, which office ho retained until his appointment, in January, 1S14, as one of the commissioners to negotiate the Treaty of Ghent. On his return he was reelected to Congress; and, in l v - . was again elected speaker of the House. During the presidency of John Quiney Adams he was secretary of state. In 1831 he was elected United States senator from Kentucky, and was soon after nominated a candidate for the presidency, but was defeated. In 1S36 he was reelected to the United States Senate, and 6crved until 1842. In 1844 he was again nominated to the presidency, and again defeated. He was returned to the U. S. Senate in 1849, and died on the 29th of June, 1852. He was ever an advocate of " protection to American industry " by a sufficient tariff, and of " internal improvements." He was in favor of the war of 1812, of the recognition of the South American republics, and of the independence 3iS NATIONAL FIFTH READER. of Greece. Some of his noblest oratorical efforts were delivered in support of these measures. His speeches are sincere, impassioned, and distinguished for their eminent practicalness. Full, flowing, sensuous, his style of oratory was modulated by a voice of sustained sweetness and power, and a heart of chivalrous courtcs}'. His Life and Speeches, complied and edited by Mallory, in two vol- umes, 8vo., appeared in 1843; and his "Life and Times," and entire works, by Calvin Colton, have since been published in New York. VI. 111. WASHINGTON'S SWORD AND FRANKLIN'S STAFF o THE sword of "Washington ! Tlio staff of Franklin ! Oh, Sir, what associations are linked in adamant with these names ! Washington, whose sword was never drawn but in the cause of his country, and never sheathed when wielded in his country's cause ! Franklin, the philosopher of the thunderbolt, the print- ing-press, and the plowshare ! WTiat names are these in the scanty catalogue of the benefactors of human kind ! Washing- ton and Franklin ! What other two men, whose lives belong to the eighteenth century of Christendom, have left a deeper im- pression of themselves upon the age in which they lived, and upon all after-time ? 2. Washington, the warrior and the legislator ! In war, con- tending, by the wager of battle, for the independence of his country, and for the freedom of the human race, — ever manifest- ing, amidst its horrors, by precept and by example, his reverence for the laws of peace, and for the tender est sympathies of hu- manity ; in peace, soothing the ferocious spirit of discord, among his own countrymen, into harmony and union, and giving to that very sword, now presented to his country, a charm more potent than that attributed, in ancient times, to the lyre of Orpheus.' 3. Franklin ! The mechanic of his own fortune ; teaching, in early youth, under the shackles of indigence, the way to wealth, and, in the shade of obscurity, the path to greatness ; in the ma- turity of manhood, disarming the thunder of its terrors, the light- 1 From an address in the U. S. Presented with tho lyre of Apollo, II. R., on the reception of these me- and instructed by the Muses in its morials by Congress. use, he enchanted with its music not 8 Orpheus, a mythical personage, only the wild beasts, but tho trees was regarded by the Greeks as tho and rocks upon Olympus, so that most celebrated of the early poets they moved from their places to fcl- who lived before the time of Homer, low the sound of his golden barp. WASHINGTON'S SWORD AND FRANKLIN'S STAFF. o.|9 ning of its fatal blast ; and wresting from the tyrant's hand the stiil more aillictivc scepter of oppression : while descending into the vale of years, traversing the Atlantic Ocean, braving, in t dead of winter, the battle and the breeze, bearing in his hand the charter of Independence, which he had contributed to form, and tendering, froni the self-created Nation to the mightiest monarchs of Europe, the olive-branch of peace, the mercurial wand of commerce, and the amulet of protection and safety to the man of peace, on the pathless ocean, from the inexorable cruelty and merciless rapacity of war. 4. And, finally, in the last stage of life, with fourscore winters upon his head, under the torture of an incurable disease, return- ing to his native land, closing his days as the chief magistrate of his adopted commonwealth, after contributing by his counsels, under the presidency of Washington, and recording his name, under the sanction of devout prayer, invoked by him to Gud, to that Constitution under the authority of which we are here as- sembled, as the Representatives of the North American People, to receive, in their name and for them, these venerablo relics of the wise, the valiant, and the good founders of our great con- federated Republic — these sacred symbols of our golden age. 5. May they be deposited among the archives ' of our govern- ment! And may every American, who shall hereafter behold them, ejaculate a mingled offering of praise to that Supreme Ruler of fho Universe, by whose tender mercies our Union has been hitherto preserved, through all the vicissitudes and revolu- tions of this turbulent world ; and of prayer for the continuan -c of these blessings, by the dispensations of Providence, to our be- loved country, from age to age, till time shall be no more ! Adams. John Qctnct Adams, a distinguished American statesman and scholar, son of John Adams, the second president of the United States, was born at Brain: ree, Massachusetts, on the 11th of July, 1707. He was cradled in the Revolution, and when but nine years old heard the first reading of the Declaration of Inde- pendence from the old State House in Boston. His early education devolved principally on his noble and accomplished mother. In 177S, in his eleventh year, he accompanied his father on his mission to France; and during that and the following year he was at school in Paris. In 17S0 he entered the public school of Amsterdam, and subsequently the University of Lcyden. In 17S1 he was made private secretary to the Hon. Francis Dana, Minister to Russia. He 1 Archives, (h r klvz), public records and papers vruicli are preserved as evidence of facts. 350 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. joined his father in Holland in 17S3, and returned home in 1785. He entered an advanced class at Harvard, and took his degree in 1787, the year after his ad- mission. In 1790 he was admitted to the bar, and commenced the practice of law at Boston, which he continued, varying his occupation by communications for the " Centinel," signed Publicola and Marcellus, until his appointment as Minister to the Hague, in 1794, by Washington. He was elected to the State Senate in 1801, and in 1803 a member of the Senate of the United States, and sat until 1808. He had previously, in 180G, been appointed professor of rhetoric in Harvard, and continued the discharge of his duties until his resignation, in 1809, to accept the mission to Russia, offered him by Madison. He published his col- lege lectures, in two octavo volumes, in 1810. He was called from his brilliant Russian diplomatic career in 1S15, to aid in negotiating the treaty of peace with England at Ghent, and was appointed minister to that country in the same year. In 1817 he returned home, was appointed secretary of state by Monroe, and re- mained in that office eight years, when he was himself chosen to the presidency. He remained in office one term, and was immediately after elected a member of the House of Representatives from his native State, a position which he retain- ed till his death. In the sixty-fifth year of active public service, he died in the capitol at Washington — in the scene of his chief triumphs — suddenly, on the 23d of February, 1S48. His last words were, " Tins is the end of earth— I am con- tent." Through his long and active political career, Mr. Adams retained a fondness for literature. He was, altogether, one of the most remarkable men of this century. His various and voluminous works exhibit a marked nationality, and a wisdom which astonishes by its universality and profoundness. SECTION XX. I 112. PROCRASTINATION. BE wise to-day ; 'tis madness to defer ; Next day the fatal pree'edent 1 will plead ; Thus on, tiU wisdom is pushed out of life. Procrastination is the thief of time ; Year after year it steals, till all are fled, And to the mercies of a moment leaves The vast concerns of an eternal scene. If not so frequent, would not this be strange? That 'tis so frequent, this is stranger still. 2. Of man's miraculous mistakes this bears The palm, " that all men are about to live," Forever on the brink of being born ; 1 Prec' e dent, something done or said that may serve as an example to authorize an after act of the like kind ; authoritutivc example. PROCRASTINATION. 351 All pay themselves the compliment to think They one day shall not drivel, and their pride On this reversion ' takes up ready praise ; At least their own ; their future selves applaud ; How excellent that life they ne'er will lead! Time lodged in their own hands is Folly's vails ; * That lodged in Fate's to wisdom they consign ; The thing they can't 3 but purpose, they postpone. 'Tis not in folly not to scorn a fool, And scarce in human wisdom to do more. 3. All promise is poor dilatory 4 man, And that through every stage. ^Yhen young indeed, In full content we sometimes nobly rest, Unanxious for ourselves, and only wish, As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise. At thirty man suspects himself a fool ; Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan ; At fifty chides his in'fanious delay, Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve ; In all the magnanimity of thought, Resolves, and re-resolves ; then dies the same. 4. And why ? because he thinks himself immortal. All men think all men mortal but themselves ; Themselves, when some alarming shock of fato Strikes through their wounded hearts the sudden dread ; But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air, Soon close ; where past the shaft no trace is found, As from the wing no scar the sky retains, The parted wave no furrow from, the keel, So dies in human hearts the thought of death ; E'en with the tender tear which nature sheds O'er those we love, we drop it in their grave. Young. Edward You>"o", author of the " Night Thoughts," was born at his father's parsonage, in Hampshire, England, in 1G81. He was educated at Winchester School, and at All Souls College, Oxford. In 1712 he commenced public life as a courtier and poet, and continued both characters till he was past eighty. m l Re ver' sion, a right to future 3 Can't, (kant\ possession or enjoyment ; benefit to 4 Dil' a to ry, inclined to defer or be received from some future event, put off what ought to be done at 3 Vails, avails ; unexpected gains, once ; delaying. 352 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. From 170S he held a fellowship at Oxford. In 1730 his college presented him to the rectory of Wclwyn, in Hertfordshire, valued ai £300 a year. In 17C1 he married a widow, the daughter of the Earl of Lichfield, which proved a happy union. Lady Elizabeth Young died in 1741 ; and her husband is supposed to have begun soon afterward the composition or the " Night Thoughts." Of his numerous works published previous to this period, the best arc his satires, which were collected in 1728, under the title of " The Love of Fame the Universal Passion," and " The Revenge," a tragedy, which appeared in 1721. Sixty years of labor and industry had strengthened and enriched his genius, and aug- mented the brilliancy of his fancy, preparatory to writing "Night Thoughts." The publication of this poem, taking place in sections, was completed in 1710. It is written in a highly artificial style, and has more of epigrammatic point than any other work in the language. Though often brilliant at the expense of higher and more important qualities, the poet introduces many noble and sublime pas- pages, and enforces the truths of religion with a commanding energy and per- suasion. The fertility of his fancy, the pregnancy ot his wit and knowledge, the striking and felicitous combinations everywhere presented, are truly remarkable. Young died in April, 1765, at the advanced age of eighty-four. n. 113. PAUL FLEMMING RESOLVES. AND now tho sun was growing liigh and warm. A little chapel, whose door stood open, seemed to invite Flemming to enter and enjoy the grateful coolness. He went in. There was no one there. The walls were covered with paintings and sculpture of the rudest kind, and with a few funeral tablets. There was nothing there to move the heart to devotion ; but in that hour tho heart of Flemming was weak, — weak as a child's. He bowed his stubborn knees and wept. And oh ! how many disappointed hopes, how many bitter recollections, how much of wounded pride, and unrequited love, were in those tears, through which he read on a marble tablet in the chapel wall opposite, this singular inscription : "Look not mournfully into the tast : It comjls not back again. Wisely improve the present : It is thine. Go FoRTH to meet the shadowy future, without teak, AND WITH A MANET HEART." 2. It seemed to him as if tho unknown tenant of that grave had opened his lips of dust, and spoken to him the words of con- solation, which his soul needed, and which no friend had yet spoken. In a moment the anguish of his thoughts was still. Tho stone was rolled away from the door of his heart ; death, was no longer there, but an angel clothed in white. He stood up, and his eyes were no more bleared with tears ; and, looking into the bright, morning heaven, he said, "I well SB stbojmjI" PAUL FLEMMINQ RESOLVES. 3.;:; 3. Men sometimes go down into tombs, with painful longings to behold once more the faces of their departed friends ; and as they gaze upon them, lying there so peacefully with the sem- blance that they wore on earth, the sweet breath of heaven touches them, and the features crumble and fall together, and are but dust. So did his soul then descend for the last time into the great tomb of the past, with painful longings to behold once more the dear faces of those he had loved ; and the sweet breath of heaven touched them, and they would not stay, but crumbled away and perished as he gazed. They, too, were dust. And thus, far-sounding, he heard the great gate of the past shut behind him as the divine poet did the gate of paradise, when the angel pointed him the way up the holy mountain ; and to him likewise was it forbidden to look back. 4. In the life of every man, there are sudden transitions of feeling, which seem almost miraculous. At once, as if seme magician had touched the heavens and the earth, the dark clouds melt into the air, the wind falls, and serenity succeeds the storm. The causes which produce these sudden changes may have been long at work within us, but the changes themselves are instan- taneous, and apparently without sufficient cause. It was so with Flemming, and from that hour forth he resolved that he would no longer veer with every shifting wind of circumstance ; no longer be a child's plaything in the hands of fate, which we our- selves do make or mar. He resolved henceforward not to lean on others ; but to walk self-confident and self-possessed : no longer to waste his years in vain regrets, nor wait the fulfilment of boundless hopes and indiscreet desires ; but to live in the present wisely, alike forgetful of the past, and careless of what the mysterious future might bring. And from that moment he was calm, and strong ; he was reconciled with himself ! 5. His thoughts" turned to his distant home bevond the sea. An indescribable, sweet feeling rose within him. " Thither will I turn ray wandering footsteps/' said he ; " and be a man among men, and no longer a dreamer among shadows. Henceforth be mine a life of action and reality ! I will work in my own sphere nor wish it other than it is. This alone is health and happiness. This alone is life — 4 Life that shall send A challenge to its end, And when it comes, say, Welcome, friend !' 354: NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 6. " Why have I not made these sage reflections, this wise resolve, sooner ? Can such a simple result spring only from the long and intricate process of experience? Alas! it is not till time, with reckless hand, has torn out half the leaves from the book of human life, to light the fires of passion with, from day to day, that man begins to see that the leaves which remain are few in number, and to remember, faintly at first, and then more clearly, that upon the earlier pages of that book was written a story of happy innocence, which ho would fain read over again. Then come listless irresolution, and the inevitable inaction of despair ; or else the firm resolve to record upon the leaves that still remain, a mere noble history than the child's story, with which the book began. Longfellow. Henry Wadswortii Longfellow was born in the city of Portland, Maine, on the 27th of February, 1807. He entered Bowdoin College at fourteen, and graduated in due course. He soon after commenced the study of law, in tho office of his father, the Hon. Stephen Longfellow, but being appointed pro- fessor of modern languages at Bowdoin, in 1S26, he sailed for Europe to prepare himself for the duties of his office, where he passed three years and a half. On his return, he entered upon the labors of instruction. Mr. Longfellow being elected professor of modern languages and literature in Harvard College, in 1835, resigned his place in Brunswick, and went a second time to Europe, to make himself better acquainted with the subjects of his studies in Denmark, Sweden, and Germany. On his return home, in 1836, he immediately entered upon his labors at Cambridge, where he has since resided. In 1854 he resigned his professorship at Harvard. His earliest poems were written for " The United States Gazette," printed in Boston, while he was an undcr-graduate, from which period he has been recognized as among the first writers of prose and verse of the nineteenth century. During his subsequent residence at Brunswick, ho wrote several elegant and very able papers for the "North American Review," translated " Coplas de Manrique," and published " Outre Mer," a collection of agreeable tales and sketches, chiefly written during his first residence abroad. "Hyperion," a romance, appeared in 1S39, and "Kavanagh," another, prose work, in 1848. The first collection of his poems was published in 1839, entitled "Voices of the Night." His "Ballads and other Poems" followed in 1841; " The Spanish Student," a play, in 1843; "Poems on Slavery," in 1844 ; "The Belfry of Bruges, and other Poems," in 1845; " Evangeline, a Talc of Arcadie," in 1847 ; " The Sea and Fireside," in 1849 ; " The Golden Legend," in 1S51 ; " Hiawatha," in 1855 ; and " Tales of a Wayside Inn," in 1863. In 1845 ; he pub- lished "The Poets and Poetry of Europe," the most complete and satisfactory work of the kind that has ever appeared in any language. " The Skeleton in Armor " is one of the longest and most unique of his original poems. " Hiawatha," his longest poem, which is purely original and American, has been republished in England, and has met with a popularity, both in Europe and America, not surpassed by any poem of the present century. The high finish, gracefulness, and vivid beauty of his style, and the moral purity and earnest humanity por- trayed in his verse, excite the sympathy and reach the heart of the public. ODE TO ADVERSITY. 355 rn. 114. ODE TO ADVERSITY. DAUGHTER of Jove, relentless power, Thou tamer of the human breast, "Whoso iron scourge and torturing hour The bad affright, afflict the best ! Bound in thy adamantine chain, The proud are taught to taste of pain ; And purple tyrants vainly groan With pangs unfelt before, unpitied and alone. 2. "When first thy sire to send on earth Virtue, his darling child, designed, To thee he gave the heavenly birth, And bade to form her infant mind. Stern, rugged nurse ! thy rigid lore "With patience many a year she bore : "What sorrow was, thou bad'st her know, And from her own she learned to melt at others' woe. 3. Scared at thy frown terrific, fly Self-pleasing Folly's idle brood, "Wild Laughter, Noise, and thoughtless Joy, And leave us leisure to be good. Light they disperse, and with them go The summer friend, the flattering foe : By vain Prosperity received, To her they vow their truth, and are again believed. 4. "Wisdom in sable garb arrayed, Immersed in rapturous thought profound, And Mel'ancholy, silent maid, With leaden eye that loves the ground, Still on thy solemn steps attend : "Warm Charity, the general friend, With Justice, to herself severe, And Pity, dropping soft the sadly -pleasing tear. 5. Oh ! gently on thy suppliant's head, Dread goddess, lay thy chasfrning hand ! 35Q NATIONAL FIFTH READER Not in thy Gorgon ' terrors clad, Nor circled with the vengeful band (As by the iin'pious thou art seen), With thundering voice, and threatening mien, "With screaming Horror's funeral cry, Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty. 6. Thy form benign, 2 O goddess, wear, Thy milder influence impart ; Thy philosophic train be there To soften, not to wound, 3 my heart. The generous spark extinct revive ; Teach me to love, and to forgive ; Exact, my own defects to scan ; W T hat others are, to feel ; and know myself a man. Gray. TnoMAS Gray was born in London in 1710. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge. When his college education "was completed, Horace Walpole in- duced him to accompany him in a tour through France and Italy ; but a misun- derstanding taking place, Gray returned to England in 1741. His father being dead, he went to Cambridge to take his degree in civil law, though he was pos- sessed of sufficient means to enable him to dispense with the labor of his pro- fession. He settled himself at Cambridge for the remainder of his days, only leaving home when he made tours to Wales, Scotland, and the lakes of West- moreland, and when he passed three years in London for access to the library of the British Museum. His life thenceforth was that of a scholar. His "Ode to Eton College," published in 1747, attracted little notice ; but the " Elegy in a Country Church-yard," which appeared in 1749, became at once, as it will always continue to be, one of the most popular of all poems. Most of his odes were written In the course of three years following 1753; and the publication of the collection in 1757 fully established his reputation. His poems, flowing from an in- tense, though not fertile imagination, inspired by the most delicate poetic feeling, and elaborated into exquisite terseness of diction, are among the most splendid ornaments of English literature. His "Letters," published after his death, are admirable specimens of English style, full of quiet humor, astute, though fas- tidious criticism, and containing some of the most picturesque pieces of de- scriptive composition in the language. He became professor of modern history at Cambridge, in 1708. He died by a severe attack of the gout in 1771. 1 Gorgon, the Gorgons, in heathen Euryalo, and Medusa. The head of mythology, were frightful beings, the latter was so frightful that every that had hissing serpents instead of one who looked at it was changed hair upon their heads ; and they had into stone, wings, brazen claws, and enormous 2 Be nlgn', gracious ; kind, teeth. Their names were Sthcno, 3 Wound, (wond). urn 357 IV. 115. LIFE. " ~\ /TAN," says Sir Thomas Browne, "is a noble animal! splen- _LVJL did in ashes, glorious in the grave ; solemnizing nativities and funerals with equal luster, and not forgetting ceremonies of bravery in the infamy of his nature I" Thus spake one who mocked while he wept at man's estate, and gracefully tempered the higli seonmgs of philosophy with the profound compassion of religion. As the sun's proudest moment is his latest, and as the forest puts on its brightest robe to die in, so does man sum- mon ostentation to invest the hour of his weakness, and prido survives when power has departed ; and what, we ma}' ask, does this instinctive contempt for the honors of the dead proclaim, except the utter vanity of the glories of the living? — for mean indeed must be the real state of man, and false the vast assump- tions of his life, when the poorest pageantry of a decent burial strikes upon the heart as a mockery of helplessness. 2. Certain it is that pomp chielly waits upon the beginning and the end of life : what lies between, may either raise a sigh or wake a laugh, for it mostly partakes of the littleness of one and the sadness of the other. The monuments of man's blessed- ness and of man's wretchedness lie side by side : we can not look for the one without discovering the other. The echo of joy is the moan of despair, and the cry of anguish is stilled in rejoicing. To make a monarch, there must be slaves ; and that one may triumph, many must be weak. 3. To one limiting his belief within the bounds of his observa- tion, and " reasoning" but from what he " knows," the condition of man presents mysteries which thought can not explain. The dignity and the destiny of man seem utterly at variance. He turns from contem'plating a monument of genius to inquire for the genius which produced it, and finds that while the work has survived, the workman has perished for ages. The meanest work of man outlives the noblest work of God. The sculptures of Phidias endure, where the dust of the artist has vanished from the earth. Man can immortalize all things but himself. 4. But, for my own part, I can not help thinking that our high estimation of ourselves is the grand error in our account. Surely, it is argued, a creature so ingeniously (in jen' yus li) fash- 358 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. ioned and so bountifully furnished, lias not been created but for lofty ends. But cast your eye on the humblest rose of the gar- den, and it may teach a wiser lesson. There you behold con- trivance and ornament — in every leaf the finest veins, the most delicate odor, and a per'fume ex'quisite beyond imitation ; yet all this is but a toy — a plaything of nature ; and surely she whose resources are so boundless that upon the gaud of a sum- mer day she can throw away such lavish wealth, steps not beyond her commonest toil when she forms of the dust a living man. When will man learn the lesson of his own insignificance ? 5. Immortal man ! thy blood flows freely and fully, and thou standest a Napoleon ; thou reclinest a Shakspeare ! — it quickens its movement, and thou liest a parched and fretful thing, with thy mind furied by the phantoms of fever ! — it retards its action but a little, and thou crawlest a crouching, soulless mass, the bright world a blank, dead vision to thine eye. Verily, O man, thou art a glorious and godlike being ! 6. Tell life's proudest tale : what is it ? A few attempts suc- cessless ; a few crushed or moldered hopes ; much paltry fret- ting ; a little sleep, and the story is concluded ; the curtain falla — the farce is over. The world is not a place to live in, but to die in. It is a house that has but two chambers ; a lazar and a charnel — room only for the dying and the dead. There is not a spot on the broad earth on which man can plant his foot and affirm with confidence, " No mortal sleeps beneath !" 7. Seeing then that these things are, what shall we say ? Shall we exclaim with the gay-hearted Grecian, " Drink to-day, for to- morrow we are not ?" Shall we calmly float down the current, smiling if wo can, silent when we must, lulling cares to sleep by the music of gentle enjoyment, and passing dream-like through a land of dreams ? No ! dream-like as is our life, there is in it one reality— our duty. Let us cling to that, and distress may overwhelm, but can not disturb us — may destroy, but can not hurt us : the bitterness of earthly things and the shortness of earthly life will cease to be evils, and begin to be blessings. Wallace. Horace Binney Wallace was born in Philadelphia on the 2Gth of February, 1817. He passed the first two years of his collegiate course at the University of Pennsylvania, and the residue at Princeton College, where lie was graduated in 1835. ne studied law with great thoroughness, and at the age of twenty-seven, prepared notes, that have been commended by the highest legal authorities, /or "Smith's Selections of Leading Cases in various Branches of the Law," aud BLENNERHASSETT'S TEMPTATION. 359 "White and Tudor' s Selection of Leading Cases in Equity." He also devote-d much time to scientific study; produced "Stanley," a novel; and published a number of articles anonymously in various periodicals. He sailed for Europe in April, 1K49, and passed a year in England, Germany, France, and Italy. On his return he resumed with increased energy, his literary pursuits. His eye-sight became impaired in the spring of 1352, owing to the incipient stages of conges- tion of the brain, caused by undue mental exertion. By the advice of physicians, he embarked for England In November. Finding no improvement in his condi- tion, on his arrival, he went to Paris for medical advice, where his cerebral dis- ease increased, and led to his death suddenly, on the 16th of December following. In 1S55 appeared in Philadelphia a volume of his writings, entitled "Art, Scenery, and Philosophy in Europe." These essays on the principles of art, descriptions of cathedrals, traveling sketches, and papers on distinguished artists, though not designed for publication, and mostly in an unfinished state, display great depth of thought, command of language, knowledge of the history and aesthetic principles of art, and a finely cultivated taste. A second volume of his writings, u Literary Criticisms and other Papers," appeared in 185G. These two works form but a small part of Mr. Wallace's literary productions. SECTION XXI. I. 116. BLENNERHASSETT'S TEMPTATION. A PLAIN man, who knew nothing- of the curious transmuta- tions ' which the wit of man can work, would be very apt to wonder by what kind of legerdemain 2 Aaron Burr 3 had con- trived to shuffle himself down to the bottom of the pack, as an ac'cessory, and turn up poor Blennerhasset as principal, in this treason. "Who, then, is Aaron Burr, and what the part which he has borne in this transaction ? He is its author, its projector, its active ex'eciiter. Bold, ardent, restless, and aspiring, his brain conceived it, his hand brought it into action. 1 Trans^ mu ta'tion, a change into he was made attorney-general in another substance or form. 1789. lie was a member of the Uni- 5 Leg y er demain', sleight of hand; ted States Senate from 1791 to 1797, an artful trick. and the leader of the republican 3 Aaron Burr was born in Newark, party. He was made vice-president N. J., February 5, 1750. His military in 1800 ; killed Alexander Hamilton talents secured for him the high po- in a duel in 1804 ; was tried on a sition of lieutenant-colonel in the charge of treasonable designs against army of the Revolution ; after which Mexico, at Richmond, Va., in 1807, of he acquired a prominent position as which he was finally acquitted : and a great lawyer in New York, where died on Staten Island, Sept. 14,1696. 360 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 2. Who is Blennerhasset ? A native of Ireland, a man of letters, who fled from the storms of his own country, to find quiet in ours. On his arrival in America, he retired, even from the population of the Atlantic States, and sought quiet and soli- tude in the bosom of our western forests. But he brought with him taste, and science, and wealth ; and "lo, the desert smiled !" Possessing himself of a beautiful island in the Ohio, he rears upon it a palace, and decorates it with every romantic embel- lishment of fane}'. A shrubbery that Shenstone ' might have envied, blooms around him. Music that might have charmed Calypso 3 and her nymphs, is his. An extensive library spreads its treasures before him. A philosophical apparatus oners to him all the secrets and mysteries of nature. Peace, tranquillity," and innocence, shed their mingled delights around him. And, to crown the enchantment of the scene, a wife, who is said to be lovely even beyond her sex, and graced with every accomplish- ment that can render it irresistible, had blessed him with her love, and made him the father of several children. 3. The evidence would convince you, Sir, that this is but a faint picture of the real life. In the midst of all this peace, this innocence, and this tranquillity, — this feast of the mind, this pure banquet (bangk'wet) of the heart, — the destroyer comes. He comes to turn this paradise into a hell. Yet the flowers do not wither at his approach, and no monitory shuddering through the bosom of their unfortunate possessor warns him of the ruin that is coming upon him. A stranger presents himself. It is Aaron Burr. Introduced to their civilities by the high rank which he had lately held in his country, he soon finds his way to their hearts, by the dignity and elegance of his demeanor, the light and beauty of his conversation, and the seductive and fascinating power of his address. • 4. The conquest (kongk'west) was not difficult. Innocence is ever simple and credulous. Conscious of no designs itself, it suspects none in others. It wears no guards before its breast. Every door and portal and avenue of the heart is thrown open, and all who choose it enter. Such was the state of Eden when 1 William Shenstone, a pleasing 1714, and died in 17G3. writer both of prose and verse, noted 3 Ca lyp' so, a fabled nymph, who for his taste in landscape-garden ing, inhabited the island of Ogygia, on was born in Shropshire, England, in which Ulysses was shipwreeked. BLENNERHASSETT'S TEMPTATION. 301 the scrpont entered its bowers ! The prisoner, in a more en- gaging form, winding himself into the open andunpracticed heart of the unfortunate Blennerhasset, found but little difficulty in changing the native character of that heart, and the objects of its affections. By degrees he infuses into it the poison of his own ambition. He breathes into it the fire of his own courage ; —a daring and desperate thirst for glory ; an ardor, panting for all the storm, and bustle, and hurricane of life. 5. In a short time, the whole man is changed and every object of his former delight relinquished. No more he enjoys the tran- quil scene : it has become flat and insipid to his taste. His books arc abandoned. His retort and crucible arc thrown aside. His shrubbery blooms and breathes its fragrance upon the air in vain — he likes it not. His car no longer drinks the rich melody of music : it longs for the trumpet's clangor, and the cannon's roar. Even the prattle of his babes, once so sweet, no longer affects him ; and the angel smile of his wife, which hitherto touched his bosom with ccstacy so unspeakable, is now unfelt and unseen. Greater objects have taken possession of his soul. G. His imagination has been dazzled by visions of diadems, and stars, and garters, and titles of nobility. He has been taught to burn with restless emulation at the names of great heroes and conquerors, — of Cromwell, 1 and Caesar, and Bonaparte. His enchanted island is destined soon to relapse into a wilderness ; and, in a few months, Ave find the tender and beautiful partner of his bosom, whom he lately " permitted not the winds " of summer " to visit too roughly," — wo find her shivering, at mid- night, on the wintry banks of the Ohio, and mingling her tears with the torrents that froze as they fell. 7. Yet this unfortunate man, thus deluded from his interest and his happiness — thus seduced from the paths of innocence and peace — thus confounded in the toils which were deliberately spread for him, and overwhelmed by the mastering spirit and genius of another, — this man, thus rained and undone, and made to play a subordinate part in this grand drama of guilt and treason — this man is to be called the principal offender ; while he, by whom he was thus plunged in misery, i3 comparatively innocent, a mere ae'ecssory ! Is this reason ? Is it law ? Is it 1 Oliver Cromwell, a groat warrior arid statesman, Lord Protector of England, born April, 1599, and died September, 1659, 10 302 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. humanity? Sir, neither the human heart nor the human un- derstanding will bear a perversion so monstrous and absurd ; so shocking to the soul ; so revolting to reason ! Wikt. William "Wirt, an able American lawyer and miscellaneous writer, was born in Bladensburg, Maryland, November 8th, 1772. He was a private tutor at fifteen ; 6tudied law; was admitted to the bar, in his twentieth year; removed to Rich- mond, Virginia, where he met with eminent success in his profession, and became chancellor and district-attorney. In 1817, in the presidency of Monroe, he be- came attorney-general of the United States, an office which he held for twelve years. His defense of Blennerhasset, in the famous trial of Aaron Burr for trea- son, in 1S07, from which the above extract is taken, won for him a great reputa- tion for fervid eloquence. On his retirement from office, in 1859, he took up his permanent residence at Baltimore, where he became actively engaged in the practice of the law. He was the author of the "Old Bachelor," "The British Spy," "Life of Patrick Henry," etc. He died February 18, 1834. II. 117. ROGER ASCHAM 1 AND LADY JANE GREY.* ASCHAM. Thou art going, my dear young lady, into a most awful state ; thou art passing into matrimony and great wealth. God hath willed it : submit in thankfulness. Thy affec- tions are rightly placed and well distributed. Love is a secon- dary passion in those who love most, a primary in those who love least. He who is inspired by it in a high degree, is inspired by honor in a higher ; it never reaches its plentitude of growth and perfection but in the most exalted minds. Alas ! alas ! Jane. What aileth my virtuous Ascham ? what is amiss ? why do I tremble ? As. I remember a sort of prophecy, made three years ago : it is a prophecy of thy condition and of my feelings on it. Rec- ollectest thou who wrote, sitting upon the sea-beach the evening after an excursion to the Isle of Wight, theso verses ? — " Invisibly bright water ! so like air, On looking down I feared thou couldst not bear 1 Roger Ascham, (as' kam), a man ccssor, married his son, Lord Guilford of great learning, the instructor of Dudley, to her ; and, the nation hav- queon Elizabeth, was born in 1515, ing declared in favor of Mary, they and died in 1568. were both executed, after a phantom 2 Lady Jane Grey, daughter of royalty of nine days, on the 12th of thcMarquisof Dorset, descended from February, 1554. Lady Jane was only the royal family of England by both in her seventeenth year, and was re- parents, was born in 1537. The Duke markable for her skill in the classical, of Northumberland having prevailed Oriental, and modern languages, and on Edward VI. to name her his tuc- for the sweetness of her disposition. ROGER ASCHAM AND LADY JANE GBEY. 363 My little bark, of all light barks most light ; And looked again, and drew me from the sight, And, hanging back, breathed each fresh gale aghast, And held the bench, not to go on so fast." Jane. I was very childish when I composed them ; and, if I had thought any more about the matter, I should have hoped you had been too generous to keep them in your memory as witnesses against me. As. Nay, they are not much amiss for so young a girl, and there being so few of them, I did not reprove thee. Half an hour, I thought, might have been spent more unprofitable ; and I now shall believe it firmly, if thou wilt but be led by them to meditate a little on the similarity of situation in which thou then wert to what thou art now in. Jane. I will do it, and whatever else you command ; for I am weak by nature and very timorous, unless where a strong sense of duty holdeth and supporteth me. There God acteth, and not his creature. Those were with me at sea who would have been •attentive to me if I had seemed to be afraid, even though wor- shipful men and women were in the company ; so that some- thing more powerful threw my fear overboard. Yet I never will go again upon the water. As. Exercise that beauteous couple, that mind and body much and variously, but at home, at home, Jane ! indoors, and about things indoors ; for God is there, too. AVe have rocks and quick- sands on the banks of our Thames (temz), O lady ! such as Ocean never heard of ; and many (who knows how soon !) may be en- gulfed in the current under their garden walls. Jane. Thoroughly do I now understand you. Yes, indeed, I have read evil things of courts ; but I think nobody van go out bad who entereth good, if timely and true warning shall have been given. As. I see perils on perils which thou dost not see, albeit thou art wiser than thy poor old master. And it is not because Love hath blinded thee, for that surpasseth his supposed oinuirjotence ; but it is because thy tender heart, having always leant afiection- ately upon good, hath felt and known nothing of evil. I once persuaded thee to reflect much ; let me now persuade thee to avoid the habitude of reflection, to lay aside books, and to gaze carefully and steadfastly on what is under and before thee. 364 NATIONAL FIFTH HEADER. Jane. I have well bethought rac of my duties : oh, how ex- tensive they are ! what a goodly and fair inheritance ! But tell me, would you command mo never more to read Cicero, and Epictetus, 1 and Plutarch, 2 and Polybius? 3 The others I do re- sign ; they are good for the arbor and for the gravel-walk ; yet leave unto me, I beseech you, my friend and father, leave unto me for my fireside and for my pillow, truth, eloquence, courage, constancy. As. Read them on thy marriage-bed, on thy child-bed, on thy death-bed. Thou spotless, undrooping lily, they have fenced thee right well. These are the men for men ; these are to fashion the bright and blessed creatures whom God one day shall smile upon in thy chaste bosom. 4 Mind thou thy husband. Jane. I sincerely love the youth (yooth) who hath espoused me ; I love him with the fondest, the most solicitous affection ; I pray to the Almighty for his goodness and happiness, and do forget at times — unworthy supplicant ! — the prayers I should have offered for myself. Never fear that I will disparage my kind religious teacher, by disobedience to my husband in tho most trying duties. As. Gentle is he, gentle and virtuous ; but time will harden him : time must harden even thee, sweet Jane ! Do thou, com- placently and indirectly, lead him from ambition. Jane. He is contented with me and with home. As. Ah, Jane ! Jane ! men of high estate grow tired of con- tentedness. Jane. He told me he never liked books unless I read them to him : I will read them to him every morning ; I will open new worlds to him richer than those discovered by the Spaniard ; I 1 Ep^ ic te'tus, a stoic philosopher, of " Moralia " or " Ethical Works," the moralist of Rome, lived about 90 amount to upward of sixty. They years after Christ. His moral wri- are pervaded by a kind, humane dis- tings are justly very celebrated. position, and a love of every thing ' 2 Plutarch, (pin' tark), an eminent that is ennobling and excellent, ancient philosopher and -writer, au- 3 Polyb'ius, a celebrated Greek thor of " Parallel Lives," which con- historian and statesman, was born in tains the biography of forty-six dis- Arcadia, n. c. 203. He -wrote a " Uni- tinffuished Greeks and Romans, was vorsal Ilistorv" in fortv books, of born in Ckoeronea, a city of Bceotia, "which we have only five complete, about 50 years after Christ. His writ- and an abridgment of twelve others, ings, comprehended under the title * Bosom, (buz' um). PARIIII ASICS AND THE CAPTIVE. 3G5 will conduct him to treasures — oh what treasures ! on which he may sleep in innocence and peace. As. Rather do thou walk with him, ride with him, play with him — be his faery, his page, his every thing that love and poetry have invented, — but watch him well ; sport with his fancies ; turn them about liko the ringlets round his cheek ; and if ever he meditate on power, go toss up thy baby to his brow, and bring back his thoughts into his heart by the music of thy dis- course. Teach him to live unto God and unto thee ; and he will discover that women, like the plants in woods, derive their softness and tenderness from the shade. Landor. Waltbb Savage Lakdob was born in Warwick, England, on the 30th of Jan- nary, 1775, and was educated at Rugby and Oxford. He first resided at Swansea, in Wales, dependent on his father for a small Income, where he commenced his " Imaginary ( lonversations," a work which alone establishes his fame. His Hr-L publication waa a small volume of poems, dated 1793. On succeeding to the family estate he became entirely independent, and was enabled to indulge to the fullest his propensity to literature. He left England in 1806, married in 1814, and went to Italy the following year, where he has since chiefly resided. His col- lected works, of prose and verse, were published in 1846, in two large volumes. Mr. Landon is a poet of great originality and power. But he is most favorably known now, as he will be by posterity, for bisprose productions, which, written in pure nervous English, are full of thoughts that fasten themselves on the mind, and arc "a joy forever." His " Imaginary Conversations," from which the pre- ceding dialogue was selected, is a very valuable work. It is rich in scholarship ; full of imagination, wit, and humor; correct, concise, and pure in style ; various in interest, and universal in sympathy. He died at Florence, Sept. 17, 1S64. III. 118. PARRIIASIUS AND THE CAPTIVE. THERE stood an unsold captive in the mart, A gray-haired and inajes'tical old man, Chained to a pillar. It was almost night, And the last seller from his place had gone, And not a sound was heard but of a dog Crunching beneath the stall a refuse bone, Or the dull echo from the pavement rung, As the faint captive changed his weary feet. 2. He had stood there since morning, and had borne From every eye in Ath'ens the cold gaze Of curious scorn. The Jew had taunted him For an Olvnthian slave. The buver came And roughly struck his palm upon his breast, 386' NATIONAL FIFTH READER. And touched his unhealed wounds, and with a sneer Passed on ; and when, with weariness 6'erspent, He bowed his head in a forgetful sleep, The inhuman soldier smote him, and, with threats Of torture to his children, summoned back The ebbing blood into his pallid face. 3 'Twa3 evening, and the half-descended sun Tipped with a golden fire the many domes Of Ath'ens, and a yellow atmosphere Lay rich and dusky in the shaded street Through which the captive gazed. He had bjrne up With a stout heart that long and weary day, Haughtily patient of his many wrongs ; But now he was alone, and from his nerves The needless strength departed, and ho leaned Prone on his massy chain, and let his thoughts Throng on him as they would. 4. Unmarked of him, Parrhasius x at the nearest pillar stood, Gazing upon his grief. The Athenian's cheek Flushed as he measured with a painter's eye The moving picture. The abandoned limbs, Stained with the oozing blood, were laced with veins Swollen to purple fullness ; the gray hair, Thin and disordered, hung about his eyes ; And as a thought of wilder bitterness Rose in his memory, his lips grew white, And the fast workings of his bloodless face Told what a tooth of fire was at his heart. 5. The golden light into the painter's room Streamed richly, and the hidden colors stole From the dark pictures radiantly forth, And in the soft and dewy atmosphere 1 Parrhasius, (par ra' zl us), a distin- Parrhasius having 1 exhibited a piece, guished painter of antiquity, born Zeuxis said, "Remove your curtain about the year 430 B. c, was a nativo that we may see your painting." of Ephesus, though others say lie was The curtain was the painting. Zeuxis an Athenian, and the rival of Zeuxis. acknowledged his defeat, saying, The latter painted grapes so natur- " Zeuxis has deceived birds, but ally that birds came to pick them. Parrhasius has deceived Zeuxis." PARRIIASIUS AND TnE CAPTIVE 367 Like forms and landscapes magical they lay. The walls were hung with armor, and about In the dim corners stood the sculptured forms Of Cytheris, 1 and Diiin, 3 and stern Jove, 3 And from tho casement soberly away Fell the grotesque long shadows, full and true, And, like a vail of lilmy mellowness, Tho lint-specks floated in the twilight air. 6. Parrhasius stood, gazing forgetfully Upon his canvas. There Prome'theua * lay, Chained to the cold rocks of Mount Caucasus — The vulture at his vitals, and' the links Of the lame Lem'nian 5 festering in his flesh ; And, as the painter's mind felt through the dim, Eapt mystery, and plucked the shadows forth With its far-reaching fancy, and with form And color clad them, his fine, earnest eye, Flashed with a passionate fire, and the quick curl Of his thin nostril, and his quivering lip, Were like the winged god's, breathing from his flight. 7. " Bring me the captive now ! My hand feels skillful, and the shadows lift From my waked spirit airily and swift, And I could paint the bow Upon the bended heavens — around me play Colors of such divinity to-day. 1 Cy the' ris, a celebrated courte- thology, -was son of the Titan Sapetus 6an, the mistress of Antony, and sub- and Clymene. His name signifies sequently of the poet Gallus, who forethought. For offenses against Ju- mentions her in his poems under the piter, he was chained to a rock on name of Lycoris. Mount Caucasus, where an eagle con 2 Diana, (dla'na), an ancient Ital- sumed in the daytime his liver, which ian divinity, whom the Romans iden- was restored ineachsucceedingnight, titled with the Greek Artemis. Ac- 6 Lena' ni an, from Lemnos, now cording to the mostancient accounts, Stalimni. an island of the Greek Ar- she was the daughter of Jupiter and chipelago, where the lame Heph»s- Leto, and the twin sister of Apollo, tus, or Vulcan, the god of fire, is said 3 Jove, Jupiter, the supreme deity to have fallen, when Jupiter hurled of the Romans, called Zeus by the him down from heaven. Hence the Greeks. workshop of the god is sometimes 4 Pro me' theus, in heathen my- placed in this island. 368 NATIONAL FIFTH HEADER, 8. " Ha ! bind him on his back ! Look ! — as Prome'theus in my picture here ! Quick — or he faints! — stand with the cordial near! Now — bend him to the rack ! Press down the poisoned links into his ilesh ! And tear agape that healing wound afresh ! 9. " So — let him writhe ! How long Will he live thus ? Quick, my good pencil, now ! What a line agony works upon his brow ! Ha ! gray-haired, and so strong ! How fearfully he stifles that short moan ! Gods ! if I could but paint a dying groan ! 10. "'Pity' thee! Soldo! I pity the dumb victim at the altar — But does the robed priest for his pity falter ? I'd rack thee, though I knew A thousand lives were perishing in thine — What were ten thousand to a fame like mine. 11. " 'Hereafter!' Ay — hereafter! A whip to keep a coward to his track ! What gave Death ever from his kingdom back To check the skeptic's laughter ? Come from the grave to-morrow with that story — And I may take some softer path to glory. 12. "No, no, old man! we die Even as the flowers, and we shall breathe away Our life upon the chance wind, even as they ! Strain well thy fainting eye — For when that bloodshot quivering is o'er, The light of heaven will never reach thee more. 13. " Yet there's a deathless name ! A spirit that the smothering vault shall spurn, And like a steadfast planet mount and burn— And though its crown of flame Consumed my brain to ashes as it shone, By all the fiery stars ! I'd bind it on ! 14. " Ay — though it bid me rifle My heart's last fount for its insatiate thirst — Though every life-strung nerve be maddened first— PARlillASIUS AND THE CAPTIVE. 339 i Though it should bid me stifle The yearning in my throat for my sweet child, And taunt its mother till my brain went wild — 15. " All— I would do it all— Sooner than die, like a dull worm, to rot — Thrust foullv into earth to be forgot ! O heavens ! — but I appall Your heart, old man ! forgive ha ! on your livo3 Let him not faint ! — rack him till he revives ! 16. " Vain — vain — give o'er ! His eyo Glazes apace. He does not feel you now — Stand back ! I'll paint tho death-dew on his brow I Gods ! if he do not die But for one moment — one — till I eclipse Conception with the scorn of those calm lips 1 17. " Shivering ! Hark ! he mutters Brokenly now — that was a difficult breath— Another ? Wilt thou never come, O Death ! Look! how his temple flutters! Is his heart still ? Aha ! lift up his head ! He shudders — gasps — Jove help him! — so — he's dead." IS. How like a mounting devil in the heart Rules the unreined ambition ! Let it once But play the monarch, and its haughty brow Glows with a beauty that bewilders thought And unthrones peace forever. Putting on The very pomp of Lucifer, it turns The heart to ashes, and with not a spring Left in the bosom for the spirit's lip, We look upon our splendor and forget The thirst of which we perish ! Yet hath life Many a falser idol. There are hopes Promising well ; and love-touched dreams for some ; And passions, many a wild one ; and fair schemes For gold and pleasure — yet will only this Balk not the soul — Ambition only, gives, Even of bitterness, a beaker full! 19. Friendship is but a slow-awaking dream, Troubled at best — Love is a lamp unseen, 16* 370 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 4 Burning to waste, or, if its light is found, Nursed for an idle hour, then idly broken — Gain is a groveling care, and Folly tires, And Quiet is a hunger never fed — And from Love's very bosom, and from Gain, Or Folly, or a Friend, or from Repose — From all but keen Ambition — will the soul Snatch the first moment of forge tfulness To wander like a restless child away. 20* Oh, if there were not better hopes than these — Were there no palm beyond a feverish fame — If the proud wealth flung back upon the heart Must canker in its coffers — if the links Falsehood hath broken will unite no more — If the deep-yearning love, that hath not found Its like in the cold world, must waste in tears — If truth, and fervor, and devotedness, Finding no worthy altar, must return And die of their own fullness — if beyond The grave there is no heaven in whose wide air The spirit may find room, and in the love Of whose bright habitants the lavish heart May spend itself — what thrice-mocked fools aee we ! Nl P. Willis. section XXII. I. 119. CHARACTER OF SCOTT. TAKE it for all and all, it is not too much to say that the char- acter of Sir Walter Scott is probably the most remarkable on record. There is no man of historical celebrity that we now recall, who combined, in so eminent a degree, the highest quali- ties of the moral, the intellectual, and the physical. He united in his own character what hitherto had been found incompatible. 2. Though a poet, and living in an ideal world, he was an exact, methodical man of business ; though achieving with the CHARACTER OF SCOTT. 37I most wonderful facility of genius, lie was patient and laborious ; a mousing antiquarian, yet with the most active interest in the present and whatever was going on around him ; with a strong turn for a roving life and military adventure, he was yet chained to his desk more hours, at somo periods of his life, than a monk- ish recluse ; a man with a heart as capacious as his head ; a Tory, brimful of Jac'obitism, 1 yet full of sympathy and unaffect- ed familiarity with all classes, even the humblest ; a successful author, without pedantry and without conceit ; one, indeed, at tho head of the republic of letters, and yet with a lower estimate of letters, as compared with other intellectual pursuits, than was ever hazarded before. 3. The first quality of his character, or, rather, that which forms tho basis of it, as of all great characters, was his energy. "We see it in his early youth, triumphing over the impediments of nature, and in spite of lameness, making him conspicuous in every sort of athletic exercise — clambering up dizzy precipices, wading through treacherous fords, and performing feats of pe- destrianism that make one's joints ache to read of. As he ad- vanced in life, we see the same force of purpo:;c turned to higher objects. 4. We see the same powerful energies triumphing over disease at a later period, when nothing but a resolution to get the bet- ter of it enabled him to do so. " Be assured," he remarked to Mr. Gillies, " that if pain could have prevented my application to literary labor, not a page of Ivanhoe would have been written. Now if I had given way to mere feelings, and had ceased to work, it is a question whether the disorder might not have taken a deeper root, and become incurable." 5. Another quality, which, like the last, seems to have given tone to his character, was his social or benevolent feelings. His heart was an unfailing fountain, which not merely the distresses, but the joys of his fellow-creatures made to How like water 6. Rarely indeed is this precious quality found united with the most exalted intellect. "Whether it be that nature, chary of her gifts, does not care to shower too many of them on one head ; or that the public admiration has led the man of intellect to set too high a value on himself, or at least his own pursuits, to take 1 Jac' obit ism, the principles of the adherents of James the Second, of England. 372 NATIONAL FIFTn READER. an interest in the inferior concerns of others ; or that the fear of compromising his dignity puts him " on points " with those who approach him ; or whether, in truth, the very magnitude of his own reputation throws a freezing shadow over us littlo people in his neighborhood — whatever be the cause, it is too truo that the highest powers of the mind are very often deficient in the only one which can malic the rest of much worth in society — the power of pleasing. 7. Scott was not one of these little great. His was not one of those dark-lantern visages which concentrate all their light on their own path, and are black as midnight to all about them. He had a ready sympathy, a word of contagious kindness or cordial greeting for all. His manners, too, were of a kind to dispel the icy reserve and awe which his great name was calcu- lated to inspire. 8. He relished a good joke, from whatever quarter it came, and was not over-dainty in his manner of testifying his satisfac- tion. " In the full tide of mirth, he did indeed laugh the heart's laugh," says Mr. Adolphus. " Give me an honest laugher," said Scott himself on another occasion, when a buckram man of fashion had been paying him a visit at Abbotsford. 9. His manners, free from affectation or artifice of any sort, exhibited the spontaneous movements of a kind disposition, subject to those rules of good breeding which Nature herself might have dictated. In this way he answered his own purpose admirably as a painter of character, by putting every man in good humor with himself, in the same manner as a cunning portrait-painter amuses his sitters with such store of fun and anecdote as may throw them off their guard, and call out the happiest expressions of their countenances. 10. The place where his benevolent impulses found their proper theater for expansion was his own home ; surrounded by a happy family, and dispensing all the hospitalities of a great feudal proprietor. "There are many good things in life," he says, in one of his letters, "whatever satirists ' and mis'anthropes 3 may say to the contrary ; but probably the best of all, next to a 1 SaT ir ist, one who writes com posure of what in public or private positions, generally poetical, that hold morals deserves rebuke, up vice or folly to severe disapproval ; a Mis' an thrope, a hater of man- one who makes a keen or severe ex kind. scene from ivanhoe. 373 conscienco void of offence, (without which, by-the-by, they can hardly exist,) arc the quiet exercise and enjoyment of the social feelings, in which we arc at once happy ourselves, and tho cause of happiness to them who are dearest to us." 11. Every page of the work, almost, shows us how intimately he blended himself with the pleasures and the pursuits of his own familv, watched over the education of his children, shared in their rides, their rambles, and sports, losing no opportunity of kindling in their young minds a love of virtue, and honorable principles of action. 12. But Scott's sympathies were not confined to his species, and if he treated them like blood relations, he treated his brute followers like personal friends. Every one remembers old Maida and faithful Camp, the " dear old friend," whose loss cost him a dinner. Mr. Gillies tells us that he went into his study on one occasion, when he was winding off his " Vision of Don Roderick." " 'Look here,' said the poet, ' I have just begun to copy over tho rhymes that you heard to-day and applauded so much. Return to supper if you can ; only don't be late, as you perceive we keep early hours, and Wallace will not suffer me to rest after six in the morning. Come, good dog, and help the poet.' 13. "At this hint, Wallace seated himself upright on a chair next his master, who offered him a newspaper, which he directly seized, looking very wise, and holding it firmly and contentedly in his mouth. Scott looked at him with great satisfaction, for he was excessively fond of dogs. 'Very well,' said he ; 'now we shall get on.' And so I left them abruptly, knowing that my ' absence would be the best company. 5 " w. II. Prescott. II. 120. SCENE FROM IVANHOE. 1 FOLLOWING with wonderful promptitude the directions of Ivanhoe, and availing herself of the protection of the large ancient shield, which she placed against the lower part of 1 This scene is laid in England, in Rebecca, the young Jewess, while the twelfth century. "Wounded and the castle is undergoing an assault a captive in the castle of Front-de- from a party of outlawed forest Bceuf, a Norman knight, Ivanhoe, rangers, led on by Richard, king of carries on this conversation with England, the unknown knight. 374: NATIONAL FIFTH READER. the window, Rebecca, with tolerable security to herself, could witness part of what was passing without the castle, and report to Ivanhoe the preparations which the assailants were making for the storm. 2. " The skirts of the wood seem lined with archers, although only a few are advanced from its dark shadow." " Under what banner ?" asked Ivanhoe. " Under no ensign of war which I can observe," answered Bebecca. " A singular novelty," mut- tered the knight, " to advance to storm such a castle without pennon or banner displayed ! — Seest thou who they be that act as leaders ?" " A knight, clad in sable armor, is the most con- spicuous," said the Jewess ; " he alone is armed from head to heel, and seems to assume the direction of all around him." 3. " What device does he bear on his shield ?" replied Ivan- hoe. " Something resembling a bar of iron, and a padlock painted blue on the black shield." " A fetterlock and shackle- bolt azure," said Ivanhoe ; " I know not who may bear the de- vice, but well I ween it might now be mine own. Canst thou not see the motto ?" " Scarce the device itself, at this distance," replied Rebecca ; " but when the sun glances fair upon his shield, it shows as I tell you." 4. " Seem there no other leaders r" exclaimed the anxious in- quirer. " None (nun) of mark and distinction that I can behold from this station," said Rebecca ; " but, doubtless, the other side of the castle is also assailed. They appear even now pre- paring to advance." Her description was here suddenly inter- rupted by the signal for assault, which was given by the blast of a shrill bugle, and at once answered by a nourish of the Norman trumpets from the battlements. 5. " And I must he here like a bedridden monk," exclaimed Ivanhoe, " while the game that gives me freedom or death is played out by the hand of others ! — Look from the window once again, kind maiden, — but beware that you are not marked by the archers beneath, — look out once more, and tell me if they yet advance to the storm." — With patient courage, strengthened by the interval which she had employed in mental devotion, Rebecca again (a gen') took post at the lattice, sheltering her- self, however, so as not to be visible from beneath. 6. "What dost thou see, Rebecca?" again demanded the wounded knight. " Nothing (nuth'ing) but the cloud of arrows sce:;e from iyanhoe. 375 flying so thick as to dazzle mine eyes, and to hide the bowmen who shoot them." " That can not endure," said Ivanhoo ; " if they press not right on to carry the castle by pure force of arms, the archery may avail but little against stone walls and bul- warks. Look for tho Knight of the Fetterlock, fair Rebecca, and see how he bears himself ; for, as the leader is, so will his followers bo." " I see him not," said Rebecca. 7. " Foul craven !" exclaimed Ivanhoe ; " does he blench from the helm when tho wind blows highest ?" " Ho blenches not ! he blenches not!" said Rebecca ; "I seo him now ; he leads a body of men close under tho outer barrier of the barbacan. 1 They pull down the piles and palisades ; 3 they hew down tho barriers with axes. His high black plume floats abroad over the throng, like a raven over the field of the slain. They havo made a breach in the barriers — they rush in — they are thrust back! — Front-de-Bceuf 3 heads the defenders ; — I see his gigan- tic form above the press. They throng again to the breach, and the pass is disputed hand to hand, and man to man. It is tho meeting of two fierce tides — tho conflict of two oceans, moved by ad'verse winds !" 8. She turned her head from the lattice, as if unable longer to endure a sight so terrible. "Look forth again, Rebecca," said Ivanhoe, mistaking the cause of her retiring ; " the archery must in some degree have ceased, since they are now fighting hand to hand. Look again ; there is now less danger." Re- becca again looked forth, and almost immediately exclaimed : — "Front-de-Bceuf and the Black Knight fight hand to hand on the breach, amid tho roar of their followers, who watch tho progress of the strife. Heaven strike with the cause of the op- pressed, and of the captive!" She then uttered a loud shriek, and exclaimed: — "Ho is down! — he is down!" "AVho is down?" cried Ivanhoe. "For our dear lady's sake, tell mc which has fallen ?" 9. " The Black Knight," answered Rebecca, faintly ; then in- stantly again shouted, with joyful eagerness, — "But no — but no ! — he is on foot again, and fights as if there were twenty 1 Bar' ba can, an advanced work one end of which is set firmly in defending the entrance to a castle or the ground ; a fence formed of pal- city, as at a draw-bridge or gate. isades, used as n moans of defense. 8 Pal N i sade', a strong sharp stake, 3 Front-cIe-Eceuf, (frong-du-buf.) 37G NATIONAL FIFTH READER. men's strength, in his single arm — his stoord is broken — he snatches an axe from a yeoman — he presses Front-de-Bceuf with blow on blow — the giant stoops and totters, like an oak under the steel of the woodman — he falls — he falls !" 10. " Front-de-Bceuf ?" exclaimed Ivanhoe. " Front-de- Bceuf !" answered the Jewess. " His men rash to the rescue, headed by the haughty Templar — their united force compels the champion to pause — they drag Front-de-Bceuf within the walls." 11. "The assailants have won the barriers, have they not?" said Ivanhoe. "They have — they have!" exclaimed Rebecca, " and they press the beseiged hard upon the outer wall ; some plant ladders, some swarm like bees, and endeavor to ascend upon the shoulders of each other — down go stones, beams, and trunks of trees upon their heads, and as fast as they bear the wounded men to the rear, fresh men supply their place in tho assault. Great God! hast thou given men thine own image, that it should be thus cruelly defaced by the hands of their brethren !" 12. "Think not of that," said Ivanhoe ; "this is no time for such thoughts. Who yield? — who push their way?" "The ladders are thrown down," replied Rebecca, shuddering. " The soldiers lie groveling under them like crushed reptiles — the be- sieged have the better !" 13. " Saint George strike for us !" exclaimed the knight ; " do the false yeomen 1 give way?" "No!" exclaimed Rebecca; " they bear themselves right yeomanly — the Black Knight ap- proaches the postern 2 with his huge axe — the thundering blows which he deals, you may hear them above all the din and shouts of the battle — stones and beams are hailed down on the bold champion — he regards them no more than if they were thistle- down or feathers !" 14. "By Saint John of Acre!" said Ivanhoe, raising himself joyfully on his couch ; " methought there was but one man in England that might do such a deed!" — "The postern gate shakes," continued Rebecca ; " it crashes — it is splintered by his blows — they rush in — the outwork is won — they hurl the defenders from the battlements — they throw them into the 'Yeo'man, a man frco born; a sage between the parade and the freeholder. main ditch, or between the ditches of 2 Fos' tern, an under-ground pas- the interior of the outworks of a fort SCENE FEOM IVANIIOE. 377 moat ! Oil, men, — if yc be indeed men, — spare them that can resist no longer!" 15. " The bridge, — the bridge which communicates with the castle, — have they won that pass?" exclaimed Ivanhoc. " No/' replied Rebecca; "the Templar has destroyed the plank on which they crossed — few of the defenders escaped with him into the castle — the shrieks and cries which you hear, tell the fate of the others ! Alas ! I see it is still more difficult to look upon victory than upon battle !" 1G. ""What do they now, maiden?" said Ivanhoc; "look forth yet again — this is no time to faint at bloodshed." "It is over for the time," answered Rebecca. " Our friends strengthen themselves within the outwork which they have mastered, and it affords them so good a shelter from the foeman's shot, that the garison only bestow a few bolts on it, from interval to inter- val, as if rather to disquiet than effectually to injure them." Scott. Sir Walter Scott, a Scottish poet and novelist, one of the most remarkable and laborious writers of any age, was born in Edinburgh, August 15th, 1771. Being a delicate child, he was sent at three years of age to reside on his pater- nal grandfather's farm, in Roxburghshire, a region abounding in traditions of the border wars, to which even in infancy he was an eager listener. lie returned to Edinburgh in 1779, greatly improved in health, excepting a lameness from which he never recovered. He soon became a pupil in the high school of Edin- burgh, whence, in 17S3, he was transferred to the university. His carte rat school or college was not brilliant ; but he was an indefatigable reader of romance 5 , old plays, poetry, and miscellaneous literature, and a keen observer of natural 6ccnery. After six years devoted to professional study in his father's office, to miscellaneous reading, and composition, Uc was called to the Scottish bar, in 1792. He married Miss Charlotte Carpenter, a young lady of great beauty, in 1797. His first great poem, "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," on n~ publication in 1S05. was received with universal admiration, and placed the author among the foremost poets of the ngc. His appointment, in 1806, to one of the chief clerk* ships in the Scottish Court of Sessions, with a salary Boon increased to £1900, enabled him to devote himself exclusively to literature. In 1806 ** Mannion" ap- peared; in 1S10, the "Lady of the Lake;" which were followed by the u Vision of Don Roderlc," "Rokcby," and in 1815, "The Lord of the Isles." In the summer of 1814, he commenced his more splendid career, a? a novelist, by pub- lishing " Wavcrlcy." In that year a portion of his literary gains were devoted to the purchase of a small farm on the river Tweed, not far from Melrose, to which he gave the name of Abbotsford, now one of the most famous literary shrines of Scotland. To " Wavcrlcy" rapidly succeeded, for nearly fifteen years, his series of novels that appeared anonymously. In 1886, two firms, his pub- lishers and his printers, failed, leaving Scott's liabilities little less than £150,000. Unappalled by the magnitude of his misfortunes, having secured an extension of time, at the age of fifty-five, he heroically set to work to reimburse his cred- itors by his literary labors. At the time of his death, at Abbotsford, September 378 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 21st, 1832, he had paid upward of £100,000 of his debts ; and soon after by the sale of his copyright interest in the Waverley novels, the claims of all his cred- itors were fully satisfied — a result perhaps never achieved before or since within so brief a space of time by the literary efforts of a single person. His character is most happily sketched by Prescott, p. 370. m. 121. SHAKSPEARE. SHAKSPEARE is, above all writers, — at least above all modern writers, — the poet of nature ; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life. His characters are not modified by the customs of particular places, unpracticed by the rest of the world ; by the peculiarities of studies or professions, which can operate but upon smaU num- bers ; or by the accidents of transient fashions or temporary opinions ; they are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as the world will always supply, and observation wiU always find. His persons act and speak by the influence of those gen- eral passions and principles by which all minds are agitated, and the whole system of life is continued in motion. In the writings of other poets a character is too often an individual : in those of Shaks'peare it is commonly a species. 2. It is from this wide extension of design that so much in- struction is derived. It is this which fills the plays of Shaks- peare wifh practical axioms and domestic wisdom. It was said of Euripides, 1 that every verse was a precept ; and it may be said of Shakspeare, that from his works may be collected a sys- tem of civil and economical prudence. Yet his real power is not shown in the splendor of particular passages, but by the progress of his fable, and the tenor of his dialogue : and he that tries to recommend him by select quotations, will succeed like the pedant in Hier'ocles, 2 who, when he offered his house to sale, carried a brick in his pocket as a specimen. 1 Eu rip' ides, one of the three with Socrates. According to somo great Greek tragedians, was born in authorities, Euripides wrote ninety- Salamis, whither his parents retired two tragedies, according to others, during the occupation of Attica by seventy -five. Of these nineteen are Xerxes, on the day of the glorious extant. He died b. c 40G. victory near that island, B. c. 480. a Hi eV o cles, a Platonic philoso- He was highly learned and accom- pher of Alexandria, who wrote plished, and on terms of intimacy many facetious stories. SHAKSPEARE. 379 3. It will not easily be imagined how much Shakspeare ex- cels in accommodating his sentiments to real life, but by com- paring him with other authors. It was observed of the ancient schools of declamation, that the mure diligently they were fre- quented, the more was the student disqualified for the world, because he found nothing there which he should ever meet in any other place. The same remark may be applied to every stage but that of Shakspeare. The theater, when it is under any other direction, is peopled by such characters as were never seen, conversing in a language which was never heard, upon topics which will never arise in the commerce of mankind. But the dialogue of this author is often so evidently determined by the incident which produces it, and is pursued with so much ease and simplicity, that it seems scarcely to claim the merit of fiction, but to have been gleaned by diligent selection out of common conversation and common occurrences. 4. Upon every other stage the universal agent is love, by whose power all good and evil is distributed, and every action quickened or retarded. To bring a lover, a lady, and a rival into the fable ; to entangle them in contradictory obligations, perplex them with oppositions of interest, and harass them with violence of desires inconsistent with each other ; to make them meet in rapture, and part in agony ; to fill their mourns with hyperbolical l joy and outrageous sorrow ; to distress them as nothing human ever was distressed ; to deliver them as nothing human ever was delivered ; is the business of a modern dram- atist. For this, probability is violated, life is misrepresented, and language is depraved. 5. But love is only one of many passions ; and as it has no great influence upon the sum of life, it has little operation in the dramas of a poet, who caught his ideas from the living world, and exhibited only what he saw before him. He knew that any other passion, as it was regular or exorbitant, was a cause of happiness or calamity. This, therefore, is the praise of Shakspeare, that his driiina is the mirror of life ; that he who has mazed his imagination, in following the jmantoms which other writers raise up before him, may here be cured of his delirious ecstasies, by reading human sentiments in human lan- guage, by scenes from which a hermit may estimate the trans- 1 Hy v per bbV ic al. exaggerating or diminishing greatly. 380 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. actions of the world, and a confessor predict the progress of the passions. 6. Shakspeare's plays are not, in the rigorous and critical sense, either tragedies or comedies, but compositions of a dis- tinct kind ; exhibiting the real state of sublunary nature, which partakes of good and evil, joy and sorrow, mingled with endless variety of proportion, and innumerable modes of combination ; and expressing the course of the world, in which the loss of one is the gain of another ; in which, at the same time, the reveler is hasting to his wine, and the mourner burying his friend ; in which the malignity of one is sometimes defeated by the frolic of another ; and many mischiefs and many benefits arc done and hindered without design. 7. Shakspeare has united the powers of exciting laughter and sorrow not only in one mind, but in one composition. Almost all his plays are divided between serious and ludicrous charac- ters, and, in the successive evolutions of the design, sometimes produce seriousness and sorrow, and sometimes levity and laughter. That this is a practice contrary to the rules of criti- cism will be readily allowed ; but there is alway an appeal open from criticism to nature. The end of writing is to instruct ; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing. That the mingled drama may convey all the instruction of tragedy or comedy can not be denied, because it includes both in its alternations of ex- hibition, and approaches nearer than either to the appearance of life, by showing how great machinations ' and slender designs may promote or obviate one another, and the high and the low cooperate in the general system by unavoidable concatenation.' 8. The force of his comic scenes has suffered little diminution from the changes made by a century and a half, in manners or in words. As his personages act upon principles arising from genuine passion, very little modified by particular forms, their pleasures and vexations are communicable to all times and to all places ; they are natural, and therefore durable. 3 The adventi- tious peculiarities of personal habits are only superficial dyes, bright and pleasing for a littlo while, yet soon fading to a dim . . . t. 1 Machination, (mak"* i na' shun), 2 Ccn cat^ c na' tion, connection the act of planning or contriving a by links; a series of links united, cr Bchemc for executing some purpose, of things depending on each other, usually an evil one. 3 Du' ra fclc, lasting. BCENE FROM KING RICHARD III. 33X tinct, 1 -without any remains of former luster ; but the discrimina- tions of true passion are the colors of nature ; they pervade the whole mass, and can only perish with the body that exhibits them. The accidental compositions of heterogeneous modes are dissolved by tho chance which combined them ; but the uniform simplicity of primitive qualities neither admits increase, nor suffers dcc:i} r . The sand heaped by one flood is scattered by another ; but the rock alway continues in its place. The stream of time, which is continually washing the dis'soluble fabrics of tho poets, passes without injury by the adamant of Shakspeare. Da. Johnson, IV. 122. BCENE FROM KING RICHARD IH. BRAKENBURY. Why looks your grace so heavily to-day ? Clarence. Oh, I have passed a miserable night, So full of ugly sights, of ghastly dreams, That, as I am a Christain faithful man, I would not spend another such a night, Though 'twere to buy a world of happy days, So full of dismal terror was tho time ! Brat. What was your dream, my lord ? I pray you toll me. Clar. Methought that I had broken from tho tower, And was embarked to cross to Bur'gundy, And in my company my brother Glostcr, Who from my cabin tempted mo to walk Upon tho hatches. Thence we looked toward England, And cited up a thousand heavy times, During the wars of York and Lanc'astcr, That had befallen us. As we passed along Upon the giddy footing of the hatches, Methought that Gloster stumbled ; and, in falling, Struck me, that sought to stay him, o'verboard, Into the tumbling billows of the main. heaven ! Methought what pain it was to drown ! W T hat dreadful noise of waters in my ears ! What sights of uglv death within mv eves ! 1 thought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks ; 1 Ti-ct. (tlngt), stain ; color: tinj?. 382 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. A thousand men, that fishes gnawed upon : Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl, Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels, All scattered in the bottom of the sea. Some lay in dead men's skulls : and in those holes "Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept, As 'twere in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems, That wooed the slimy bottom of the deep, And mocked the dead bones that lay scattered by. Brak. Had you such leisure, in the time of death, To gaze upon the secrets of the deep ? Clar. Meth ought I had ; and of ten did I strive To yield the ghost ; but still the envious flood Kept in my soul, and would not let it forth To find the empty, vast, and wandering air ; But smothered it within my panting bulk, Which almost burst to belch it in the sea. Brak. Awaked you not wifti this sore agony ? Clar. No, no ! my dream was lengthened after life ; Oh, then began the tempest to my soul ! I passed, methought, the melancholy flood, With that grim ferryman 1 which poets write of, Unto the kingdom of perpetual night. The first that there did greet my stranger soul Was my great father-in-law, renowned Warwick,' Who cried aloud — " What scourge for perjury Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?" And so he vanished. Then came wandering by A shadow like an angel, with bright hair Dabbled in blood, and he shrieked out aloud — "Clarence is come,— false, fleeting, perjured Clarence, — TJiat stabbed me in the field by Tewksbury ! Seize on him, furies ! take him to your torments !" With that, methought a legion of foul fiends 1 Charon, (ka' ron), who, according three cents in value, which was to ancient mythology, conveyed in placed in the mouth of every corpse his boat the shades of the dead across previous to its burial. He is repre' the rivers of the lower world. For sented as an aged man, with a dirty this service he was paid with an board and a mean dress, obolus, a small silver coin ot about ■ Warwick, (wor 7 rik). SCENE FROM KING RICHARD III. 383 Environed me, and howled in mine ears Such hideous cries, that, with the very noise, I trembling waked, and, for a season after, Could not believe but that I was in hell ; Such terrible impression made my dream. Brak. No marvel, lord, that it affrighted you ; I am afraid, methinks, to hear you tell it. Clar. Ah ! Brakenbury, I have done these things, That now give evidence against my soul, For Edward's sake ; and, see how he requites me ! God ! if my deep prayers can not appease thee, But thou wilt be avenged on my misdeeds, Yet execute thy wrath on me alone : Oh, spare my guiltless wife, and my poor children ! — 1 prithee, Brakenbury, stay by me ; My soul is heavy, and I fain would sleep. Brak. I will, my lord ; God give your grace good rest ! — [Clarence reposing himself on a chair. Sorrow breaks seasons, and reposing hours, Makes the night morning, and the noon-tide night. Princes have but their titles for their glories, An outward honor for an inward toil : And, for unfelt imaginations, They often feel a world of restless cares : So that between their titles and low name, There's nothing differs but the outward fame. Shakspeare. William Siiakspeake, one of the greatest of all poets, was born at Stratford- on-Avon, Warwick County, England, in April, 1504. His father, John Shak- speare, a woolcombcr or glover, rose to be high bailiff and chief alderman of Stratford. William is supposed to have received bis early education at tbe grammar-school in bis native town. We have ho trace how he was employed between bis scbool-days and manhood. Some bold that be was an attorney's clerk. Doubtless he was a bard, though perhaps an irregular student. He mar- ried Anne Hatbaway in 1582, and soon after became connected with tbe Black- friar's Theater, in London, to which city be removed in 15S6 or 13S7. Two years subsequent be was a joint proprietor of that theater, with four others below him in the list. Though we know nothing of the date of his lirst play, he had most probably begun to write long before he left Stratford. Of bis thirty-seven plays, the existence of thirty-one is defined by contemporary records. He became rich in the theaters, with which he ceased to be connected about 1609. He had pre- viously purchased tbe principal house in his native town, where he passed the residue of his life, and died in April, 1616. We can only refer students that wish to know more of this great poet, to his writings, an extended description of which is rendered unnecessary by tbe selection immediately preceding the above. 384 NATIONAL FIFTH HEADER. V. 123. NORVAL. Enter first Glenalvon ; and soon after, Norval. Tlie latter seems looting off at some distant object. aLENALVON. His port I love ; he's in a proper mood To chide the thunder, if at him it roared. [Aside. [Aloud.] Has Nerval seen the troops? Norval. The setting sun With yellow radiance lightened all the vale, j^nd as the warriors moved, each polished helm, Corslet, or spear, glanced back his gilded beams. The hill they climbed, and, halting at its top, Of more than mortal size, towering they seemed A host angelic, clad in burning arms. Glen. Thou talk'st it well ; no leader of our host In sounds more loftv talks of glorious war. Norv. If I should e'er acquire a leader's name, My speech will be less ardent. Novelty Now prompts my tongue, and youthful admiration Vents itself freely ; since no part is mine Of praise pertaining to the great in arms. Glen. You wrong yourself, brave sir ; your martial deed3 Have ranked you with the great. But mark me, Norval, Lord Randolph's favor now exalts your youth Above his veterans of famous service. Let me, who know these soldiers, counsel you. Give them all honor : seem not to command, Else they will hardly brook your late-sprung power, Which nor alliance props nor birth adorns. Norv. Sir, I have been accustomed, all my days, To hear and speak the plain and simple truth ; And though I have been told that there are men Who borrow friendship's tongue to speak their scorn, Yet in such language I am little skilled ; Therefore I thank Glenalvon for his counsel, Although it sounded harshly. Why remind Me of my birth obscure ? Why slur my power With such contemptuous terms? NORVAL. 380 Glen. I did not mean To gall your pride, which now I see is great. Norv. My pride ! Glen. Suppress it, as you wish to prosper ; Your pride's excessive. Yet, for Randolph's sake, I will not leave you to its rash direction. If thus you swell, and frown at high-bom men, "Will high-born men endure a shepherd's scorn ? Norv. A shepherd's scorn ! [tfrvsees left Glen. [Right.] ^Vhy yes, if you presume To bend on soldiers those disdainful eyes As if you took the measure of their minds, And said in secret, You're no match for me, What will become of you ? Nerv. Hast thou no fears for thy presumptuous self ? Glen. Ha ! dost thou threaten me ? Norv. Didst thou not hear ? Glen. Unwillingly I did ; a nobler foe Had not been questioned thus ; but such as thou — Norv. "Whom dost thou think me ? Glen. Norval. Norv. So I am ; And who is Norval in Glenalvon's eyes? Glen. A peasant's son, a wandering beggar boy ; At best no more, even if he speaks the truth. Norv. False as thou art, dost thou suspect my truth ? Glen. Thy truth ! thou'rt ail a lie ; and basely false Is the vain-glorious tale thou told'st to Randolph. Norv. If I were chained, unarmed, or bedrid old, Perhaps I should revile ; but, as I am, I have no tongue to rail. The humble Norval Is of a race who strive not but with deeds. [Crosses It. Did I not fear to freeze thy shallow valor, And make thee sink too soon beneath my Bioord, I'd tell thee — what thou art. I know thee well. Glen. [L.~] Dost thou not know Glenalvon born to command Ten thousand slaves like thee ? Norv. Villain, no more ! Draw, and defend thv life. I did desnm To have defied thee in another cause ; 17 386 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. But heaven accelerates its vengeance on thee. Now for my own and Lady Randolph's wrongs ! [Both draw their swords. Enter Lord Randolph, R. Lord Randolph. Hold! I command you both ! the man that stirs Makes me his foe. Norv. Another voice than thine That threat had vainly sounded, noble Randolph. Glen. Hear him, my lord ; he's wondrous condescending ! Mark the humility of shepherd Norval ! Norv. Now you may scoff in safety. [Both sheathe their swords. Lord R. [R.] Speak not thus, Taunting each other, but unfold to me The cause of quarrel ; then I judge betwixt you. Norv. Nay, my good lord, though I revere you much. My cause I plead not, nor demand your judgment. I blush to speak ; and will not, can not speak The opprobrious words that I from him have borne. To the liege lord of my dear native land I owe a subject's homage ; but even him And his high arbitration I'd reject! Within my bosom reigns another lord — Honor ! sole judge and umpire of itself. If my free speech offend you, noble Randolph, Revoke your favors, and let Norval go Hence as he came ; alone — but not dishonored ! Lord R. Thus far I'll mediate with impartial voice : The ancient foe of Caledonia's land Now waves his banner 6'er her frighted fields ; Suspend your purpose till your country's arms Repel the bold invader ; then decide The private quarrel. Glen. I agree to this. Norv. And I. [Lord R. retires. Glen. Norval, Let not our variance mar the social hour, Nor wrong the hospitality of Randolph. Nor frowning anger, nor yet wrinkled hate, Shall stain my countenance. Smooth thou thy brow ; Nor let our strife disturb the gentle dame. SCENE FROM CATILINE. 387 Korv. Think not so lightly, sir, of my resentment : When we contend again, our strife is mortal. [Exeunt Glln., Nobv. Home. John Home, author of " Douglas" and various other tragedies, "was born at Lcith, Scotland, In 1722. lie entered the Church, and succeeded Blair, author of "The Grave," as minister of Athelstaneford. After writing " Douglas," 60 violent a storm was raised bj the fact that a Presbyterian minister had written a play, that he was obliged to resign his living. Lord Bute rewarded him with the sinecure office of conservator of Scots privileges at Campvere, and on the accession of George III., in 17G0, he secured a pension for the poet of £300 per annum. With an income of some £G00, and the friendship of David Hume, Blair, Robertson, and other distinguished men, Home's life was passed in happy tranquillity. He died in 1808, aged eighty-six. VI. 124. SCENE FROM CATILINE. [In the Senate. ] CICERO. Our long dispute must close. Take one proof more Of this rebellion. — Lucius Catiline l Has been commanded to attend the senate. He dares not come. I now demand your votes ! — Is he condemned to exile ? [Catiline comes in hastily, and flings himself on the bench ; all the senators go over to the other side. Cicero, [turning to Catiline]. Here I repeat the charge, to gods and men, Of treasons manifold ; — that, but this day, He has received dispatches from the rebels ; That he has leagued with deputies from Gaul To seize the province ; nay, has levied troops, And raised his rebel standard : — that but now 1 Lucius Sergius Catiline, the do- province, and frustrated in a conspir- scendantof an ancient and patrician acy to kill the new consuls, he or- family in Rome, whose youth and ganized the extensive conspiracy in manhood were stained by every vice which the scene here given occurs, and crime. He was praetor in B.C. The history of this conspiracy, which 6S, was governor of Africa during ended by the death of Catiline, in a the following year, and returned to decisive battle fought early in G"2, Rome in 66, to sue for the consulship, has been written by Sallust. He was Disqualified for a candidate, by an a man of great mental and physical impeachment for oppression in his powers, without moral qualities. 388 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. A meeting of conspirators was held Under his roof, with mystic rites, and oaths, Pledged round the body of a murdered slave. To these he has no answer. Catiline, [rising calmly]. Conscript fathers! I do not rise to waste the night in words ; Let that plebe'ian l talk ; 'tis not my trade ; But here I stand for right — let him show proofs — For Roman right ; though none, it seems, dare stand To take their share with me. Ay, cluster there, Cling to your masters ; judges, Romans — slaves! His charge is false ; I dare him to his proofs. You have my answer. Let my actions speak ! Cic. [interrupting him]. Deeds shall convince you ! Has the traitor done ? Cat. But this I will avow, that I have scorned, And still do scorn, to hide my sense of wrong : "Who brands me on the forehead, breaks my sword, Or lays the bloody scourge upon my back, "Wrongs me not half so much as he who shuts The gates of honor on me, — turning out The Roman from his birthright ; and for what ? [Looking round. To fling your offices to every slave ; Vipers that creep where man disdains to climb ; And having wound their loathsome track to the top Of this huge moldering monument of Rome, Hang hissing at the nobler man below. Cic. This is his answer ! Must I bring more proofs ? Fathers, you know there lives not one of us, But lives in peril of his midnight sword. Lists of proscription have been handed round, In which your general properties are made Your murderer's hire. [A cry is heard without — " More prisoners /" An officer enters with letters for Cicero ; who, after glancing at them, sends them round the Senate. Catiline is strongly perturbed. Cic. Fathers of Rome ! If man can be convinced By proof, as clear as daylight, here it is ! 1 Plebeian, (pie be' yan), one of the common people or lower ranks of men ; — usually applied to the common people of ancient Rome. SCENE FROM CATILINE. 389 * Look on these letters ! Here's a deep-laid plot To wreck the provinces : a solemn league, Made with all form and circumstance. The time Is desperate, — all the slaves are up ; — Rome shakes ! The heavens alone can tell how near our graves We stand even here! — The name of Catiline I3 foremost in the league. He was their king. Tried and convicted traitor ! go from Rome ! Cat. [haughtily rising]. Come, consecrated lictors, from your thrones : [ To the Senate. Fling down your scepters : — take the rod and ax, And make the murder as you make the law. Cic. [interrupting him]. Give up the record of his banishment. [ To an officer. [TJie officer gives it to the Consul.] Cat. Banished from Rome ! What's banished, but set free From daily contact of the things I loathe ? " Tried and convicted traitor !" Who says this ? Who'll prove it, at his peril, on my head ? Banished — I thank you for 't. It breaks my chain ! I held some slack allegiance till this hour — But now my sword's my own. Smile on, my lords ! I scorn to count what feelings, withered hopes, Strong provocations, bitter, burning wrongs, I have within my heart's hot cells shut up, To leave you in your lazy dignities. But here I stand and scoff you : here I fling Hatred and full defiance in vour face. Your Consul's merciful. For this, all thanks. He dares not touch a hair of Catiline. [TJie Consul reads] : — £k Lucius Sergius Catiline: by the decree of the Senate, you are declared an enemy and alien to the State, and banished from the territory of the Commonwealth." TJie Consul. Lictors, drive the traitor from the temple ! Cat. [furious]: "Traitor!" I go— but I return. This— trial! Here I devote your Senate ! I've had wrongs To stir a fever in the blood of age, Or make the infant's sinews strong as steel. This day's the birth of sorrows ! — this hour's work 390 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. "Will breed proscriptions : — look to your hearths, my lords ! For there, henceforth, shall sit, for household gods, Shapes hot from Tartarus ! ' — all shames and crimes 1 Wan Treachery, with his thirsty dagger drawn ; Suspicion, poisoning his brother's cup ; Naked Rebellion, with the torch and ax, Making his wild sport of your blazing thrones ; Till Anarchy comes down on you like Night, And Massacre seals Rome's eternal grave ! [ TJw Senators rise in tumult and cry out. Go, enemy and parricide, from Rome ! Cic. Expel him, lictors ! Clear the Senate-house ! ( They surround him. Cat. [struggling through them]. I go, but not to leap the gulf alone. I go — but when I come, 'twill be the burst Of ocean in the earthquake — rolling back In swift and mountainous ruin. Fare you well ! You build my funeral-pile, but your best blood Shall quench its flame. Back, slaves! [To the hclors.] — I will return! [He rushes out.] Croly. George Ckoly, LL.D., for many years rector of St. Stephens, TValbrook, London, was born in Ireland, toward the close of the last century, and was edu- cated at Trinity College, Dublin. Talented, and astonishingly industrious, he wrote much both in prose and verse. Among his productions are his tragedy of " Catiline ;" his comedy of " Pride shall have a Fall ;" " Salathiel," a romance ; "Political Life of Burke;" "Tales of the Great St. Bernard," and "Marston." He was a correct and elegant poet. His prose style is clear, rich, idiomatic, and at times remarkably eloquent. He died in 18G0. SECTION XXIII. I. 125. SELECT PASSAGES IN VERSE. I. PATRIOTISM.— Scott. * BREATHES there a man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, " This is my own — my native land !" 1 Tar' ta rus, in Homer's Iliad, a Hades as heaven is above the earth, place beneath the earth, as far below and closed by iron gates. Later poets SELECT PASSAGES IN VERSE. 391 Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned As home his footsteps he hath turned, From wandering on a foreign strand ? If such there breathe, go, mark him well ! For him no minstrel's raptures swell. High though his titles, proud his name, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim, — Despite those titles, power, and pelf, The wretch, concentered all in self, Living shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust from whence he sprung, Unwept, unhonored, and unsung. II. AMBITION.— Byuon. He who ascends to mountain-tops shall find The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow : He who surpasses or subdues mankind Must look down on the hate of those below. Though high above the sun of glory glow, And far beneath the earth and ocean spread, Round him are icy rocks, and loudly blow Contending tempests on his naked head ; And thus reward the toils which to those summits led. III. INDEPENDENCR-Thomsoh. I care not, Fortune, what you me deny ; You can not rob me of free Nature's grace ; You can not shut the windows of the skv, Through which Aurora ' shows her brightening face ; You can not bar my constant feet to trace The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve : Let health my nerves and finer fibers brace, And I their toys to the great children leave : Of Fancy, Reason, Virtue, naught can me bereave ! describe tliis as the place of punish- Tithonus, and, on a chariot drawn by ment in the lower world ; also as the swift horses Lampus and Phae- Hades, or the lower world in general, thon, ascended up to heaven from 1 Aurora, (a r6' ra), the goddess of the river Oceanus, to announce the the morning red. It is said, in my- coming light of the sun to gods as thology, at the close of every night well as to mortals : hence, the dawa- Bhe rose from the couch of her spouse, ing light ; the morning. 392 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. IV. THE CAPTIVE'S DREAMS.— Mrs. Hkmaks, I dream of all things free ! of a gallant, gallant bark, That sweeps through storm and sea like an arrow to its mark ; Of a stag that o'er the hills goes bounding in its glee ; Of a thousand flashing rills, — of all things glad and free. I dream of some proud bird, a bright-eyed mountain king : In my visions I have heard the rushing of his wing. I follow some wild river, on whose breast no sail may be ; Dark woods around it shiver, — I dream of all things free : Of a happy forest child, with the fawns and flowers at play, Of an Indian midst the wild, with the stars to guide his way ; Of a chief his warriors leading ; of an archer's greenwood tree : My heart in chains is bleeding, and I dream of all things free ! V. WILLIAM TELL.-Brtant. Chains may subdue the feeble spirit, but thee, Tell, of the iron heart ! they could not tame ! For thou wert of the mountains ; they proclaim The everlasting creed of liberty. That creed is written on the untrampled snow, Thundered by torrents which no power can hold, Save that of God, when he sends forth his cold, And breathed by winds that through the free heaven blow -• Thou, while thy prison walls were dark around, Didst meditate the lesson Nature taught, And to thy brief captivity was brought A vision of thy Switzerland unbound. The bitter cup they mingled, strengthened thee For the great work to set thy country free. VI. TELL ON SWITZERLAND.— Knowles.' Once Switzerland was free! Wifli what a pride I used to walk these hills, — look up to Heaven, And bless God that it was so ! It was free 1 James Sheridan Knowles, an lislied, of -which, perhaps, none is English poet, one of the most sue- more deservedly popular than " Wil- cessful of modern actors and tragic liam Tell," from which tho above dramatists, was born in Cork, Ireland, was extracted. A few years since, in 1784. His second play; "Virgin- he became a zealous and eloquent ius," appeared in 1820, and had an preacheroftheBaptist denomination, extraordinary run of success. All his He died at Torquay, England, No- plays have been collected and repub- vember oOth, 186:2. SELECT PASSxiQES IN VERSE. 393 From end to end, from cliff to lake 'twas free ! Free as our torrents are, that leap our rocks, And plow our valleys, without asking leave ; Or as our peaks, that wear their caps of snow In very presence of the regal sun ! How happy was I in it then ! I loved Its very storms. Ay, often have I sat In my boat at night, when midway o'er the lake The stars went out, and down the mountain gorge The wind came roaring, — I have sat and eyed The thunder breaking from his cloud, and smiled To see him shake his lightnings o'er my head, And think I had no master save his own. — You know the jutting cliff, round which a track Up hither winds, whose base is but the brow To such another one, with scanty room For two abreast to pass ? O'ertaken there Bv the mountain blast, I've laid me flat along And while gust followed gust more furiously, As if to sweep me o'er the horrid brink, And I have thought of other lands, whose storms Are summer flaws to those of mine, and just Have wished me there ; — the thought that mine was free Has checked that wish, and I have raised my head, And cried in thralldom to that furious wind, Blow on ! Tins is the land of liberty ! VII.— HOW SLEEP THE BRAVE. -Collins. How sleep the brave, who sink to rest, Bv all their country's wishes blest ! "When Spring, w r ith dewy lingers cold, Returns to deck their hallowed mold, She there shall dress a sweeter sod Than Fancy's feet have ever trod. By fairy hands their knell is rung ; By forms unseen their dirge is sung ; There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray, To bless the turf that wraps their clay ; And Freedom shall awhile repair, To dwell, a v/eeping hermit, there. 394 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. VIII.— THE GREEKS AT THERMOPYLAE.— Btkon. They fell devoted, but undying ; The very gale their names seemed sighing ; The waters murmured of their name ; The woods were peopled with their fame ; The silent pillar, lone and gray, Claimed kindred with their sacred clay : Their spirits wrapped the dusky mountain, Their memory sparkled o'er the fountain ; The meanest rill, the mightiest river, Kolled mingling with their fame forever. Despite of every yoke she bears, The land is glory's still and theirs. Tis stiU a watchword to the earth : "When man would do a deed of worth, He points to Greece, and turns to tread. So sanctioned, on the tyrant's head ; He looks to her, and rushes on "Where life is lost, or freedom won. II. 126. GREECE. HE who hath bent him o'er the dead, Ere the first day of death is fled, The first dark day of nothingness, The last of danger and distress, Before Decay's effacing fingers Have swept the lines where beauty lingers, And marked the mild, angelic air, The rapture of repose, that's there, The fixed yet tender traits that streak The languor of the placid cheek — And but for that sad, shrouded eye, That fires not, wins not, weeps not, now, And but for that chill, changeless brow, "Where cold obstruction's apathy Appalls the gazing mourner's heart, As if to him it could impart The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon^ GREECE. 395 Yes, but for these, and these alone, Some moments, ay, one treacherous hour, — He still might doubt the tyrant's power ; . So fair, so calm, so softly sealed, The first — last look by death revealed ! 2. Such is the aspect of this shore ; ^ Tis Greece — but living Greece no more ! *-* So coldly sweet, so deady fair, f* We start — for soul is wanting there, n^ Hers is the loveliness in death, That parts not quite with parting breath ; But beauty with that fearful blooni, That hue which haunts it to the tomb — Expression's last receding ray, A gilded halo hovering round decay, The farewell beam of feeling past away ! Spark of that flame, perchance of heavenly birth, "Which gleams, but warms no more its cherished earth. 3. Clime of the unforgotten brave ! Whose land from plain to mountain-cave Was Freedom's home or Glory's grave 1 Shrine of the mighty ! can it be That this is all remains of thee ? Approach, thou craven, crouching slave I Say, is not this Thermopylae ? l These waters blue that round you lave, O servile offspring of the free — Pronounce what sea, what shore is this. The gulf, the rock, of Salamis ! ■ These scenes, their story not unknown, i Ther m5p' y las, a famous pass of Xerxes, B. c. 489. of Greece, about five miles long, and 3 SaT a mis, an island of Greece, originally from 50 to GO yards in in the Gulf of iEgina, ten miles W width. It is hemmed in on one side of Athens. Its shape is very irreg by precipitous rocks of from 400 to ular ; the surface is mountainous GOO feet in height, and on the other and wooded in some parts. In the side by the sea and an impassable channel between it and the main morass. Here Leonidas and his land, the Greeks, underThemistocles, three hundred Spartans died in de- gained a memorable naval victory fending Greece against the invasion over the Persians, b. c. 480. 396 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Arise, and make again your own : Snatch from the ashes of your sires The embers of their former fires ; And he who in the strife expires Will add to theirs a name of fear, That Tyranny shall quake to hear, And leave his sons a hope, a fame, They too will rather die than shame ; For Freedom's battle once begun, Bequeathed by bleeding sire to son, Though baffled 6ft, is ever won. 4. Bear witness, Greece, thy living page ! Attest it, many a deathless age ! While kings, in dusty darkness hid, Have left a nameless pyramid, Thy heroes, though the general doom Hath swept the column from their tomb, A mightier monument command — The mountains of their native land ! There points thy Muse, to stranger's eye, The graves of those that can not die ! 'Twere long to tell, and sad to trace, Each step from splendor to disgrace : Enough, no foreign foe could quell Thy soul, till from itself it fell. Yes ! s«slf-abasement paved the way To villain-bonds and despot sway. Bykojj. A' m. 127. SONG OF THE GREEKS, 1822. GAIN to the battle, Achaians ! J Our hearts bid the tyrants defiance ; Our land, — the first garden of Liberty's tree, — It has been, and shall yet be, the land of the free ; For the cross of our faith is replanted, The pale dying crescent is daunted, m ' ■- .... - i - - ■ ,--. i ■■■-■■ ..I, — , 1 Achaians, (a ka' anz), the people of Achaia, a department of the king- dom of Greece. SONG OF THE GREEKS, 1822. 397 And we march that the footprints of Ivla'homet's ' slaves May be washed out in blood from our forefathers' graves. Their spirits are hovering o'er us, And the sicord shall to glory restore us. 2. Ah ! what though no succor advances, Nor Christendom's chivalrous lances Arc stretched in our aid ?— Be the combat our own ! And we'll perish or conquer more proudly alone ; For we've sworn by our country's assaulters, By the virgins they've dragged from our altars, By our massacred patriots, our children in chains, By our heroes of old, and their blood in our veins, That, living, we icill be victorious, Or that, dying, our deaths shall be glorious. 3. A breath of submission we breathe not : The sword that we've drawn we will sheathe not : Its scabbard is left where our martyrs are laid, And the vengeance of ages has whetted its blade. Earth may hide, waves engulf, fire consume us ; But they shall not to slavery doom us : If they rule, it shall be 6'er our ashes and graves : — ■ But we've smote them already with lire on the waves, And new triumphs on land are before us ; — To the charge ! — Heaven's banner is o'er us. 4. This day — shall ye blush for its story ; Or brighten your lives with its glory ? — Our women — oh, say, shall they shriek in despair, Or embrace us from conquest, with wreaths in their hair ? Accursed may his memory blacken, If a coward there be that would slacken Till we've trampled the turban, and shown ourselves worth Being sprung from, and named for, the god-like of earth. Strike home ! — and the world shall revere us As heroes descended from heroes. 1 Ma' horn et, a false prophet of and whose authority at the present Arabia, who, by the mere force of time is acknowledged by nearly two his genius and his convictions, hundred millions of souls. He was subdued many nations to his re- born in 570, and died on the 8th of ligion, his laws and his scepter; July, C32. 398 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 5. Old Greece lightens up with emotion ! Her inlands, her isles of the ocean, Fanes rebuilt, and fair towns, shall with jubilee ring, And the Nine shall new hallow their Helicon's 1 spring. Our hearths shall be kindled in gladness, That were cold, and extinguished in sadness ; Whilst our maidens shall dance with their white waving arms, Singing joy to the brave that delivered their charms, — When the blood of yon Mussulman cravens Shall have crimsoned the beaks of our ravens ! Thomas Campbell. IV. 128. MARCO BOZZARIS. AT midnight, in his guarded tent, The Turk was dreaming of the hour When Greece her knee in suppliance bent, Should tremble at his power ; In dreams, through camp and court, he bore The trophies of a conqueror ; In dreams, his song of triumph heard ; Then wore his monarch's signet ring ; Then pressed that monarch's throne, — a king ; As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing, As Eden's garden bird. 2. At midnight, in the forest shades, Bozzaris * ranged his Suliote band, True as the steel of their tried blades, Heroes in heart and hand. There had the Persian's thousands stood, There had the glad earth drunk their blood 1 Hel' i con, a famous mountain here described, in which, with a in Bceotia, in Greece, from which handful of five hundred Suliotes, at flows a fountain, and where resided midnight, August 20th, 1823, he the Muses. surprised a Turkish army of twenty 8 Marco Bozzaris, (bot' sa ris), a thousand men, fought his way to the Sulioteof Arnaout and Greek descent, very tent of the commander-in-chief, was born in 1789. He was early in- and was killed by a random shot, volved in revolutionary movements, while making the pasha prisoner. His most brilliant exploit is the one The victory, however, was complete. MARCO BOZZARIS. 399 On old Platsea's l day ; And now, there breathed that haunted air The sons of sires who conquered there, With arm to strike, and soul to dare, As quick, as far as they. 3. An hour passed on — the Turk awoke ; That bright dream was his last ; He woke to hear his sentries shriek, " To arms ! — they come ! the Greek ! the Greek ! He woke — to die midst flame, and smoke, And shout, and groan, and saber-stroke, And death-shots falling thick and fast As lightnings from the mountain-cloud ; And heard, with voice as trumpet loud, Bozzaris cheer his band : " Strike — till the last armed foe expires ; Strike — for your altars and your fires ; STRIKE — for the green graves of your sires ; God — and your native land ! 4. They fought — like brave men, long and well ; They piled that ground with Moslem slain ; They conquered — but Bozzaris fell, Bleeding at every vein. His few surviving comrades saw His smile, when rang their proud huzza, And the red field was won ; Then saw in death his eyelids close, Calmly as to a night's repose, Like flowers at set of sun. 5. Come to the bridal chamber, Death ! Come to the mother, when she feels, For the first time, her first-born's breath ; Come when the blessed seals That close the pestilence are broke, And crowded cities wail its stroke ; Come in consumption's ghastly form, The earthquake's shock, the ocean's storm ; 1 Plataea, (pld to' a), a ruined city feated and nearly annihilated the of Greece. Near it, B. c. 479, the grand Persian army, under Mar- Greeks, under Pausanias, totally de- donius, who was killed in the action. 400 NATIONAL FIFTH READER Come when the heart beats high and warm With banquet-song, and dance, and wine, — And thou art terrible ! — The tear, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier ; And all we know, or dream, or fear, Of agony, are thine. 6. But to the hero, when his sword Has won the battle for the free, Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word ; And in its hollow tones are heard The thanks of millions yet to be. Bozzaris ! with the storied brave Greece nurtured in her glory's time, Best thee : there is no prouder grave, Even in her own proud clime. We tell thy doom without a sigh ; For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's, — One of the few, the immortal names, That were not born to die ! Halleck. Fitz-Giieene Halleck was born at Guilford, in Connecticut, August, 1795, and at the age of eighteen entered the banking-house of Jacob Barker, in New York, with which he was associated several years, susequcntly performing the duties of a book-keeper in the private office of John Jacob Astor. Soon after the decease of that noted millionaire, in 1848, he retired to his birth-place, where he has since resided. He evinced a taste for poetry and wrote verses at a very early period. " Twilight," his first offering to the " Evening Post," appeared in October, 1818. The year following he gained his first celebrity in literature as a town wit, by producing, with his friend Drake, several witty and satirical pieces, which appeared in the columns of the " Evening Post" with the signature of Croaker <fc Co. ; and his fame was fully established by the publication of a vol- ume of his poems in 1827. His poetry is characterized by its music and perfec- tion of versification, and its vigor and healthy sentiment. SECTION XXIV. I. 129. THE CLOSING YEAR *t I ^IS midnight's holy hour — and silence now _L Is brooding, like a gentle spirit, o'er The still and pulseless world. Hark ! on the winds The beU's deep tones are swelling — 'tis the knell THE CLOSING YEAR 401 Of the departed year. No funeral train Is sweeping past ; yet, on the stream and wood, "With mel'ancholy light, the moonbeams rest Like a pale, spotless shroud ; the air is stirred As by a mourner's sigh ; and on yon cloud, That floats so still and placidly through heaven, The spirits of the seasons seem to stand, — Young Spring, bright Summer, Autumn's solemn form, And Winter with his aged locks, — and breathe, In mournful cadences, that come abroad Like the far wind-harp's wild and touching wail, A melancholy dirge o'er the dead year, Gone from the earth forever. 2. 'Tis a time For memory and for tears. "Within the deep, Still chambers of the heart, a specter dim, Whose tones are like the wizard voice of Time, Heard from the tomb of ages, i)oints its cold And solemn finger to the beautiful And holy visions that have passed away, And left no shadow of their loveliness On the dead waste of life. That specter lifts The eofim-lid of Hope, and Jo} r , and Love, And, bending mournfully above the pale, Sweet forms that slumber there, scatters dead flowers O'er what has passed to nothingness. 3. The year Has gone, and with it, many a glorious throng Of happy dreams. Its mark is on each brow, Its shadow in each heart. In its swift course, It waved its scepter 6'er the beautiful — And they are not. It laid its pallid hand Upon the strong man — and the haughty form Is fallen, and the flashing eye is dim. It trod the hall of revelrv, where thronged The bright and joyous — and the tearful wail Of stricken ones is heard, where erst the song And reckless shout resounded. 4. It passed o'er The battle-plain, where sicord, and spear, and shield, 402 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Flashed in the light of mid-day, — and the strength Of serried hosts is shivered, and the grass, Green from the soil of carnage, waves above The crushed and moldering skeleton. It came, And faded like a wreath of mist at eve ; Yet, ere it melted in the viewless air, It heralded its millions to their homo In the dim land of dreams. 5. Kemorseless Time ! Fierce spirit of the glass and scythe ! — what power Can stay him in his silent course, or melt His iron heart to pity ? On, still on He presses, and forever. The proud bird, The condor of the Andes, that can soar Through heaven's unfathomable depths, or brave The fury of the northern hurricane, And bathe his plumage in the thunder's home, Furls his broad wings at nightfall, and sinks down To rest upon his mountain crag, — but Time Knows not the weight of sleep or weariness, And night's deep darkness has no chain to bind His rushing pinions. 6. Revolutions sweep O'er earth, like troubled visions o'er the breast Of dreaming sorrow ; cities rise and sink, Like bubbles on the water ; fiery isles Spring blazing from the ocean, and go back To their mysterious caverns ; mountains rear To heaven their bald and blackened cliffs, and bow Their tall heads to the plain ; new empires rise, Gathering the strength of hoary centuries, And rush down like the Al'pine avalanche, Startling the nations, — and the very stars, Yon bright and burning blazonry of God, Glitter a while in their eternal depths, And, like the Pleiad, loveliest of their train, Shoot from their glorious spheres, and pass away, To darkle in the trackless void : yet Time — Time, the tomb-builder, holds his fierce career, Dark, stern, all-pitiless, and pauses not OUR HONORED DEAD. 403 Amid the mighty -wrecks that strew his path, To sit and muse, like other conquerors, Upon the fearful ruin he has wrought. Prentice. George D. Pkentice was born at Preston, in Connecticut, December 18th, 180?,and was educated at Brown University, in Providence, where he graduated in 1823. In 18:23 he commenced "The New England Weekly Review," at Hart- ford, which he edited for two years, when, resigning its management to Mr. Whitlier, he removed to Louisville, Kentucky, where he has since conducted the "Journal," of that city, one of the most popular gazettes ever published in this country. His numerous poetical writings have never been published col- lectively. H. 130. OUR HONORED DEAD. HOW bright are the honors "which await those who "with sacred fortitude and patriot' ic patience have endured all things that they might save their native land from division and from the power of corruption ! The honored dead ! They that die for a good cause are redeemed from death. Their names are gathered and garnered. Their memory is precious. Each place grow r s proud for them who were born there. 2. There is to be, ere long, in every village and in every neighborhood, a glowing pride in its martyred heroes. Tablets shall preserve their names. Pious love shall renew their in- scriptions as time and the unfeeling elements decay them. And the national festivals shall give multitudes of precious names to the orator's lips. Children shall grow up under more sacred inspirations, whose elder brothers, dying nobly for their coun- try, left a name that honored and inspired all who bore it. Orphan children shall find thousands of fathers and mothers to ove and help those whom dying heroes left as a legacy to the gratitude of the public. 3. Oh, tell me not that they are dead — that generous host, that airy army of invisible heroes ! They hover as a cloud of witnesses above this nation. Are they dead that yet speak louder than we can speak, and a more universal language ? Axe they dead that yet act ? Are they dead that yet move upon society, and inspire the people with nobler motives and more heroic patriotism ? 4. Ye that mourn, let gladness mingle with your tears. He was your son ; but now he is the nation's. He made your 404 NATIONAL FIFTH READER household bright : now his example inspires a thousand house- holds. Dear to his brothers and sisters, he is now brother to every generous youth in the land. Before he was narrowed, appropriated, shut up to you. Now he is augmented, set free, and given to all. He has died from the family, that he might live to the nation. Not one name shall be forgotten or neglected ; and it shall by-and-by be confessed, as of an ancient hero, that he did more for his country by his death than by his whole life. 5. Neither are they less honored who shall bear through life the marks of wounds and sufferings. Neither ep'aulette nor badge is so honorable as wounds received in a good cause. Many a man shall envy him who henceforth limps. So strange is the transforming power of patriotic ardor, that men shall almost covet disfigurement. Crowds will give way to hobbling cripples, and uncover in the presence of feebleness and help- lessness. And buoyant children shall pause in their noisy games, and with loving reverence honor them whose hands can work no more, and whose feet are no longer able to march except upon that journey which brings good men to honor and immortality. 6. O mother of lost children ! set not in darkness nor sorrow whom a nation honors. O mourners of the early dead ! they shall live again, and live forever. Your sorrows are our glad- ness. The nation lives, because you gave it men that loved it better than their own lives. And when a few more days shall have cleared the perils from around the nation's brow, and she shall sit in unsullied garments of liberty, with justice upon her fore/iead, love in her eyes, and truth upon her lips, she shall not forget those whose blood gave vital currents to her heart, and whose life, given to her, shall live with her life till time shall be no more. 7. Every mountain and hill shall have its treasured name, every river shall keep some solemn title, every valley and every lake shall cherish its honored register ; and till the mountains are worn out, and the rivers forget to flow, till the clouds are weary of replenishing springs, and the springs forget to gush, and the rills to sing, shall their names be kept fresh with rev- erent honors, which are inscribed upon the book of National Remembrance ! II. W. Beecher, TIIE HOLY DEAD. 405 in. 131. THE HOLY DEAD. THEY dread no storm that lowers, No perished joys bewail ; They pluck no thorn-clad flowers, Nor drink of streams that fail : There is no tear-drop in their eye, No change upon their brow ; Their placid bosom heaves no sigh, Though all earth's idols bow. 2. Who are so greatly blest ? From whom hath sorrow fled ? Who share such deep, unbroken rest, "Where all things toil '? The dead ! The holy dead. Why weep ye so Above yon sable bier ? Thrice blessed ! they have done with woe, The living claim the tear. 3. Go to their sleeping bowers, Deck their low couch of clay With earliest spring's soft breathing flowers ; And when they fade away, Think of the amaranth' me wreath, The garlands never dim, And tell me why thou flv'st from death, Or hid'st thy friends from him. 4. We dream, but they awake ; Dread visions mar our rest ; Through thorns and snares our way we take, And yeb we mourn the blest ! For spirits round the Eternal Throne How vain the tears we shed ! They are the living, they alone, Whom thus we call the dead. Mrs. Sigourney. Mrs. L. H. Sigourney was born at Norwich, Connecticut, 1791. Her maiden name was Lydia Huntley. She was married to Charles Sigourney in 1S19. She is one of the most voluminous of American female writers, and equally happy in prose and verse. Her rare and highly cultivated intellect, her fine sensibilities, and her noble heart, have enabled her, in all her works, to plead successfully the cause of humanity and religion. She died at Ilartford, Ct., June 10th, 1S05. 406 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. IV. 132. DEATH OF THE OLD TRAPPER. PART FIRST. THE trapper was placed on a rude seat, which had been made with studied care, to support his frame in an upright and easy attitude. The first glance of the eye told his former friends that the old man was at length called upon to pay the last tribute of nature. His eye was glazed, and apparently as devoid of sight as of expression. His features were a little more sunken and strongly marked than formerly ; but there, all change, so far as exterior was concerned, might be said to have ceased. 2. His approaching end was not to be ascribed to any posi- tive disease, but had been a gradual and mild decay of the physical powers. Life, it is true, still lingered in his system ; but it was as if at times entirely ready to depart, and then it would appear to reanimate the sinking form, reluctant to give up the possession of a tenement that had never been corrupted by vice or undermined by disease. It would have been no violent fancy to have imagined that the spirit fluttered about the placid lips of the old woodsman, reluctant to depart from a shell that had so long given it an honest and honorable shelter. 3. His body was placed so as to let the light of the setting sun fall full upon the solemn features. His head was bare, the long, thin locks of gray fluttering lightly in the evening breeze. His rifle lay upon his knee, and the other accouterments of the chase were placed at his side, within reach of his hand. Be- tween his feet lay the figure of a hound, with its head crouch- ing to the earth, as if it slumbered ; and so j>erfectly easy and natural was its position, that a second glance was necessary to tell Middleton he saw only the skin of Hector, stuffed, by In- dian tenderness and ingenuity, in a manner to represent the living animal. 4. The old man was reaping the rewards of a life remarkable for temperance and activity, in a tranquil and placid death. His vigor, in a manner, endured to the very last. Decay, when it did occur, was rapid, but free from pain. Ho had hunted with the tribe in the spring, and even throughout most of the DEATH OF THE OLD TKAPPER. 407 summer ; when his limbs suddenly refused to perform their customary offices. A sympathizing weakness took possession of all his faculties ; and the Pawnees believed they were going to lose, in this unexpected manner, a sage and counsellor whom they had begun both to love and respect. 5. But, as we have already said, the immortal occupant seemed unwilling to desert its tenement. The lamp of life nickered, without becoming extinguished. On the morning of the day on which Middleton arrived, there was a general reviv- ing of the powers of the whule man. His tongue was again heard in wholesome maxims, and his eye from time to time recognized the persons of his friends. It merely proved to be a brief and final intercourse with the world, on the part of one who had already been considered, as to mental communion, to have taken its leave of it forever. 5. When he had placed his guests in front of the dying man, Hard-Heart, after a pause, that proceeded as much from sorrow as decorum, leaned a little forward, and demanded — "Does my father hear the words of his son ?" " Speak," returned the trapper, in tones that issued from his chest, but which were rendered awfully distinct by the stillness that reigned in the place. " I am about to depart from the village of the Loups, and shortly shall be beyond the reach of your voice." 7. "Let the w r ise chief have no cares for his journey," con- tinued Hard-Heart, with an earnest solicitude that led him to forget, for the moment, that others were waiting to address his adopted parent ; "a hundred Loups shall clear his path from briers." "Pawnee, I die, as I have lived, a Christian man!" resumed the trapper, with a force of voice that had the same startling effect on his hearers as is produced by the trumpet, when its blast rises suddenly and freely on the air, after its ob- structed sounds have been heard struggling in the distance : " as I came unto life so will I leave it. Horses and arms are not needed to stand in the presence of the Great Spirit of my people. He knows my color, and according to my gifts will ho judge my deeds." 8. " My father will tell my young men how many Mingoes he has struck, and what acts of valor and justice he has done, that they may know how to imitate him." "A boastful tongue is not heard in the heaven of a white man !" solemnlv returned 408 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. the old man. " What I have done He has seen. His eyes are alway open. That which has been well done will He remem- ber ; wherein I have been wrong will He not forget to chastise, though He will do the same in mercy. No, my son, a pale-face may not sing his own praises, and hope to have them accepta- ble before his God !" 9. A little disappointed, the young partisan stepped modestly back, making way for the recent comers to approach. Middle- ton took one of the meager hands of the trapper, and struggling to command his voice, he succeeded in announcing his presence. The old man listened like one whose thoughts were dwelling on a very different subject ; but when the other Had succeeded in making him understand that he was present, an expression of joyful recognition passed over his faded features. "I hope you have not so soon forgotten those whom you so materially served!" Middleton concluded. "It would pain me to think my hold on your memory was so light." 10. " Little that I have ever seen is forgotten," returned the trapper : " I am at the close of many weary days, but there is not one among them all that I could wish to overlook. I re- member you, with the whole of your company ; ay, and your gran'ther, that went before you. I am glad that you have come back upon these plains ; for I had need of one who speaks the English, since little faith can be put in the traders of these re- gions. "Will you do a favor to an old and dying man ?" " Name it," said Middleton ; " it shall be done." " It is a far journey to send such trifles," resumed the old man, who spoke at short intervals, as strength and breath permitted ; "a far and weary journey is the same ; but kindnesses and friendships are things not to be forgotten. There is a settlement among the Otsego hills— " 11. "I know the place," interrupted Middleton, observing that he spoke with increasing difficulty ; " proceed to tell me what you would have done." " Take this rifle, and pouch, and horn, and send them to the person whose name is graven on the plates of the stock, — a trader cut the letters with his knife, — for it is long that I have intended to send him such a token of my love !" " It shall be so. Is there more that you could wish ?" "Little else have I to bestow. My traps I give to my Indian son ; for honestly and kindly has he kept his faith. Let him DEATH OF THE OLD TRAPPER. 409 stand before me." Middleton explained to the chief "what the trapper had said, and relinquished his own place to the other. 12. "Pawnee," continued the old man, alway changing his language to suit the person he addressed, and not unfrequently according to the ideas he expressed, " it is a custom of my people for the father to leave his blessing with the son before he shuts his eyes forever. This blessing I give to you : take it ; for the prayers of a Christian man will never make the path of a just warrior to the blessed prairies either longer or more tangled. May the God of a white man look on your deeds with friendly eyes, and may you never commit an act that shall cause him to darken his face. I know not whether we shall ever meet again. 13. " There arc many traditions concerning the place of Good Spirits. It is not for one like me, old and inexperienced though I am, to set up my opinions against a nation's. You believe in the blessed prairies, and I have faith in the sayings of my fathers. If both are true, our parting will bo final ; but if it should prove that the same meaning is hid under different words, we shall yet stand together, Pawnee, before the face of your "Walicondah, who will then be no other than my God. 14. " There is much to be said in favor of both religions, for each seems suited to its own people, and no doubt it was so in- tended. I fear I have not altogether followed the gifts of my color, inasmuch as I find it a little painful to give up forever the use of the rifle, and the comforts of the chase. But then the fault has been my own, seeing that it could not have been His. Ay, Hector," he continued, leaning forward a little, and feeling for the ears of the hound, " our parting has come at last, dog, and it will bo a long hunt. You have been an honest, and a bold, and a faithful hound. Pawnee, you can not slay the pup on my grave, for where a Christian dog falls there ho lies for- ever ; but you can be kind to him after I am gone, for the love you bear his master." 15. " The words of my father are in my cars," returned the young partisan, making a grave and respectful gesture of assent. " Do you hear what the chief has promised, dog ?" demanded the trapper, making an effort to attract the notice of the insen- sible effigy of his hound. Receiving no answering look, nor hearing any friendly whine, the old man felt for the mouth, and endeavored to force his hand between the cold lips. The truth IS 410 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. then flashed npon him, although he was far from perceiving the whole extent of the deception. Falling back in his seat, he hung his head, like one who felt a severe and unexpected shock. Profiting by this momentary forgetfulness, two young Indians removed the skin with the same delicacy of feeling that had in- duced them to attempt the pious fraud, V. 133. DEATH OF THE OLD TRAPPER, PART SECOND. " rMHK dog is dead," muttered the trapper, after a pause of JL many minutes ; " a hound has his time as well as a man ; and well has he filled his days ! Captain," he added, making an effort to wave his hand for Middleton, " I am glad you have come ; for though kind, and well meaning according to the gifts of their color, these Indians are not the men to lay the head of a white man in his grave. I have been thinking, too, of this dog at my feet : it will not do to set forth the opinion that a Christian can expect to meet his hound again ; still there can be little harm in placing what is left of so faithful a servant nigh the bones of his master." "It shall be as you desire." "I'm glad you think with me in this matter. In order, then, to save labor, lay the pup at my feet ; or, for that matter, put him side by side. A hunter need never be ashamed to be found in com- pany with his dog !" " I charge myself with your wish.' 2. The old man made a long, and apparently a musing pause. At times he raised his eyes wistfully, as if he would again ad- dress Middleton, but some innate feeling appeared alway to sup- press his words. The other, who observed his hesitation, in- quired in a way most likely to encourage him to proceed, whether there was aught else that he could wish to have done. "I am without kith or kin in the wide world !" the trapper an- swered : " when I am gone there will be an end of my race. We have never been chiefs ; but honest, and useful in our way, I hope it can not be denied we have alway proved ourselves. My father lies buried near the sea, and the bones of his son will whiten on the prairies." " Name the spot, and your remains shall be placed by the side of your father," interrupted Middleton. 3. " Not so, not so, Captain. Let me sleep where I have lived DEATH OF THE OLD TKAPPER. 411 — beyond the din of the settlements ! Still I see no need why the grave of an honest man should be hid, like a red-skin in his ambushment. I paid a man in the settlements to make and put a graven stone at the head of my father's resting-place. It was of the value of twelve beaver-skins, and cunningly and curiously was it carved ! Then it told to all comers that the body of such a Christian lay beneath ; and it spoke of his manner of life, of his years, and of his honesty. When we had done with the Frenchers, in the old war, I made a journey to the spot, in order to sec that all was rightly performed, and glad I am to say, the workman had not forgotten his faith." 4. " And such a stone you would have at your grave ?" " I ! no, no, I have no son but Hard-Heart, and it is little that an In- dian knows of white fashions and usages. Besides, I am his debtor already, seeing it is so little I have done since I have lived in his tribe. The rifle might bring the value of such a thing — but then I know" it will give the boy pleasure to hang the piece in his hall, for many is the deer and the bird that ho has seen it destroy. No, no, the gun must be sent to him whose name is graven on the stock !"' 5. " But there is one who would gladly prove his affection in the way you wish ; he who owes you not only his own deliver- ance from so many dangers, but who inherits a heavy debt of gratitude from his ancestors. The stone shall be put at the head of your grave." The old man extended his emaciated hand, and gave the other a squeeze of thanks. " I thought you might be willing to do it, but I was backward in asking the favor," he said, "seeing that you are not of my kin. Put no boastful words on the same, but just the name, the age, and the time of the death, with something from the holy book ; no more, no more. My name will then not be altogether lost on 'arth ; I need no more." 6. Middleton intimated his assent, and then followed a pause that was onlv interrupted bv distant and broken sentences from the dying man. He appeared now to have closed his accounts with the world, and to await merely for the final summons to quit it. Middleton and Hard-Heart placed themselves on the opposite sides of his seat, and watched with melancholy solici- tude the variations of his countenance. 7. For two hours there was no verv sensible alteration. The 412 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. expression of his faded and time-worn features was that of a calm and dignified repose. From time to time he spoke, utter- ing some brief sentence in the way of advice, or asking some simple questions concerning those in whose fortunes he still took a friendly interest. During the whole of that solemn and anxious period, each individual of the tribe kept his place, in the most self-restrained patience. When the old man spoke, all bent their heads to listen ; and when his words were uttered, they seemed to ponder on their wisdom and usefulness. 8. As the flame drew nigher to the socket, his voice was hushed ; and there were moments when his attendants doubted whether he still belonged to the living. Middleton, who watched each wavering expression of his weather-beaten visage with the interest of a keen observer of human nature, softened by the tenderness of personal regard, fancied he could read the work- ings of the old man's soul in the strong lineaments of his coun- tenance. Perhaps what the enlightened soldier took for the delusion of mistaken opinion did actually occur — for who has returned from that unknown world to explain by what forms, and in what manner, he was introduced into its awful precincts ? Without pretending to explain what must ever be a mystery to the quick, we shall simply relate facts as they occurred. 9. The trapper had remained nearly motionless for an hour. His eyes alone had occasionally opened and shut. WTaen opened, his gaze seemed fastened on the clouds which hung around the western horl'zon, reflecting the bright colors, and giving form and loveliness to the glorious tints of an American sunset. The hour — the calm beauty of the season — the occasion — all con- spired to fill the spectators with solemn awe. Suddenly, while musing on the remarkable position in which he was placed, Middleton felt the hand, which he held, grasp his own with in- credible power, and the old man, supported on either side by his friends, rose upright to his feet. For a moment he looked about him, as if to invite all in his presence to listen (the lingering remnant of human frailty), and then, with a fine military elevation of the head, and with a voice that might be heard in every part of that numerous assembly, he pronounced the word — " Here!" 10. A movement so entirely unexpected, and the air of grand- eur and humility which were so remarkably united in the mien of the trapper, together with the clear and uncommon force of DEATH OF THE OLD TRAPPER. 413 his utterance, produced a short period of confusion in the facul- ties of all present. Yvlien Middleton and Hard-Heart, each of whom had involuntarily extended a hand to support the form of the old man, turned to him again, they found that the subject of their interest was removed forever beyond the necessity of their care. They mournfully placed the body in its seat, and the voice of the old Indian, who arose to announce the termination of the scene to the tribe, seemed a sort of echo from that invisi- ble world to which the meek spirit of the trapper had just de- parted. " A valiant, a just, and a wise warrior has gone on the path which will lead him to the blessed grounds of his people !" he said. " When the voice of the "Wahcondah called him, he was ready to answer. Go, my children ; remember the just chief of the pale-faces, and clear your own tracks from briers !" 11. The grave was made beneath the shade of some noble oaks. It has been carefully watched to the present hour by the Pawnees of the Loup, and is 6f/m shown to the traveler and the trader as a spot where a just white man sleeps. In due time the stone was placed at its head, with the simple inscription which the trapper had himself requested. The only liberty taken by Middleton was to add — "May no wanton hand ever DISTURB HIS REMAINS." JAMES FENNIMORE COOPER. James Fennimoke Coopek, the celebrated American novelist, was born at Burlington, New Jersey, in 1789. His father, Judge William Cooper, born in Pennsylvania, became possessed, in 1785, of a large tract of land near Otsego Lake, in the State of New York, where, in the spring of 1786, he erected the first house in Cooperstown. In 1 70."> and K'.t'.i he was elected to represent that district in Congress. Here the novelist chiefly passed his boyhood to his thir- teenth year, and became perfectly conversant with frontier life. At that early age he entered Yale College, where he remained three years, when he obtained a midshipman's commission and entered the navy lie passed the six following years in that service, and thus became master of the second great field of his future literary career. In 1811 he resigned his commission, married Miss De- lancey, a descendant of one of the oldest and most influential families in Amer- ica, and settled down to a home life in "Westchester, near New York, where he resided for a short time before removing to Cooperstown. Here he wrote bis first book, " Precaution." This was followed, in 1821, by "The Spy," one of the best of all historical romances. It was almost immediately republished in all parts of Europe. It was followed, two years later, by "The Pioneers." "The Pilot," the first of his sea novels, next appeared. It is one of the most remark- able novels of the time, and everywhere obtained instant and high applause. In 1S2G he visited Europe, where his reputation was already well established a* one of the greatest writers of romantic fiction which our age has produced. He passed several years abroad, and was warmly welcomed in every country he visited. His literary activity was not impaired by his change of scene, as sev- ^14 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. eral of his best works were written while traveling. He returned home in 1833. " The Prairie," from which the above touching and effective scene was taken, the first of his works written in Europe, published in 1827, was one of the most successful of the novelist's productions. His writings throughout are distin- guished by purity and brilliancy of no common merit. He was alike remarkable for his fine commanding person, his manly, resolute, independent nature, and his noble, generous heart. He died at Cooperstown, September 14, 1851. VI. 134. ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCH- YARD. rTIHE curfew tolls the knell of parting day, JL The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The plowman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. 2. Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds ; 3. Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower The moping owl does to the moon complain Of such as, wandering near her secret bower, Molest her ancient solitary reign. 4. Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, Where heaves the turf in many a moldering heap, Each in his narrow cell forever laid, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. 5. The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. 6. For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care ; No children run to lisp their sire's return, Or climb his knees, the envied kiss to share. 7. Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, Their furrow 6ft the stubborn glebe has broke : How jocund did they drive their team afield ! How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCH-YARD. 415 8. Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys, and destiny obscure ; Nor Grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile, The short and simple annals of the poor. 9. The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth, e'er gave, Await alike th* inevitable hour : The paths of glory lead but to the grave. 10. Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault, If Memory 6'er their tomb no trophies raise, "Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault The pealing anthem swells the note of praise. 11. Can storied urn, or animated bust, Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath ? Can Honor's voice provoke the silent dust, Or Flattery soothe the dull, cold ear of death ? 12. Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire ; Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed, Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre : 13. But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page, Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll ; Chill Penury repressed their noble rage, And froze the genial current of the soul. 14. Full many a gem, of purest ray serene, The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear ; Full many a flower is bom to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air. 15. 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. 16. Th' applause of listening 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, 17. Their lot forbade : nor circumscribed alone Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined ; 416 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne, And shut the gates of mercy on mankind ; 18. The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, Or heap the shrine of luxury and pride With incense kindled at the Muse's flame. 19. Far from the maddening crowd's ignoble strife, Their sober wishes never learned to stray ; Along the cool, sequestered vale of life They kept the noiseless tenor of their way. 20. Yet e'en these bones from insult to protect, Some frail memorial still erected nigh, With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked, Implores the passing tribute of a sigh. 21. Their name, their years, spelt by th' unlettered Muse, The place of fame and elegy supply ; And many a holy text around she strews, . That teach the rustic moralist to die. 22. For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind ? 23. On some fond breast the parting soul relies, Some pious drops the closing eye requires ; E'en from the tomb the voice of nature cries, E'en in our ashes live their wonted (wunt'ed) fires. 24. For thee, who, mindful of th' unhonored dead, Dost in these lines their artless tale relate, If 'chance, by lonely contemplation led, Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate, — 25. Haply some hoary-headed swain may say, " Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn, Brushing with hasty steps the dews away, To meet the sun upon the upland lawn. 26. " There, at the foot of yonder nodding beech, That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high, His listless length at noontide would he stretch, And pore upon the brook that babbles by. THE PHANTOM SHIP. 417 27. " Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, Muttering bis wayward fancies, would he rove, Now drooping, woful-wan, like one forlorn, Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love. 28. " One morn I missed him on the customed hill, Along the heath, and near his favorite tree : Another came, — nor yet beside the rill, Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood, was he : 29. " The next, with dirges due, in sad array, Slow through the churchway path we saw him borne ; Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn." THE EPITAPH. Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth, a youth to fortune and to fame unknown i Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth, And Melancholy marked him for her own. Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere, Heaven did a recompense as largely send : He gave to misery — all he had — a tear, He galned from heaven ('twas all he wished) a friend. no further seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his FRAILTIES from THEIR dread ABODE, (There they alike in trembling hope repose,) The bosom of his Father and ms God. Gray. SECTIOX XXY. I. 135. THE PHANTOM SHIP. 1. a^HE breeze had sunk to rest, the noonday sun was high, . And ocean's breast lay motionless beneath a cloudless sky, There was silence in the air, there was silence in the deep ; And it seemed as though that burning calm were nature's final sleep. 418 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 2. The mid-day watch was set, beneath the blaze of light, When there came a cry from the tall mast-head, " A sail! a sail, in sight /" And o'er the far horl'zon a snowy speck appeared, And every eye was strained to watch the vessel as she neared. 3. There was no breath of air, yet she bounded on her way, And the dancing waves around her prow were flashing into spray. She answered not their hail, alongside as she passed : There were none who trod her spacious deck ; not a seaman on the mast ; 4 No hand to guide her helm : yet on she held her course ; She swept along that waveless sea, as with a tempest's force : A silence, as of death, was o'er that vessel spread She seemed a thing of another world, the world where dwell the dead. 5. She passed away from sight, the deadly calm was o'er, And the spell-bound ship pursued her course before the breeze once more ; And clouds across the sky obscured the noonday sun, And the winds arose at the tempest's call, before the day was done. 6. Midnight — and still the storm raged wrathfully and loud, And deep in the trough of the heaving sea labored that vessel proud : There was darkness all around, save where lightning flashes keen Played on the crest3 of the broken waves, and lit the depths between. 7. Around her and below, the waste of waters roared, And answered the crash of the falling masts as they cast them overboard. At every billow's shock her quivering timbers strain ; And as she rose on a crested wave, that strange ship passed again. THE DROWNED MARINER 419 8. And o'er that stormy sea she flew before the gale, Yet she had not struck her lightest spar, nor furled her loftiest sail. Another blinding flash, and nearer yet she seemed, And a pale blue light along her sails and o'er her rigging gleamed. 9. But it showed no seaman's form, no hand her course to guide; And to their signals of distress the winds alone replied. The Phantom Ship passed on, driven o'er her pathless way, But helplessly the sinking wreck amid the breakers lay. 10. The angry tempest ceased, the winds were hushed to sleep, And calm and bright the sun again shone out upon the deep. But that gallant ship no more shall roam the ocean free ; She has reached her final haven, beneath the dark blue sea. 11. And many a hardy seaman, who fears nor storm nor fight, Yet trembles when the Phantom Ship drives past his watch at night; For it augurs death and danger : it bodes a watery grave, With sea-weeds for his pillow — for his shroud,the wandering wave. n. 136. THE DROWNED MARINER. A MARINER sat in the shrouds one night, The wind was piping free ; Now bright, now dimmed was the moonlight pale, And the phosphor gleamed in the wake of the whale, As it floundered in the sea ; The scud was flying athwart the sky, The gathering winds went whistling by, And the wave, as it towered then fell in spray, Looked an emerald wall in the moonlight ray. 2. The mariner swayed and rocked on the mast, But the tumult pleased him well : Down the yawning wave his eye he cast, And the monsters watched, as they hurried past, Or lightly rose and fell. — 420 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. For their broad, damp fins were under the tide, And they lashed, as they passed, the vessel's side, And their filmy eyes, all huge and grim, Glared fiercely up, and they glared at him. 3. Now freshens the gale, and the brave ship goes Like an uncurbed steed along ; A sheet of flame is the spray she throws, As her gallant prow the water plows ; But the ship is fleet and strong ; The topsails are reefed, and the sails are furled, And onward she sweeps o'er the watery world, And dippeth her spars in the surging flood ; But there cometh no chill to the mariner's blood. 4. "Wildly she rocks, but he swingeth at ease, And holds him by the shroud ; And, as she careens to the crowding breeze, The gaping deep the mariner sees, And the surging heareth loud. Was that a face, looking up at him With its pallid cheek, and its cold eyes dim ? Did it beckon him down ? Did it call his name ? Now rolleth the ship the way whence it came. 5. The mariner looked, and he saw, with dread, A face he knew too well ; And the cold eyes glared, the eyes of the dead, And its long hair out on the waves was spread— - Was there a tale to tell ? The stout ship rocked with a reeling speed — And the mariner groaned, as well he need — For ever down, as she plunged on her side, The dead face gleamed from the briny tide. 6. Bethink thee, mariner, well of the past : A voice calls loud for thee ; There's a stifled prayer, the first, the last ; The plunging ship on her beam is cast — Oh, where shall thy burial be ? Bethink thee of oaths, that were lightly spoken ; Bethink thee of vows, that were lightly broken ; THE DROWNED MARINER. 421 Bethink thee of all that is dear to thee, For thou art alone on the raging sea. 7. Alone in the dark, alone on the wavo To buffet the storm alone ; To struggle aghast at thy watery grave, To struggle and feel there is none to save I God shield thee, helpless one ! The stout limb3 yield, for their strength is past ; The trembling hands on the deep are cast ; The white brow gleams a moment more, Then slowly sinks — the struggle is o'er. 8. Down, down, where the storm is hushed to sleep, "Where the sea its dirge shall swell ; "Where the amber-drops for thee shall weep, And the rose-lipped shell its music keep ; There thou shalt slumber well. The gem and the pearl lie heaped at thy side ; They fell from the neck of the beautiful bride, From the strong man's hand, from the maiden's brow, As they slowly sunk to the wave below. 9. A peopled home is the ocean-bed ; The mother and child are there : The fervent youth and the hoary head, The maid with her floating locks outspread, The babe with its silken hair : As the water moveth they slightly sway, And the tranquil light on their features play : And there is each cherished and beautiful form, Away from decay, and away from the storm. Mrs. Smith. Elizabeth Oakes Smith, the accomplished writer, whose maiden name was Prince, was born near Portland, Maine. She early showed remarkable skill in composition. When sixteen years of a<rc she was married to Mr. Seba Smith, author, who in 1S39 removed to New York, where they still reside. Her first published book was entitled " Riches without "Wings." In 1S44 appeared " The Sinless Child, and other Poems," and since, a number of other works, some of which have passed through many editions. 422 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. m. 137. THE DIVER. "/~\H, where is the knight or the squire so bold, V-/ As to dive to the howling charybdis ' below ? — I cast into the whirlpool a goblet of gold, And o'er it already the dark waters flow : "Whoever to me may the goblet bring, Shall have for his guerdon 3 that gift of his king." 2. He spoke, and the cup from the terrible steep, That rugged and hoary, hung over the verge Of the endless and measureless world of the deep, Swirled into the maelstrom that maddened the surge. " And where is the diver so stout to go — I ask ye again— to the deep below?" 3. And the knights and the squires that gathered around, Stood silent — and fixed on the ocean their eyes ; They looked on the dismal and savage profound, And the peril chilled back every thought of the prize. And thrice spoke the monarch — " The cup to win, Is there never a wight who will venture in ?" 4. And all as before heard in silence the king — Till a youth, with an aspect unfearing but gentle, 'Mid the tremulous squires, stept out from the ring, Unbuckling his girdle, and doffing his mantle ; And the murmuring crowd, as they parted asunder, On the stately boy cast their looks of wonder. 5. As he strode to the marge of the summit, and gave One glance on the gulf of that merciless main ; Lo ! the wave that for ever devours the wave, Casts roaringly up the charybdis again ; And, as with the swell of the far thunder-boom, Rushes foamingly forth from the heart of the gloom. ^ — .... 1 Cha ryb' dis, one of the two immense fig-tree, under which dwelt rocks, Scylla and Charybdis, describ- Charybdis, who thrice every day ed by Homer as lying near together, swallowed down the waters of the between Italy and Sicily ; both for- sea, and thrice threw them up again, midable to ships which had to pass 3 Guerdon, (gcVdon), recompense ; between them. One contained an reward. THE DIVER. 423 6. And it bubbles and seethes, and it hisses and roars, As when fire is with water commixed and contending ; And the spray of its wrath to the welkin up-soars, And flood upon flood hurries on, never ending. And it never will rest, nor from travail be free, Like a sea that is laboring the birth of a sea. 7. And at last there lay open the desolate realm I Through the breakers that whitened the waste of the swell, Dark — dark yawned a cleft in the midst of the whelm, The path to the heart of that fathomless hell. Round and round whirled the waves — deep and deeper still driven, Like a gorge thro' the mountainous main thunder-riven. 8. The youth gave his trust to his Maker ! Before That path through the riven abyss closed again — Hark ! a shriek from the crowd rang aloft from the shore, And, behold ! he is whirled in the grasp of the main ! And o'er him the breakers mysteriously rolled, And the giant-mouth closed on the swimmer so bold. 9. O'er the surface grim silence lay dark and profound, But the deep from below murmured hollow and fell ; And the crowd, as it shuddered, lamented aloud — "Gallant youth — noble heart — fare-thee-well, fare-thee- well !" And still ever deepening that wail as of woe, More hollow the gulf sent its howl from below. 10. If thou should'st in those waters thy diadem fling, And cry, " "Who may find it shall win it, and wear ;" God's wot, though the prize were the crown of a king — A crown at such hazard were valued too dear. For never did lips of the living reveal, What the deeps that howl yonder in terror conceal. 11. Oh many a ship, to that breast grappled fast, Has gone down to the fearful and fathomless grave ; Again, crashed together, the keel and the mast, To be seen, tossed aloft in the glee of the wave. — Like the growth of a storm ever louder and clearer, Grows the roar of the gulf rising nearer and nearer. 424 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 12. And it bubbles and seethes, and it hisses and roars, As when fire is with water commixed and contending ; And the spray of its wrath to the welkin up-soars, And flood upon flood hurries on, never ending. And, as with the swell of the far thunder-boom, Rushes roaringly forth from the heart of the gloom. 13. And, lo ! from the heart of that far-floating gloom, What gleams on the darkness so swanlike and white ? Lo ! an arm and a neck, glancing up from the tomb ! — They battle — the Man's with the Element's might. It is he — it is he !--in his left hand behold, As a sign — as a joy! — shines the goblet of gold! 14 And he breathed deep, and he breathed long, And he greeted the heavenly delight of the day. They gaze on each other — they shout as they throng — " He lives — lo the ocean has rendered its prey ! And out of the grave where the Hell began, His valor has rescued the living man !" 15. And he comes with the crowd in their clamor and glee, And the goblet his daring has won from the water, He lifts to the king as he sinks on his knee ; And the king from her maidens has beckoned his daughter, And he bade her the wine to his cup-bearer bring, And thus spake the Diver — "Long life to the king! 1G. "Happy they whom the rose-hues of daylight rejoice, The air and the sky that to mortals are given ! May the horror below never more find a voice — Nor Man stretch too far the wide mercy of Heaven ! Never more — never more may he lift from the mirror, The Veil which is woven with Night and with Tereok I 17. " Quick-brightening like lightning — it tore me along, Down, down, till the gush of a torrent at play, In the rocks of its wilderness caught me — and strong As the wings of an eagle, it whirled me away. Vain, vain were my struggles — the circle had won me, Round and round in its dance the wild element spun me. 18. " And I called on my God, and my God heard my prayer. In the strength of my need, in the gasp of my breath — • THE DIVER. 426 And showed me a crag that rose up from the lair, And I clung to it, trembling — and baffled the death ! And, safe in the perils around me, behold On the spikes of the coral the goblet of gold. 19. " Below, at the foot of that precipice drear, Spread the gloomy, and purple, and pathless obscure ! A Silence of Horror that slept on the ear, That the eye more appalled might the Horror endure ! Salamander — snake — dragon — vast reptiles that dwell In the deep — coiled about the grim jaws of their hell. 20. "Dark-crawled — glided dark the unspeakable swarms, Like masses unshapen, made life hideously — Here clung and here bristled the fashionless forms — Here the Hammer-fish darkened the dark of the sea — And with teeth grinning white, and a menacing motion, Went the terrible Shark— the Hyena of Ocean. 21. " There I hung, and the awe gathered icily o'er me, So far from the earth where man's help there was none ! The One Human Thing, with the Goblins before me — Alone — in a loneness so ghastly — Alone ! Fathom-deep from man's eye in the speechless profound, With the death of the Main and the Monsters around. 22. " Methought, as I gazed through the darkness, that now A hundred-limbed creature caught sight of its prey, And darted — O God ! from the far-flaming bough Of the coral, I swept on the horrible way ; And it seized me, the wave with its wrath and its roar, It seized me to save — King, the danger is o'er!" 23. On the youth gazed the monarch, and marveled — quoth he, "Bold Diver, the goblet I promised is thine, And this ring will I give, a fresh guerdon to thee, Never jewels more precious shone up from the mine ; If thou'lt bring me fresh tidings, and venture again, To say what lies hid in the innermost main!" 24. Then outspake the daughter in tender emotion, "Ah! father, my father, what more can there rest? Enough of this sport with the pitiless ocean — He has served thee as none would, thyself hast confest 426 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. If nothing can slake thy -wild thirst of desire, Be your knights not, at least, put to shame by the squire I* 25. The king seized the goblet — he swung it on high, And whirling, it fell in the roar of the tide ; " But bring back that goblet again to my eye, And I'll hold thee the dearest that rides by my side, And thine arms shall embrace as thy bride, I decree, The maiden whose pity now pleadeth for thee. 5 ' 26. In his heart, as he listened, there leapt the wild joy — And the hope and the love through his eyes spoke in fire, On that bloom, on that blush, gazed, delighted, the boy ; The maiden she faints at the feet of her sire ! Here the guerdon divine, there the danger beneath ; He resolves ! — To the strife with the life and the death ! 27. They hear the loud surges sweep back in their swell ; Their coming the thunder-sound heralds along ! Fond eyes yet are tracking the spot where he fell — They come, the wild waters, in tumult and throng, Rearing up to the cliff — roaring back as before ; But no wave ever brought the lost youth to the shore. Schiller. JohA'nn Ciiristoph Friedrich von Schiller, a German poet, dramatist, and historian, was born in Marbach, Wiirtemberg, November 10th, 1759, and died in Weimar, May 9th, 1805. His best prose production, "History of the Thirty Years' War," published in 1791, is probably the best historical perform- ance of which Germany can boast. His greatest performance, the drama of " Wallenstein," appeared in 1799. " William Tell," his most popular drama, was published in 1804 He is probably best known by his ballads and lyric poems. IV. 138. MORTE D'ARTHUR. SO all day long the noise of battle rolled Among the mountains by the winter sea ; Until King Arthur's * table, man by man, Had fallen in Lyonness about their Lord, »■ — ■ ■ ■ ■ 1 -■ - ■ 1 King Arthur. The life and death Ian, in Cornwall, in 542. Modred was of this ancient British hero, if indeed slain and Arthur mortally wounded, there ever was such a person, are The British Celts long believed that involved in fiction. Modred, his he would some day come back and nephew, revolted from him, which vindicate for them the undivided brought on the fatal battle of Com- sovereignty of Britannia. MORTE D'ARTIIUR. 427 King Arthur : then, because his wound was deep, The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him, Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights, And bore him to a chapel nigh the field, A broken chancel with a broken cross, That stood on a dark strait of barren land. On one side lay the Ocean, and on one Lay a great water, and the moon was full. 2. Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere : " The sequel of to-day unsolders all The goodliest fellowship of famous knights \Vhereof this world holds record. Such a sleep They sleep — the men I loved. I think that wo Shall never more, at any future time, Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds, Walking about the gardens and the halls Of Camelot, as in the days that were. I perish by this people which I made, — Though Merlin ' sware that I should come again To rule once more — but let what will be, be, I am so deeply smitten through the helm That without help I can not last till morn. 3. Thou, therefore, take my brand Excalibur, Which was my pride ; for thou rememberest how In those old days, one summer noon, an arm Rose up from out the bosom of the lake, Clothed in white samite, 3 mystic, wonderful, Holding the sword — and how I rowed across And took it, and have worn it, like a king : And, wheresoever I am sung or told, In aftertime, this also shall be known : But now delay not : take Excalibur, And fling him far into the middle meer : "Watch what thou seest, and lightly bring me word." 4. To him replied the bold Sir Bedivere : "It is not meet, Sir King, to leave thee thus, Aidless, alone, and smitten through the helm. 1 Merlin, two British seers and sor- 2 Sa' mite, a kind of silk stuff, or cerers, of tho 5th and 6th centuries, taffeta, often adorned with geld. 428 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. A little thing may harm a wounded man. Yet I thy hest will all perform at full, Watch what I see, and lightly bring thee word." So saying, from the ruined, shrine he stept, And in the moon athwart the place of tombs, "Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men, Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping down By zigzag paths, and juts of pointed rock, Came on the shining levels of the lake. 5. There drew he forth the brand Excalibur, And o'er him, drawing it, the winter moon, Brightening the skirts of a long cloud, ran forth And sparkled keen with frost against the hilt ; For all the haft twinkled with diamond sparks, Myriads of topaz-lights, and jacinth-work Of subtlest jewelry. He gazed so long That both his eyes were dazzled, as he stood This way and that dividing the swift mind, In act to throw ; but at the last it seemed Better to leave Excalibur concealed There in the many-knotted waterflags, That whistled stiff and dry about the marge. So strode he back slow to the wounded King. 6. Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere : " Hast thou performed my mission which I gave ? What is it thou hast seen ? or what hast heard ?" And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere : " I heard the ripple washing in the reeds, And the wild water lapping on the crag." To whom replied King Arthur, faint and pale, " Thou hast betrayed thy nature and thy name, Not rendering true answer, as beseemed Thy fealty, nor like a noble knight ; For surer sign had followed, either hand Or voice, or else a motion of the meer. This is a shameful thing for men to lie. Yet now, I charge thee, quickly go again As thou art lief and dear, and do the thing I bade thee, watch, and lightly bring me word." MORTE D'ARTHUR. 4 l 29 7. Then went Sir Bedivcrc the second time Across the ridge, and paced beside the meer, Counting the dewy pebbles, fixed in thought ; But when he saw the wonder of the hilt, • How curiously and strangely chased, he smote His palms together, and he cried aloud : " And if indeed I cast the brand away, Surely a precious thing, one worthy note, Should thus be lost forever from the earth, Which might have pleased the eyes of many men. What good should follow this, if this were done ? What harm, undone ? deep harm to disobey, Seeing obedience is the bond of rule. Were it well to obey then, if a king demand An act unprofitable, against himself '? 8. " The king is sick, and knows not what he does. What record, or what relic of my lord Should be to aftertime, but empty breath And rumors of a doubt ? but were this kept, Stored in some treasure-house of mighty kings, Some one might show it at a joust of arms, Saying, ' King Arthur's sword, Excalibur, Wrought by the lonely maiden of the Lake. Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps Upon the hidden bases of the hills.' So might some old man speak in the aftertime To all the people, winning reverence. But now much honor and much fame were lost." 9. So spake he, clouded with his own conceit, And hid Excalibur the second time, And so strode back slow to the wounded King. Then spoke King Arthur, breathing heavily : " What is it thou hast seen ? or what hast heard? And answer made the bold Sir Bedivcrc : " I heard the water hvpping on the crag, And the long ripple washing in the reeds." 10. To whom replied King Arthur, much in wrath ; " Ah, miserable and unkind, untrue, Unknightly, traitor-hearted ! Woe is me ! 430 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Authority forgets a dying king, Laid widowed of the power in his eye That bowed the will. I see thee what thou art ; For thou, the latest left of all my knights, In whom should meet the offices of all, Thou wouldst betray me for the precious hilt ; Either from lust of gold, or like a girl Valuing the giddy pleasure of the eyes. Yet, for a man may fail in duty twice, And the third time may prosper, get thee hence ; But, if thou spare to fling Excalibur, I will arise and slay thee with my hands." 11. Then quickly rose Sir Bedivere, and ran, And, leaping down the ridges lightly, plunged Among the bulrush-beds, and clutched the stoord, And strongly wheeled and threw it. The great brand Made lightnings in the splendor of the moon, And flashing round and round, and whirled in an arch, Shot like a streamer of the northern morn, Seen where the moving isles of winter shock By night, with noises of the northern sea. So flashed and fell the brand Excalibur ; But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, And caught him by the hilt, and brandished him Three times, and drew him under in the meer. And lightly went the other to the King. 3 2. Then spoke King Arthur, drawing thicker breath, " Now see I by thine eyes that this is done. Speak out : what is it thou hast heard, or seen !" And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere : " Sir King, I closed mine eyelids, lest the gems Should blind my purpose, for I never saw, Nor shall see, here or elsewhere, till I die, Not though I live three lives of mortal men, So great a miracle as yonder hilt. Then with both hands I flung him, wheeling him ; But when I looked again, behold an arm, Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, MORTE D'ARTHUR. 431 That caught him by the hilt, and brandished him Three times, and drew him under in the nicer." 13. And answer made King Arthur, breathing hard. " My end draws nigh ; 'tis time that I were gone. Make broad thy shoulders to receive my weight, And bear me to the margin : yet I fear My wound hath taken cold, and I shall die." So saying, from the pavement he half rose, Slowly, with pain, reclining on his arm, And looking wistfully with wild blue eyes As in a picture. Him Sir Bedivere Remorsefully regarded through his tears, And would have spoken, but he found not words, Then took with care, and kneeling on one knee, O'er buth his shoulders drew the languid hands, And rising bore him through the place of tombs. 14. But as he walked, King Arthur panted hard Like one that feels a nightmare on his bed AVhen all the house is mute. So sighed the King, Muttering and murmuring at his ear, " Quick, quick ! I fear it is too late, and I shall die." But the other swiftly strode from ridge to ridge, Clothed with his breath, and looking, as he walked Larger than human on the frozen hills. He heard the deep behind him, and a cry Before. His own thought drove him like a goad. Dry clashed his harness in the icy caves And barren chasms, and all to left and right The bare black cliff clanged round him, as he based His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels — And on a sudden, lo ! the level lake, And the long glories of the winter moon. 1 5. Then saw they how there hove a dusky barge, Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stem, Beneath them ; and descending they were ware That all the decks were dense with stately forms Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream — by these Three Queens with crowns of gold — and from them rose 432 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. A cry that shivered to the tingling stars, And, as it were one voice, an agony Of lamentation, like a wind, that shrills All night in a waste land, where no one comes, Or hath come, since the making of the world. Then murmured Arthur, " Place me in the barge," And to the barge they came. There those three Queens Put forth their hands, and took the King, and wept. 16. But she that rose the tallest of them all And fairest, laid his head upon her lap, And loosed the shattered casque, and chafed his hands, And called him by his name, complaining loud, And dropping bitter tears against his brow Striped with dark blood ; for all his face was white And colorless, and like the withered moon Smote by the fresh beam of the springing east ; And all his greaves * and cuisses a dashed with drops Of onset ; and the light and lustrous curls — That made his iovehead like a rising sun High from the dais-throne — were parched with dust ; Or, clotted into points, and hanging loose, Mixed with the knightly growth that fringed his lips. So like a shattered column lay the King ; Not like that Arthur who, with lance in rest, From spur to plume a star of tournament, Shot through the lists at Camelot, and charged Before the eyes of ladies and of kings. 17. Then lordly cried the bold Sir Bedivere, — " Ah ! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go ? Where shall I hide my fore/iead and my eyes? For now I see the true old times are dead, When every morning brought a noble chance, And every chance brought out a noble knight. Such times have been not since the light that led The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh. But now the whole Round Table is dissolved, Which was an image of the mighty world ; 1 Greaves, armor for the legs; a 2 Cuisse, (lewis), defensive armor «ort of boots for the thighs. MOETE D'AKTIIL'tt. 4^3 And I, tho last, go forth companionless, And the days darken round me, and tho years, Among new men, strange faces, other minds." 18. And slowly answered Arthur from the barge : "The old order change th, yielding place to new, And God fulfills himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. Comfort thyself : what comfort is in me? I have lived my life, and that which I havo done May Ho within himself make pure ! but thou, If thou shouldst never sec my face again, Pray for my soul. More things arc wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice Rise like a fountain for me night and day. For what arc men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer Both for themselves and those who call them friend? For so tho whole round earth is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. 19. But now farewell. I am going a long way With these thou seest — if indeed I go (For all my mind is clouded with a doubt) To the island-valley of Avilion ; Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly ; but it lies Deep-mcadowed, happy, fair with orchard-lawns And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea, Where I will heal me of my grievous wound." 20. So said he, and tho barge with oar and sail Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan, That, iluting a wild carol, ere her death, Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere Revolving many memories, till the hull Looked one black dot against the verge of dawn, And on the mcer the wailing died awav. Alfhed Te^tntson. 19 434 NATIONAL FIFTH HEADER. V. 139. THE SKELETON IN ARMOR. 1 1. " O PEAK ! speak ! thou fearful ^ guest ! Who, with thy hollow breast Still in rude armor drest, Comest to daunt me ! "Wrapt not in Eastern balms, But with thy fleshless palms Stretched, as if asking alms, Why dost thou haunt me ?" 2. Then, from those cavernous eyes Pale flashes seemed to rise, As when the Northern skies Gleam in December ; And, like the water's flow Under December's snow, Came a dull voice of wGe From the heart's chamber. 3. 11 1 was a Viking old ! My deeds, though manifold, No Skald 2 in song has told, No Saga 3 taught thee ! Take heed, that in thy verse Thou dost the tale rehearse, Else dread a dead man's curse ; For this I sought thee. 1 The author says : M The follow- ing ballad was suggested to me while riding on the seashore at Newport. A year or two previous a skeleton had been dug up at Fall River, clad in broken and corroded armor ; and the idea occurred to me of connecting it with the Round Tower at Newport, generally known hitherto as the Old Wind Mill, though now claimed by the Danes " Far in the Northern Land, By the wild Baltic's strand, I, with my childish hand, Tamed the ger-falcon ; * And, with my skates fast-bound, Skimmed the half-frozen Sound, That the poor whimpering hound Trembled to walk on. 5. " Oft to his frozen lair Tracked I the grisly bear, While from my path the hare Fled like a shadow ; Oft through the forest dark Followed the were-wolf s bark, Until the soaring lark Sang from the meadow. 6. " But when I older grew, Joining a corsair's crew, O'er the dark sea I flew With the marauders. Wild was the life we led ; Many the souls that sped, Many the hearts that bled, By our stern orders. as a work of their early ancestors. This is an admirable exercise in Monotone, see p. G7. 2 Skald, an ancient Scandinavian bard or poet ; a reciter and singer ot heroic poems, eulogies, etc., among the Norsemen. 3 Sa' ga, a Scandinavian legend or story handed down among tho Norsemen and kindred people. 4 Ger-falcon, (j6V fa kn). TUE SKELETON LN ARMOR. 4;j5 7. 44 Many a wassail-bout ' Wore the long Winter out; Often our midnight shout Set the cocks crowing, As we the Berserk's tale Measured in cups of ale, Draining the oaken pail, Filled to overflowing. 8. " Once as I told in glee Tales of the stormy sea, Soft eyes did gaze on me, Burning yet tender; And as the white stars shine On the dark Norway pine, On that dark heart of mine Fell their soft splendor. 9. "I wooed the blue-eyed maid, Yielding, yet half afraid, And in the forest's shade Our vows were plighted. Under its loosened vest Fluttered her little breast, Like birds within their nest By the hawk frighted. 10. " Bright in her father's hall Shields gleamed upon the wall, Loud sang the minstrels all, Chaunting his glory ; "When of old Hildebrand I asked his daughter's hand. Mute did the minstrels stand To hear my story. 11. i; While the brown ale he quaffed, Loud then the champion laughed, And as the wind-gusts waft The sea-foam bricrhtlv, o v 7 So the loud laugh of scorn, Out of those lips unshorn, From the deep drinking-horn Blew the foam lightly. " She was a Prince's child, I but a Viking wild, And though sheblushed and smiled I was discarded ! Should not the dove so white Follow the sea-mew's flight, "Why did they leave that night Her nest unguarded ? 13. " Scarce had I put to sea, Bearing the maid with me,— Fairest of all was she Among the Norsemen ! — "When on the white sea-strand, "Waving his armed hand, O 7 Saw we old Hildebrand, "With twenty horsemen. 14. " Then launched they to the blast, Bent like a reed each mast, Yet we were gaining last, When the wind failed us ; And with a sudden flaw Came round the gusty Skaw, So that our foe we saw Laugh as he hailed us. 15. II And as to catch the gale Round veered the flapping sail, Death ! was the helmsman's hail Death without quarter ! Mid-ships with iron keel Struck we her ribs of steel ; Down her black hulk did reel Through the black water I 1 Wassail-bout, (w6s' sil-bout), a drinking-bout; a contest or set-to at wassail, a kind of liquor used on festive occasions. 436 RATIONAL FIFTH READER, 16. " As with his wings aslant, Sails the tierce cormorant, Seeking some rocky haunt, With his prey laden, So toward the open main, Beating to sea again, Through the wild hurricane, Bore I the maiden. 17. " Three weeks we westward bore, And when the storm was o'er, Cloud-like we saw the shore Stretching to lee-ward ; There for my lady's bower Built I the lofty tower, Which, to this very hour, Stands looking sea-ward. 18. 11 There lived we many years : Time dried the maiden's tears; She had forgot her fears, She was a mother ; Death closed her mild blue eyes, Under that tower she lies ; Ne'er shall the sun arise On such another ! 19. " Still grew my bosom then, Still as a stagnant fen ! Hateful to me were men, The sun-light hateful ! In the vast forest here, Clad in my warlike gear, Fell I upon my spear, O, death was grateful ! 20. " Thus, seamed with meny scars Bursting these prison bars, Up to its native stars My soul ascended ! There from the flowing bowl Deep drinks the warrior's s6ul, Skoal! to the Northland ! slcOalP^ — Thus the tale ended. II. W. Longfellow. SECTION XXYI. L 140. SCENES FROM PICKWICK. THE DILEMMA. MR. Pickwick's apartments in Goswell street, although on a limited scale, were not only of a very neat and com- fortable description, but peculiarly adapted for the residence of a man of his genius and observation. His sitting-room was the first floor front, his bed-room w T as the second floor front ; and thus, whether ho was sitting at his desk in the parlor, or stand- ing before the dressing-glass in his dormitory-, he had an equal 1 Skoal, in Scandanavia this is the the word is slightly changed, in customary salutation when drink- order to preserve the correct pro- liig a health. The orthography of nuneiation. SCENES FliOAi PICKWICK. J^yj opportanity of contemplating human nature in all the numerous phases it exhibits, in that not more populous than popular thoroughfare. 2. His landlady, Mrs. Bardell — the relict and sole executrix of a deceased custom-house officer — was a comely (kiim'ly) woman of bustling manners and agreeable appearance, with a natural genius for cooking, improved by study and long prac- tice into an ex'quisite talent. There were no children, no ser- vants, no fowls. The only other inmates of the house were a largo man and a small boy ; the first a lodger, the second a production of Mrs. Bardell's. The large man was always at home precisely at ten o'clock at night, at which hour he regu- larly condensed himself into the limits of a dwarfish French bedstead in the back parlor ; and the infantine sports and gym- nastic exercises of Master Bardell were exclusively confined to the neighboring pavements and gutters. Cleanliness and quiet reigned throughout tho house ; and in it Mr. Pickwick's will was law. 3. To any one acquainted with these points of the domestic economy of the establishment, and conversant with the admira- blc regulation of Mr. Pickwick's mind, his appearance and be- havior, on the morning previous to that which had been fixed upon for the journey to Eatansvill, would have been most mys- terious and unaccountable. He paced the room to and fro with hurried steps, popped his head out of the window at intervals of about three minutes each, constantly referred to his watch, and exhibited many other manifestations of impatience, very unusual with him. It was evident that something of great im- portance was in contemplation ; but what that something was, not even Mrs. Bardell herself had been enabled to discover. 4. " Mrs. Bardell," said Mr. Pickwick, at last, as that amiable female approached the termination of a prolonged dusting of the apartment, "Sir," said Mrs. Bardell. "Your little boy is a very long time gone." " Why, it's a good long way to tho Borough, sir," remonstrated Mrs. Bardell. " Ah," said Mr. Pick- wick, " very true ; so it is." Mr. Pickwick relapsed into silence, and Mrs. Bardell resumed her dusting. 5. Mrs. Bardell," said Mr. Pickwick, at the expiration of a few minutes. " Sir," said Mrs. Bardell again. " Do you think it's a much greater expense to keep two people, than to keep 438 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. one ?" " La, Mr. Pickwick/' said Mrs. Bardell, coloring up to the very border of her cap, as she fancied she observed a species of matrimonial twinkle in the eyes of her lodger; "La, Mr. Pickwick, what a question!" "Well, but do you?" inquired Mr. Pickwick. " That depends," said Mrs. Bardell, approaching the duster very near to Mr. Pickwick's elbow, which was planted on the table ; " that depends a good deal upon the person, you Imow, Mr. Pickwick ; and whether it's a saving and careful per- son, sir." " That's very true," said Mr. Pickwick ; " but the person I have in my eye (here he looked very hard at Mrs. Bar- dell) I think possesses these qualities ; and has, moreover, a considerable knowledge of the world, and a great deal of sharp- ness, Mrs. Bardell ; which may be of material use to me." 6. " La, Mr. Pickwick," said Mrs. Bardell ; the crimson rising to her cap-border again. " I do," said Mr. Pickwick, growing energetic, as was his wont (wunt) in speaking of a subject which interested him. " I do, indeed ; and to tell you the truth, Mrs. Bardell, I have made up my mind." " Dear me, sir," exclaimed Mrs. Bardell. " You'll think it not very strange now," said the amiable Mr. Pickwick, with a good-humored glance at his com- panion, " that I never consulted you about this matter, and never mentioned it, till I sent your little boy out this morning — eh '?" 7. Mrs. Bardell could only reply by a look. She had long worshipped Mr. Pickwick at a distance, but here she was, all at once, raised to a pinnacle to which her wildest and most extrav- agant hopes had never dared to aspire. Mr. Pickwick was going to propose — a deliberate plan, too — sent her little boy to the Borough, to get him out of the way — how thoughtful — how con- siderate !— " Well," said Mr. Pickwick, " what do you think f M " Oh, Mr. Pickwick," said Mrs. Bardell, trembling with agita- tion, " you're very kind, sir." " It will save you a great deal of trouble, won't it ?" said Mr. Pickwick. " Oh, I never thought anything of the trouble, sir," replied Mrs. Bardell ; " and of course, I should take more trouble to please you then than ever ; but it is so kind of you, Mr. Pickwick, to have so much consid- eration for my loneliness." 8. " Ah to be sure," said Mr. Pickwick ; " I never thought of that. When I am in town, vou'll alwavs have somebodv to sit with you. To be sure, so you will." "I'm sure I ought to bo a very happy woman," said Mrs. Bardell. " And your little boy — " SCENES FROM PICKWICK. 439 said Mr. Pickwick. " Bless his heart," interposed Mrs. Bardell, with a maternal sob. " He, too, will have a companion," re- sumed Mr. Pickwick, "a lively one, who'll teach him, I'll bo bound, more tricks in a week, than he would ever learn in a year." And Mr. Pickwick smiled placidly. 9. " Oh you dear — " said Mrs. Bardell. Mr. Pickwick started. " Oh you kind, good, playful dear," said Mrs. Bardell ; and without more ado, she rose from her chair, and flung her arms round Mr. Pickwick's neck, with a cataract of tears, and a chorus of sobs. "Bless my soul," cried tho astonished Mr. Pickwick ; — " Mrs. Bardell, my good woman — dear me, what a situation — pray consider. Mrs. Bardell, don't — if anybody should come — " " Oh, let them come," exclaimed Mrs. Bardell, frantically ; "I'll never leave you — dear, kind, good, soul ;" and, with theso words, Mrs. Bardell clung the tighter. ] 0. " Mercy upon me," said Mr. Pickwick, struggling violently, " I hear somebody coming up the stairs. Don't, don't, there's a good creature, don't." But entreaty and remonstrance were alike unavailing : for Mrs. Bardell had fainted in Mr. Pickwick's arms ; and before he could gain time to deposit her on a chair, Master Bardell entered tho room, ushering in Mr. Tupman, Mr. Winkle, and Mr. Snodgrass. Mr. Pickwick was struck motionless and speechless. He stood with his lovely burden in his arms, gazing vacantly on the countenances of his friends, without the slightest attempt at recognition or explanation. They, in their turn, stared at him ; and Master Bardell, in his turn, stared at evervbody. 11. The astonishment of the Pickwickians was so absorbing, and the perplexity of Mr. Pickwick was so extreme, that they might have remained in exactly the same relative situation until the suspended animation of tho lady was restored, had it not been for a most beautiful and touching expression of filial affection on the part of her youthful son. Clad in a tight suit of corduroy, spangled with brass buttons of a very considerable size, he at first stood at the door astounded and uncertain ; but by degrees, the impression that his mother must have suffered some personal damage, pervaded his partially developed mind, and considering Mr. Pickwick the aggressor, he set up an ap- palling and semi-earthly kind of howling, and butting forward, with his head, commenced assailing that immortal gentleman 440 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. about the back and legs, with such blows and pinches as the strength of his arm, and the violence of his excitement allowed. 12. Take this little villain away," said the agonized Mr. Pick- wick, "he's mad." "What is the matter?" said the three tongue-tied Pickwickians. " I don't know," replied Mr. Pick- wick, pettishly. " Take away the boy — (here Mr. Winkle earned the in'teresting boy, screaming and struggling, to the farther end of the apartment.) Now help me to lead this woman down stairs.*' " Oh, I'm better now," said Mrs. Bardell, faintly. "Let me lead you down stairs," said the ever gallant Mr. Tupman. " Thank you, sir — thank you ;" exclaimed Mrs. Bardell, hys- terically. And down stairs she was led accordingly, accompanied by her affectionate son. 13. " I can not conceive" — said Mr. Pickwick, when his friend returned — " I can not conceive what has been the matter with that woman. I had merely announced to her my intention of keeping a man-servant, when she fell into the extraordinary paroxysm in which you found her. Very extraordinary thing." "Very," said his three friends. "Placed me in such an ex- tremely awkward situation," continued Mr. Pickwick. " Very ;** was the reply of his followers, as they coughed slightly, and looked dubiously at each other. 4. This behavior was not lost upon Mr. Pickwick. He re- marked their incredulity. They evidently suspected him. — " There is a man in the passage, now," said Mr. Tupman. " It's the man that I spoke to you about," said Mr. Pickwick, " I sent for him to tho Borough this morning. Have the goodness to call him up, Snodgrass." n. 141. SCENES FROM PICKWICK. SPEECH OF SEXIGEINT BUZFUZ. YOU heard from ray learned friend, Gentlemen of the Jury, that this is an action for a breach of promise of marriage, in which the damages are laid at fifteen hundred pounds. The plaintiff, Gentlemen, is a widow ; yes, Gentlemen, a widow. The late Mr. Bardell, some time before his death, became the father, Gentlemen, of a little boy. With this little boy, the only pledge of her depai-ted exciseman, Mrs. Bardell shrunk from the world tt SCENES FROM PICKWICK. 441 and courted the retirement and tranq uillity of Goswcll street : and here she placed in her front parlor-window a written pla- card', bearing this inscription, — "Apartments fubnkhed rcr. \ SINGLE GENTLEMAN. InQUIIIE WITHIN." 2. Mrs. Bardell's opinions of tho opposite sex, Gentlemen, were derived from a long contemplation of the ines'thnablc qual- ities of her lost husband. She had no fear, — she had no distrust, 11 was confidence and rel Lance. " Mr. Bardell," said the widow, was a man of honor, — Mr. Bardell was a man of his word, — Mr. Bardell was no deceiver, — Mr. Bardell was onco a single gentleman himself : to single gentlemen I look for protection, for assistance, for comfort, and consolation ; in single gentlemen I shall perpetually see something to remind me of what Mr. Bardell was, when he first won my young and untried aiiections ; to a single gentleman, then, shall my lodgings be let." 3. Actuated by this beautiful and touching impulse (among the best impulses of our imperfect nature, Gentlemen), the lonely and desolate widow dried her tears, furnished her first floor, caught her innocent boy to her maternal bosom, and put the bill up in her parlor-window. Did it remain there long? No. The serpent was on the watch, the train was laid, the mine was preparing, the sapper and miner was at work ! Before the bill had been in the parlor-window three days, — three days, Gentle- man, — a being, erect upon two legs, and bearing all the outward semblance of a man, and not of a monster, knocked at the door of Mrs. Bardell's house ! He inquired within ; he took the lodgings ; and on the very next day he entered into possession of them. This man was Pickwick, — Pickwick, the defendant! •1. Of this man I will say little. The subject presents but few attractions ; and I, Gentlemen, am not the man, nor are you, Gentlemen, the men, to delight in the contemplation of revolt- ing heartlessness, and of systematic villainy. I say systematic villainy, Gentlemen ; and when I say systematic villainy, let mo tell the defendant Pickwick, if he be in court, as I am info lined he is, that it would have been more decent in him. more becom- ing, if he had stopped away. Let me tell him, further, that a counsel, in the discharge of his duty, is neither to be intimida- ted, nor bullied, nor put down ; and that any attempt to do either the one or the other will recoil on the head of the at tempter, be ho plaintiff or be he defendant, be his name 442 NATIONAL FIFTH HEADER. Pickwick, or Xoakes, cr Stoakes, or Stiles, or Brown, or Thompson. 5. I shall show you, Gentlemen, that for two years Pickwick continued to reside constantly, and without interruption or in- termission, at Mrs. BardelTs house. I shall show you that Mrs. Bardell, during the whole of that time, waited on him, attended to his comforts, cooked his meals, looked out his linen for the washerwoman when it went abroad, darned, aired, and prepared it for wear when it came home, and, in short, enjoyed his fullest trust and confidence. I shall show you that, on many occasions, he gave half-pence, and on some occasions even sixpence, to her little bey. I shall prove to you, that on one occasion, when he returned from the country, he distinctly and in terms offered her marriage, — previously, however, taking special care that there should be no witnesses to their solemn contract ; and I am in a situation to prove to you, on the testimony of three of his own friends, — most unwilling witnesses, Gentlemen — most unwilling witnesses, — that on that mominsf he was discovered bv them holding the plaintiff in his amis, and soothing her agitation by his caresses and endearments. 6. And now, Gentlemen, but one word more. Two letters have passed between these parties, — letters that must be viewed with a cautious and suspicious eye, — letters that were evidently intended, at the time, bv Pickwick, to mislead and delude any third parties into whose hands they might fall. Let me read the first : — " Garraway's, twelve o'clock. — Dear Mrs. B. — Chops and Tomato sauce. Yours, Pickwick." Gentleman, what does this mean ? Chops and Tomato sauce ! Yours, Pickwick ! Chops ! Gracious heavens ! And Tomato sauce ! Gentlemen, is the happiness of a sensitive and confiding female to be trilled awav bv such shallow artifices as these ? 7. The next has no date whatever, which is in itself suspi- cious : — " Dear Mrs. B., I shall not be at home to morrow. Slow coach." And then follows this very remarkable expression, — "Don't trouble yourself about the warming-pan. " The warm- ing-pan ! Why, Gentlemen, who does trouble himself about a warming-pan ? Why is Mrs. Bardell so earnestly entreated not to agitate herself about this warming-pan, unless (as is no doubt the case) it is a mere cover for hidden fire — a mere substitute for sonic endearing word or promise, agreeably to a preconcerted SCENES FROM PICKWICK. 443 system of correspondence, artfully contrived by Pickwick with a view to his contemplated desertion ? And what does this allu- sion to the slow coach mean ? For aught I know, it may be a reference to Pickwick himself, who has most unquestionably been a criminally slow coach during the wholo of this transac- tion, but whose speed will now be very unexpectedly accelerated, and whose wheels, Gentlemen, as he will find to his cost, will very soon bo greased by you ! 8. But enough of this, Gentlemen. It is difficult to smile with an aching heart. My client's hopes and prospects are ruined, and it is no figure of speech to say that her occupation is gone indeed. The bill is dow T n ; but there is no tenant ! Eligible single gentlemen pass and repass ; but there i3 no invitation for them to inquire within, or without ! All is gloom and silence in the house : even the voice of the child is hushed ; his infant sports are disregarded, when his mother w r ceps. 9. But Pickwick, Gentlemen, Pickwick, the ruthless destroyer of this domestic 6'asis in the desert of Goswell street, — Pickwick, who has choked up the well, and thrown ashes on the sward, — Pickwick, who comes before you to-day with his heartless tomato-sauce and warming-pans, — Pickwick still rears his head with unblushing effrontery, and gazes without a sigh on the ruin he has made ! Damages, Gentlemen, heavy damages, is the only punishment with w r hich you can visit him, — the only recompense you can award to my client ! And for those damages she now appeals to an enlightened, a high-minded, a right-feeling, a con- scientious, a dispassionate, a sympathizing, a contemplative Jury of her civilized countrymen ! m. 142. SCENES FROM PICKnVICK. SAM TYELLER AS WITNESS. "~TTT"HATS your name, sir?" inquired the judge. "Sam V V Weller, my lord," replied that gentleman. " Do you spell it with a ' V or a ' W ?' " inquired the judge. " That de- pends upon the taste and fancy of the speller, my lord," replied Sam ; " I never had occasion to spell it more than once or twice in my life, but I spells it w T ith a ' \7 " Here a voice in the gal- lery exclaimed aloud, — " Quite right, too, Samivel ; quite right. 444 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Put it down a we, my lord, put it down a we" " Who is that that dares to address the court ?" said the little judge looking U p; "Usher!" "Yes, my lord!" "Bring that person hero instantly." " Yes, my lord." 2. But, as the usher didn't find the person, he didn't bring him ; and, after a great commotion, all the people who had got up to look for the culprit, sat down again. The little judge turned to the witness as soon as his indignation would allow him to speak, and said — "Do you know who that was, sir?" "I rather suspect it was my father, my lord," replied Sam. " Do you see him here now ?" said the judge. " No, I don't, my lord," replied Sam, staring right up into the lantern in the roof of the court. "If you could have pointed him out, I would have committed him instantly," said the judge. Sam bowed his acknowledgments, and turned with unimpaired cheer- fulness of countenance toward Sergeant ' Buzfuz. 3. " Now, Mr. TVcller," said Sergeant Buzfuz. " Now, sir," replied Sam. " I believe you are in the service of Mr. Pick- wick, the defendant in this case. Speak up, if you please, Mr. Weller." " I mean to speak up, sir," replied Sam. " I am in the service o' that 'ere genTman, and a wery good service it is." "Little to do, and plenty to get, I suppose?" said Sergeant Buzfuz, with jocular'ity. " Oh, quite enough to get, sir, as the soldier said ven they ordered him three hundred and fifty lashes," replied Sam. " You must not tell us what the soldier or any other man said, sir," interposed the judge ; " it's not evi- bence." M Wery good, my lord," replied Sam. 4. " Do you recollect anything particular happening on the morning when you were first engaged by the defendant, ch, Mr. Weller?" said Sergeant Buzfuz. "Yes I do, sir," replied Sam. "Have the goodness to tell the jury what it was." "I had a reg'lar new fit out o' clothes that morn in', gen'l'men of the jury," said Sam, " and that was a wery particler and uncommon cir- cumstance vith me in those days." 5. Hereupon there was a general laugh ; and the little judge, looking with an angry countenance over his desk, said, — " You had better be careful, sir." " So Mr. Pickwick said at the time, my lord," replied Sam, " and I was wcry careful o' that 'ere suit o' clothes ; wery careful, indeed, my lord." The judge looked 1 Sergeant, (tar'jent), a lawyer of the burliest rank. SCENES FROM PICKWICK. 445 sternly at Sain for full two minutes, but Sam's features were so perfectly calm and sercno that he said nothing, and motioned Sergeant Buzfuz to proceed. G. " Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Weller," said Sergeant Buz- fuz, folding his arms emphatically, and turning half round to the jury, as if in mute assurance he would bother the witnt ss yet — " Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Weller, that you saw noth- ing of this fainting on the part of the plaintiff in the arms of the defendant, which you have heard described by the wit- nesses ?" " Certainly not," replied Sam. " I was in the passago till the v called me up, and then the old lady was not there." 7. " Now attend, Mr. Weller," said Sergeant Buzfuz, dipping a large nun into the inkstand before him, for the purpose of fright- ening Sam with a show of taking down his answer, " you wcro in the passage and yet saw nothing of what was going forward. Have you a pair of eves, Mr. Weller?" "Yes, I have a pair cf eyes," replied Sam, " and that's just it. If they wos a pair o' patent double million magnifyin' gas microscopes of hextra power, p'raps I might be able to see through a ilight o' stairs and a deal door ; but bein' only eyes, you see, my wision's limited." 8. At this answer, which was delivered without the slightest appearanco of irritation,- and with the most complete simplicity and equanimity of manner, the spectators tittered, the little judge smiled, and Sergeant Buzfuz looked particularly foolish. After a short consultation vs'ith Dodson and Fogg, the learnt d sergeant again turned to Sam, and said, with a painful effort to conceal his vexation, — " Now, Mr. Weller, 111 ask you a ques- tion on another point, if you please." " If you please, sir," rejoined Sam, with the utmost good-humor. 9. "Do you remember going up to Mrs. BardelTa house, one night in November last?" "Oh, yes ; wcrv well." "Oh, vou do remember that, Mr. Weller," said Sergeant Buzfuz, recover- ing his spirits, " I thought we should get at something at last." "I rather thought that, too, sir," replied Sam ; and at this tho spectators tittered again. " Well ; I suppose you went up to lave a little talk about this trial — eh, Mr. Weller T said Ser- geant Buzfuz, looking knowingly at the jury. "I went up to pay Vhe rent ; but we did gefc a talking about the trial," replied Sam. \" Oh, vou did get a talking about the trial," said Ser- 44:6 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. important discovery. "Now what passed about the trial ; will you have the goodness to tell us, Mr. Weller ?" 10. "Yith all the pleasure in my life, sir," replied Sam. " Arter a few unimportant observations from the two wirtuous females as has been examined here to-day, the ladies gets into a wery great state o' admiration at the honorable conduct of Mr. Dod- son and Fogg — them two genTmen as is sittin' near you now." This, of course, drew general attention to Dodson and Fogg, who looked as virtuous as possible. " The attorneys for the plaintiff," said Mr. Sergeant Buzfuz ; " well, they spoke in high praise of the honorable conduct of Messrs. Dodson and Fogg, the attorneys for the plaintiff, did they ?" " Yes," said Sam ; " they said what a wery gen'rous thing it was o' them to have taken up the case on spec, and to charge nothin' at all for costs, unless they got 'em out of Mr. Pickwick." 11. At this very unexpected reply, the spectators tittered again, and Dodson and Fogg, turning very red, leaned over to Sergeant Buzfuz, and in a hurried manner whispered something in his ear. " You are quite right," said Sergeant Buzfuz aloud, with affected composure. " It's perfectly useless, my lord, at- tempting to get at any evidence through the impenetrable stu- pidity of this witness. I will not trouble the court by asking him any more questions. Stand down, sir." 12. " Would any other gen 'I'm an like to ask me any thin' ?" inquired Sam, taking up his hat, and looking round most delib- erately. "Not I, Mr. Weller, thank you," said Sergeant Snub- bin, laughing. "You may go down, sir," said Sergeant Buzfuz, waving his hand impatiently. Sam went down accordingly, after doing Messrs. Dodson and Fogg's case as much harm as he conveniently could, and saying just as little respecting Mr. Pickwick as might be, which was precisely the object he had in view all along. Dickens. Charles Dickens, tliG famous English novelist, -was born at Portsmouth, in February, 1812. At an curly period he became reporter for the newspaper press of London, and thus escaped the cramping necessity of depending for subsist- ence upon his first purely literary labors. His earliest work?, " Sketches by Boz," first written for periodicals, were collected and published in two volumes, bear- ing respectively the dates of 1836 and 1837. His works immediately succeeding, "Pickwick," "Oliver Twist," and "Nicholas Nickleby," fully established his reputation. The " Pickwick Papers," from which the preceding scenes were selected, is one of his best works. He has probably never drawn a character more original in conception and more happily sustained than that of Sam Weller. MY ORATORICAL EXPERIENCE 447 The career of Dickens has been one of uniform success. His more recent pub- lication, "Dombcy and Son," "David Copperfleld," "Bleak House," and " Lit- tle Dorrit," prove conclusively that, far from having "written himself out," the resources of his mind arc well-nigh inexhaustible. His genius, which has peopled our literature with such a crowd of living and moving characters, gives promise of as many new creations, equally varied and true to nature. He is now editor of "All the Year Round," a first class magazine. IV. 143. MY ORATORICAL EXPERIENCE. 1 fTlHE Mayor had got up to propose another toast ; and, 1 listening rather inattentively to the first sentence or two, I soon became sensible of a drift in his Worship's remarks that made me glance ajiprchensively toward Sergeant Wilkins. " Yes," grumbled that gruff personage, shoving a decanter of Port toward me, "it is your turn next"; and seeing in my face, I suppose, the consternation of a wholly unpracticed orator, he kindly added, — "It is nothing. A mere acknowl- edgment will answer the purpose. The less you say, the better they will like it." That being the case, I suggested that per- haps they would like it best if I said nothing at all. But the Sergeant shook his head. 2. Now, on first receiving the Mayor's invitation to dinner, it had occurred to me that I might possibly be brought into my present predicament ; but I had dismissed the ide'a from my mind as too disagreeable to be entertained, and, moreover, as so alien from my disposition and character that Fate surely could not keep such a misfortune in store for me. If nothing else prevented, an earthquake or the crack of doom would cer- tainly interfere before I need rise to speak. Yet here was the Mayor getting on inex'orably, — and, indeed, I heartily wished that he might get on and on forever, and of his wordy wander- ings find no end. 3. If the gentle reader, my kindest friend and closest confi- dant, deigns to desire it, I can impart to him my own experi- ence as a public speaker quite as indifferently as if it concerned another person. Indeed, it does concern another, or a mere 1 The author, in an article which the following humorous account describes the Civic Banquets, which of the oratorical ordeal he passed he attended in London, while United at one of the Mayor's dinner-par- States Consul at Liverpool, gives tics. 448 NATIONAL FIFTH HEADER. spectral phenomenon, for it "was not I, in my proper and natn- ral self, that sat there at table or subsequently rose to speak. d. At the moment, then, if the choice had been offered me whether the Mayor should let off a speech at my head or a pis- tol, I should unhesitatingly have taken the latter alternative. I had really nothing to say, not an idea in my head, nor, which was a good deal worse, any flowing words or embroidered sen- tences in vrhich to dress out that empty Nothing, and give it a cunning aspect of intelligence, such as might last the poor vacuity the little time it had to live. 5. But time pressed ; the Mayor brought his remarks, affec- tionately eulogistic of the United States and highly compli- mentary to their distinguished representative at that table, to a close, amid a vast deal of cheering ; and the band struck up " Hail Columbia," I believe, though it might have been " Old Hundred," or "God save the Queen" over again, for anything that I should have known or cared. When the music ceased, there was an intensely disagreeable instant, during which I seemed to rend away and fling off the habit of a lifetime, and rose, still void of ideas, but with preternatural composure, to make a speech. G. The guests rattled on the table, and cried "Hear!" most vociferously, as if now, at length, in this foolish and idly gar- rulous world, had come the long-expected moment when one golden word was to be spoken ; and in that imminent crisis, I caught a glimpse of a little bit of an effusion of international sentiment which it might and must and should do to utter. 7. Well ; it was nothing, as the Sergeant had said. What surprised me most was the sound of my own voice, which I had never before heard at a declamatory pitch, and which impress- ed me as belonging to some other person, who, and not myself, would be responsible for the speech : a prodigious consolation and encouragement under the circumstances ! 8. I went on without the slightest embarrassment, and sat down amid great applause, wholly undeserved by anything that I had spoken, but well won from Englishmen, mcthought, by the new development of pluck that alone had enabled me to speak at all. "It was handsomely done !" quoth Sergeant Wil- luns ; and I felt like a recruit who had been for the first time under tire. MY ORATORICAL EXPERIENCE 419 9. I would gladly have ended my oratorical career then and there forever, but was often placed in a similar or worse posi- tion, and compelled to meet it an I best might ; for this was one of the necessities of an office which I had voluntarily taken on my shoulders, and beneath which I might bo crushed by no moral delinquency on my own part, but could not shirk without cowardice and shame. My subsequent fortune was various. 10. Once, though I felt it to be a kind of imposture, I got a speech by heart, and doubtless it might have been a very pretty ■ one, only I forgot every syllable at the moment of need, and had to improvise 3 another as well as I could. I found it a better method to pre-arrange a few points in my mind, and trust to the spur of the occasion, and the kind aid of Provi- dence for enabling me to bring them to bear. 11. The presence of any considerable proportion cf personal friends generally dumbfounded me. I would rather have talked with an enemy in the gate. Invariably, too, I was much em- barrassed by a small audience, and succeeded better with a large one, — the sympathy of a multitude possessing a buoyant effect, which lifts the speaker a little way out cf his individual- ity and tosses him toward a perhaps better range of sentiment than his private one. 12. Again, if I rose carelessly and confidently, with an ex- pectation of going through the business entirely at my ease, I often found that I had little or nothing to say ; whereas, if I came to the scratch in perfect despair, anel at a crisis when failure would have been horrible, it once or twice happcucel that the frightful emergency concentrated my poor faculties, anel enabled me to give definite anel vigorous expression to sen- timents which an instant before lookeel as vague and far-off as the clouds in the atmosphere. 13. On the whole, poor as my own success may have been, I apprehend that any intelligent man with a tongue possesses the chief requisite of oratorical power, and may develop many of the others, if he deems it worth while to bestow a great amount of labor and pains on an object which the most aecompliskcel orators, I suspect, have not found altogether satisfactory to their highest impulses. At any rate, it must bo a remarkably 1 Pretty (prft'tl). ranoously, or off-hand, without pre- * Im'provise\ to speak extempo- vioua preparation. 450 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. true man who can keep his own elevated conception of truth when the lower feeling of a multitude is assailing his natural sympathies, and who can speak out frankly the best that there is in him, when by adulterating it a little, or a good deal, he knows that he may make it ten times a3 acceptable to the audience. Hawthorne. Nathaniel Hawthorne, an American novelist and essayist, was born in Salem, Massachusetts, July 4th, 1804. Owing to ill health, at the age of ten years, he left home to try the effects of farm-life, going to a farm owired by the family, and located on the shores of Sebago Lake, Maine. He returned to Salem, resumed his studies, and graduated at Bowdoin College in 1825. In 1837 he collected his early contributions to magazines, and published them under the title of "Twice-told Tales." The work was highly lauded by the N. A. Review. It was republished, with a second series, in 1S43. Probably his most popular romances are the "Scarlet Letter," " The House of the Seven Gables," and the " Marble Faun." During the administration of President Pierce, he was U. S. Consul at Liverpool. This office he resigned in 1S57. He died suddenly, while on a journey to the White Mountains for his health, at Plymouth, New Hamp- shire, May 19, 1864. Mr. Hawthorne's literary reputation was not confined to the United States. His most important works have been republished and widely read in England, and, in the form of translations, in Germany SECTION XXVII. I. 144. A FOREST NOOK. A NOOK within the forest ; overhead The branches arch, and shape a pleasant bower, Breaking white cloud, blue sky, and sunshine bright, Into pure ivory and sapphire spots, And flecks of gold ; a soft cool emerald tint Colors the air, as though the delicate leaves Emitted self-born light. What splendid walls And what a gorgeous roof carved by the hand Of glorious Nature ! 2. Here the spruce thrusts in Its bristling plume, tipped with its pale-green points ; The scalloped beech leaf, and the birch's, cut Into firm rugged edges, interlace : While here and there, through clefts, the laurel lifts Its snowy chalices half -brim med with dew, A FOREST NOOK. 451 As though to hoard it for the haunting elves The moonlight calls to thi3 their festal hall. A thick, rich, grassy carpet clothes the earth, Sprinkled with autumn leaves. The fern displays Its fluted wreath, beaded beneath with drops Of richest brown ; the wild-rose spreads its breast Of delicate pink, and the o'erhanging fir Has dropped its dark, long cone. 3. The scorching glare Without, makes this green nest a grateful haunt For summer's radiant things ; the butterfly Fluttering within and resting on some flower, Fans his rich velvet form ; the toiling bee Shoots by, with sounding hum and mist-like wings ; The robin perches on the bending spray "With shrill, quick chirp ; and like a flake of fire The redbird seeks the shelter of the leaves. And now and then a flutter overhead In the thick green, betrays some wandering wing Coming and going, yet concealed from sight. A shrill, loud outcry — on yon highest bough Sits the gray squirrel, in his burlesque wrath Stamping and chattering fiercely : now he drops A hoarded nut, then at my smiling gaze Buries himself within the foliage. 4. The insect tribe arc hero : the ant toils on "With its white burden ; in its netted web Gray glistening o'er the bush, the spider lurks, A close crouched ball, out-darting as a hum Tells its trapped prey, and looping quick its threads, Chains into helplessness the buzzing wings. The wood-tick taps its tiny muffled drum To the shrill cricket-fife, and swelling loud, The grasshopper its swelling bugle winds. Those breaths of Nature, the light fluttering air3, Like gentle respirations, come and go, Lift on its crimson stem the niaple leaf, Displaying its white lining underneath, And sprinkle from the tree-tops golden rain Of sunshine on the velvet sward below. 452 NATIONAL FIFTH HEADER. 5. Such nooks as this are common in the woods : And all these sights and sounds the commonest In Nature, when she wears her summer prime. Yet by them pass not lightly : to the wiso They tell the beauty and the harmony Of e'en the lowliest things that God has made ; That his familiar earth and sky are full Of his ineffable power and majesty ; That in the humble objects, seen too 6ft To be regarded, is such wondrous grace, The art of man is Tain to imitate ; That the low flower our careless foot treads down Is a rich shrine of incense delicate, And radiant beautv, and that God hath formed All, from the cloud-wreathed mountain, to the grain Of silver sand the bubbling spring casts up, "With deepest forethought and severest care. And thus these noteless lovely things are types Of his perfection and divinity. A. B. Street. n. 145. FOREST TREES. I HAVE paused mure than once in the wilderness of America, to contem'plate the traces of some blast of wind, which seemed to have rushed down from the clouds, and ripped its way through the bosom of the woodlands ; rooting up, shiver- ing, and splintering the stoutest trees, and leaving a long track of desolation. There is something awful in the vast havoc made among these gigantic plants ; and in considering their magnifi- cent remains, so rudely torn and mangled, hurled down to per- ish prematurely on their native soil, I was conscious of a strong movement of sympathy wife the wood-nymphs, grieving to be dispossessed of their ancient habitations. 2. I recollect also hearing a traveler of poetical temperament, expressing the kind of horror which he felt in beholding, on the banks of the Missouri, an oak of prodigious size, which had been in a manner overpowered by an enormous wild grape-Tine. The vine had clasped its huge folds round the trunk, and from thence had wound about every branch and twig, until the mighty tree FOREST TREES. 453 had withered in its embrace. It seemed like Laoc'oon ' strag- gling ineffectually in the hideous coils of the monster Python. 3 It was tlia lion of trees perishing in the embraces of a \ tble Vj< >a. 3. I am fond of listening to the conversation of English gen- tlemen on rural concerns, and of noticing with what taste and discrimination, and what strong, unaffected interest, they will discuss topics, which, in other countries, arc abandoned to mere woodmen or rustic cultivators. I have heard a noble carl descant on park and forest scenery, with the science and feeling of a painter. Ho dwelt on the shape and beauty of particular trees on his estate with as much pride and technical precision a3 though he had been discussing the merits of statues in his collection. I found that he had gone considerable distances to examine trees which were celebrated among rural amateurs' ; for it seems that trees, like horses, have their established points of excellence, and that there arc some in England which enjoy very extensive celebrity from being perfect in their kind. •1. There is something nobly simple and pure in such a taste. It argues, I think, a sweet and generous nature, to have this strong relish for the beauties of vegetation, and thi3 friendship for the hardy and glorious sons of the forest. There is a grand- eur of thought connected with this part of rural economy. It i c ;, if I may be allowed the figure, the heroic line of husbandry. It is worthy of liberal, and free-born, and aspiring men. He who plants an oak looks forward to future ages, and plants for pos- terity. Nothing can be less selfish than this. He can not ex- pect to sit in its shade nor enjoy its shelter ; but he exults in the idea that the acorn which he has buried in the earth shall grow up into a lofty pile, and shall keep on flourishing, and increas- 1 La 5c' oon, a Trojan, and a priest an J lii3 two sons entwined by the of Apollo, who tried to dissuade his two serpents, is still extant, and prc- couutrym:ni from drawing into the served in the Vatican, at Rome, city the wooden horse of the Greeks, ' Py' thon, a celebrated serpent which finally caused the overthrow that lived in the caves of Mount of Troy. When preparing to sacri- Parnassus, but was slain by Apollo, fice a bull to Xeptune, two fearful who founded the Pythian games in serpents suddenly rushed upon him commemoration of his victory, and and his two sons, and strangled them, received, in consequence, tho sur- His death formed the subject of many name Pythius. This, however, was ancient works of art ; and a magnifi- not one of the serpents that destroy, cent group, representing the father ed Laocoon. 454 NATIONAL FIFTH READER, ing, and benefiting mankind, long after lie shall have ceased to tread his paternal fields. 5. Indeed, it is the nature of such occupations to lift the thought above mere worldliness. As the leaves of trees are said to absorb all noxious qualities of the air, and breathe forth a purer atmosphere, so it seems to me as if they drew from us all sordid and angry passions, and breathed forth peace and philan- thropy. There is a serene and settled majesty in woodland scenery that enters into the soul, and dilates and elevates it, and fills it with noble inclinations. The ancient and hereditary groves, too, that embower this island, are ■ most of them full of story. They are haunted by the recollections of the great spirits of past ages, who have sought for relaxation among them, from the tumult of arms, or the toils of state, or have wooed the muse beneath their shade. 6. It is becoming, then, for the high and generous spirits of an ancient nation to cherish these sacred groves that surround their ancestral mansions, and to perpetuate them to their de- scendants. Brought up, as I have been, in republican habits and principles, I can feel nothing of the serv'ile reverence for titled rank, merely because it is titled. But I trust I am neither churl nor bigot in my creed. I do see and feel how hereditary distinction, when it falls to the lot of a generous mind, may ele- vate that mind into true nobility. 7. It is one of the effects of hereditary rank, when it falls thus happily, that it multiplies the duties, and, as it were, extends the existence of the possessor. He does not feel himself a mere in- dividual link in creation, responsible only for his own brief term of being. Ho carries back his existence in proud recollection, and ho extends it forward in honorable anticipation. He lives with his ancestry, and he lives with his posterity. To both does he consider himself involved in deep responsibilities. As he has received much from those that have gone before, so he feels bound to transmit much to those who are to come after him. 8. His domestic undertakings seem to imply a longer exist- ence than those of ordinary men. None are so apt to build and plant for future centuries, as noble-spirited men who have re- ceived their heritages from foregoing ages. I can easily imagine, therefore, the fondness and pride with which I have noticed English gentlemen, of generous temperaments, but high aristo- GODS FIRST TEMPLES. 455 cratic feelings, contem'plating those magnificent trees, which rise liko towers and pyramids from the midst of their paternal lands. There is an affinity between all natures, animate and in- animate. The oak, in the pride and lustihood of its growth, seems to mo to take its range with the lion and the eagle, and to assimilate, in the grandeur of its attributes, to heroic and in- tellectual man. 0. With its mighty pillar rising straight and direct toward * heaven, bearing up its leafy honors from the impurities of earth, and supporting them aloft in free air and glorious sun- shine, it is an emblem of what a true nobleman should be : a refuge for the weak, — a shelter for the oppressed, — a defence for the defenceless ; warding 6ft' from them the peltings of the storm, or the scorching rays of arbitrary power. He who is this, is an ornament and a blessing to his native land. He who i3 otherwise, abuses his eminent advantages ; — abuses the grand- cur and prosperity which he has drawn from the bosom of his country. Should tempests arise, and he be laid prostrate by the storm, who would mourn over his fall ? Should he be borne down by the oppressive hand of power, who would murmur at his fate ? — " Why cumbereth he the ground ?" Ikvikg. in. 146. GOD'S FIRST TE3IPLES. THE groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, And spread the roof above them, — ere he framed The lofty vault, to gather and roll back The sound of anthems, — in the darkling wood, Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks And supplication. For his simple heart Might not resist the sacred influences, That, from the stilly twilight of the place, And from the gray old trunks, that, high in heaven, Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the sound Of the invisible breath, that swaved at once All their green tops, stole over him, and bowed His spirit with the thought of boundless Power 456 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. And inaccessible Majesty. Ah ! why Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore Only among the crowd, and under roof3 That our frail hands have raised ? Let me, at least, Here, in the shadow of this aged wood, Offer one hymn ; thrice happy, if it find Acceptance in his ear. 2. Father, thy hand Hath reared these venerable columns : thou Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst look down Upon the naked earth, and, forthwith, rose All these fair ranks of trees. They in thy sun Budded, and shook their green leaves in thy breeze, And shot toward heaven. The century-living crow, "Whose birth was in their tops, grew old and died Among their branches ; till, at last, they stood, As now they stand, massy, and tali, and dark, Fit shrine for humble worshiper to hold Communion with his Maker. 3. Hero are seen No traces of man's pomp or prido ; no silks Hustle, no jewels shine, nor envious eyes Encounter ; no fantastic carvings show The boast of our vain race to change the form Of thy fair works. But thou art here ; thou filTst The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds That run along the summits of these trec3 In music ; thou art in the cooler breath, That, from the inmost darkness of the place, Comes, scarcely felt ; the barky trunks, the ground, The fresh, moist ground, are all instinct with thee. 4. Here is continual worship ; nature, here, In the tranquillity that thou dost love, Enjoys thy presence. Noiselessly, around, From perch to perch, the solitary bird Passes ; and yon clear spring, that, midst its Zierbs, Wells softly forth, and visits the strong roots Of half the mighty forest, tells no tale Of all the good it does. GOD'S FIRST TEMPLES. 457 5. Tliou hast not left Thyself without a witness, in these shades, Of thy perfections. Grandeur, strength, and grace, Are here to speak of thee. This mighty oak — By whose immovable stem I stand, and seem Almost annihilated — not a prince, In all the proud old world beyond the deep, E'er wore his crown as loftily as he "Wears the green coronal of leaves, with which Thy hand has graced him. Nestled at his root Is beauty, such as blooms not in the glare Of the broad sim. That delicate forest flower, "With scented breath, and look so like a smile, Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mold, An emanation of the indwelling Life, A visible token of the upholding Love, That are the soul of this wide universe. 6. My heart is awed within me, when I think Of the great miracle that still goes on, In silence, round me — the perpetual work Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed Forever. Written on thy works, I read The lesson of thy own eternity. Lo ! all grow old and die : but see, again, How, on the faltering footsteps of decay, Youth presses — ever gay and beautiful youth — . In all its beautiful forms. These loftv trees "Wave not less proudly that their ancestors Holder beneath them. 7. Oh ! there is not lost One of earth's charms : upon her bosom yet, After the flight of untold centuries, The freshness of her far beginning lies, And yet shall lie. Life mocks the idle hato Of his arch enemy Death ; yea, seats himself Upon the sepulcher, and blooms and smiles, And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe Makes his own nourishment. For he came forth From thine own bosom, and shall have no end. 20 458 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 8. There have been holy men, who hid themselves Deep in the woody wilderness, and gave Their lives to thought and prayer till they outlived The generation born with them, nor seemed Less aged than the hoary trees and rocks Around them ; and there have been holy men, "Who deemed it were not well to pass life thus. But let me often to these solitudes Eetire, and, in thy presence, reassure My feeble virtue. Here, its enemies, The passions, at thy plainer footsteps, shrink, And tremble, and are still. 9. O God ! when thou Dost scare the world with tempests, set on fire The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill, With all the waters of the firmament, The swift, dark whirlwind, that uproots the woods, And drowns the villages ; when, at thy call, Uprises the great deep, and throws himself Upon the continent, and overwhelms Its cities ; — who forgets not, at the sight Of these tremendous tokens of thy power, His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by ! Oh ! from these sterner aspects of thy face Spare me and mine ; nor let us need the wrath Of the mad, unchained elements, to teach Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate, In these calm shades, thy milder majesty, And to the beautiful order of thy works Learn to conform the order of our lives. Bkyant. IV. 147. LANDSCAPE BEAUTY. IT is easy enough to understand how the sight of a picture or statue should affect us nearly in the same way as the sight of the original : nor is it much more difficult to conceive, how the sight of a cottage should give us something of the same feeling as the sight of a peasant's family ; and the aspect of a town raise many of the same ideas as the appearance of a multitude LANDSCAPE BEAUTY. 459 of persons. "We may begin, therefore, with an example a little more complicated. Take, for instance, tho case of a common English landscape — green meadows with grazing and ruminating cattle — canals or navigable rivers — well-fenced, well cultivated fields — neat, clean, scattered cottages — humble antique churches, with church-yard elms, and crossing hedgerows, — all seen under bright skies, and in good weather. 2. There is much beauty, as every one will acknowledge, in such a scene. But in what does the beauty consist ? Not cer- tainly in the mere mixture of colors and forms ; for colors more pleasing, and lines more graceful (according to any theory of grace that may be preferred), might be spread upon a board, or a painter's pallet, without engaging the eye to a second glance, or raising the least emotion in the mind : but in the picture of human happiness that is presented to our imaginations and affections ; in the visible and unequivocal signs of comfort, and cheerful and peaceful enjoyment — and of that secure and suc- cessful in'dustry that insures its continuance — and of the piety by which it is exalted — and of the simplicity by which it is con- trasted with the guilt and the fever of a city life ; in the images of health, and temperance, and plenty which it exhibits to every eye ; and in the glimpses which it affords to warmer imagina- tions, of those primitive or fabulous times, when man was un- corrupted by luxury and ambition, and of those humble retreats in which wo still delight to imagine that love and philosophy may find an unpolluted asy'luni. 3. At all events, however, it is human feeling that excites our sympathy, and forms tho truo object of our emotions. It is man, and man alone, that we see in the beauties of the earth which he inhabits ; or, if a more sensitive and extended sympa- thy connect us with the lower families of animated nature, and make us rejoice with the lambs that bleat on the uplands, or tho cattle that repose in the valley, or even with the living plants that drink the bright sun and the balmy air beside them, it is still the idea of enjoyment — of feelings that animate the exist- ence of sentient beings — that calls forth all our emotions, and is the parent of all the beauty with which we proceed to invest the inanimate creation around us. 4. Instead of this quiet and tame English landscape, let us now take a Welsh or a Highland scene, and sec whether its 460 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. beauties will admit of being explained on the same principle. Here, we shall have lofty mountains, and rocky and lonely re- cesses — tufted woods bung over precipices — lakes intersected with castled promontories — ample solitudes of unplowed and untrodden valleys — nameless and gigantic ruins — and mountain echoes repeating the scream of the eagle and the roar of the cataract. 5. This, too, is beautiful, and to those who can interpret the language it speaks, far more beautiful than the prosperous scene with which we have contrasted it. Yet, lonely as it is, it is to the recollection of man and the suggestion of human feelings that its beauty also is owing. The mere forms and colors that compose its visible appearance are no more capable of exciting any emotion in the mind than the forms and colors of a Turkey carpet. It is sympathy with the present or the past, or the imaginary inhabitants of such a region, that alone gives it either interest or beauty ; and the delight of those who behold it will always be found to be in exact proportion to the force of their imaginations and the warmth of their social affections. 6. The leading impressions here are those of romantic seclu- sion and prime'val simplicity ; lovers sequestered in these blissful solitudes, "from towns and toils remote," and rustic poets and philosophers communing with nature, and at a distance from the low pursuits and selfish malignity of ordinary mortals : then there is the subhme impression of the Mighty Powers which piled the mighty cliffs upon each other, and rent the mountains asunder, and scattered their giant fragments at their base, and all the images connected with the monuments of ancient mag- nificence and extinguished hostility — the feuds, and the combats, and the triumphs of its wild and primitive inhabitants, contrasted with the stillness and desolation of the scenes where they lie interred ; and the romantic ideas attached to their ancient tradi- tions, and the peculiarities of the actual life of their descendants — their wild and enthusiastic poetry — their gloomy superstitions — their attachment to their chiefs — the dangers, and the hard- ships, and enjoyments of their lonely huntings and fishings — their pastoral shielings on the mountains in summer — and tho tales and the sports that amuse the little groups that arc frozen into their vast and trackless valleys in the winter. 7. Add to all this the traces of vast and obscure antiquity MORNING HYMN TO MOUNT BLANC. 4G1 that arc impressed on the language and the habits of the people, and on the cliffs, and caves, the gulfy torrents of the land ; and the solemn and touching reflection, perpetually recurring, of the -weakness and insignificance of perishable man, whose genera- tions thus pass away into oblivion, with all their toils and ambi- tion ; while nature holds on her unvarying course, and pours out her streams, and renews her forests, with undecaying activity, regardless of the fate of her proud and perishable sovereign. Jeffrey. V. 148. MORNING HYMN TO MOUNT BLANC. HAST thou a charm to stay the morning star In his steep course ? — so long he seems to pause On thy l^ald, awful head, O sovereign Blanc ! The Arve and Aveiron at thy base Rave ceaselessly ; but thou, most awful form! Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines, How silently ! Around thee and above Deep is the air and dark, — substantial black, — An ebon mass ; methinks thou piercest it, As with a wedge ! But when I look again, It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine, Thy habitation from eternity ! 2. O dread and silent mount ! I gazed upon thee, Till thou, still present to the bodily sense, Didst vanish from my thought : entranced in prayer I worshiped the Invisible alone. Yet like some sweet, beguiling melody. So sweet, we know not we are listening to it, Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thoughts Yea, with my life, and life's own secret joy, — Till the dilating soul, enrapt, transfused, Into the mighty vision passing — there As in her natural form, swelled vast to Heaven. 3. Awake, my soul ! not only passive praise Thou owest — not alone these swelling tears, Mute thanks, and secret ecstasy. Awake, Voice of sweet song ! Awake, my heart, awake ! 462 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Green vales and icy cliffs all join my hymn. Thou first and chief, sole sovereign of the vale ! Oh ! struggling with the darkness all the night, And visited all night by troops of stars, Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink : Companion of the morning-star at dawn, Thyself, earth's rosy star, and of the dawn Co-herald ! wake, oh wake ! and utter praise. Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth ? Who filled thy countenance with rosy light ? Who made thee parent of perpetual streams ? 4 And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad ! Who called you forth from night and utter death, From dark and icy caverns called you forth, Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks. Forever shattered and the same forever ? Who gave you your invulnerable life, Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, Unceasing thunder and eternal foam ? And who commanded, — and the silence came, — "Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?" 5. Ye ice-falls ! ye that from the mountain's brow Adown enormous ravines slope amain, — Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice, And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge ! Motionless torrents ! silent cataracts ! — Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven Beneath the keen full moon ? Who bade the sun Clothe you with rainbows ? Who with living flowers Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet ? — " God !" let the torents, like a shout of nations, Answer ; and let the ice-plains echo, "God!" 6. " God !" sing, yo meadow-streams, with gladsome voice, Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds ! And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow, And in their perilous fall shall thunder, " God !" Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost ! Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest ! Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm 1 ELEMENTS OF THE SWISS LANDSCAPE. 403 Te lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds ! Ye signs and wonders of the elements! Utter forth " God!" and fill the hills with p>raise. 7. Once more, hoar mount ! with thy sky-pointing peak, Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard, Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene, Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast, — Thou, too, again, stupendous mountain ! thou, That, as I raise my head, awhile bowed low In adoration, upward from thy baso Slow-traveling with dim eyes suffused with tears, Solemnly scemest, like a vapory cloud, To rise before me — rise, oh ever rise, Rise, like a cloud of incense, from the earth ! Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills, Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven, Great hierarch ! tell thou the silent sky. And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun, Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God ! Coleridge. VI. 149. ELE^LENTS OF THE SWISS LANDSCAPE. PASSING out through a forest of larches, whose dark verdure is peculiarly appropriate to it, and going up toward the baths 1 of Lcuk, 2 the interest of the landscape does not at all diminish. What a concentration and congregation of all ele- ments of sublimity and beauty are before you ! what surprising contrasts of light and shade, of form and color, of softness and ruggedness ! Here are vast heights above you, and vast depths below, villages hanging to the mountain sides, green pasturages and winding paths, lovely meadow slopes enameled with flowers deep immeasurable ravines', torrents thundering down them colossal, overhanging, castellated 3 reefs of granite ; snowy peaks with the setting sun upon them. 2. You command a view far down over the valley of the 1 Baths, (bafhz). and about 5000 feet above the sea. 3 Leuk, (loik), a villago and ecle- 3 CaVtellaHed, inclosed; adorned brated bathing-place of Switzerland, with turrets and battlement*, like a in the canton of Valais, on the Rhone, castle. 464 NATIONAL FIFTH HEADER. Bhone, with its villages and castles, and its mixture of rich farms and vast beds and heaps of mountain fragments, deposited by furious torrents. What affects the mind very powerfully on first entering upon these scenes, is the deep dark blue, so in- tensely deep and overshadowing, of the gorge at its upper end, and at the magnificent proud sweep of the granite barrier, which there shuts it in, apparently without a passage. The mountains rise like vast supernatural intelligences taking a material shape $ and drawing around themselves a drapery of awful grandeur ; there is a fore/iead of power and majesty, and the likeness of a kingly crown above it. 3. Amidst all the grandeur of this scenery, I remember to have been in no place more delighted with the profuse richness, delicacy, and beauty of the Al'pine flowers. The grass of the meadow slopes, in the gorge of the Dala, had a depth and power of verdure, a clear, delicious greenness, that in its effect upon the mind was like that of the atmosphere in the brightest au- tumnal morning of the year ; or rather, perhaps, like the colors of the sky at sunset. There is no such grass-color in the world as that of these mountain meadows. It is just the same at the verge of the ice oceans of Mount Blanc. It makes you think of one of the points chosen by the Sacred Poet to illustrate the divine benevolence (and I had almost said, no man can truly understand why it was chosen, who has not traveled in Switzer- land), " Who maketh the grass to grow upon the mountains." 4. And then the flowers, so modest, so lovely, yet of such deep ex'quisite hue, enameled in the grass, sparkling amidst it, " a starry multitude," underneath such awful brooding mountain forms and icy precipices — how beautiful ! All that the poets have ever said or sung of daisies, violets, snow-drops, king-cups, primroses, and all modest flowers, is here outdone by the mute poetry of the denizens of these wild pastures. Such a meadow slope as this, watered with pure rills from the glaciers, would have set the mind of Edwards ' at work in contemplation on the Jonathan Edwards, one of tlie his thirteenth year; graduated with first metaphysicians of his age, au- the highest honors ; and continued thor of an " Essay on the Freedom his residence in the institution for of the Will," was horn in East two years, for the study of theol- Windsor, Connecticut, October 5th, ogy. He first preached to a congre- 1703. He entered Yale College in gation in New York, in his nine- ELEMENTS OF THE SWISS LANDSCAPE. 4G5 beauty of holiness. He lias connected these meek and lowly flowers with an imago, which none (nun) of the poets of this world have ever thought of. 5. To him tho divine beauty of holiness " made the soul like a field or garden of God, with all manner of pleasant flowers ; all pleasant, delightful, and undisturbed ; enjoying a sweet calm, and tho gentle, vivifying beams of the sun. The soul of a true Christian appears like such a little white ilowcr as we see in tho spring of tho year ; low and humble on tho ground ; opening its bosom to receive tho pleasant beams of the sun's glory ; re- joicing, as it were, in a calm rapture ; diffusing around a sweet fragrancy ; standing peacefully and lovingly in tho midst of other flowers round about ; all in like manner opening their bosoms to drink in the light of the sun." G. Very likely such a passage as this, coming from the soul of the great theologian (for this is the poetry of the soul, and not of the artificial sentiment, nor of the mere worship of na- ture), will seem to many persons like violets in the bosom of a glac'ier. But no poet ever described the meek, modest flowers so beautifully, rejoicing in a calm rapture. Jonathan Edwards himself, with his grand views of sacred theology and history, his living piety, and his great experience in the deep things of God, was like a mountain glacier, in one respect, as the " par'ent of perpetual streams," that arc then the deepest, when all the foun- tains of tho world arc the driest ; like, also, in another respect, that in climbing his theology you get very near to heaven, and are in a very pure and bracing atmosphere ; like, again, in this, that it requires much spiritual labor and discipline to surmount his heights, and some care not to fall into the crev&ssfes; and like, once more, in this, that when you get to the top, you have a vast, 1 wide, glorious view of God's great plan, and see things in their chains and connections, which before you only saw separate and piecemeal. Ciieever. George B. Ciieeveu was horn at ITallowell, "Maine, on the 17th of April, 1S07. lie was graduated at Bowdoin College, September, 1S25, studied theology at Andover, was licensed to preach in 1830, and was first settled as pastor over Howard Street church of Salem, Massachusetts. lie went to Europe in 18GG, teenth year. He preached in North- stalled president of Princeton College ampton twenty-three years: was in January, 1758; and died on the missionary to the Indians near Stock- 2'2d of March of the same vear. * » bridge, Mass., for six years ; was in- ' Vast, (vast), see Note 3, p. 22. 2<P ±Q>G NATIONAL FIFTH READER. ■where he spent two years and six months. In 1839 he became pastor of tha Allen Street church, New York, and in 1846 of the Church of the Puritans, a position which he still retains. In 1844 he again visited Europe for a year. Dr. Chcevcr is celebrated as a logician. He has a keen analytical mind, and com- bining fancy with logic, succeeds equally well in allegory and in argumentation His numerous and valuable works have gained him an enviable position in Amer- ican literature. He has written extensively for our ablest reviews and periodicals, lie was a valuable correspondent of the " New York Observer," when in Europe, find editor of the " New York Evangelist" during 1845 and 1846. He is now a contributor of "The Independent." His "Lectures on Pilgrim's Progress," published in 1843, and " Voices of Nature," 1852, are among the ablest of his productions, and indicate most truly his mode and range of thought. " Wander- ings of a Pilgrim in the Shadow of Mont Blanc and the Yungfrau Alp," from which the above extract is taken, published in 1846, on his return from his second i isit to Europe, met with a very favorable reception. As a writer he is always dear and unimpassioned ; he sees and hears and describes, never falling, through excess of feeling, into confusion, or figure, or redundancy of expression. The reader is strengthened by his power, calmed by his tranquillity, and incited to eelf-denying and lofty views, by his earnest and vigorous presentation of truth. vn. 150. ALPINE SCENERY. ABOVE me are the Alps — most glorious Alps — The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps, And throned Eternity in icy halls Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls The avalanche — the thunderbolt of snow ! All that expands the spirit, yet appalls, Gather around these summits, as to show How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below. 2. Lake Leman ' woos me with its crystal face, — The mirror, where the stars and mountains view The stillness of their aspect in each trace Its clear depth yields of their far height and hue. There is too much of man here, to look through, With a fit mind, the might which I behold ; But soon in me shall loneliness renew 1 L>e' man or Geneva, a crescent- eighty-four feet. Its waters, which shaped lake of Europe, between are never entirely frozen over, havo Switzerland r.ndtheSardinian States, a peculiar deep-blue color, are very Length, forty-five miles ; breadth, transparent, and contain a great va- from one to nine and a half miles ; riety of fish. Steam navigation was and greatest depth, nine hundred and introduced in 1823. ALPINE SCENERY. 467 Thoughts hid, but not less cherished than of old, Ere mingling with the herd that penned me in their fold. 3. Clear, placid Leman ! thy contrasted lake With the wide world I've dwelt in is a thing "Which w r arns me, with its stillness, to forsako Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring. This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing To waft me from distraction ; once I loved Torn ocean's roar ; but thy soft murmuring Sounds sweet as if a sister's voice reproved, That I with stern delights should e'er have been so moved, 4. It is the hush of night ; and all between Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear, Mellowed and mingling, 3-et distinctly seen, Save darkened Jura, 1 whose capped heights appear Precipitously steep ; and drawing near, There breathes a living fragrance from the shore, Of flowers yet fresh w T ith childhood ; on the ear Drops the light drip of the suspended oar, Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more. 5. He is an evening reveler, who makes His life an infancy, and sings his fill ; At intervals, some bird from out the brakes Starts into voice a moment, then is still. There seems a floating whisper on the hill ; — But that is fancy ; for the starlight dews All silently their tears of love distill, Weeping themselves away till they infuse Deep into Nature's breast the spirit of her hues. G. Ye stars ! which arc the poetry of heaven, If, in your bright leaves, we would read the fato Of men and empires, — 'tis to be forgiven, That in our aspirations to be great, Our destinies 6'erleap their mortal state, fc. — — ■ ■ 1 — — — . — - — - - ■■ - 1 1 , 3 Jura, (jo' ra), a chain of mount- breadth of thirty miles. One of the ains which separates France from culminating points, and the highest, Switzerland, extending for one hun- is Mount Molesson six thousand five dred and eighty miles in the form of hundred and eighty-eight feet above a curve, from S. to N. E., with a mean the level of tho sea. 468 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. And claim a kindred with you ; for ye are A beauty and a mystery, and create In us such love and reverence from afar, That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star. 7. All heaven and earth are still, — though not in sleep, But breathless, as we grow when feeling most ; And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep : — All heaven and earth are still ! From the high host Of stars to the lulled lake, and mountain coast, All is concentered in a life intense, "Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost, But hath a part of being, and a sense Of that which is of all Creator and Defense. 8. The sky is changed ! and such a change ! O Night, And Storm, and Darkness, ye are wondrous strong, Yet lovely in your strength, as the light Of a dark eye in woman ! Far along, From peak to peak, the rattling crags among, Leaps the live thunder ! — not from one lone cloud, But every mountain now hath found a tongue ; And Jura answers, through her misty shroud, Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud ! 9. And this is in the night. — Most glorious night ! Tliou wert not sent for slumber ! let me be ,A sharer in thy fierce and far delight, — A portion of the tempest and of thee ! How the lit lake shines, — a phosphoric sea — And the big rain comes dancing to the earth ! And now again 'tis black — and now, the glee Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain mirth, As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth. 10. Sky, mountains, river, winds, lake, lightnings ! ye, With night, and clouds, and thunder, and a soul To make these felt and feeling, well may be Things that have made me watchful : — the far roll Of your departing voices is the knoll Of what in me is sleepless, — if I rest. But where, of ye, O tempests ! is the goal ? Are ye like those within the human breast? Or do ye find, at length, like eagles, some high nest ? SELECT PASSAGES IN VERSE. 469 11. The morn is up again, the dewy morn, With breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom, Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn, And living as if earth contained no tomb, — And glowing into day : wo may resume The march of our existence ; and thus I, Still on thy shores, fair Leman ! may find room And food for meditation, nor pass by Much, that may give us pause, if pondered fittingly. Lori> BrcioN. SECTION XX NTIII. I. 151. SELECT PASSAGES IN VERSE. n^ I. EARLY DAWN.— Shelley. THE point of one white star is quivering still Deep in the orange light of widening morn, Beyond the purple mountains : through a chasm Of wind-divided mist the darker lake Reflects it. Now it wanes : it gleams again As the waves fade, and as the burning threads Of woven cloud unravel in pale air : 'Tis lost ! and through yon peaks of cloud-lilje snow The roseate sunlight quivers : hear I not The iEolian ' music of her sea-green plumes Winnowing the crimson dawn ? II. DAYBREAK.— Longfellow. A wind came up out of the sea, And said, " O mists, make room for me !" It hailed the ships, and cried, " Sail on, Ye mariners ! the night is gone !" And hurried landward far away, Crying, "Awake! it is the day!" It said unto the forest, " Shout ! Hang all your leafy banners out !" 1 2E o' li an, pertaining to JEolus, the £od of the winds; hence, music produced by wind may be termed JEolian music. 470 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. It touched the wood-bird's folded wing, And said, "O bird, awake and sing!" And o'er the farms, " O chanticleer, Your clarion blow! the day is near!" It whispered to the fields of corn, " Bow down, and hail the coming morn 1" It shouted through the belfry-tower, " Awake, bell ! proclaim the hour I" It crossed the church-yard with a sigh, And said, " Not yet ! in quiet lie !" III. DAYBREAK.— Shelley. Bay had awakened all things that be, The lark, and the thrush, and the swallow free, And the milkmaid's song, and the mower's scythe, And the matin bell, and the mountain bee : Fireflies were quenched on the dewy corn, Glow-worms went out, on the river's brim, Like lamps which a student forgets to trim : The beetle forgot to wind his horn, The crickets were still in the meadow and hill : Like a flock of rooks at a farmer's gun, Night's dreams and terrors, every one, Fled from the brains which are their prey, From the lamp's death to the morning ray. IV. SUNRISE IN SOUTH AMERICA.— Bowles.* 'Tis dawn : — the distant Andes' rocky spires, One after one, have caught the oriental fires. Where the dun condor shoots his upward flight, His wings are touched with momentary light. William Lisle Bowles was born other poems in 1789. His sonnets at Northamptonshire, England, on have, probably, never been surpassed. September 25th, 1762. He received " The Missionary of the Andes," his early education at Winchester, published in 1815, is, perhaps, as where he was at the head of the good as any of his numerous and school during his last year, and, in excellent poems. He entered the consequence, was elected a scholar ministry, and in 1804, became Vicar of Trinity College, Oxford, in 1781. of Bremhill, which was his residence In 1783 he gained the chancellor's for nearly a quarter of a century, prize for Latin verse ; and published He died at Salisbury, his last resi- sevcral of his beautiful sonnets and dence, April 7th, 1850. SELECT PASSAGES IN VERSE. 471 Meantime, beneath the mountains' glittering heads, A boundless ocean of gray vapor spreads, That o'er the champaign, stretching far below, Moves on, in clustered masses, rising slow, Till all the living landscape is displayed In various pomp of color, light, and shade, — Hills, forests, rivers, lakes, and level plain, Lessening in sunshine to the southern main. The lama's fleece fumes with ascending dew ; The gem-like humming-birds their toils renew ; And see, where yonder stalks, in crimson pride, The tall flamingo, by the river's side, — Stalks, in his richest plumage bright arrayed, With snowy neck superb, and legs of lengthening shade. V. DAWN.— Willis. Throw up the window 1 'Tis a morn for lifo In its most subtle luxury. The air Is like a breathing from a rarer world ; And the south wind is like a gentle friend, Parting the hair so softly on my brow. It has come over gardens, and flowers That kissed it are betrayed ; for as it parts, With its invisible fingers, my loose hair, I know it has been trifling with the rose, And stooping to the violet. There is joy For all God's creatures in it. The wet leaves Are stirring at its touch ; and birds are singing, As if to breathe were music ; and the grass Sends up its modest odor with the dew, Like the small tribute of humility. VI. MORNING.— Milton. Sweet is the breath of Morn, her rising sweet, "With charm of earliest birds ; pleasant the sun, When first on this delightful land ho spreads His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower, Glistering with dew ; fragrant the fertile earth After soft showers ; and sweet the coming on Of grateful evening mild : then silent Night, With this her solemn bird, and this fair moon, And these the gems of heaven, her starry train. £72 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. VII. MORNING ON THE RHINE.— Bowles. 'Twas morn, and beautiful the mountain's brow — Hung with the clusters of the bending vino — Shone in the early light, when on the Khine "We sailed, and heard the waters round the prow In murmurs parting : varying as we go, Bocks after rocks come forward and retire, As some gray convent-wall or sun-lit. sjrire Starts up, along the banks, unfolding slow. Here castles, like the prisons of despair, Frown as we pass! — There, on the vineyard's side, The bursting sunshine pours its streaming tide ; "While Gkief, forgetful amid scenes so fair, Counts not the hours of a long summer's day, Nor heeds how fast the prospect winds away. VIII. MORNING SOUNDS.— Beattie.i But who the melodies of morn can tell ?— The wild brook babbling down the mountain's side ; The lowing herd ; the sheepfold's simple bell ; The pipe of early shepherd, dim descried In the lone valley ; echoing far and wide, The clamorous horn along the cliffs above ; The hollow murmur of the ocean-tide ; The hum of bees ; the linnet's lay of love ; And the full choir that wakes the universal crove. & j The cottage cur3 at early pilgrim bark ; Crowned with her pail, the tripping milkmaid sings ; The whistling plowman stalks afield ; and hark! Down the rough slope the ponderous wagon rings ; Through rustling corn the hare astonished springs ; Slow tolls the village clock the drowsy hour ; The patridge bursts away on whirring wings ; Deep mourns the turtle in sequestered bower ; And shrill lark carols clear from her aerial tower. 1 James Beattie, the well-known and of the " Essay on Truth," was Scotch poet and moralist, author of born December 5th, 17G5, and died the celebrated poem, the " Minstrel," August 18th, 1803. SELECT PASSAGES IN VERSE. 473 IX. EARLY RISING.— IIurdis.i Rise wim the lark, and with the lark to bed. The breath of night's destructive to the hue Of every flower that blows. Go to the field, And ask the humble daisy why it sleeps, Soon as the sun departs. AVhy close the eyes Of blossoms infinite, ere the still moon Her oriental vail puts off? Think why, Nor let the sweetest blossom be exposed, That nature boasts, to night's unkindly damp. "Well may it droop, and all its freshness lose, Compelled to taste the rank and poisonous steam Of midnight theater, and morning ball. Give to repose the solemn hour she claims ; And from the fore/iead of the morning steal The sweet occasion. Oh ! there is a charm That morning has, that gives the brow of age A smack of youth, and makes the lip of youth Breathe per'fumes exquisite. Expect it not, Ye who till noon upon a down-bed lie, Indulging feverish sleep ; or wakeful, dream Of happiness no mortal heart has felt, But in the regions of romance'. Ye fair, Like you it must be wooed, or never won ; And, being lost, it is in vain ye ask For milk of roses and Olympian dew. Cosmetic art no tincture can afford The faded features to restore : no chain, Be it of gold, and strong as adamant, Can fetter beauty to the fair one's will. n. 152. SELECT PASSAGES IN VERSE. I. INVOCATION TO NIGHT.— J. F. Rollings. COME, with thy sweeping cloud and starry vest Mother of counsel, and the joy which lies In feelings deep, and inward sympathies, 5 James Hurdis, an English poet, born in 1763, and died in 1801. 474 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Soothing, like founts of health, the wearied breast. Lo ! o'er the distant hills the day-star's crest Sinks redly burning ; and the winds arise, Moving with shadowy gusts and feeble sighs Amid the reeds which veil the bittern's nest ! Day hath its melody and light — the sense Of mirth which sports round fancy's fairy mine ; But the full power, which loftier aids dispense, To speed the soul where scenes unearthly shine — Silence, and peace, and stern magnificence, And awe, and throned solemnity — are thine ! II. A TWILIGHT PICTURE.— Whittieb. The twilight deepened round us. Still and black The great woods climbed the mountain at our back : And on their skirts, where yet the lingering day On the shorn greenness of the clearing lay, The brown old farm-house like a bird's nest hung. With home-life sounds the desert air was stirred : The bleat of sheep along the hill we heard, The bucket plashing in the cool, sweet well, The pasture-bars that clattered as they fell ; Dogs barked, fowls fluttered, cattle lowed ; the gate Of the barn-yard creaked beneath the merry weight Of sun-brown children, listening, while they swung. The welcome sound of supper-call to hear ; And down the shadowy lane, in tinklings clear, The pastoral curfew of the cow-beU rung. III. EVENING.— Cbolt. "When eve is purpling cliff and cave, Thoughts of the heart, how soft ye flow I Not softer on the western wave The golden lines of sunset glow. Then all by chance or fate removed, Like spirits crowd upon the eye, — The few we liked, the one we loved, — And the whole heart is memory : And life is like a fading flower, Its beauty dying as we gaze ; Yet as the shadows round us lower, SELECT PASSAGES IN VERSE. 475 Heaven p6ur3 above a brighter blaze. When morning sheds its gorgeous dye, - Our hope, our heart, to earth is given ; But dark and lonely is the eye That turns not, at its eve, to heaven. IV. NIGHT.— COLEBIDQE.1 TnE crackling embers on the hearth are dead ; The in-door note of in'dustry is still ; The latch is fast ; upon the window-sill The small birds wait not for their daily bread : The voiceless flowers — how quietly they shed Their nightly odors ! and the household rill Murmurs continuous dulcet sounds, that fill The vacant expectation, and the dread Of listening night. And haply now she sleeps ; For all the garrulous noises of the air Are hushed in peace : the soft dew silent weeps, Like hopeless lovers, for a maid so fair .• — Oh ! that I were the happy drearn that creeps To her soft heart, to find my image there. V. NIGHT AT CORINTH.'— Byrox. 'Tis midnight : on the mountains brown The cold round moon shines deeply down : Blue roll the waters : blue the sky Spreads like an ocean hung on high, Bespangled with those isles of light, So widely, spiritually bright ; — "Who ever gazed upon them shining, And turned to earth without repining, Nor wished for wings to flee away, And mix with their eternal ray ? The waves on either shore lay there 1 Hartley Coleridge, eldest son of brilliancy of imagery, beauty of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was born thought, pure English style, and at Clevcdown, a small village near pleasing and instructive suggestions. Bristol, England, September 19th, Ho died on the Gth of January, 1849. 1796. Some of his poems are ex- 3 The night here described is sup- quisitely beautiful, and his sonnets posed to have been in 1715, when are surpassed by few in the language. Corinth, then in possession of the His prose works are remarkable for Venetians, was besieged by theTurks. 4:76 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Calm, clear, and azure as the air ; And scarce their foam the pebbles shook, But murmured meekly as the brook. The winds were pillowed on the waves ; The banners drooped along their staves, And, as they fell around them furling, Above them shone the crescent curling : And that deep silence was unbroke, Save where the watch his signal spoke, Save where the steed neighed 6ft and shrill, And echo answered from the hill ; And the wild hum of that wild host Rustled like leaves from coast to coast, As rose the Muezzin's x voice in air In midnight call to wonted a prayer. VI. A SUMMER'S NIGHT.— Bailey.' The last high upward slant of sun on the trees, Like a dead soldier's sword upon his pall, Seems to console earth for the glory gone. Oh ! I could weep to see the day die thus. The death-bed of a day, how beautiful ! Linger, ye clouds, one moment longer there ; Fan it to slumber with your golden wings! Like pious prayers, ye seem to soothe its end. It will wake no more till the all-revealing day ; When, like a drop of water, greatened bright Into a shadow, it shall show itself, With all its little tyrannous things and deeds, Unhomed and clear. The day hath gone to God, — Straight — like an infant's spirit, or a mocked And mourning messenger of grace to man. Would it had taken me too on its wings ! My end is nigh. Would I might die outright ! 1 Mu ez' zin, one appointed by the 22d, 1816. He was educated in the Turks, who use no bells for the pur- schools of his native town and at pose, to summon the religious to their the university of Glasgow. His first devotions, to the extent of his voice, and most remarkable poem, "Festus," 3 Wonted, (wunf ed). appeared in 1839. His principal ■ Philip James Bailey, an English publications since are the "Angel poet, was born in Nottingham, April World " and " Mystic." SELECT PASSAGES IN VERSE. 477 So o'er tho sunset clouds of red mortality The emerald hues of deathlessness diffuse Their glory, heightening to the starry blue Of all embosoming eternity. VII. NIGHT AND DEATH.— Wiiite." Mysterious night ! when our first parent knew Thee, from report divine, and heard thy name, Did he not tremble for this lovely frame, This glorious canopy of light and blue ? Yet 'neam a curtain of translucent dew, Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, Hesperus, 2 with the host of heaven came ; And lo ! creation widened in man's view. Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed Within thy beams, Sun ? or who could find, While fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed, That to such countless orbs thou madest us blind ? Why do we then shun death with anxious strife ? — If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life ? VIII. NIGHT.— Shelley. How beautiful this night ! The balmiest sigh, Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear, Were discord to the speaking quietude That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven's ebon vault, Studded with stars unutterably bright, Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls, Seems like a canopy which love has spread To curtain her sleeping world. Y6n gentle hills, Eobed in a garment of untrodden snow ; Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend, — So stainless, that their white and glittering spires Tinge not the moon's pure beam ; yon castled steep, Whose banner hangtth o'er the time-worn tower So idly, that rapt fancy deemeth it A metaphor of peace ; — all form a scene 1 Joseph Blanco White, a Spanish, the magazines and periodical press, gentleman of Irish descent, "who lie was born in 1775, and died in 1841. came to England in lS10,and devoted 5 Hes' perils, the evening star, himself to literature, chiefly through especially Venus. 478 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Where musing solitude might love to lift Her soul above this sphere of earthliness ; Where silence, undisturbed, might watch alone, So cold, so bright, so still. IX. THE MOON.— Charlotte Smith.* Queen of the silver bow ! by thy pale beam, Alone and pensive, I delight to stray, And watch thy shadow trembling in the stream, Or mark the floating clouds that cross thy way : And while I gaze, thy mild and placid light Sheds a soft calm upon my troubled breast ; And 6ft I think, fair planet of the night, That in thy orb the wretched may have rest ; The sufferers of the earth perhaps may go, Released by death, to thy benignant sphere, And the sad children of despair and woe Forget, in thee, their cup of sorrow here. Oh ! that I soon may reach thy world serene Poor wearied pilgrim in this toiling scene ! X. THE STARS.— Darwin.» Roll on, ye stars ; exult in youthful prime ; Mark with bright curves the printless steps of Time ; Near and more near your beamy cars approach, And lessening orbs on lessening orbs encroach. Flowers of the sky, ye, too, to age must yield, Frail as your silken sisters of the field. 1 Mrs. Charlotte Smith (Miss for her poetry, which abounds with Turner) was born in King Street, touches of tenderness, grace, and St. James Square, London, May beauty. She died on the 28th of 4th, 1749. Her first collection of October, 180G. sonnets and other poems was very " Erasmus Darwin, an English popular, passing through no less physician, poet, and botanist, was than eleven editions. Her first born at Elton, in 1731, and after novel, " Emmeline," which was ex- taking his degree at Edinburgh, ceedingly popular, appeared in 1788. pursued his professional career at Her novels and other prose works, Litchfield, from which place he re. in all about forty volumes, were moved to Derby, where he died in much admired by Sir Walter Scott 1802. Dr. Darwin was an original and other contemporaries ; but she thinker, a great adept in analogies, is now most known and most valued and nn able versifier. LOCHINVAR'S RIDE. 479 Star after star from heaven's high arch shall rush, Suns sink on suns, and systems systems crush, Headlong, extinct, to one dark center fall, And death, and night, and chaos mingle all ; Till o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm, Immortal Nature lifts her changeful form, Mounts from her funeral pyre, on wings of flame, And soars and shines, another and the same. SECTION XXIX. I. 153. LOCHINVAR'S RIDE. OH, young Lochinvar is come out of the West, — Through all the wide Border his steed was the best ! And save his good broadsirord he weapons had none, — He rode all unarmed and he rode all alone. So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war, There never was knight like the young Lochinvar. 2. He stayed not for brake, and he stopped not for stone, He swam the Eske river where ford there was none ; But ere he alighted at Netherby gate, The bride had consented, the gallant came late ; For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war, Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar. 3. So boldly he entered the Xetherby hall, 'Mong bridesmen, and kinsmen, and brothers, and all : Then spoke the bride's father, his hand on his sword (For the poor craven bridegroom said never a word), " O, come ye in peace here, or come ye in war, Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar ?" 4. "I long wooed your daughter, — my suit you denied ; — Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide ; And now am I come with this lost love of mine, To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine. There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far, That would gladly be bride to the vourig Lochinvar.' 1 4:80 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 5. The bride kissed the goblet ; the knight took it up, He quaffed off the wine, and he threw down the cup, She looked down to blush, and she looked up to sigh, With a smile on her lips, and a tear in her eye. He took her soft hand, ere her mother could bar, — "Now tread we a measure V said young Lochinvar. 6. So stately his form, and so lovely her face, That never a hall such a galliard did grace ; While her mother did fret, and her father did fume, And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume ; And the bride-maidens whispered, "'Twere better, by far, To have matched our fair cousin with young Lochinvar." 7. One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear, When they reached the hall-door, and the charger stood near ; So light to the croup the fair lady he swung, So light to the saddle before her he sprung ! " She is won ! we are gone, over bank, bush, and scar ; They'll have fleet steeds that follow," quoth young Lochinvar. 8. There was mounting 'mong Grsemes of the Netherby clan ; Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran : There was racing and chasing on Cannobie Lee, But the lost bride of Netherby ne'er did they see. So daring in love, and so dauntless in war, Have ye e'er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar ? Scott. II. 154. THE KING OF DENMARK'S RIDE. ~VYT"ORD was brought to the Danish king V V (Hurry !) That the love of his heart lay suffering, And pined for the comfort his voice would bring ; (O ! ride as though you were flying !) Better he loves each golden curl On the brow of that Scandinavian girl Than his rich crown jewels of ruby and pearl ; And his Rose of the Isles is dying ! 2. Thirty nobles saddled with speed ; (Hurry!) THE KING OF DENMARK'S RIDE 481 Each one mounting a gallant steed Which ho kept for battle and days of need ; (0 ! ride as though you were flying !) Spurs were struck in the foaming flank ; "Worn-out chargers staggered and sank ; Bridles were slackened, and girths were burst ; But ride as they would, the king rode first, For his Rose of the Isles lay dying ! 3. His nobles are beaten, one by one ; (Hurry !) They have fainted, and faltered, and homeward gone ; His little fair page now follows alone, For strength and for courage trying The king looked back at that faithful child ; "Wan was the face that answering smiled ; They passed the drawbridge with clattering din, Then he dropped ; and only the king rode in Where his Rose of the Isles lay dying ! 4 The king blew a blast on his bugle horn ; (Silence !) No answer came ; but faint and forlorn An echo returned on the cold gray morn, Like the breath of a spirit sighing. The castle portal stood grimly wide ; None welcomed the king from that weary ride ; For dead, in the light of the dawning day, The pale sweet form of the wclcomer lay, Who had yearned for his voice while dying ! 5. The panting steed, with a drooping crest, Stood weary. The king returned from her chamber cf lest, The thick sobs choking in his breast ; And, that dumb companion eyeing, The tears gushed forth which he strove to check ; He bowed his head on his charger's neck : " O, steed — that every nerve didst strain, Dear steed, our ride hath been in vain To the halls where my love lay dying l" Caroline No-rton. 4S2 NATIONAL FIFTH HEADER. m. 155. SHERIDAN'S RIDE. UP from the South at break of day, Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay, The affrighted air with a shudder bore, Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain's door, The terrible grumble and rumble and roar, Telling the battle was on once more, And Sheridan — twenty miles away. 2. And wider still those billows of war Thundered along the horl'zon's bar, And louder yet into Winchester rolled The roar of that red sea uncontrolled, Making the blood of the listener cold As he thought of the stake in that fiery fray, And Sheridan — twenty miles away. 3. But there is a road from Winchester town, A good, broad highw T ay leading down ; And there, through the flush of the morning light, A steed, as black as the steeds of night, Was seen to pass as with eagle flight — As if he knew the terrible need, He stretched away with the utmost speed ; Hills rose and fell — but his heart was gay, W T ith Sheridan fifteen miles away. 4. Still sprung from these swift hoofs, thundering South, The dust, like the smoke from the cannon's mouth, Or the trail of a comet sweeping faster and faster, Foreboding to foemen the doom of disaster ; The heart of the steed and the heart of the master Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls, Impatient to be where the battle-field calls ; Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play, AVith Sheridan only ten miles away. 6. Under his spurning feet, the road Like an arrowy Al'pine river flowed, And the landscape sped away behind Like an ocean flying before the wind ; THK HIDE FROM GHENT TO A IX. 483 And the steed, like a bark fed with furnace ire, Swept on with his wild eyes full of fire. But, lo ! he is nearing his heart's desire — He is snuffing the smoke of the roaring fray, With Sheridan only five miles away. 6. The first that the General saw were the groups Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops ; — What was done — what to do — a glance told him both, Then striking his spurs with a terrible oath, He dashed down the line 'mid a storm of huzzahs, And the wave of retreat checked its course there because The sight of the master compelled it to pause. With foam and with dust the black charger was gray ; By the flash of his eye, and his red nostril's play, He seemed to the whole great army to say, " I have brought you Sheridan all the way From Winchester down lo save the day!" 7. Hurrah, hurrah for Sheridan ! Hurrah, hurrah for horse and man ! And when their statues are placed on high Under the dome of the Union sky, — The American soldier's Tenrole of Fame, — There, with the glorious General's name, Be it said in letters both bold and bright : " Here is the steed that saved the day By carrying Sheridan into the fight From Winchester — twenty miles away!" T. B. Reed. IV. 15G. THE RIDE FROM GHENT TO AIX. I SPRANG to the stirrup (stur'rup), and Joris and he : I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three ; "Good speed !" cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew; " Speed !" echoed the wall to us galloping through ; Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest, And into the midnight we galloped abreast. 2. Not a word to each other ; we kept the great pace — Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place ; 484 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. I turned in rny saddle and made its girths tigLfc, Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right, Rebuckled the check-strap, chained slacker the bit, Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit. 3. 'Twas moonset at starting ; but while we drew near Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear ; At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see ; At Diifleld 'twas morning as plain as could be ; And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-chime — > So Joris broke silence with " Yet there is time ! " 4. At Aerschot, up leaped of a sudden the sun, And against him the cattle stood black every one, To stare through the mist at us galloping past ; And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last, With resolute shoulders, each butting away The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray. 5. And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track ; And one eye's black intelligence, — ever that glance O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance ; And the thick heavy spume-flakes, which aye and anon His fierce lips shook upward in galloping on. 6. By Hasselt Dirck groaned ; and cried Joris, " Stay spur ! Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault's not in her ; We'll remember at Aix" (aks) — for one heard the quick wheeze Of her chest, saw the stretched neck, and staggering knees, And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank, As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank. 7. So we were left galloping, Joris and I, Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky ; The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh ; 'Neath our feet broke the brittle, bright stubble like chaff ; Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white, And " Gallop" gasped Joris, " for Aix is in sight ! 8. " How they'll greet us !" — and all in a moment his roan Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone ; And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate, With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim, And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim. CHARACTER OF HAMLET. 485 9. Then I cast loose my buff-coat, each holster let fall, Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all, Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear, Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without peer ; Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good, Till at length into Aix lioland galloped and stood. 10. And all I remember is friends flocking round, As I sate with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground ; And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine, As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine, "Which (the burgesses voted by common consent) Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent. Browning. Robert Browning, one of the most remarkable English poets of the age, was born in Camberwell, a suburb of London, in 1812, and educated at the London University. At the age of twenty he went to Italy, where he passed some time studying the mediaeval history of the country, and making himself acquainted with the life, habits, and characteristics of its people. The effect of his Italian life is distinctly perceivable in the selection of subjects for his poems and his treatment of them. His first work, " Paracelsus," a dramatic poem of great power, appeared in is;;5. Mr. Browning was married to Elizabeth Barrett, in November, 1846. His collective poems, in two volumes, appeared in London in 1840, and since then three additional volumes were publbhcd, all of which have been republished in this country. Though a true poet, of original genius, both dramatic and lyrical, his poems are not popular among the masses. Much of his poetry is written for poets, requiring careful study, and repaying all that is given to it. A few of his dramatic lyrics, however, such as "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," "The Lost Leader," "Incident of the French Camp," and "How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix," are unrivaled in elements of popularity. SECTION XXX. I. 157. CHARACTER OF HAMLET. HAMLET is a name : his speeches and sayings but the idle coinage of the poet's brain. But are they not real ? They are as real as our own thoughts. Their reality is in the reader's mind. It is we who are Hamlet. This play is a prophetic truth, which is above that of history. 2. Whoever has become thoughtful and inel'aneholv through his own mishaps or those of others ; whoever has borne about 4:8(3 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. wifih liim the clouded brow of reflection, and thought himself " too much i' th' sun ;" whoever has seen the golden lamp of day dimmed by envious mists rising in his own breast, and could find in the world before him only a dull blank, with nothing left remarkable in it ; whoever has known " the pangs of despised love, the insolence of office, or the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes ;" he who has felt his mind sink within him, and sadness cling to his heart like a malady ; who has had his hopes blighted and his youth staggered by the apparitions of strange things ; who can not be well at ease, while he sees evil hovering near him like a specter ; whose powers of action have been eaten up by thought ; he to whom the universe seems infinite, and himself nothing ; whose bitter- ness of soul makes him careless of consequences : this is the true Hamlet. 3. We have been so used to this tragedy, 1 that we hardly know how to criticise it, any more than we should know how to describe our own faces. But we must make such observa- tions as we can. It is the one of Shakspeare's plays, that we think of oftenest, because it abounds most in striking reflections on human life, and because the distresses of Hamlet are trans- ferred, by the turn of his mind, to the general account of human- ity. Whatever happens to him, we apply to ourselves ; because he applies it so himself, as a means of general reasoning. 4. He is a great nioralizer, and what makes him worth at- tending to, is, that he moralizes on his own feelings and expe- rience. He is not a commonplace pedant. If Lear shows the greatest depth of passion, Hamlet is the most remarkable for the ingenuity, originality, and unstudied development of char- acter. There is no attempt to force an interest : every thing is left for time and cir'cumstances to unfold. The attention is excited without effort ; the incidents succeed each other as matters of course ; the characters think, and speak, and act, just as they might do, if left entirely to themselves. There is no set purpose, no straining aj; a point. 5. The observations are suggested by the passing scene — the gusts of passion come and go like sounds of music borne on the 1 Trag' e dy, a poem prepared for persons, having a fatal and mourn- the stage, representing some remark- ful end ; any event by which human able action, performed by illustrious lives are lost by human violence. SCENES FROM HAMLET. . 437 'wind. The whole play is an exact transcript of what might be supposed to have taken place at the court of Denmark, at the remote period of time fixed upon, before the modern refinements in morals and manners were heard of. It w T ould have been m'teresting enough to have been admitted, as a by-stander in such a scene, at such a time, to have heard and seen something of what was going on. 6. But hero we are more than spectators. We have not only "the outward pageants and the signs of grief," but "we have that within which passes show." We read the thoughts of the heart, we catch the passions living as they rise. Other dramatic writers give us very fine versions and paraphrases of nature ; but Shakspeare, together with his own comment, gives us the original text, that we may judge for ourselves. This is a great advantage. 7. The character of Hamlet is itself a pure effusion of genius. It is not a character marked by strength of will, or even of passion, but by refinement of thought and sentiment. Hamlet is as little of the hero as man well can be : but he is a young and princely novice, full of high enthusiasm and quick sensi- bility, — the sport of circumstances, questioning with fortune, and refining on his own feelings ; and forced from the natural bias of his disposition by the strangeness of his situation. Hazlitt. William Hazlitt, an English author, was horn at Maidstone, April 10th, 1778. After graduating at college, he first became a painter, but finding he was not likely to reach the highest standard, he renounced the art and embarked in a literary career. His essay on "The Principles of Human Action," appeared in 1805. Thenceforth his principal support was derived from his contributions to the periodicals, and his occasional publications and lectures. Among his best known works are : "Characters of Sbakspeare's Plays," which appeared in London in 1817; "A View of the English Stage," 1818; "Lectures on the En- glish Poets," 1818; "Lectures on the English Comic Writers," 1819; "Tkble Talk," 1821 ; and " Life of Napoleon Bonaparte." He lived In Loudon daring the last twenty years of his life, in a house in Westminster, once occupied by Milton. He died September IS, 1SC0. n. 158. SCENES FROM HAMLET. PART FIRST. Enter the King, Queen, Hamlet, Lords, and Attendants. KING. Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death The memory be green ; and that it us befitted To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom 488 NATIONAL FIFTH READER To be contracted in one brow of woe ; Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature, That we with wisest sorrow think on him, Together with remembrance of ourselves. Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen. The imperial jointress of this warlike state, Have we, as 'twere, with a defeated joy, — Taken to wife : nor have we herein barred Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone With this affair along : — For all, our thanks. But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son, Ham. A little more than kin, and less than kind. [Aside King. How is it that the clouds still hang on you ? Ham. Not so, my lord, I am too much i J the sun. Queen. Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted color off, And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark. Do not, for ever, with thy vailed lids, Seek for thy noble father in the dust : Thou know'st, 'tis common ; all that live, must die, Passing through nature to eternity. Ham. Ay, madam, it is common. Queen. If it be, Why seems it so particular with thee ? Ham. Seems, madam ! nay, it is ; I know not seems. 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, Nor customary suits of solemn black, Nor windy suspiration of forced breath, No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage, Together with all forms, modes, shows of grief, That can denote me truly : These, indeed, seem ; For they are actions that a man might play : But I have that within, which passeth show ; These, but the trappings and the suits of woe. King. 'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet, To give these mourning duties to your father : But, you must know, your father lost a father ; That father lost, lost his ; and the survivor bound, In filial obligation, for some term To do obsequious sorrow : but to persevere SCENES FROM HAMLET. 489 In obstinate condolemtnt, is a course Of impious stubbormiess ; 'tis unmanly grief : It shows a will most incorrect to heaven ; A heart unfortified, or mind impatient : An understanding simple and unschooled : For what, we know, must be ; and is as common As any of the most vulgar thing to sense, Why should we, in our peevish opposition, Take it to heart ? Fye ! 'tis a fault to heaven. We pray you, throw to earth This unprevailing woe ; and think of us As of a father : for let the world take note, You are the most immediate to our throne ; Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son. Queen. Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet : I pray thee stay with us ; go not to Wittenberg. Ham. I shall in all my best obey you, madam. King. Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply ; Be as ourself in Denmark. — Madam, come ; This gentle and unforced accord of Hamlet Sits smiling to my heart : in grace whereof, No jocund health, that Denmark drinks to-day But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell ; Ilc-speaking earthly thunder. Come away. [Exeunt King, Queen, Lords, &c. Earn. Oh, that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew ! Or that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon 'gainst self-slaughter ! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world ! Fye on't ! Oh fye ! 'tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed : things rank, and gross in nature, Possess it merely. That it should come to this ! But two months dead ! — nay, not so much, not two ; So excellent a king ; that was, to this, Hyperion ' to a satyr : 3 so loving to my mother, 1 Hy pe'ri on, the father of Au- of Apollo, the god of day, who was rora, and the Sun and Moon ; or, as distinguished for his beauty. Shakspeare represents, this is a name ' Sa'tyr, a demigod or dehy of 21* 490 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. That lie might not beteem'the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth ! Must I remember ? And yet, within a month, — Let me not think on't ; — Frailty, thy name is woman I— A little month ; or ere those shoes were old, "With which she followed my poor father's body, Like Ni'obe, all tears ; — why she, even she, — heaven ! a beast, that wants discourse of reason, Would have mourned longer, — married with my uncle, My father's brother ; but no more like my father, Than I to Hercules : It is not, nor it can not come to, good ; But break, my heart ; for I must hold my tongue ! Enter Horatio, Bernardo, and Marcellus. Hor. Hail to your lordship ! Ham. I am glad to see you well : Horatio, — or I do forget myself. Hor. The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever. Ham. Sir, my good friend ; I'll change that name with you And what make you from Wit'tenberg, Horatio ? — Marcellus ? Mar. My good lord. Ham. I am very glad to see you ; good even, sir, — But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg ? Hor. A truant disposition, good my lord. Ham. I would not hear your enemy say so ; Nor shall you do mine ear that violence, To make it truster of your own report Against yourself : I know, you are no truant. But what is your affair in Elsinore ? We'll teach you to drink deep, ere you depart. Hor. My lord, I came to see your father's funeral. Ham. I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-student ; 1 think, it was to see my mother's wedding. Hor. Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon. the wood, described as a monster, the nose round and turned upward, part man and part goat, and charac- the ears pointed, with two small terized by riotous merriment and in- horns growing out of the forehead, dulgence in sensual pleasure. Sa- and a tail like that of a goat, tyrs are represented with bristly hair, ' Be teem', allow; Buffer. SCENES FROM HAMLET. 491 Ham. Thrift, thrift, Horatio ! the funeral baked meats Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables. 'Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio ! — My father, — Methinks, I see my father. Ilor. Where, My lord ? Ham. In my mind's eye, Horatio. Hor. I saw him once, he was a goodly king. Ham. He was (woz) a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again. Hor. My lord, I think I saw him yesternight Ham. Saw ! whom ? Hor. My lord, the king your father. Ham. The king, my father ? Hor. Season your admiration for a while With an atteut ear ; till I may deliver, Upon the witness of these gentlemen, This marvel to you. Ham. For heaven's love, let me hear. Hor. Two nights together had these gentlemen, Marcellus and Bernardo, on their watch, In the dead waist and middle of the night, Been thus encountered. A figure like your father, Armed at point, exactly, cap-a-pe, Appears before thein, and, with solemn march, Goes slow and stately by them : thrice he walked, By their oppressed and fear-surprised eyes, Within his truncheon's length ; whilst they, distilled Almost to jelly with the act of fear, Stand dumb, and speak not to him. This to me In dreadful secrecy impart they did ; And I with them, the third night kept the watch , WTiere, as they had delivered, both in time, Form of the thing, each word made true and good, The apparition comes : I knew your father ; These hands are not more like. Ham. But where was this ? Mar. My lord, upon the platform where we watched. Ham. Did you not speak to it ? 492 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Hor. My lord, I did ; But answer made it none (nun) ; yet once, niethought, It lifted up its head, and did address ^Itself to motion, like as it would speak ; But, even then, the morning cock crew loud ; And, at the sound, it shrunk in haste away, And vanished from our sight. Ham. 'Tis very strange. Hor. As I do live, my honored lord, 'tis true ; And we did think it writ down in our duty, To let you know of it. Ham. Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles ma Hold you the watch to-night ? All. We do, my lord. Ham. Armed, say you ? All. Armed, my lord. Ham. From top to toe ? All. My lord, from head to foot. Ham. Then saw vou not His face ? Hor. O, yes, my lord ; he wore his beaver up Ham. What ! looked he frowningly ? Hor. A countenance more In sorrow than in anger. Ham. Pale, or red ? Hor. Nay, very pale. Ham. And fixed his eyes upon you ? Hor. Most constantly. Ham. I would, I had been there. Hor. It would have much amazed you. Ham. Very like, Very like. Stay'd it long ? Hor. While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred* Ham. His beard was grizzled ? — no ? Hor. It was, as I have seen it in his life, A sable silvered. Ham. I will watch to-night ; Perchance, 'twill walk again. Hor. I wan-ant, 'twill. Ham. If it assume my noble father's person, SCENES FKOM HAMLET. 493 I'll speak to it, though hell itself should gape, 1 And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all, If you have hitherto concealed this sight, Let it be tenable in your silence still ; And whatsoever else shall hap to-night, Give it an understanding, but no tongue : I will requite your loves. So, fare you well : Upon the platform, 'twixt eleven and twelve, I'll visit you. All. Our duty to your honor. Ham. Your loves, as mine to you : Farewell. [Exeunt Horatio, Marcellus, and Bernardo. My father's spirit in arms ! all is not well ; I doubt some foul play : 'would, the night were come ! Till then, sit still, my soul. Foul deeds will rise, Though all the earth 6'erwhelm them, to men's eyes. m. 159. SCENES FROM HAMLET. PART SECOND. Enter Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus. HAMLET. The air bites shrewdly ; it is very cold. Horatio. It is a nipping and an eager air. Ham. What hour now ? Hor. I think, it lacks of twelve. Mar. No, it is struck. Hor. Indeed ? I heard it not ; then it draws near the season, "Wherein the spirit held his wont 3 to walk. [A flourish of trumpets, and ordnance shot off, within. What does this mean, my lord ? Ham. The king doth wake to-night, and takes his rouse,' And, as he drains his draughts of R/ienish down, The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out The triumph of his pledge. Hor. Is it a custom ? Ham. Ay, marry, is't ; • _ — _ — . — . — - ■ » 1 Gape, (gap). * Rouse, (rouz), a carousal ; a fes- 1 Wotit, (wunt), custom ; habit. tival ; a drinking frolic. 494 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. But to my mind, — though I am native here, And to the manner born, — it is a custom More honored in the breach, than the observance. Enter Ghost. Hor. Look, my lord, it comes ! Ham. Angels and ministers of grace defend us ! Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damned, Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell, Be thy intents wicked, or charitable, Thou com'st in such a questionable shape, That I will speak to thee ; I'll call thee Hamlet, King, father, royal Dane : O, answer me : Let me not burst in ingorance ! but tell, Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death, Have burst their cere'ments ! why the sepulcher Wherein we saw thee quietly in-urned, Hath 6ped his ponderous and marble jaws, To cast thee up again ! What may this mean, That thou, dead corse, again, in complete steel, Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon, Making night hideous ; and we fools of nature, So horribly to shake our disposition, With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls ? Say why is this ? wherefore ? what should we do ? Hor. It beckons you to go away with it, As if it some impartment did desire To you alone. Mar. Look, with what courteous 1 action It waves you to a more removed ground ; But do not go with it. Hor. No, by no means. Ham. It will not speak ; then I will follow it. Hor. Do not, my lord. Ham. Whv, what should be the fear ? I do not set my life at a pin's fee ; And, for my soul, what can it do to that, Being a thing immortal as itself? It waves me forth again ; — I'll follow it. 1 • 3 Corteous, (kert' e us), of court-like or elegant and condescending man new ; well-bred ; complaisant. SCENES FROM HAMLET. 4 f J.j Hor. What, if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord, Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff, That beetles 6'er his base into the sea ? And there assume some other horrible form, And draw you into madness ? Ham. It waves me still : — Go on, I'll follow thee. Mar. You shall not go, my lord. Ham. Hold off your hands. Hor. Be ruled, you shall not go. Ham. My fate cries out, And makes each petty artery in this body As hardy as the Ne'mean lion's nerve. — [Ghost beckons. Still am I called ; — unhand me, gentlemen : — [Breaking from them. By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets 1 me : — I say, away! — Go on, I'll follow thee. [Exeunt Ghost and Hamlet, followed by Horatio and Marcellus. Re-enter Ghost and Hamlet. Ham. Whither wilt thou lead me ? speak, I'll go no further. Ghost. Mark me. Ham. I will. Ghost. My hour is almost come, When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames Must render up myself. Ham. Alas, poor ghost! GJiost. Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing To what I shall unfold. Ham. Speak, I am bound to hear. Ghost. So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear. Ham. What? Ghost. I am thy father's spirit ; Doomed for a certain term to walk the night, And, for the day confined to fast in fires, Till the foul crimes, done in my days of nature, Axe burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid To tell the secrets of m}' prison-house, I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word 1 Lets, retards ; hinders. 496 NATIONAL FIFTH HEADER. Would harrow up thy soul ; freeze thy young blood ; Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres ; Thy knotted and combined locks to part, And each particular hair to stand on end, Like quills upon the fretful porcupine : But this eternal blazon must not be To ears of flesh and blood :— List, — list, — O list! — If thou didst ever thy dear father love, ■ Ham. heaven ! GJwst. Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder. Ham. Murder? Ghost. Murder most foul, as in the best it is ; But this most foul, strange, and unnatural, Ham. Haste me to know it ; that I, with wings as swift As meditation, or the thoughts of love, May sweep to my revenge. Ghost. I find thee apt ; And duller should'st thou be than the fat weed That rots itself in ease on Lethe ' wharf, Would'st thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear : 'Tis given out, that sleeping in mine orchard, A serpent stung me ; so the whole ear of Denmark Is by a forged process of my death Rankly abused : but know, thou noble youth, The serpent that did sting thy father's life, Now wears his crown. Ham. 0, my prophetic soul ! my uncle ! Ghost. Ay, — With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts, He won to his shameful love The will of my most seeming virtuous queen : O, Hamlet, what a falling-off was there ! From me, whose love was of that dignity, That it went hand and hand even with the vow I made to her in marriage ; \ and to decline 1 L6' the, a river of Africa, water- cause the name signifies oblivion, ing the city of Berenice, which, be- was feigned to cause forgetfulness cause it runs many miles under of all that was past to those who ground, was fabled by the poets to drank of its waters ; oblivion ; for- be one of the rivers of hell, and be- get-fulness. SCENES FROM HAMLET. 497 Upon a wretch, whose natural gifts were poor To those of mine ! — But, soft ! methinks, I scent the morning air ; Brief let me be : — Sleeping within my orchard, My custom always of the afternoon, Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole, With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial, And in the porches of mine ears did pour The leperous distillment ; whose effect Holds such an enmity with blood of man, That, swift as quicksilver, it courses through The natural gates and alleys of the body ; And, with a sudden vigor, it doth posset And curd, like eager droppings into milk, The thin and wholesome blood : so did it mine ; Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand, Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatched : Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, No reckoning made, but sent to my account With all my imperfections on my head. Ham. O, horrible ! O, horrible ! most horrible ! Ghost. If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not ; But, howsoever thou pursu'st this act, Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive Against thy mother aught : leave her to heaven, And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge, To goad and sting her. Fare thee well at once ! The glow-worm shows the matin to be near, And 'gins to pale his ineffectual fire : Adieu, adieu, adieu ! remember me. [Exit. Ham. Hold, hold, my heart : And you my sinews, grow not instant old, Bat bear me stiffly up ! — Remember thee ! Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat In this distracted globe. Ilemember thee ? Yea, from the table of my memory I'll wipe away all trivial fond records, All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past That youth and observation copied there ; And thy commandment all alone shall live £9S NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Within the book and volume of my brain, Unmixed with baser matter : yes, by heaven, I have sworn't. IV. 160. SCENES FROM HAMLET. 1 PART THIIID. PoLOtfius interrupts Hamlet who is reading a booh. POLONIUS. Do you know me, my lord ? Hamlet. Excellent well ; you are a fishmonger. Pol. Not I, my lord. Ham. Then I would you were so honest a man. Pol. Honest, my lord ? Ham. Ay, sir ; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand. Pol. That's very true, my lord. Ham. Have you a daughter ? Pol. I have, my lord. Ham. Let her not walk i' the sun : friend, look to't. Pol. How say you by that? [Aside.] Still harping on my daughter : — yet he knew me not at first ; he said, I was a fish- monger. He is far gone, far gone ; and, truly, in my youth I suffered much extremity for love ; — very near this. I'll speak to him again. [To Hamlet.] What do you read, my lord? Ham. Words, words, words. Pol. What is the matter, my lord ? Ham. Between whom ? Pol. I mean the matter that you read, my lord. Ham. Slanders, sir : for the satirical rogue says here, that old men have gray beards ; that their faces are wrinkled ; all of which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down ; for yourself, sir, should be as old as I am, if, like a crab, you could go backward. 1 Hamlet, after the interview with of his former companions, to draw the ghost of his father, in order that out, if possible, the secret which he may verify his belief of the mur- oppresses him. Polonius, lord chain- der and successfully avenge it, affects berlain of the palace, an aged man, insanity. The king and queen are also tries to fathom him, and con- so disturbed by this that they send fidently declares him crazy through Rosencrantz and Guildenstcrn, two lovesickness. SCENES FROM HAMLET. 499 Pol. [Aside.'] Though this be madness, yet there's method in it. [To Hamlet.] Will you walk out of the air, my lord? Ham. Into my grave ? Pol. Indeed, that is out o' the air. [Aside] How pregnant sometimes his replies are ! a happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be deliv- ered of. [ To Hamlet.] My honorable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you. Ham. You can not, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal ; except my life, except my life, ex- cept my life. Pol. Faie you well, my lord. [Exit. Enter Rosencbantz and Qutldenstebn. Guil. My honored lord ! — Bos. My most dear lord ! — Ham My excellent good friends ! How dost thou, Guilden- stern ? Ah, Roscncrantz ! Good lads, how do ye both ? What news? Pos. None, my lord, but that the world 's grown honest. Ham. Then is dooms-day near. But your news is not true. Let me question more in particular. What have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune, that she sends you to prison hither ? Guil. Prison, my lord! Ham. Denmark's a prison. Pos. Then is the world one. Ham. A goodly one ; in which there are many con'nnes, wards, and dungeons ; Denmark being one of the worst. Pos. We think not so, my lord. Ham. Why, then, 't is none (nun) to you ; for there is noth- ing (nuth'ing) either good or bad, but thinking makes it so : to me it is a prison. Pos. Why, then your ambition makes it one : 't is too narrow for your mind. Ham. 0, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count mysell a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams. But, in the beaten way of friendship, what make you at Elsinore ? Pos. To visit you, my lord ; no other occasion. Ham. Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks ; but I thank you. Were you not sent for ? Is it your own inclining? 500 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Is it a free visitation ? Coine, come ; deal justly with me : come, come ; nay, speak. Guil. What should we say, my lord ? Ham. Any thing — hut to the purpose. You were sent for ; and there is a kind of confession in your looks, which your modesties have not craft enough to color ; I know the good king and queen have sent for you. Bos. To what end, my lord ? Ham. That you must teach me. But let me conjure' you, by the rights of our fellowship, by the consonancy of our youth, by the obligation of our ever-preserved love, and by what more dear a better proposer could charge you withal, be even and direct with me, whether ye were sent for, or no ? Bos. [To Guildenstern.] What say you ? Ham. [Aside.'] Nay, then I have an eye of you. [To them.] If you love me, hold not off. Guil. My lord, we were sent for. Ham. I will tell you why ; so shall my anticipation prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the king and queen moult no feather. I have of late (but, wherefore, I know not,) lost all my mirth, foregone all custom of exercises : and, indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition, that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile prorn'ontory ; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majes- tical roof, fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. WTiat a piece of work is a mr,n ! How noble in reason ! how infinite in faculties! in form, and moving, how express and admirable ! in action, how like an angel ! in apprehension, how like a god ! the beauty of the world ! the paragon of animals ! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust ? — Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. Your hands. You are welcome ; but my uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived. Guil. In what, my dear lord ? Ham. I am but mad north-north-west : when the wind is southerlv, I know a hawk from a hand-saw. Be'enter Polonius. Pol. My lord, the queen would speak with you, and presently. Ham. Do you see yonder cloud, that's almost in shape of a camel ? SCENES FROM HAMLET. 501 Pol. By the mass, and t is like a camel, indeed. Ham. Methinks, it is like a weasel. Pol. It is backed like a weasel. Ham. Or, like a whale. Pol. Very like a whale. Ham. Then will I come to my mother by and by. — They fool me to the top of my bent. — I will come by and by. Pol. I will say so. [Exit Polonius. Ham. By and by is easily said. — Leave me, friends. [Exeunt Ros. and Guil. 'Tis now the very witching time of night ; When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world : now could I drink hot blood, And do such bitter business as the day Would quake to look on. Soft ; now to my mother ! — heart, lose not thy nature ; let not ever The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom ; Let me be cruel, not unnatural : 1 will speak daggers to her, but use none. V. 161. SCENES FROM HAMLET. PART FOURTH. 1 H Enter Queen and Hamlet. AMLET. Now, mother, what's the matter? Queen. Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended. Ham. Mother, you have my father much offended. Queen. Come, come, you answer with an idle toDgue. Ham. Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue. Queen. Why, how now, Hamlet ? Ham. . "What's the matter now? Queen. Have you forgot me ? Ham. No, by the rood, 2 not so : 1 Hamlet, doubtful of the relation the plot, and he becomes fully con- of the ghost, and fearful that it vinced that his uncle was the mut- might be only the tale of a wicked derer of his father, spirit, laid a plot to convince himself 2 Rood, (rfld), the cross, or an im- of his uncle's participation in the age of Christ on the cross, with the murder : and the scene here given Virgin Mary and a saint, or St. occurs after the successful issue of John, on each side of it. 502 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. You are the queen, your husband's brother's wife ; And — would it were not so ! — you are ray mother. Queen. Nay, then I'll set those to you that can speak. Ham. Come, come, and sit you down ; you shall not budge ; You go not till I set you up a glass Where you may see the inmost part of you. Queen. What wilt thou do ? — thou wilt not murder me ? Ham. Leave wringing of your hands : peace ; sit you down, And let me wring your heart : for so I shall, If it be made of penetrable stuff ; If damned custom have not brazed it so, That it is proof and bulwark against sense. Queen. WTiat have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue In noise so rude against me ? Ham. Such an act, That blurs the grace and blush of modesty ; Calls virtue, hypocrite ; takes off the rose From the fair forehead of an innocent love, And sets a blister there ; makes marriage vows As false as dicer's oath ! oh, such a deed As from the body of contraction plucks The very soul ; and sweet religion makes A rhapsody of words. Heaven's face doth glow ; Yea, this solidity and compound mass, With tristful visage, as against the doom, Is thought-sick at the act. Queen. Ah me ! what act, That roars so loud, and thunders in the index ? Ham. Look here, upon this picture, and on this ; The counterfeit presentment of two brothers. See what a grace was seated on this brow : Hyperion's curls ; the front of Jove himself ; An eye like Mars, 1 to threaten and command ; A station like the herald Mercury, 2 New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill ; 1 Mars, an ancient Roman god,' est honors at Rome ; also, a planet, who, at an early period, was iden- 2 Mer'cury, in mythology, themes' tified with the Greek Ares, or the sender and interpreter of the gods, god delighting in bloody war. Next and the god of eloquence and of com- to Jupiter, Mars enjoyed the high- nierce, called Hermes by the Greeks SCENES FROM HAMLET. 503 A combination, and a form, indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal, To give the world assurance of a man : This was your husband. — Look you, now, what follows r Here is your husband ; like a mildewed ear, Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes ? Could you on this fail mountain leave to feed, And batten on this moor? Ha! have 3-ou eyes ? You can not call it love ; for at your age The heyday in the blood is tame, it's humble, And waits upon the judgment ; and what judgment Would step from this to this ? Queen. Oh, speak no more ! Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul ; And there I see such black and grained spots, As will not leave their tinct. 1 Oh, speak to me no more! These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears : No more, sweet Hamlet ! Ham. A murderer and a villain : A slave that is not twentieth part the time Of your precedent lord : — a vice of kings : A cut-purse of the empire and the rule ; That from a shelf the precious diadem stole, And put it in his pocket ! Queen. No more ! Ham. A king Of shreds and patches ; — [Enter Ghost. Save me and hover o'er me with vour win^s, You heavenly guards ! — What would your gracious figure ? Queen. Alas, he's mad ! Ham. Do you not come your tardy son to chide, That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by The important acting of your dread command? O, say! Ghost. Do not forget : this visitation Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose. But look! amazement on thy mother sits : O, step between her and her fighting soul : 1 Tinct, (tlngkt), spot ; stain ; color. 504 NATIONAL FIFTH READER, Speak to her, Hamlet. Ham. How is it with you, lady ? Queen. Alas ! how is't with you, That you do bend your eye on vacancy, And with the in corporal air do hold discourse ? Whereon do you look ? Ham. On him ! on him ! Look you, how pale he glares ! His form and cause conjoined, preaching to stones, Would make them capable. Do not look on me, Lest, with this piteous action, you convert My stern effects : then what I have to do Will want true color ; tears, perchance, for blood. Queen. To whom do you speak this ? Ham. Do you see nothing there ? Queen. Nothing at all ; yet all that is I see. Ham, Nor did you nothing hear ? Queen. No, nothing, but ourselves. Ham. Why, look you there ! look, how it steals away ! My father, in his habit as he lived ! Look, where he goes, even now, out at the portal ! [Exit Ghost. Queen. This is the very coinage of your brain : This bodiless creation, ecstasy Is very cunning in. Ham. Ecstasy ! My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time, And makes as healthful music. It is not madness, That I have uttered : bring me to the test, And I the matter will re-word ; which madness Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace, Lay not that flattering unction to your soul, That not your trespass, but my madness, speaks : It will but skin and film the ulcerous place, While rank corruption, mining all within, Infects unseen. Confess yourself to Heaven ; Repent what's past ; avoid what is to come ; And do not spread the compost on the weeds To make them ranker. Queen. O Hamlet ! thou hast cleft my heart in twain. Ham. Oh, throw away the worser part of it, SOCIETY THE (J HEAT EDUCATOR. 505 And live the purer with the other half. Good-night : once more, good-night ! And when you are desirous to be blest, I'll blessing beg of you. Shakspeahe. SECTION XXXI. I. 102. SOCIETY THE GREAT EDUCATOR. SOCIETY is the great educator. Mure than universities, more than schools, more than books, society educates. Nature is the schoolhouse, and many lessons are writ* en upon its walls ; but man is the effective teacher. Parents, relatives, friends, associates ; social manners, maxims, morals, worships, the daily example, the fireside conversation, the casual inter- view, the spirit that breathes through the whole atmosphere of life — these are the powers and influences that train the mass of mankind. Even books, which are daily assuming a larger place in human training, are but the influence of man on man. 2. It is evident that one of the leading and ordained means by which men are raised in the scale of knowledge and virtue, is the conversation, example, influence of men superior to them- selves. It seems, if one may say so, to be the purpose, the in- tent, the effort of nature — of Providence, to bring men together, and to bring them together, for the most part, in relations of discipleship and teaching. 3. The social nature, first, draws them to intercourse. Per- petual solitariness is intolerable. But then, much of their in- tercourse is on terms of inequality. Equals in age, people in society, seldom meet, but one is able to teach or tell something, and the other is desirous to learn it. The lower are strongly drawn to the higher. Children are not content to be always by themselves ; curiosity, reverence, filial affection draw them to their superiors. In the whole business of life — tillage, mechanism, manufacture, merchandise — a younger generation is connected with an elder, to be taught bv it. 4. Barbarous tribes go on forever in their barbarism, till they are brought into the presence of superior culture. The Chinese 22 506 NATIONAL FIFTH HEADER. exclusion has kept that people stationary, though civilization has been knocking at their gates for more than three centuries. And it is better — I speak of mere results, not principles — that the way for light should be opened into that country by English cannon balls, or the rending asunder of the empire, than never to be opened. 5. But such a fixed barrier to civilization is a solitary phe- nomenon in history. Nations, the barbarous and civilized, by some means or other, in the everlasting fer'ruent of human interests and passions, are thrown into communication and interfusion — if by no better means, by war, by subjugation, by capture : for Providence, if one may say so, will have them come together. Human injustice and cruelty are not to be abetted in this matter. There are better ways, which Christian civilization ought to learn — travel, trade, missions of light and mercy ; but, some way, the nations must mingle together, or the ignorant will never be enlightened, the savage never civilized. 6. Where are the ruder peasantry of Europe now resorting, for work and for subsistence ? To the heart of England and America. Many an enlightened man, building a railroad, or improving his estate, many a refined woman in her household, is made their teacher — little suspecting the office, perhaps. It were fortunate, I think, for both parties, if they did ; it might make the relation more kindly and holy ; but any way, the work will be done. How fine and delicate and penetrating is this power of man to influence his kind ! A word, a tone, a look — nothing (nuth'ing) goes to the, depths of the soul like that. The dexterous hands, and the embracing arms, the com- manding eye and the persuasive lips and the stately presence are fitted for nothing more remarkably than to teach. 7. Traveling on a railroad, one day, I saw a little child in the company of some half a dozen affectionate relatives. From hand to hand it passed — to be amused, to be soothed, to be taught something from moment to moment — to receive mrny lessons, and more caresses, all the day long. " Here," I thought with myself, " is a company of unpaid, loving, willing, unwearied teachers. Such governesses could scarce be hired on any terms." "Well, it was not a nobleman's child ; it was not a rich man's child, that I know : the same thing, substantially, is passing in every house where childhood lives, every day. SOCIETY THE GREAT EDUCATOR. 5^7 8. How sharp, too, and jealous, is the guardianship of society over the virtue of its members ! How preventive and corrective are its sorrow and indignation at their failures ! A parent's grief is such a warning and retribution as prisons and dungeons could not bring upon his erring child. And then it is to be observed that the grosser and mure ruinous vices are such as soon betray themselves, and can not be long concealed. The police of society is very likely to find them out. 9. And selfishness, covetousness, vanity, do not escape. The repulsive atmosphere of common feeling about the seiiish man, the cold shadow in which the miser walks, the stinging criti- cisms upon the vain man, proclaim that society is not an idle censor What does public opinion brand, what does literature satirize, all over the world, but the faults and foibles of men ? 10. Society has thrones for the good and noble, and purple and gold are but rags and dust in the comparison. Society has prisons and penitentiaries for the base and bad, and stone walls and silent cells are not so cold and death-like. Dewey. n. 163. THE SCHOOLMASTER AND THE CONQUEROR. THERE is nothing (nuth'ing) which the adversaries of im- provement are mure wont (wimt) to make themselves merry with than what is termed the "march of intellect;" and here I will confess, that I think, as far as the phrase goes, they are in the right. It is a very absurd, because a very incorrect expression. It is little calculated to describe the operation in question. It does not picture an image at all resembling the proceedings of the true friends of mankind. It much more re- sembles the progress of the enemy to all improvement. The conqueror moves in a march. He stalks onward with the "pride, pomp, and circumstance of war'' — banners flying — shouts rending the air — guns thundering — and martial music pealing, to drown the shrieks of the wounded, and the lamenta'- tions for the slain. 2. Not thus the schoolmaster, in his peaceful vocation. He meditates and prepares in secret the plans which are to bless mankind ; he slowly gathers round him those who are to further their execution — he quietly, though firmly, advances in his 508 NATIONAL FIFTH READER'. humble path, laboring steadily, but calmly, till he has opened to the light all the recess'es of ignorance, and torn up by the roots the weeds of vice. His is a progress not to be compared with any thing like a march ; but it leads to a far more brilliant triumph, and to laurels more imperishable than the destroyer of his species, the scourge of the world, ever won. 3. Such men — men deserving the glorious title of Teachers of Mankind — I have found, laboring conscientiously, though, perhaps, obscurely, in their blessed vocation, wherever I have gone. I have found them, and shared their fellowship, among the daring, the ambitious, the ardent, the indomitably active French ; I have found them among the persevering, resolute, industrious Swiss ; I have found them among the laborious, the warm-hearted, the enthusiastic Germans ; I have found them among the high-minded, but enslaved Italians (i tal'yanz) ; and in our own country, God be thanked, their number everywhere abound, and are every day increasing. 4. Their calling is high and holy ; their fame is the property of nations ; their renown will fill the earth in after ages, in pro- portion as it sounds not far off in their own times. Each one of those great teachers of the world, possessing his soul in peace, performs his appointed course ; awaits in patience the fulfill- ment of the promises ; and, resting from his labors, bequeaths his memory to the generation whom his works have blessed, and sleeps under the humble but not inglorious epitaph, com- memorating " one in whom mankind lost a friend, and no man got rid of an enemy." Brougham. Henry Brougham, the distinguished philanthropist, orator, and statesman, was horn in Westmoreland, England, in 1779. He received his preparatory education at the high school in Edinburgh, and in 1795 entered the university, where his course was a complete triumph. He was one of the projectors and chief contributors of the Edinburgh Review, and in 1803 published " An Inquiry into the Colonial Policy of the European Powers," which at once called the attention of the public to its author. After his admission to the Scottish bar, he visited the north of Europe, and on his return commenced practice in the Court of King's Bench, London, where he soon gained both popularity and emolument. He first entered Parliament in 1810, and here the vastness and universality of his acquirements, his singular activity, and untiring energies rendered him very serviceable in the promotion of reforms. He was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow in 1825, and was president of the "Society for the Dif- fusion of Useful Knowledge," established in 1827. He was appointed Lord Chancellor and elevated to the peerage in 1830. Since 1S34 he has been con- stantly exerting his transcendent abilities in the House of Lords in favor of all measures that are calculated to advance the best interests of society. Among INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 509 hla most valuable works arc, "Biography of Eminent Statesmen and Men ol Letters in the Reign of George III.," 3 vols. ; "A Discourse on Natural Theo- logy," and an edition of his Parliamentary Speeches, revised by himself. I lis speeches unquestionably stand in the very lirst rank of oratorical masterpieces. in. iG4. INTELLECTUAL POWER IF wo pass in review all the pursuits of mankind, and all the ends they aim at under the instigation of their appetites and passions, or at the dictation of shallow utilitarian philos'- ophy, we shall find that they pursue shadows and worship idols, or that whatever there is that is good and great and catholic in their deeds and purposes, depends for its accomplishment upon the intellect, and is accomplished just in proportion as that in- tellect is stored with knowledge. And whether we examine the present or the past, we shall find that knowledge alone is real power — "more powerful," says Eacon, "than the will, com- manding the reason, understanding, and belief," and "setting up a throne in the spirits and souls of men." 2. We shall find that the progress of knowledge is the only true and permanent progress of our race, and that however in- ventions, and discoveries, and events which change the face of human affairs, may appear to be the results of contemporary efforts, or providential accidents, it is, in fact, the men of learn- ing who lead with noiseless step the vanguard of civilization, that mark out the road over which — opened sooner or later — posterity marches ; and from the abundance of their precious stores sow seed by the wayside, which spring up in due season and produce a hundred fold ; and cast bread upon the waters which is gathered after many days. The age which gives birth to the largest niunber of such men is always the most enlight- ened ; and the age in which the highest reverence and most intelligent obedience is accorded to them, always advances most rapidly in the career of improvement. 3. And let not the ambitious aspirant to enrol himself with this illustrious band, to fill the throne which learning " setteth up in the spirits and souls of men," and wield its absolute power, be checked, however humble he may be, however un- likely to attain wealth or office, or secure homage as a practical man or man of action, by any fear that true knowledge can be 510 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. stifled, overshadowed, or compelled to involuntary barrenness. Whenever or wherever men meet to deliberate or act, the trained intellect will always master. 4. But for the most sensitive and modest, who seeks retire- ment, there is another resource. The public press, accessible to all, will enable him, from the depths of solitude, to speak trumpet-tongued to the four corners of the earth. No matter how he may be situated — if he has facts that will bear scrutiny, if he has thoughts that burn, if he is sure he has a call to teach — the press is a tripod ' from which he may give utterance to his oracles ; and if there be truth in them, the world and future ages will accept it. 5. It is not commerce that is king, nor manufactures, nor cotton, nor any single art or science, any more than those who wear the bauble crowns. Knowledge is sovereign, 2 and the press is the royal seat on which she sits, a sceptered monarch. From this she rules public opinion, and finally gives laws alike to prince and people, — laws framed by men of letters ; by the wandering bard ; by the philosopher in his grove or portico, his tower or laboratory ; by the pale student in his closet. 6. We contemplate with awe the mighty movements of the last eighty years, and we held our breath while we gazed upon the heaving human mass so lately struggling, like huge levia- than, over the broad face of Europe. What has thus stirred the world ? The press. The press, which has scattered far and wide the sparks of genius, kindling as they fly. Books, journals, pamphlets, these are the cannon-balls — moulded often by the obscure and humble, but loaded with fiery thoughts — which have burst in the sides of every structure, political, social, and religious, and shattered, too often, alike the rotten and the sound. For in knowledge, as in everything else, the two great principles of Good and Evil maintain their eternal warfare, — a war amid and above all other wars. 7. But in the strife of knowledge, unlike other contests, vic- tory never fails to abide with truth. And the wise and vir- tuous who find and use this mighty weapon, are sure of their 1 TrT pod, any utensil or vessel, the temple of Apollo, at Delplii, sat supported on three feet, as a stool, while giving responses to those con- a table, an altar, and the like. On suiting the oracle, inch a stool the Pythian priest, in 2 Sovereign (euV er in). MORAL PROGRESS OF TIIE AMERICAN PEOPLE. 5H reward. It may not come soon. Years, ages, centuries may pas3 awa}', and the grave-stone may have crumbled above tho Lead that should have worn the wreath. But to the eye of faith, the vision of the imperishable and inevitable halo that shall enshrine the memory is forever present, cheering and sweetening toil, and compensating for privation. And it often happens that the great and heroic mind, unnoticed by the world, buried apparently in profoundest darkness, sustained by faith, works out the grandest problems of human progress ; working under broad rays of brightest light ; light furnished by that inward and immortal lamp, which, when its mission upon earth has closed, is trimmed anew by angels' hands, and placed among the stars of heaven. Hammond. James Henry Hammond, a statesman and a political writer of distinction, was born in Newberry District, South Carolina, November 15, 1807. He graduated in South Carolina College, in Columbia, of whicb his fatber was president, in 1S25 • was admitted to the bar in 1S28; and in 1830 became editor, at Columbia, of the "Southern Times." He retired from his profession, on his marriage with lOsa Fitzsimmons, in 1831. He was elected member of Congress, in which body he took his seat in 1S35. Owing to the failure of his health, he resigned his seat in Congress the following spring, and traveled a year and a half in Europe. He was, in 1843, elected Governor of his native State, in which capacity he gave special attention to the State military organization, Introducing the West Point system into several of the academies and colleges. In 1857 he was elected to the U. S. Senate, from which he withdrew on the secession of South Carolina. After the outbreak of hostilities he remained quietly at home, superintending the affairs of his large estate, until declining health withdrew him from active pursuits. He was an ardent supporter of Mr. Calhoun's views, advocating with zeal and ability the doctrine of State Rights. His published speeches and essays, and his elaborate review of the Life, Character, and Services of John C. Calhoun, severally display the statesman, and the industrious and energetic scholar. The above extract is from an Oration before the Literary Societies of S. C. College. He died November 13, 1SGL IT. 165. MORAL PROGRESS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. A KIND of reverence is paid by all nations to antiquity. There is no one that does not trace its lineage from the gods, or from those who were especially favored by the gods. Every people has had its ago of gold, or Augustan age, or heroic age — an age, alas! forever passed. These prejudices are not altogether unwholesome. Although they produce a conviction of declining virtue, which is unfavorable to generous emulation, yet a people at once ignorant and irrevcrential, would necessarily 512 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. become licentious. Nevertheless, such prejudices ought to be modified. 2. It is untrue, that in the period of a nation's rise from dis- order to refinement, it is not able to continually surpass itself. We see the present, plainly, distinctly, with all its coarse out- lines, its rough inequalities, its dark blots, and its glaring de- formities. We hear all its tumultuous sounds and jarring dis- cords. We see and hear the past, through a distance which re- duces all its inequalities to a plane, mellows all its shades into a pleasing hue, and subdues even its hoarsest voices into harmony. 3. In our own case, the prejudice is less erroneous than in most others. The revolutionary age was truly a heroic one. Its exigencies called forth the genius, and the talents, and the vir- tues of society, and they ripened amid the hardships of a long and severe trial. But there were selfishness, and vice, and fac- tions, then, as now, although comparatively subdued and re- pressed. You have only to consult impartial history, to learn that neither public faith, nor public loyalty, nor private virtue, culminated at that period in our own country ; while a mere glance at the literature, or at the stage, or at the politics of any Europe'an country, in any previous age, reveals the fact that it was marked, more distinctly than the present, by licentious morals and mean ambition. 4. It is only just to infer in favor of the United States an im- provement of morals from their established progress in knowl- edge and power ; otherwise, the philosophy of society is misun- derstood, and we must change all our courses, and henceforth seek safety in imbecility, and virtue in superstition and ignorance. What shall be the test of the national morals ? Shall it be the eccentricity of crimes ? Certainly not ; for then we must com- pare the criminal eccentricity of to-day with that of yesterday. The result of the comparison would be only this, that the crimes of society change with changing circumstances. 5. Loyalty to the state is a public virtue. Was it ever deeper- toned or more universal than it is now ? I know there are eb- ullitions of passion and discontent, sometimes breaking out into disorder and violence ; but was faction ever more effectually disarmed and harmless than it is now ? — There is a loyalty that springs from the affection that we bear to our native soil. This we have as strong as any people. But it is not the soil alone, MORAL PROGRESS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. 51 3 nor yet the soil beneath our feet and the skies over our heads, that constitute our country. It is its freedom, equality, justice, greatness, and glory. Who amoDg us is so low as to be insen- sible of an interest in them ? Four hundred thousand natives of other lands every year voluntarily renounce their own sovereigns, and swear fealty to our own. Who has ever known an Ameri- can to transfer his allegiance permanently to a foreign power ? 6. The spirit of the laws, in any country, is a true index to the morals of a people, just in proportion to the power they exercise in making them. Who complains here or elsewhere, that crime or immorality blots our statute-books with licentious enactments? The character of a country's magistrates, legisla- tors, and captains, chosen by a people, reflects their own. It is true that in the earnest canvassing which so frequently recurring elections require, suspicion often follows the magistrate, and scandal follows in the footsteps of the statesman. Yet, when his course has been finished, what magistrate has left a name tarnished by corruption, or what statesman has left an act or an opinion so erroneous that decent charity can not excuse, though it may disapprove ? What chieftain ever tempered military tri- umph with so much moderation as he who, when he had placed our standard on the battlements of the capital of Mexico, not only received an offer of supreme authority from the conquered nation, but declined it ? 7. The manners of a nation are the outward form of its iuner life. Where is woman held in so chivalrous respect, and where does she deserve that eminence better ? Where is property more safe, commercial honor better sustained, or human life more sacred ? Moderation is a virtue in private and in public life. Has not the great increase of private wealth manifested itself chiefly in widening the circle of education and elevating the standard of popular intelligence? With forces which, if combined and directed by ambition, would subjugate this conti- nent at once, we have made only two very short wars — the one confessedly a war of defence, and the other ended by paying for a peace and for a domain already fully conquered. 8. Where lies the secret of the increase of virtue which has thus been established ? I think it will be found in the entire emancipation of the consciences of men from either direct or indirect control by established ecclesiastical or political systems. 22* 514 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Religious classes, like political parties, have been left to compete in the great work of moral education, and to entitle themselves to the confidence and affection of society, by the purity of their faith and of their morals. 9. I am well aware that some, who may be willing to adopt the general conclusions of this argument, will object that it is not altogether sustained by the action of the government itself, however true it may be that it is sustained by the great action of society. I can not enter a field where truth is to be sought among the disputations of passion and prejudice. I may say, however, in reply first, that the governments of the United States, although more perfect than any other, and although they embrace the great ideas of the age more fully than any other, are, nevertheless, like all other governments, founded on com- promises of some abstract truths and of some natural rights. 10. As government is impressed by its constitution, so it must necessarily act. This may suffice to explain the phenomenon complained of. But it is true, also, that no government ever did altogether act out, purely, and for a long period, all the vir- tues of its original constitution. Hence it is that we are so well told by Bolingbroke, 1 that every nation must perpetually renew its constitution or perish. Hence, moreover, it is a great excel- lence of our system, that sovereignty resides, not in Congress and the President, nor yet in the governments of the States, but in the people of the United States. If the sovereign be just and firm and uncorrupted, the governments can always be brought back from any aberrations, and even the constitutions themselves, if in any degree imperfect, can be amended. This great idea of the sovereignty of the people over the government glimmers in the British system, while it fills our own with a broad and glow- ing light. Seward. William H. Seward, son of Dr. Samuel S. Seward, of Florida, Orange County, New York, was born in that village on the 16th of May, 1S01. lie en- 1 Henry St. John Viscount Bo- was elevated to the peerage in 1712. lingbroke, an orator, statesman, and Unfortunately, none of the speeches philosophical essayist, was horn at delivered by him in either house Battersea, in Surrey, England, in have been preserved, though they are 1672. He was educated at Eton and reported to have been very brilliant. Oxford. St. John entered parliament He died in 1751, and a complete in 1701, and was successively secre- edition of his works, in five volumes, tary of war and secretary of state. He appeared soon after. TO THE SKYLARK. 515 tered Union College in 1816. After completing his course with distinguished honor, he studied law at New York with John Anthon,and afterward with John Duer and Ogden Hoffman. Soon after his admission to the bar he commenced practice in Auburn, New York, where be married in 1824. He rose rapidly to distinction in his profession. In 1838 he first took a prominent part in politics, when he labored for the reelection of John Quincy Adams to the presidency. He became a member of the State Senate in 1830, where he remained for four years. He made a tour in Europe, of a few months, in 1833, during which he wrote a series of letters, which were published in the " Albany Evening Jour- nal." He was elected governor of the State by the whig party in 1838 ; reelected in 1840; but in 1842, declining a renomiuation, retired to the practice of his profession. He was chosen United States senator in 1849, by a large majority ; and, on the expiration of his term in 1855, he was reelected to the same body. When Mr. Lincoln became president, Mr. Seward was appointed secretary of State. In 1853 an edition of his works was published in New York, in three octavo volumes, containing his specehes in the State and national Senate, and before popular assemblies, with his messages as governor, his forensic argu- ments, miscellaneous addresses, letters from Europe, and selections from his public correspondence. His writings and speeches are models of correct com- position ; their grammatical construction, rhetorical finish, and accurate arrange- ment, rendering them well-nigh faultless. Though not remarkable for oratory, his classic style, his perfect self-control, his truthful manner, his uncommon 6ensc, and his thorough knowledge of the leading questions of the day, com- mand the attention and admiration of the hearer. The above extract is from his address at Yale College, 1S54. H SECTION XXXII. L 166. TO A SKYLARK. AIL to thee, blithe spirit ! — bird thou never wert, — That from heaven, or near it, pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. 2. Higher still, and higher, from the earth thou springest Like a cloud of fire ; the blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost (dust) soar, and soaring ever, singtst. 3. In the golden lightening of the sunken sun, O'er which clouds are brightening, thou dost float and run, Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. 4. The pale purple even melts around thy flight : Like a star of heaven, in the broad daylight Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight. 516 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 5. Keen are the arrows of that silver sphere, Whose intense lamp narrows in the white dawn clear Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. 6. All the earth and air with thy voice is loud, As, when night is bare, from one lonely cloud The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed. 7. "What thou art we know not : what is most like thee ? From rainbow clouds there flow not drops so bright to see, As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. 8. Like a poet hidden in the light of thought, Singing hymns unbidden, till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not. 9. Like a high-born maiden in a palace tower, Soothing her love-laden soul in secret hour AVith music sweet as love, which overflows her bower. 10. Like a glow-worm golden in a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden its aerial hue Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view. 11. Like a rose embowered in its own green leaves, By warm winds deflowered, till the scent it gives Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy- winged thieves. 12. Sound of vernal showers on the twinkling grass, Bain-awakened flowers, all that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass. 13. Teach us, sprite or bird, what sweet thoughts are thine : I have never heard praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. 14. Chorus hymene'al, or triumphal chant, Matched with thine would be all but an empty vaunt — A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. 15. What objects are the fountains of thy happy strain ? "What fields, or waves, or mountains ? what shapes of sky or plain ? What love of thine own kind ? what ignorance of pain ? 16. With thy clear keen joyance languor can not be : Shadow of annoyance never came near thee : Thou lovest ; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. 17. Waking or asleep, thou of death must deem TO THE SKYLARK. 517 Things more true and deep than we mortals dream, Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream ? 18. We look before and after, and pine for what is not : Our sincerest laughter with some pain is fraught : Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. 19. Yet if we could scorn hate, and pride, and fear ; If we were things born not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever could come near. 20. Better than all measures of delight and sound, Better than all treasures that in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground ! 21. Teach me half the gladness that thy brain must know, Such harmonious madness from my lips would flow, The world should listen then, as I am listt ning now. Shelley. Percy Btssiie Siiei.t.et, a poet of admirable genius, the son and heir of a wealthy baronet in Sussex, England, was born in that county in 1702. He was educated first at Eton, and afterward at Oxford, where he studied hard, but irreg- ularly ; incessantly speculated, thought, and read ; became entangled in meta- physical difficulties, and, at the age of seventeen, published, with a direct appeal to the heads of the colleges, a pamphlet entitled "The Necessity of Atheism." He was immediately expelled; and his friends being disgusted with him, he was cast on the world a prey to the undisciplined ardor of youth and passion. At the age of eighteen he printed his poem of " Queen Mab," in which singular poetic beauties arc interspersed with many speculative absurdities. Shortly after this he married a young woman of humble station in life, which completed his alienation from his family. After a tour on the continent, during which he visited some of the most magnificent scenes of Switzerland, he settled near Windsor Forest, where he composed his poem, " Alastor, or the Spirit of Soli- tude," which contains descriptive passages excelled by none of his subsequent works. His domestic unhappincss soon after induced him to separate from his wife, and the unhappy woman destroyed herself. This event subjected him to much misrepresentation, and by a decree of chancery he was deprived of the guardianship of his two children, on the ground of immorality and atheism. Not long after his wife's death he married the daughter of Godwin, authoress of "Frankenstein," and other novels. They resided for a few months in Buck- inghamshire, where they made themselves beloved by their charity for the poor. Here he composed the "Revolt of Islam," a poem still more energetic than "Alastor." In the spring of 1818 he and his family removed to Italy, where they at length settled themselves at Pisa. In that country, with health already failing, Shelley produced some of his principal works, in a period of four years. In July, 1823, he was drowned in a storm which he encountered in his yacht on the Gulf of Spezzia. In accordance with his own desire, his body was burned, under the direction of Lord Byron and other friends, and the ashes were carried to Rome and deposited in the Protestant burial-ground, near those of a child he had lost in that city. A complete edition of "Shelley's Poetical Works," with notes by his widow, has been published. The above ode to the Skylark bears, perhaps, as pure a poetical stamp as any of his productions. 518 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. n. 167. SELECT PASSAGES IN VERSE. I. VOICE OF THE WIND.— Henry Taylor. riH HE wind, when first he rose and went abroad JL Through the waste region, felt himself at fault, Wanting a voice, and suddenly to earth Descended with a wafture and a swoop, Where, wandering volatile, from kind to kind, He wooed the several trees to give him one. First he besought the ash ; the voice she lent Fitfully, with a free and lashing change, Flung here and there its sad uncertainties : The aspen next ; a fluttered frivolous twitter Was her sole tribute : from the willow came, So long as dainty summer dressed her out, A whispering sweetness ; but her winter note Was hissing, dry, and reedy : lastly the pine Did he solicit ; and from her he drew A voice so constant, soft, and lowly deep, That there he rested, welcoming in her A mild memorial of the ocean cave Where he was born. II. MINISTRATIONS OF NATURE.— Coleridgb. With other ministrations thou, O Nature, Healest thy wandering and distempered child ! Thou pourest on him thy soft influences, Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets, Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters ; Till he relent, and can no more endure To be a jarring and discordant thing Amid this general dance and minstrelsy ; But, bursting into tears, wins back his way, His angry spirit healed and harmonized By the benignant touch of love and beauty. III. MOONLIGHT.— Shakspeare. How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank ? Here we will sit, and let the sounds of music Creep in our ears : soft stillness, and the night, SELECT PASSAGES IN VERSE. 519 Become the touches of sweet harmony. Sit, Jessica. 1 Look how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patens ' of bright gold. There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdest, But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed chcrubins : Such harmony is in immortal souls ; But w T hilo this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we can not hear it. IV. THE BELLS OF OSTEND.— Bowles. No, I never, till life and its shadows shall end, Can forget the sweet sound of the bells of Ostend ! * The day set in darkness, the w T ind it blew loud, And rung as it passed through each murmuring shroud. My fore/iead was wet with the foam of the spray, My heart sighed in secret for those far away ; When slowly the morning advanced from the east, The toil and the noise of the tempest had ceased : The peal from a land I ne'er saw 7 , seemed to say, " Let the stranger forget every sorrow to-day !" Yet the short-lived emotion was mingled with pain — I thought of those eye3 I should ne'er see again ; I thought of the kiss, the last kiss which I gave, And a tear of regret fell unseen on the wave ; I thought of the schemes fond affection had planned, Of the trees, of the towers, of my own native land. But still the sweet sounds, as they swelled to the air, Seemed tidings of pleasure, though mournful to bear, And I never, till life and its shadows shall end, Can forget the sweet sound of the bells of Ostend ! V. MTSIC. — Shakspeare. Do but note a wild and wanton herd, Or race of youthful and unhandled colts, Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud, i Jessica, daughter of Shy lock, in ■ Os tend', a fortified seaport town the " Merchant of Venice." of Belgium, province of W. Flanders, 2 Pat' en, the plate or vessel on on the N. Sea. It is neatly built, which the consecrated bread is being a watering-place sometimes placed ; a plate, resorted to by the Belgian court. 520 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. "Which is the hot condition of their blood ; If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound, Or any air of music touch their ears, You shall perceive them make a mutual stand, Their savage eyes turned to a modest gaze, By the sweet power of music : therefore, the poet Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods ; Since naught so stockish hard, and full of rage, But music for the time doth change his nature. The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treason, stratagems, and spoils ; The motions of his spirit are dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus : ' Let no such man be trusted. VI. MUSIC— Shelley. My soul is an enchanted boat, "Which, like a sleeping swan doth float Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing ; And thine doth like an angel sit Beside the helm, conducting it, "While all the winds with melody are ringing. It seems to float ever, forever Upon that many winding river, Between mountains, woods, abysses, A paradise of wildernesses ! VII. PASTOKAL MUSIC— Byron. Hark! the note, The natural music of the mountain reed — For here the patriarchal days are not A pastoral fable — pipes in the liberal air, Mixed with the sweet bells of the sauntering herd : My soul would drink those echoes. Oh that I were The viewless spirit of a lovely sound, A living voice, a breathing harmony, A bodiless enjoyment, born and dying "With the blest tone which made me ! ^ ... ■ — — . — --- - . i — _ . ,_.,, ,— — .... — . I, , . ■ ' 1 Er/e bus, son of Chaos, in heathen dark and gloomy space under the mythology. The name signifies dark- earth, through which the shades pass ness, and is therefore applied to the into Hades. HYMNS. 521 m. 168. HYMNS. THE discovery of a statue, a vase, or even of a cameo, inspires art-critics and collectors with enthusiastic in'dustrv, to search whether it be a copy or an original, of what age, and by what artist. But I think that a heart-hymn, sprung from the soul's deepest life, and which is, as it were, the words of the heart in those hours of transfiguration in which it beholds God, and heavenly angels, is nobler by far than any old simulacrum, 1 or carved ring, or heathen head, however ex'quisite in lines and feature ! 2. To trace back a hymn to its source, to return upon the path along which it has trodden on its mission of mercy through generations, to witness its changes, its obscurations and reap- pearances, is a work of the truest religious enthusiasm, and far surpasses in importance the tracing of the ideas of mere art. For hymns are the expo'nents of the inmost piety of the Church. They are crystalline tears, or blossoms of joy, or holy prayers, or incarnated raptures. They are the jewels which the Church has worn : the pearls, the diamonds and precious stones, formed into amulets more potent against sorrow and sadness than the most famous charms of wizard or magician. And he who knows the way that hymns flowed, knows where the blood of piety ran, and can trace its veins and arteries to the very heart. 3. No other composition is like an experimental hymn. It is not a mere poetic impulse. It is not a thought, a fancy, a feel- ing threaded upon words. It is the voice of experience speak- ing from the soul a few words that condense and of ten represent a whole life. It is the life, too, not of the natural feelings growing wild, but of regenerated feeling, inspired by God to a heavenly destiny, and making its way through troubles and hin- drances, through joys and victories, dark or light, sad or serene, yet always struggling forward. Forty years the heart may have been in battle, and one verse shall express the fruit of the whole. 4. One great hope may come to fruit only at the end of many years, and as the ripening of a hundred experiences. As there be flowers that drink up the dews of spring and summer, and 1 Sim' u la N cram, the likeness, resemblance, or representation of any- thing ; an image, picture, figure, effigy, or statue. 522 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. feed upon all the rains, and, only just before the winter comes, burst forth into bloom, so it is with some of the noblest blossoms of the soul. The bolt that prostrated Saul gave him the ex- ceeding brightness of Christ ; and so some hymns could never have been written but for a heart-stroke that well-nigh crushed out the life. It is cleft in two by bereavement, and out of the rift comes forth, as by resurrection, the form and voice that shall never die out of the world. Angels sat at the grave's mouth ; and so hymns are the angels that rise up out of our griefs and darkness and dismay. 5. Thus born, a hymn is one of those silent ministers which God sends to those who are to be heirs of salvation. It enters into the tender imagination of childhood, and casts down upon the chambers of its thought a holy radiance which shall never quite depart. It goes with the Christian, singing to him all the way, as if it were the airy voice of some guardian spirit. When darkness of trouble, settling fast, is shutting out every star, a hymn bursts through and brings light like a torch. It abides by our side in sickness. It goes forth with us in joy to syllable that joy. 6. And thus, after a time, we clothe a hymn with the memo- ries and associations of our own life. It is garlanded with flowers which grew in our hearts. Born of the experience of one mind, it becomes the unconscious record of many minds. We sang it, perhaps, the morning that our child died. We sang this one on that Sabbath evening when, after ten years, the family were once more all together. There be hymns that were sung while the mother lay a-dying ; that were sung when the child, just converted, was filling the family with the joy of Christ new-born, and laid, not now in a manger, but in a heart. And thus sprung from a wondrous life, they lead a life yet more wonderful. When they first come to us they are like the single strokes of a bell ringing down to us from above ; but, at length, a single hymn becomes a whole chime of bells, mingling and discoursing to us the harmonies of a life's Christian experience. 7. And oftentimes, when in the mountain country, far from noise and interruption, we wrought upon these hymns ' for our vacation tasks, we almost forgot the living world, and were lifted up by noble lyrics as upon mighty wings, and went back to the Hymns, " Plymouth Collection of Hymns and Tunes," published in 1855. HYMNS. 523 days when Christ sang with his disciples, when the disciples sang too, as in our churches they have almost ceased to do. Oh ! but for one moment even, to have sat transfixed, and to have listened to the hymn that Christ sang and to the singing ! But the olive-trees did not hear his murmured notes more clearly than, rapt in imagination, we have heard them ! 8. There, too, are the hymns of St. Ambrose ' and many others, that rose up like birds in the early centuries, and have come flying and singing all the way down to us. Their wing is untired yet, nor is the voice less sweet now than it was a thou- sand years ago. Though they sometimes disappeared, they never sank ; but, as engineers for destruction send bombs that, rising high up in wide curves, overleap great spaces and drop down in a distant spot, so God, in times of darkness, seems to have caught up these hymns, spanning long periods of time, and letting them fall at distant eras, not for explosion and wounding, but for healing and consolation. 9. There are crusaders' hymns, that rolled forth their truths upon the oriental air, while a thousand horses' hoofs kept time below, and ten thousand palm-leaves whispered and kept time above ! Other hymns, fulfilling the promise of God that His saints should mount up with wings as eagles, have borne up the sorrows, the desires, and the aspirations of the poor, the op- pressed, and the persecuted, of Huguenots, of Covenanters, and of Puritans, and winged them to the bosom of God. 10. In our own time, and in the familiar experiences of daily life, how are hymns mossed over and vine-clad with domestic associations ! One hymn hath opened the morning in ten thou- sand families, and dear children with sweet voices have charmed the evening in a thousand places with the utterance of another. Nor do I know of any steps now left on earth by which one may 1 St. Ambrose, a celebrated Chris- much influence, that after the mas- tian father, was probably born at sacreof Thessalonica in 39, he refused Treves, in 340. After a careful edu- the Emperor Theodosius to the cation at Rome, he practiced with Church of Milan for a period of eight greatsuccess,asanadvocate,at Milan ; months, and then caused him to per- and about 370 was appointed prefect form a public penance. Ambrose of the provinces of Liguria and. Emi- was a man of eloquence, firmness, lia, whose seat of government was and ability. The best edition of his Milan. He was appointed Bishop of works is that of the Benedictines. Milan in 374 ; and finally acquired ro » Bombs, (bumz). 524 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. so soon rise above trouble or weariness as the verses of a hymn and the notes of a tune. And if the angels, that Jacob saw, sang when they appeared, then I know that the ladder which he beheld was but the scale of divine music let down from heaven to earth. H. W. Beeches. IV. 169. THE PASSIONS. WHEN Music, heavenly maid, was young, While yet in early Greece she sung, The Passions 6ft, to hear her shell, Thronged around her magic cell, — Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting, — Possessed beyond the Muse's painting ; By turns they felt the glowing mind Disturbed, delighted, raised, refined : Till once, 'tis said, when all were fired, Filled wim fury, rapt, inspired, From the supporting myrtles round They snatched her instruments of sound ; And, as they oft had heard apart Sweet lessons of her forceful art, Each — for Madness ruled the hour — Would prove his own expressive power. 2. First Fear, his hand, its skill to try, Amid the chords bewildered laid ; And back recoiled, he knew not why, E'en at the sound himself had made. — Next Anger rushed — his eyes on fire, In lightnings owned his secret stings : In one rude clash he struck the lyre, And swept, with hurried hands, the strings. — With woful measures, wan Despair — Low sullen sounds ! — his grief beguiled ; A solemn, strange, and mingled air ; 'Twas sad, by fits — by starts, 'twas wild. 3. But thou, O Hope ! with eyes so fair — What was thy delighted measure ? Still it whispered promised pleasure, THE PASSIONS. 525 And bade the lovely scenes at distance bail I Still would her touch the strain prolong ; And, from the rocks, the woods, the vale, She called on Echo still, through all her song ; And where her sweetest theme she chose, A soft responsive voice was heard at every close ; And Hofe, enchanted, smiled, and waved her golden hair. 4. And longer had she sung — but, with a frown, Revenge impatient rose. He threw his blood-stained sttford in thunder down ; And, with a withering look, The war-denouncing trumpet took, And blew a blast so loud and dread, "Were ne'er prophetic sounds so full of woes ; And ever and anon, he beat The doubling drum with furious heat ; And though, sometimes, each dreary pause between, Dejected Pitt, at his side, Her soul-subduing voice applied, Yet still he kept his wild unaltered mien ; While each strained ball of sight seemed bursting from his head. 5. Thy numbers, Jealousy, to naught were fixed — Sad proof of thy distressful state ! Of differing themes the veering song was mixed ; And now it courted Love — now, raving, called on Hate.— With eyes upraised, as one inspired, Pale Melancholy sat retired ; And, from her wild, sequestered seat, In notes, by distance made more sweet, Poured through the mellow horn her pensive soul ; And, dashing soft from rocks around, Bubbling runnels joined the sound ; Through glades and glooms the mingled measure stole ; Or, o'er some haunted streams, with fond delay, — Round a holy calm diffusing, Love of peace, and lonely musing, — In hollow murmurs died away. 6. But, oh I how altered was its sprightlier tone, When Cheerfulness, a nymph of healthiest hue, 52G NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Iler bow across her shoulder flung, Her buskins gemmed with morning dew, Blew an inspiring air, that dale and thicket rung, — The hunter's call, to Faun and Dryad known ! The oak-crowned sisters, and their chaste -eyed queen, Satyrs, and sylvan boys, were seen, Peeping from forth their alleys green : Brown Exekctse rejoiced to hear ; And Sport leaped up, and seized his beechen spear. 7. Last came Joy's ecstatic trial : — He, with viny crown, advancing, First to the lively pipe his hand addressed ; But soon he saw the brisk awakening viol, Whose sweet entrancing voice he loved the best. They would have thought, who heard the strain, Tney saw in Tempe's ' vale her native maids, Amid the festal-sounding shades, To some unwearied minstrel dancing ; "While, as his flying fingers kissed the strings, Love framed with Mirth a gay fantastic round — Loose were her tresses seen, her zone unbound— And he, amid his frolic play, As if he would the charming air repay, Shook thousand odors from his dewy wings. Collins. "William Collins, one of the most interesting and exquisite of English poets, was born at Chichester on Christmas-day, 1720. He was educated at Winchester, and Magdalen College, Oxford. Before leaving college he published the " Orien- tal Eclogues," which, to the disgrace of the university and the literary public, were wholly neglected. In 1744 he came to London as a literary adventurer, and about two years later published his "Odes," and made the acquaintance of Dr. Johnson, who held him in the highest esteem. His life in the metropolis was irregular, and, until the death of an uncle, who left him a legacy of £2000, was one of continual hardship. On the receipt of this little fortune, he repaid Miller, the bookseller, the loss sustained by the publication of his neglected "Odes," which were afterward destined to become immortal. Unhappily, the seeds of disease and occasional insanity had been too deeply sown in his former poverty to be eradicated, and after a short sojourn in France, he passed through the doors of a lunatic asylum to his early home, where, in care of his sister, he died, in 1750, at the early age of thirty-six. His appearance was manly, his con- versation elegant, his views extensive, his disposition cheerful, and his morals 1 Tempe, (tern' pa), a valley of Eu- pus on the N., and Ossa on the S. ropean Turkey, in the N. E. of Thes- The beauties of its scenery are much. Baly,between the mountains of Oly in- celebrated by ancient writers. ALEXANDER'S FEAST. 527 pure. He was a man of extensive literature, and of vigorous faculties. The " Oriental Eclogues" are written in a clear, correct style, and they charm by their figurative language and descriptions, the simplicity and beauty of their dialogues and sentiments, and their musical versification. No poet has been more happy in the use of metaphors and personification. Collins' "Odes" arc unsurpassed by any thing of the same species of composition in the English language, and that to the "Passions" is a perfect master-piece of poetical description. V. 170. ALEXANDER'S FEAST. TT^WAS at the royal feast for Persia won JL By Philip's warlike son : Aloft, in awful state, The godlike hero sate, On his imperial throne. His valiant r>eers were placed around Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound ; So should desert in arms be crowned. The lovely Thais ' by his side Sat, like an eastern blooming bride, In flower of youth and beauty's pride. Happy, happy, happy pair ! None (nun) but the brave, None but the brave, None but the brave, deserves the fair. 2. Timotheiis, placed on high Amid the tuneful choir, "With flying Angers touched the lyre : The trembling notes ascend the sky, And heavenly joys inspire. The song began from Jove, Who left his blissful seats above — Such is the power of mighty love ! A dragon's fiery form belied the god : Sublime on radiant spheres he rode, ^ha'is, a celebrated beauty of palace of the Persian kings. On the Athens, an attendant of Alexander, death of the conqueror, she married who gained such influence over him, Ptolemy, king of Egypt, one of Alex- as to cause him, during a great fes- ander's generals. She is sometimes tival at Persepolis, to set fire to the called Menandria. 528 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. When he to fair Olympia ' pressed, And stampt an image of himself, a sovereign of the world. The listening crowd admire the lofty sound ; "A present deity!" they shout around ; " A present deity !" the vaulted roofs rebound : With ravished ears The monarch hears, Assumes the god, Affects to nod, And seems to shake the spheres. 3. The praise of Bacchus, 2 then, the sweet musician sung, — Of Bacchus, ever fair and ever young ! The jolly god in triumph comes ! Sound the trumpet ! beat the drums ! Flushed with a purple grace, He shows his honest face. Now give the hautboys breath ! — he comes ! he comes 1 Bacchus, ever fair and young, Drinking joys did first ordain : Bacchus' blessings are a treasure ; Drinking is the soldier's pleasure : Rich the treasure, Sweet the pleasure ; Sweet is pleasure, after pain ! 4. Soothed with the sound, the king grew vain ; Fought all his battles o'er again ; And thrice he routed all his foes, and thrice he slew the slain, The master saw the madness rise ; His glowing cheeks, his ardent eyes ! And, while he heaven and earth defied, Changed his hand and checked his pride. He chose a mournful muse, Soft pity to infuse : He sung Darius, 3 great and good, 'Olympia (ollm'pia), or Juno, ■ Da ri' us III., sometimes called the sister and wife of Jupiter. Codomannus, in whose defeat by 1 Bac' chus, or rather Dionysus, Alexander the Great the Persian the beautiful, but effeminate god of empire was consummated, succeeded wine, in mythology, represented as to the throne b. c. 336, and was crowned with vine leaves. killed 330. ALEXANDER'S FEAST. 52'J By too severe a fate, Fallen! fallen! fallen ! fallen I— Fallen from his high estate. And weltering in his blood ! Deserted at his utmost need By those his former bounty fed, On the bare earth exposed he lies, With not a friend to close his eyes. "With downcast look the joyous victor sate, Revolving, in his altered soul, The various turns of fate below ; And now and then a sigh he stole, And tears began to flow. 5. The mighty master smiled to see That love was in the next degree : 'Twas but a kindred strain to move ; For pity melts the mind to love. Softly sweet, in Lvdian ' measures, Soon he soothed his soul to pleasures : War, he sung, is toil and trouble ; Honor but an empty bubble ; Never ending, still beginning, Fighting still, and still destroying : If the world be worth thy winning, Think, oh think it worth enjoying ! Lovely Thais sits beside thee ; Take the good the gods provide thee. The many rend the skies with loud applause : So love was crowned ; but music won the cause. The prince, unable to conceal his pain, Gazed on the fair Who caused his care, And sighed and looked, sighed and looked, Sighed and looked; and sighed again : At length, with love and wine at once oppressed, The vanquished victor sunk upon her breast. 1 Lyd'ian, pertaining to Lydia, said especially of one of the ancient a country of Asia Minor, or to its in- Greek modes or keys, the music in habitants : hence, soft; effeminate ; — which was soft and pathetic. 530 NATIONAL FIFTH HEADER 6. Now strike the golden lyre again — A louder yet, and yet a louder strain I Break his bands of sleep asunder, And rouse him like a rattling peal of thunder. Hark ! hark ! — the horrid sound Has raised up his head ! As awaked from the dead, And amazed, he stares around. Revenge ! revenge ! Timotheiis cries — See the furies arise ! See the snakes that they rear, How they hiss in their hair, And the sparkles that flash from their eyes ! 7. Behold a ghastly band, Each a torch in his hand ! Those are Grecian ghosts, that in battle were slain, And unburied remain, Inglorious, on the plain. Give the vengeance due To the valiant crew. Behold how they toss their torches on high ! How they point to the Persian abodes, And glittering temples of their hostile gods ! The princes applaud with a furious joy ; And the king seized a flambeau, with zeal to destroy : Thais led the way To light him to his prey ; And, like another Helen, 1 fired another Troy. 8. Thus long ago, — Ere heaving bellows 1 learned to blow, "While organs yet were mute, — Timotheiis to his breathing flute And sounding lyre, Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire. 1 Helen, a most beautiful woman elaus, who, with the other Greek of ancient Greece, whom Paris, the chiefs, resolved to avenge her abduo son of Priam, king of Troy, stole tion. Hence rose the Trojan war. from the arms of her husband, Men- 2 Bellows, (bel' lus). ALEXANDER'S FEAST. 531 At last, divine Cecilia 5 came, Inventress of the vocal frame : The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store, Enlarged the former narrow bounds, And added length to solemn sounds, With nature's mother wit, and arts unknown before. Let old Timotheus yield the prize, Or both divide the crown : He raised a mortal to the skies ; She drew an angel down. Dryden. John Dkyden, one of the great masters of English verse, was born at Old- winckle, in Northamptonshire, August, 1631. He was educated at Westminster and Trinity College, Cambridge. He began his literary career by a set of heroic stanzas on the death of Cromwell, which was a good precursor of his future excellence. The Restoration occurring when he was in his thirtieth year, ex- eluded him for the time from government employment and patronage, and he at once devoted himself to literature for a profession. The stage now offered itself as the only means through which his pen could furnish a livelihood ; and, in the course of twenty-five years, he wrote twenty-seven dramas, the most re- markable of which are his "Heroic Plays." From these rhymed dialogues arose that mastery of the English heroic couplet which he was the first to ac- quire, and in which no succeeding poet has nearly equaled hi in. The prefaces, dedications, and essays, with which he accompanied his dramas, exhibit him at once as the earliest writer of regular and elegant English prose, and as the first who aimed in our language at any thing like philosophical criticism. These prose fragments contain some of the most felicitous specimens of style which our tongue has ever produced. His engagement to write plays for the King's The- ater gave him £300 a year : his circumstances were improved by his marriage, in 1665, with Lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the Earl of Berkshire ; and in 1670 he received, with a salary of £200 a year and the famous butt of wine, the joint offices of historiographer-royal and poet-laureate. "Absalom and Achito- phel," the best of all his political satires, appeared in 1681. "The Medal" and "Mac Flecknoe," works of the same kind, followed soon after. Inl6S5, Dryden was received into the Church of Rome, the first public fruit of which was the " Hind and Panther," a rich allegorical poem, in which the main arguments of the Roman Church are stated. The Revolution, taking place in his fifty-seventh year, deprived the poet of his courtly patrons and pensions, and forced him to spend the last twelve years of his life in hard toil. Some of his best works weie produced in this period. In 1690 appeared his tragedy of " Dou Sebastian," the best of his serious plays. In 1697 he threw off at a heat his " Alexander's Feast," one of the most animated of all lyrical poems; and his spirited translation of Virgil appeared the same year. Lastly, in the spring of 1700, were published his " Fables," which prove that his warm imagination then burned as brightly 8 Cecilia, the patron saint of mu- and depicted on canvas by more sic, erroneously regarded as the in- than one of the great painters. Ra- ventress of the organ, suffered mar- phael has most admirably presented tyrdom A. D. 220. She has been her as the personification of heavenly celebrated by several of the poets, devotion. 532 NATIONAL FIFJTH READER. as ever, and that his metrical skill increased at the close of his life. These ad- mirable poems shed a glory on the last days of the poet, who died on the 1st of May, 1700. For an extended description of Dryden's poetical endowments, the reader is referred to the 66th Exercise, p. 243. SECTION XXXIII. I. 171. HAMLET'S SOLILOQUY. TO be — or not to be — that is the question ! Whether 'tis nobler in the mind, to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune ; Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And, by opposing, end them. To die — to sleep ; — No more ? and, by a sleep, to say we end The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to ? 'Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished ! To die — to sleep : To sleep ! perchance to dream ! Ay ; there's the rub ; For, in that sleep of death, what dreams may come, "When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause ! 2. There's the respect That makes calamity of so long life ; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's con'tumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin ? 3. Who would fardels bear, To groan and sweat under a weary life ; But that the dread of something after death, — That undiscovered country, from whose bourn No traveler returns, — puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have, Than fly to others that we know not of? CATO'S SOLILOQUY. 533 4. Thus conscience does make cowards of us all ; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought ; And enterprises of great pith and moment, With this regard, their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. Shakspeare* n. 172. CATO'S 1 SOLILOQUY. IT must be so — Plato, thou reasonest well ! Else, whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality ? Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror, Of falling into naught ? AVhy shrinks the soul Back on hersolf, and startles at destruction ? 'Tis the divinity that stirs within us ; 'Tis Heaven itself, that points out a hereafter, And intimates eternity to man. 2. Eternity ! — thou pleasing, dreadful thought ! Through what variety of untried being, Through what new scenes and changes must we pass ! The wide, the unbounded prospect lies before me ; But shadows, clouds, and darkness rest upon it. Here will I hold. If there's a Power above us, — And that there is, all Nature cries aloud Through all her works, — He must delight in virtue ; And that which He delights in must be happy. i Marcus Porcius Cato, great- of the republican party were finally grandson of Cato the Censor, -was extinguished by the battle of Thap- born B. C 95. From his youth he bus, April 6th, B. C. 46. Failing to -was celebrated for his bravery, vir- inspire his countrymen, who were tue, decision, severity, and harshness collected at Utica, with courage to of character. He was the principal endure a siege, he resolved not to supporter of Cicero in his measures outlive the downfall of the republic, for suppressing the Catilinerian con- After providing for the safety of his spiracy ; and on the commencement friends, and spending the greater of civil war, in B. C. 40, he joined part of the night in perusing Plato's the party of Pompey against Caesar. Phanlo, he inflicted on himself the After the defeat of the former, Cato wound of which he died, in the forty- proceeded to Africa, where the hopes ninth year of his age. 534 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. But when ? or where ? This world was made for Caesar. I'm weary of conjectures, — this must end them. [Laying his hand on his sword. 3. Thus am I doubly armed. My death ' and life, My bane and antidote, are both before me. This in a moment brings me to my end ; But this informs me I shall never die. The soul, secure in her existence, smiles At the drawn dagger, and defies its point. The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years ; But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amid the war of elements, The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds. Addisow. Joseph Addison, the eldest son of an able and learned clergyman, was born at his father's rectory of Milston, in Wiltshire, England, on the first day of May, 1672. He was educated chiefly at the Charter-house and at Oxford, and distin- guished himself as a writer of Latin verse. He took his master's degree in 1693, and held a fellowship from 1699 to 1711. He first appeared in print by contribu- ting English verses, some of which are original, and others translations from the classics, to Dryden's Miscellanies. Political encouragement from the whig party, soon after induced him to write a poem complimenting King William on the campaign in which he took Namur. A pension, procured for him by Lord Somers, enabled him, in 1699, to visit the Continent, where he resided for three years. The best of his poems, a " Letter from Italy," was written in 1701, while he was still abroad ; and his " Travels in Italy," his first extended prose work, exhibited his extensive knowledge, and his skill and liveliness in composition. Soon after his return to England he wrote " The Campaign," a poem celebrating Marlborough's victory at Blenheim, which, receiving extraordinary applause, secured him an appointment, in 1704, as one of the commissioners of appeal in excise. He became an under secretary of state in 1706, and secretary to the lord-lieutenant of Ireland in 1709, about a year and a half before the dismissal of the ministry which he served. From the autumn of 1710 till the end of 171-1, four of the best years of his life, the opposition having deprived him of office, Addison's principal employment was the composition of his celebrated Periodical Essays. In 1709 he began to furnish papers for the " Tattler," a periodical con- ducted by his schoolfellow and friend, Richard Steele, writing, in all, more than sixty of the two hundred and seventy-one essays which the work contained. On the first day of March, 1711, these two writers commenced the "Spectator," which appeared every week-day till the 6th day of December, 1712. The two contributing almost equally, seem together to have written not very much less than five hundred of the papers. On the cessation of the " Spectator," Steele set on foot the " Guardian," which, started in March, 1713, came to an end in October, with its one hundred and seventy-fifth number, fifty-three of the papers 1 Death, bane, and the first this, refer to his sword ; and life antidote and the second this, to the book lie held in his hand. SELECT PASSAGES IN PROSE. 535 being Addison's. In point of style the two friends resembled each other very closely, when dealing with familiar objects; but, in the higher tones of thought and composition, Addison showed a mastery of language raising him very de- cisively, not above Steele only, but above all his contemporaries. In April, 1713, he brought on the stage his tragedy of " Cato," which was rendered so im- mensely popular, partly through political considerations, as to raise the reputa- tion of the author to its highest point. The accession of George I. occurring in the latter part of 1714, restored the whigs to power, and thus again diverted Ad- dison from literature to politics. After acting as secretary to the regency, he was made one of the lords of trade early in 1715. Owing, it is said, to the influ- ence of his wife, the Countess-dowager of Warwick, whom he had married a few months before, he was induced to become one of the two principal secre- taries of state in 1717; but ill health caused him to resign, eleven months after his appointment, from which period he received a pension of £1500 a year, lie died at Holland House, on the 17th of June, 1719. His body, after lying in state, was interred in the poet's corner of Westminster Abbey. m. 173 SELECT PASSAGES IN PROSE. I. EVIDENCE OF A CREATOR.— Tillotson.' OW often might a man, after he had jumbled a set of H letters in a bag, fling them out upon the ground before they would fall into an exact poem, yea, or so much as make a good discourse in prose ! And may not a little book be as easily made by chance, as this great volume of the world ? — How long might a man be in sprinkling colors upon a canvas with a careless hand, before they could happen to make the exact picture of a man ! And is a man easier made by chance than this picture ? — How long might twenty thousand blind men, which should be sent out from the several remote parts of England, wander up and down before they would all meet upon Salisbury Plains, and fall into rank and file in the exact order of an army ! And yet this is much more easy to be imagined, than how the innumerable blind parts of matter should rendezvous 3 themselves into a world. 3 1 John Tillotson, a distinguished of Canterbury. Died in 169-4. His prelate of the English Church, was sermons, his principal compositions, born in Sowerby, Yorkshire, in 1630. were, for half a century, more read He was educated at Clare Hall Col- than any in our language, lege, Cambridge. Soon after leaving 2 Rendezvous (r£n'de v6), toassem- that institution, he rose to distinc- ble, or meet at a particular place, as tion as a preacher, and preferments troops, ships, &c. ; to bring together flowed upon him in rapid succession, at a certain place, till in 1690 he became Archbishop ■ World, (we'rld). 536 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. II. NATURE PROCLAIMS A DEITY.— Chateaubriand.* There is a God ! The herbs of the valley, the cedars of the mountain, bless him ; the insect sports in his beam ; the bird sings him in the foliage ; the thunder proclaims him in the heavens ; the ocean declares his immensity ; — man alone has said, There is no God ! Unite in thought at the same instant the most beautiful objects in nature. Suppose that you see, at once, all the hours of the day, and all the seasons of the year, — a morning of spring, and a morning of autumn — a night be- spangled with stars, and a night darkened by clouds — meadows enameled with flowers — forests hoary with snow — fields gilded by the tints of autumn, — then alone you will have a just con- ception of the universe ! While you are gazing on that sun which is plunging into the vault of the West, another observer admires him emerging from the gilded gates of the East. By what inconceivable power does that aged star, which is sinking fatigued and burning in the shades of the evening, reappear at the same instant fresh and humid with the rosy dew of the morning ? At every hour of the day, the glorious orb is at once rising, resplendent as noon- day, and setting in the west ; or, rather, our senses deceive us, and there is, properly speaking, no East or West, no North or South, in the world. III. THE UNBELIEVER.— Chalmers. I pity the unbeliever — one who can gaze upon the grandeur, and glory, and beauty of the natural universe, and behold not the touches of His finger, who is over, and with, and above all ; from my very heart I do commiserate his condition. The un- believer ! — one whose intellect the light of revelation never penetrated ; who can gaze upon the sun, and moon, and stars, and upon the unfading and imperishable skj', spread out so mag- nificently above him, and say all this is the work of chance ! The heart of such a being is a drear and cheerless void. In him, mind — the god-like gift of intellect — is debased, destroyed ; all is dark — a fearful chaotic labyrinth, rayless, cheerless, hope- less ! No gleam of light from heaven penetrates the blackness of the horrible delusion ; no voice from the Eternal bids the 1 Chateaubriand, (sh& to bre fin"), Christianity," was born in Brittany, a noted French writer and states- in 17(>i>, and died in Paris, in 1848, man, author of the " Genius of at nearly the close of bis 80th year. INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY 537 desponding heart rejoice. No fancied tones from the harps of seraphim arouse the dull spirit from its lethargy, or allay the con- suming fever of the brain. The wreck of mind is utterly rem'edi- less ; reason is prostrate ; and passion, prejudice, and supersti- tion, have reared their temple on the ruins of his intellect. I pity the unbeliever. "What to him is the revelation from on high but a sealed book ? He sees nothing above, or around, or beneath him, that evinces the exist once of a God ; and he de- nies — yea, while standing on the footstool of Omnipotence, and gazing upon the dazzling throne of Jehovah, he shuts his intel- lect to the light of reason, and denies there is a God. IV. BLESSINGS OF RELIGIOUS FAITH.— Davy.' I envy no quality of the mind or intellect in others — not genius, power, wit, or fancy ; but if I could choose what would be most delightful, and I believe most useful to me, I should prefer a firm religious belief to every other blessing ; for it makes life a discipline of goodness ; creates new hopes, when all earthly hopes vanish ; and throws over the decay, the de- struction of existence, the most gorgeous of all lights ; awakens life even in death, and from corruption and decay calls up beauty and divinity ; makes an instrument of torture and of shame the ladder of ascent to paradise ; and far above all com- binations of .earthly hopes, calls up the most delightful visions of palms and amaranths, the gardens of the blest, the security of everlasting joys, where the sensualist and the skeptic view only gloom, decay, annihilation, and despair. IV. 174. INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem appareled in celestial light — •Sir Humphrey Davy, who ranks, not an extended, he was an able as a man of science, second to none prose writer, and possessed a fine in the nineteenth century, was born poetical imagination, which, had he at Penzance, in Cornwall, England, not been the first chemist, would December, 1778. Of his numerous have placed him among the first discoveries, that of the safety-lamp poets of his age. He died at Geneva, was, perhaps, m^st useful. Though on the 30th of Mav, 1820. ' 2?* 538 NATIONAL FIFTH READER The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore ; Turn where so e'er I may, by night or day. The things which I have seen, I now can see no more, 2. The rainbow comes and goes, and lovely is the rose ; The moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare ; Waters on a starry night Are beautiful and fair ; The sunshine is a glorious birth ; But yet I know, where'er I go, That there hath passed away a glory from the earth, 3. Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, And while the young lambs bound As to the tabor's sound, To me alone there came a thought of grief ; A timely utterance gave that thought relief, And I again am strong. The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep — No more shall grief of mine the season wrong. I hear the echoes through the mountains throng ; The winds come to me from the fields of sleep, And all the earth is gay ; ♦ Land and sea Give themselves up to jollity ; And with the heart of May Doth every beast keep holiday ; — Thou child of joy, Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy shep herd boy ! 4. Ye blessed creatures ! I have heard the call Ye to each other make ; I see The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee ; My heart is at your festival, My head hath its coronal — The fullness of your bliss, I feel, I feel it alL O evil day ! if I were sullen While Earth herself is adorning, This sweet May-morning, INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. 539 And the children are culling On every side, In a thousand valleys far and wide, Fresh flowers ; while the sun shines warm, And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm — I hear, I hear, with joy I hear ! — But there's a tree, of many one, A single field which I have looked upon — Both of them speak of something that is gone ; The pansy at my feet Doth the same tale repeat. Whither is fled the visionary gleam ? Where is it now, the glory and the dream ? 6. Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting ; The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And conieth from afar. Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory, do we come From God, who is our home. Heaven lies about us in our infancy ! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy : But he beholds the light, and whence it flows — He sees it in his iov. The vouth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is nature's priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended : At length the man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day. 6. Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own. Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind ; And, even with something of a mother's mind, And no unworthy aim, The homely nurse doth all she can To make her foster-child, her inmate man, Forget the glories he hath known, And that imperial palace whence he came. 540 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 7. Behold the child among his new-born blisses A six years' darling of a pigmy size ! See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies, Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses, With light upon him from his father's eyes ! See, at his feet, some little plan or chart, Some fragment from his dream of human life, Shaped by himself with newly-learned art — - A wedding or a festival, A mourning or a funeral — And this hath now his heart, And unto this he frames his song. Then will he fit his tongue To dialogues of business, love, or strife ; But it will not be long Ere this be thrown aside, And with new joy and pride The little actor cons another part — Filling from time to time his "humorous stage" With all the persons, down to palsied age, That life brings with her in her equipage ; As if his whole vocation Were endless imitation. 8. Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie Thy soul's immensity ! Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep Thy heritage ! thou eye among the blind, That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep Haunted for ever by the eternal mind ! — Mighty prophet ! Seer blest, On whom those truths do rest Which we are toiling all our lives to find, In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave ! Thou over whom thy immortality Broods like the day, a master o'er a slave, A presence which is not to be put by ! Thou little child, yet glorious in the might Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height, Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoko The years to bring the inevitable yoke, INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. 5^1 Tims blindly with thy blessedness at strife ? Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight, And custom lie upon thee with a weight Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life ! 9. O joy ! that in our embers Is something that doth live, That nature yet remembers AMiat was so fugitive ! The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benediction : not, indeed, For that which is most worthy to be blest- Delight and liberty, the simple creef. Of childhood, whether busy or at rest, With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast — Not for these I raise the song of thanks and praise ; But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings, Blank misgivings of a creature Moving about in worlds not realized, High instincts, before which our mortal nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised — But for those first affections, Those shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain -light of all our day, Are yet a master light of all our seeing, Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal Silence : truths that wake, To perish never — Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor, Nor man nor boy, Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Can utterly abolish or destroy ! Hence in a season of calm weather, Though inland far we be, Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither — Can in a moment travel thither, 542 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. V And see the children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. 10. Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song I And let the young lambs bound As to the tabor's sound ! "We in thought will join your throng, Ye that pipe and ye that play, Ye that through your hearts to-day "Feel the gladness of the May ! What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower — We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind : In the primal sympathy Which, having been, must ever be ; In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering ; In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind. 11. And O ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves, Forebode not any severing of our loves ! Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might ; I only have relinquished one delight To live beneath your more habitual sway. I love the brooks which down their channels fret, Even more than when I tripped lightly as they ; The innocent brightness of a new-born day Is lovely yet ; The clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober coloring from an eye That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality ; Another race hath been, and other palms are won. Thanks to the human heart by which we live, Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears — To me the "meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. William Wordsworth. THE POET. 543 SECTION XXXIV. I. 175. THE POET. HOW glorious, above all earthly glory, are the faculty and mission of the Poet ! His are the flaming thoughts that pierce the vail of heaven — his arc the feelings, which on the wings of rapture sweep over the abyss of ages. The star of his being is a splendor of the world. 2. The Poet's state and attributes are half divine. The breezes of gladness are the heralds of his approach ; the glimpse of his coming is as the flash of the dawn. The hues of Con- quest flush his brow : the anger of triumph is in his eyes. The secret of Creation is with him ; the mystery of the Immortal is among his treasures. The doom of unending sovereignty is upon his nature. 3. The meditations of his mind are Angels, and their issuing forth is with the strength of eternity. The talisman 1 of his speech is the scepter of the free. The decrees of a dominion whose sway is over spirits, and whose continuance is to ever- lasting, go out from before him ; and that ethereal essence, which is the untamable in man — which is the liberty of the Infinite within the bondage of life — is obedient to them. His phrases are the forms of Power : his syllables are agencies of Joy. 4. With men in his sympathies, that he may be above them in his influence, his nature is the jewel-clasp that binds Humanity to Heaven. It mediates between the earthly and celestial : in the vigor of his production, divinity becomes substantial ; in the sublimity of his apprehensions, the material loses itself into spirit. It is his to drag forth the eternal from our mortal form of being — to tear the Infinite into our bounden state of action. 5. What conqueror has troops like his ? — the spirit-forces of Language — those subtle slaves of mind, those impetuous masters of the Passions ; whose mysterious substance who can compre- hend—whose mighty operation what can com 'bat? Evolved, none knoweth how, within the curtained chambers of existence 1 Talisman, (tal'izman\ something as preservation from sickness, in- formed by magical skill, to which jury, cVc. ; that which produces re- wonderful effects were ascribed, such markabl^ effects. 544 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. — half-physical, half-ideal, and finer than all the agencies of Time — linked together by spells, which are the spontaneous magic of genius, which he that can use, never understands — the weird hosts of words fly forth, silently, with silver wings, to win resistlessly against the obstacles of Days, and Distance, and Destruction, to fetter nations in the viewless chains of admira- tion, and be, in the ever-presence of their all-vitality, the immor- tal portion of the'r author's being. G. Say what we will of the real character of the strifes of war, and policy, and wealth, the accents of the singer are the true acts of the race. What prince, in the secret places of his dalli- ance, uses such delights as his ? Passing through the life of the actual, with its transitory blisses, its deciduous ' hopes, its quickly waning fires, his interests dwell only in the deep consciousness of the soul and mind, to which belong uu decaying raptures, and the tone of a godlike force. Within that glowing universe of Sentiment and Fancy, which he generates from his own strenu- ous and teeming spirit, he is visited by immortal forms, whose motions torment the heart with ecstasy — whose vesture is of light — whose society is a fragrance of all the blossoms of Hope. 7. To him the True approaches in the radiant garments of the Beautiful ; the Good unvails to him the princely splendors of her native lineaments, and is seen to be Pleasure. His soul lies strewn upon its flowery desires, while, from the fountains of ideal loveliness, flows softly over him the rich, warm luxury of the Fancy's passion. His Joys are Powers ; and it is the blessedness of his condition that Triumph to him is prepared not by toil, but by indulgence. Begotten by the creative might of rapture, and beaming with the strength of the delight of their conception, the shapes of his imagination come forth in splendor, and he fasci- nates the world with his felicities. H. B. Wallace. n. 176. TO THE SPIRIT OF POETRY. LEAVE me not yet! Leave me not cold and lonely, Thou dear ideal of my pining heart ! Thou art the friend — the beautiful — the only. Whom I would keep, though all the world depart ! De cH'u ons, falling in autumn, as leaves; not permanent. TO THE SPIRIT OF POETRY. 545 Thou, that dost vail the frailest flower with glory, Spirit of light and loveliness and truth ! Thou that didst tell me a sweet, fairy story Of the dim future, in my wistful youth ! Thou, who canst weave a halo round the spirit, Through which naught mean or evil dare intrude, Resume not yet the gift, which I inherit From heaven and thee, that dearest, holiest good ! Leave me not now! Leave me not cold and lonely, Thou starry prophet of my pining heart ! Thou art the friend — the tenderest, the only, With whom, of all, 'twould be despair to part. 2. Thou that earnest to mo in my dreaming childhood, Shaping the changeful clouds to pageants rare, Peopling the smiling vale and shaded wildwood "With airy beings, faint yet strangely fair ; Telling me all the sea-born breeze was saying, While it went whispering through the willing leaves ; ■ Bidding me listen to the light rain playing Its pleasant tune about the household eaves ; Tuning the low, sweet ripple of the river, Till its melodious murmur seemed a t-ong! A tender and sad chant, repeated ever, A sweet, impassioned plaint of love and wrong I Leave me not yet ! Leave me not cold and lonely, Thou star of promise o'er my clouded path ! Leave not the life, that borrows from thee only All of delight and beauty that it hath ! 3. Thou, that when others knew not how to love me, Nor cared to fathom half my yearning soul, Didst wreathe thy flowers of light around, above me, To woo and win me from my griefs control ; By all my dreams, the passionate, the holy, When thou hast sung love's lullaby to me ; By all the childlike worship, fond and lowly, Which I have lavished upon thine and thee ; By all the lays my simple lute was learning, To echo from thy voice — stay with me still ! Once flown — alis ! for thee there's no returning ! The charm will die o'er valley, wood, and hill. 546 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Tell me not Time, whose wing my brow has shaded, Has withered spring's sweet bloom within my heart : Ah, no ! the rose of love is yet un faded, Though hope and joy, its sister flowers, depart. 4. Well do I know that I have wronged thine altar With the light offerings of an idler's mind ; And thus with shame, my pleading prayer I falter, Leave me not, spirit ! deaf, and dumb, and blind I Deaf to the mystic harmony of nature, Blind to the beauty of her stars and flowers ; Leave me not, heavenly yet human teacher, Lonely and lost in this cold world of ours! Heaven knows I need thy music and thy beauty Still to beguile me on my weary way, To lighten to my soul the cares of duty, And bless with radiant dreams the darkened day ; To charm my wild heart in the worldly revel, Lest I, too, join the aimless, false and vain : Let me not lower to the soulless level Of those whom I now pity and disdain ! Leave me not yet ! — leave me not cold and pining, Thou bird of paradise, whose plumes of light, Where'er they rested, left a glory shining : Fly not to heaven, or let me share thy flight ! Osgood. Frances Sargent Osgood, daughter of Joseph Locke, a Boston merchant, was born in that city about the year 1812. Some of her first poems appeared in a juvenile Miscellany, conducted by Mrs. L. M. Child, rapidly followed by others, which soon gave their signature, " Florence," a wide reputation. About 1834 she was married to S. S. Osgood, a young painter already distinguished in his profession. They soon after went to London, where Mr. Osgood pursued his art of portrait-painting with success ; and his wife's poetical compositions to various periodicals met with equal favor. In 1839 a collection of her poems was published in London, entitled " A Wreath of Wild-Flowers from New England." About the same period she wrote " The Happy Release, or the Triumphs of Love," a play in three acts. She returned with Mr. Osgood to Boston in 1840. They removed to New York soon afterward, where the remainder of her life was principally passed. Her poems, and prose tales and sketches, appeared at brief intervals in the magazines. In 1841 she edited " The Poetry of Flowers and Flowers of Poetry," and in 1847, "The Floral Offering," two illustrated gift-books. Her poems were collected and published in New York in 1816. She possessed an unusual facility in writing verses, with a felicitous style, and was happy in the selection of subjects. Her rare gracefulness and delicacy, and her unaffected and lively manners, won her a large circle of warm friends. She died on the 12th of May, 1850. THE INFLUENCE OF POETRY. 547 ILL 177. THE INFLUENCE OF POETRY. WE believe that poetry, far from injuring society, is one of the great instruments of its refinement and exaltation. It lifts the mind above ordinary life, gives it a respite from de- pressing cares, and awakens the consciousness of its affinity wim what is pure and noble. In its legitimate and highest efforts, it has the same tendency and aim with Christianity (krist yan'i ti), — that is, to spiritualize our nature. 2. True, poetry has been made the instrument of vice, the pander of bad passions ; but when genius thus stoops, it dims its fires, and parts with much of its. power ; and even when poetry is enslaved to licentiousness and misan'thropy, she can not wholly forget her true vocation. Strains of pure feeling, touches of tenderness, images of innocent happiness, sympa- thies with what is good in our nature, bursts of scorn or indig- nation at the hollowness of the world, passages true to our moral nature, often escape in an immoral work, and show us how hard it is for a gifted spirit to divorce itself wholly from what is good. 3. Poetry has a natural alliance with our best affections. It delights in the beauty and sublimity of outward nature and of the soul. It indeed portrays with terrible energy the excesses of the passions ; but they are passions which show a mighty nature, which are full of power, which command awe, and ex- cite a deep though shuddering sympathy. Its great tendency and purpose is to carry the mind beyond and above the beaten, dusty, weary walks of ordinary life ; to lift it into a purer ele- ment, and to breathe into it more profound and generous emotion. 4. It reveals to us the loveliness of nature, brings back the freshness of youthful feeling, revives the relish of simple pleas- ures, keeps unquenched the enthusiasm which warmed the spring-time of our being, refines youthful love, strengthens our interest in human nature by vivid delineations of its tenderest and loftiest feelings, spreads our sympathies over all classes of society, knits us by new ties with universal being, and, through the brightness of its prophetic visions, helps faith to lay hold on the future life. 548 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 5. We are aware that it is objected to poetry that it gives wrong views and excites false expectations of life, peoples the mind with shadows and illusions, and builds up imagination on the ruins of wisdom. That there is a wisdom against which poetry wars — the wisdom of the senses, which makes physical comfort and gratification the supreme good, and wealth the chief interest of life — we do not deny ; nor do we deem it the least service which poetry renders to mankind, that it redeems them from the thraldom of this earth-born prudence. 6. But, passing over this topic, we would observe that the complaint against poetry, as abounding in illusion and decep- tion, is, in the main, groundless. In many poems there is more of truth than in many histories and philosophic theories. The fictions of genius are often the vehicles of the sublimest veri- ties, and its flashes often open new regions of thought, and throw new light on the mysteries of our being. In poetry, when the letter is falsehood, the spirit is often profoundest wisdom. 7. And if truth thus dwells in the boldest fictions of the poet, much mure may it be expected in his delineations of life ; for the present life, which is the first stage of the immortal mind, abounds in the materials of poetry, and it is the highest office of the bard to detect this divine element among the grosser pleasures and labors of our earthly being. The present life is not wholly prosaic, precise, tame, and finite. To the gifted eye it abounds in the poetic. 8. The affections which spread beyond ourselves, and stretch far into futurity ; the workings of mighty passions, which seem to arm the soul with an almost superhuman energy ; the inno- cent and irrepressible joy of infancy ; the bloom, and buoyancy, and dazzling hopes of youth ; the throbbings of the heart when it first wakes to love, and dreams of a happiness too vast for earth ; woman, with her beauty, and grace, and gentleness, and fullness oi feeling, and depth of affection, and her blushes of purity, and the tones and looks which only a mother's heart can inspire, — these are all poetical. 9. It is not true that the poet paints a life which does not exist. He only extracts and concentrates, as it were, life's ethereal essence, arrests and condenses its volatile fragrance, brings together its scattered beauties, and prolongs its more refined but evanes'cent joys ; and in this he does well ; for it is TO THE POET. 5^<J good to feel that life is not wholly usurped by cares for sub- sistence and physical gratifications, but admits, in measures which may be indefinitely enlarged, sentiments and delights worthy of a higher being. 10. This power of poetry to refine our views of life and hap- piness is more and more needed as society advances. It is needed to withstand the encroachments of heartless and artifi- cial manners, which makes civilization so tame and unin'ter- esting. It is needed to counteraet the tendency of physical science, which — being now sought, not, as formerly, for intel- lectual gratification, but for multiplying bodily comforts — re- quires a new development of imagination, taste, and poetry, to preserve men from sinking into an earthly, material, ep y icure'an ' life. Cuanninq. William Elleiiy Channing, D. D., an eminent American divine, was bora at Newport, R. I., April 7th, 1780. At the age of twelve he was sent to New London, Conn., to prepare for college under his uncle, the Rev. Henry Chan- ning. His father, an able and hospitable lawyer, soon afterward died, to which, in connection with a revival which then swept over New England, he attributed the commencement of his decidedly religious life. He entered the freshman class of Harvard College in 1794, where he graduated with the highest honors. He became pastor of the Federal Street Church, Boston, in 1803. The society rapidly increased under his charge, and his reputation and influence became marked and extensive. He married, in 1814; visited Europe for his health, in 1823; and died at Bennington, Vt., October 2, 1S42. He published many admirable addresses and letters. His nephew, William E. Channing, col lected and published six volumes of his writings in 1848. A selection of his writings, entitled "Beauties o* Channing," has been published in London; and many of his essays, at various times, have been translated into German. Among the best of his general writings are his "Remarks on the Character and Writings of Milton;" on "Bonaparte;" on "Fenelon;" and on "Self-Culture." IV. 178. TO THE POET. THOU, who wouldst wear the name Of poet mid thy brethren of mankind, And clothe in words of flame Thoughts that shall live within the general mind,— Deem not the framing of a deathless lay The pastime of a drowsy summer day. 1 Ep v i cu re' an, pertaining to upon the opinion that pleasure con- Epicurus, a celebrated Greek philo- stitutes the highest human happi- sopher, whose theory was based ness; hence, given to luxury. 550 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 2. But gather all thy powers, And wreak them on the verse that thou dost weave 5 And in thy lonely hours, At silent morning or at wakeful eve, "While the warm current tingles through thy veins, Set forth the burning words in fluent strains. 3. No smooth array of phrase, Artfully sought and ordered though it be, Which the cold rhymer lays Upon his page with languid m'dustry, Can wake the listless pulse to livelier speed, Or fill with sudden tears the eyes that read. 4. The secret wouldst thou know To touch the heart or fire the blood at will ? Let thine own eyes 6'erflow ; Let thy lips quiver with the passionate thrill ; Seize the great thought, ere yet its power be past, And bind, in words, the fleet emotion fast. 5. Then, should thy verse appear Halting and harsh, and all unaptly wrought, Touch the crude line with fear, Save in the moment of impassioned thought ; Then summon back the original glow, and mend The strain with rapture that with fire was penned. 6. Yet let no empty gust Of passion find an utterance in thy lay, A blast that whirls the dust Along the howling street and dies away ; But feelings of calm power and mighty sweep, Like currents journeying through the windless deep. 7. Seek'st thou, in living lays, To limn the beauty of the earth and sky ? Before thine inner gaze Let all that beauty in clear vision lie ; Look on it with exceeding love, and write The words inspired by wonder and delight. 8. Of tempests wouldst thou sing, Or tell of battles — make thyself a part THE BELLS. 551 Of the great tumult ; cling To the tossed wreck with terror in thy heart ; Scale, with the assaulting host, the rampart's height, And strike and struggle in the thickest fight. 9. So shalt thou frame a lay That haply may endure from age to age, And they who read shall say : What witchery hangs upon this poet's page ! What art is his the written spells to find That sway from mood to mood the willing mind ! Bryant. SECTIOX XXXV. I. 179. THE BELLS. H EAR the sledges with the bells — Silver bells — "What a world of merriment their melody foretells ! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night ! While the stars that oversprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight ; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic ' rhvme, To the tintinnabulation J that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells — From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. 2. Hear the mellow wedding-bells, Golden bells ! What a world 3 of happiness their harmony foretells I Through the balmy air of night How they ring out their delight ! » Runic (r5' nik), an epithet ap- 3 Tin r tin naV u la' tion, a tink- plied to the language and letters of ling sound, as of a bell or bells, the ancient Goths. s World, (w&rld). 552 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. From the molten-golden notes, And all in tune, What a, liquid ditty floats To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats On the moon ! Oh, from out the sounding cells, What a gush of euphony voluminously wells ! How it swells ! How it dwells On the Future ! how it tells Of the rapture that impels To the swinging and the ringing Of the bells, bells, bells — Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells — To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells ! 3. Hear the loud alarum bells — Brazen bells ! What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells ! In the startled ear of night How they scream out their affright ! Too much horrified to speak, They can only shriek, shriek, Out of tune, In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire Leaping higher, higher, higher, With a desperate desire, And a resolute endeavor, Now — now to sit or never, By the side of the pale-faced moon. Oh, the bells, bells, bells ! What a tale their terror tells Of despair ! How they clang, and clash, and roar ! What a horror they outpour On the bosom of the palpitating air ! Yet the air, it fully knows, By the twanging And the clanging, THE BELLS 553 How the danger ebbs and flows ; Yet the car distinctly tells In the jangling And the wrangling, How the danger sinks and swells, By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells — Of the bells— Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells— In tha clamor and the clangor of the bells ! 4. Hear the tolling of the belh — Iron bells ! What a world of solemn thought their monody ' compels ! In the silence of the night, How we shiver with affright At the mel'ancholy menace of their tone 1 For every sound that floats From the rust within thuir throats Is a groan. And the people — ah, the people — They that dwell up in the steeple, All alone, And who tolling, tolling, tolling, In that muffled monotone, Feel a glory in so rolling On the human heart a stone — They are neither man nor woman — They are neither brute nor human — They are Ghouls : a And their king it is who tolls ; And he rolls, rolls, rolls, rolls, A prean 3 from the bells ! And his merry bosom swells With the pa?an of the bells ! 1 M5n' o dy, a species of poem of was supposed to prey upon human a mournful character, in which a bodies. single mourner is supposed to bewail 3 Pae' an, among the antfentt, a himself. song of rejoicing in honor of Apollo ; 5 Ghoul (g6l), an imaginary evil hence, a loud and joyous song ; a being among Eastern nations, which song of triumph- 554 NATIONAL FIFTH READEtt. And he dances and lie yells ; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the psean of the bells — Of the bells : Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the throbbing of the bells—- Of the bells, bells, bells, To the sobbing of the bells ; Keeping time, time, time, As he knells, knells, knells, In a happy Runic rhyme, To the rolling of the bells — Of the bells, bells, bells — To the tolling of the bells, Of the bells, bells, bells, bells — Bells, bells, bells — To the moaning and the groaning of the bells. Edgar A. Poe. Edgar A. Poe, born in Baltimore, in January, 1811, was left an orphan by the death of his parents at Richmond, in 1815. He was adopted by John Allen, a wealthy merchant of Virginia, who in the following year took him to England, and placed him at a school near London, from which, in 1822, he was removed to the University of Virginia, where he graduated with distinction in 1826. While at the Military Academy at West Point, in 1830, he published his first work, a small volume of poems. He secured prizes for a poem and a tale at Baltimore, in 1833; in 1835 he was employed to assist in editing "The Southern Literary Gazette," at Richmond ; in 1838 he removed to Philadelphia, where he was connected as editor with Burton's Magazine one year, and with Graham's a year and a half; and subsequently, while in that city, published several volumes of tales, besides many of his finest criticisms, tales, and poems, in periodicals. He went to New York in 1844, where he wrote several months for the " Evening Mirror." In 1845 appeared his very popular poem of " The Raven," and the same year he aided in establishing the " Broadway Journal," of which he was afterward the sole editor. His wife, to whom he had been married about twelve years, died in the spring of 1849. In the summer of that year he returned to Virginia, where it was supposed he had mastered his previous habits of dissipa- tion ; but he died from his excesses, at Baltimore, on the seventh of October, at the age of thirty-eight years. In poetry, as in prose, he was eminently success- ful in the metaphysical treatment of the passions. He had a great deal of imag- ination and fancy, and his mind was highly analytical. His poems are con- structed with wonderful ingenuity, and finished with consummate art. THE CRY OF THE HUMAN. ~,~>3 II. 180. THE CRY OF THE nUMAN. « rpHERE is no God,' the foolish saith, I But none, ' There is no sorrow ;' And nature oft, the cry of faith, In bitter need will borrow : Eyes which the preacher could not school, By wayside graves are raised ; And lips say, ' God be pitiful/ Who ne'er said, ' God be praised.' Be pitiful, O God ! 2. The tempest stretches from the steep The shadow of its coming ; The beasts grow tame, and near us creep, As help were in the human : Yet, while the cloud- wheels roll and grind We spirits tremble under ! — The bills have echoes ; but we find No answer for the thunder. Be pitiful, OGod! 8. The battle hurtles ' on the plains — Earth feels new scythes upon her : We reap our brothers for the wains, And call the harvest . . honor, Draw face to face, front line to line, One image all inherit, — Then kill, curse on, by that same sign, Clay, clay — and spirit, spirit. Be pitiful, OGod! 4. The plague runs festering through the town, And never a bell is tolling ; And corpses, jostled 'neath the moon, Nod to the dead-cart's rolling. The young child calleth for the cup — The strong man brings it weeping ; 1 Hurtle (hSr'tl), to make a clashing, terrifying, or threatening sound ; to resound. 556 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. The mother from her babe looks up, And shrieks away its sleeping. Be pitiful, O God f 5. The plague of gold strikes far and near, And deep and strong it enters : This purple simar ' which we wear, Makes madder than the centaur's. 2 Our thoughts grow blank, our words grow strange ; We cheer the pale gold-diggers — Each soul is worth so much on 'Change, And marked, like sheep, with figures. Be pitiful, God ! 6. The curse of gold upon the land, The lack of bread enforces — The rail-cars snort from strand to strand, Like more of Death's White Horses ! The rich preach ' rights' and future days, And hear no angel scoffing : The poor die mute — with starving gaze On corn-ships in the ofnng. Be pitiful, God ! 7. We meet together at the feast — To private mirth betake us — We stare down in the winecup, lest Some vacant chair should shake us ! We name delight, and pledge it round — ' It shall be ours to-morrow !' God's seraphs ! do your voices sound As sad in naming sorrow ? Be pitiful, God ! 8. We sit together, with the skies, The steadfast skies, above us : We look into each other's eyes, 4 And how long will you love us ?' i Simar (si mar'), a kind of long as man from the head to the loins, gown or robe. the remainder of the body being 2 Cen' taur, a fabulous being, sup- that of a horse with its four feet posed to be half man and half horse, and tail ; also, as here used, a bulk represented in ancient works of art killer. THE CRY OF TIIE HUMAN. 557 The eyes grow dim with prophecy, The voices, low and breathless — 'Till death us part' — words, to be Our best for love the deathless ! Be pitiful, dear God ! 9. Wo tremble by the harmless bed Of one loved and departed — Our tears drop on the lips that said Last night, ' Be stronger hearted !' O God, — to clasp those fingers close, And yet to feel so lonely ! — To see a light upon such brows, Which is the daylight only ! Be pitiful, OGod! 10. The happy children come to us, And look up in our faces : They ask us — Was it thus, and thus, When we were in their places ? We can not speak : — we see anew The hills we used to live in ; And feel our mother's smile press through The kisses she is giving. Be pitiful, O God ! 11. We pray together at the kirk, For mercy, mercy, solely — Hands weary with the evil work, We lift them to the Holy ! The corpse is calm below our knee — Its spirit, bright before Thee — Between them, worse than either, we — Without the rest of glory ! Be pitiful, O God J 12. We leave the communing of men, The murmur of the passions ; And live alone, to live again With endless generations. Are we so bravo ? — The sea and sky In silence lift their mirrors ; 558 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. And, glassed therein, our spirits high Recoil from their own terrors. Be pitiful, O God ! 13. We sit on hills our childhood wist, Woods, hamlets, streams, beholding : The sun strikes through the farthest mist, The city's spire to golden. The city's golden spire it was, When hope and health were strongest, But now it is the churchyard grass, We look upon the longest. Be pitiful, O God ! 15. And soon all vision waxeth dull — Men whisper, ' He is dying :' We cry no more, ' Be pitiful !' — We have no strength for crying : No strength, no need ! Then, Soul of mine, Look up and triumph rather — Lo ! in the depth of God's Divine, The Son adjures the Father — Be pitiful, O God ! Mrs. Browning. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, an English poetess, and one of the greatest, if not the greatest, was born in London, in 1809. Educated with great care, she became a ripe scholar, uniting remarkably the distinctive characteristics of the masculine understanding and the feminine heart. She began to write at a very early age for periodicals. Her first volume of poems appeared in 1826. She became the wife of Robert Browning in 1846. She died at Florence, the princi- pal residence of the Brownings for several years, June 29th, 1861. Her range ot subjects was wide. Her genius grew apace, every new performance giving better promise for the next. She abounded in figures, strong and striking, in happy conceits, and successful expressions. She knew the true art of choosing words, a large per cent, of them being Saxon. Of her numerous poems, probably none surpasses " Aurora Leigh," a narrative poem in 9 books, published in 1856. in. 181. THE RAVEN. 1. ONCE upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore — While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, THE RAVEN. 559 As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber-door. " "lis some visitor," I muttered, " tapping at my chamber-door — Only this, and nothing more." 2. Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor, Eagerly I wished the morrow : vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of Borrow — sorrow for the lost Lenore — For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore — Nameless here forevermore. 3. And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain, Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before ; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, " Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber-door, — Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber-door ; That it is, and nothing more." 4. Presently my soul grew stronger : hesitating then no longer, " Sir," Raid I, " or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore ; But the fact is, I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber-door, That I scarce was sure I heard you" — here I opened wide the door: Darkness there, and nothing more. 5. Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before ; But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word " Lenore!" This 7whisper'd,and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore !" Merely this, and nothing more. 6. Back "into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, Soon again I heard a tapping, something louder than before. " Surely," said I, " surely that is something at my window-lattice ; 560 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Let me see then what thereat is, and this mystery explore, — Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore ; — "lis the wind, and nothing more." 7. Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore. Not the least obeisance made he ; not a minute stopp'd or stay'd he ; But, with mien of lord or lady, perch'd above my chamber-door, — Perch'd upon a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber-door — Perch'd, and sat, and nothing more. 8. Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, " Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, " art sure no craven ; Ghastly, grim, and ancient raven, wandering from the nightly shore, Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore ?" Quoth the raven, " Nevermore !" 9. Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, Though its answer little meaning — little relevancy bore ; Eor we can not help agreeing that no living human being Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber-door — Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber-door, With such name as " Nevermore !" 10. But the raven sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour. Nothing further then he utter'd — not a feather then he flutter'd — Till I scarcely more than mutter 'd, " Other friends have flown before — On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before* Then the bird said, " Nevermore !" 11. Startled at the stillness, broken by reply so aptly spoken, "Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store, Caught from some unhappy master, whom unmerciful disaster THE RAVEN. 561 Follow'd fast and follow'd faster, till his songs one burden bore, — Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore, Of — " Never — nevermore !" 12. But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling, Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust, and door, Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore — What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore Meant in croaking " Nevermore !" 13. This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing To the fowl, whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er, But whose velvet violet lining, with the lamp-light gloating o'er She shall press — ah ! nevermore ! 14. Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer Swung by seraphim, whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor. 11 Wretch," I cried, " thy God hath lent thee — by these angels he hath sent thee Respite — respite and nepenthe ' from thy memories of Lenore ! Quaff, oh, quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!" Quoth the raven, " Nevermore !" 15. " Prophet !" said I, " thing of evil ! — prophet still, if bird or devil ! Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest toss'd thee here ashore, Desolate, yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted — On this home by Horror haunted — tell me truly, I implore — Is there — is there balm in Gilead ? — tell me — tell me, I implore P Quoth the raven, "Nevermore !" 16. " Prophet !" said I, " thing of evil ! — prophet still, if bird or devil ! By that heaven that bends above us — by that God we both adore, 1 Ne pSn'the, a drug or medicine that relieves pain and exhilarates. 24* 562 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Tell this soul, with sorrow laden, if, within the distant Aidenn, 1 It shall clasp a sainted maiden, whom the angels name Lenore ; Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore!" Quoth the raven, " Nevermore !" 17. " Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend !" I shrieked, upstarting — " Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken ! Leave my loneliness unbroken ! — quit the bust above my door ! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door !" Quoth the raven, " Nevermore I" 18. And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas, just above my chamber-door ; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor ; And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted — Nevermore ! Edgar A. Poe. SECTION XXXYI. I. 182. THE SARACEN BROTHERS. PART FIRST. ATTENDANT. A stranger craves admittance to your highness. Saladin. Whence comes he ? Atten. That I know not. Enveloped with a vestment of strange form, His countenance is hidden ; but his step, J Aidenn, from Aides, a name pre- transferred to his house, his abode, ferred by the poets for Hades. In or kingdom, so that it became a Homer, Aides is invariably the name name in quite general use for the of the god ; but in latter times it was nether world. THE SARACEN BROTHERS. 563 His lofty port, bis voice in vain disguised, Proclaim — if that I dare pronounce it. Sal. Whom ? Atten. Thy royal brother ! Sal. Bring him instantly. [Exit Attendant. Now, with his specious, smooth, persuasive tongue, Fraught with some wily subterfuge, he thinks To dissipate my anger. He shall die. [Enter Attendant and Ma lee Adhel. Leave us together. [Exit Attendant.] [Aside.'] I should know that form. Now summon all thy fortitude, my soul, Nor, though thy blood cry for him, spare the guilty ! [Aloud j Well, stranger, speak ; but first unvail thyself, For Sal'adm l must view the form that fronts him. Malek Adhel. Behold it, then ! Sal I see a traitor's visage. Mai. Ad. A brother's ! Sal. No ! Saladin owns no kindred with a villain. Mai. Ad. O, patience, Heaven. Had any tongue but thine Uttered that word, it ne'er should speak another. Sal. And why not now ? Can this heart be more pierced By Malek Adhel's sword than by his deeds ? Oh, thou hast made a desert of this bosom ! For open candor, planted sly disguise ; For confidence, suspicion ; and the glow Of generous friendship, tenderness, and love, Forever banished ! Whither can I turn, When he by blood, by gratitude, by faith, By every tie, bound to support, forsakes me ? Who, who can stand, when Malek Adhel falls ? 1 Sal' a din, the hero of this dra- and conquests. Christians and Sara- matic piece, was born in 1137. He cens have vied with each other in became Sultan of Egypt and Syria writing panegyrics on the justice, in 1168, from which period he is valor, generosity, and political wis- noted for his wars with the Chris- dom of this prince, who possessed tian crusaders. He died at Damas- the art, not simply of acquiring cus in 1193, leaving a brother and power, but of devoting it to the seventeen eons to 6hare his power good of his subjects. 584 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Henceforth. I turn me from the sweets of love : The smiles of friendship, and this glorious world, In which all find some heart to rest upon, Shall be to Saladin a cheerless void, — His brother has betrayed him ! Mil. Ad. Thou art softened ; I am thy brother, then ; but late thou saidst > My tongue can never utter the base title ! S.il. Was it traitor ? True ! Thou hast betrayed me in my fondest hopes ! Villain ? 'Tis just ; the title is appropriate Dissembler ? 'Tis not written in thy face ; No, nor imprinted on that specious brow ; But on this breaking heart the name is stamped, Forever stamped, with that of Malek Adhel ! Think'st thou I'm softened ? By Mahomet ! these hands Should crush these aching eyeballs, ere a tear Fall from them at thy fate ! O monster, monster ! The brute that tears the infant from its nurse Is excellent to thee, for in his form The impulse of his nature may be read ; But thou, so beautiful, so proud, so noble, Oh, what a wretch art thou ? Oh ! can a term In all the various tongues of man be found To match thy infamy ? Mai. Ad. Go on ! go on ! 'Ti3 but a little while to hear thee, Saladin ; And, bursting at thy feet, this heart will prove Its penitence, at least. Sal. That were an end Too noble for a traitor ! The bowstring is A more appropriate finish ! Thou shalt die ! Mai. Ad. And death were welcome at another's mandate ! What, what have I to live for ? Be it so, If that, in all thy armies, can be found An executing hand. Sal. Oh, doubt it not ! They're eager for the office. Perfidy, So black as thine, effaces from their minds All memory of thy former excellence. THE SARACEN BROTHERS. 565 Mai. Ad. Defer not then their -wishes. Saladin, If e'er this form was joyful to thy sight, This voice seemed grateful to thine ear, accede To my last prayer : — Oh, lengthen not this scene, To which the agonies of death were pleasing ! Let me die speedily ! Sal. This very hour ! [Aside,'] For, oh ! the more I look upon that face, The more I hear the accents of that voice, The monarch softens, and the judge is lost In all the brother's weakness ; yet such guilt, — Such vile ingratitude, — it calls for vengeance ; And vengeance it shall have ! AVhat, ho ! who waits there ? [Enter Attendant. Atten. Did your highness call ? Sal. Assemble quickly My forces in the court. Tell them they come To view the death of yonder bosom-traitor. And, bid them mark, that he who will not spare His brother when he errs, expects obedience, Silent obedience, from his followers. [ Exit Attendant. n. 183. THE SARACEN BROTHERS. PART SECOND. MALEK ADHEL. Now, Sal'adin, The word is given, I have nothing more To fear from thee, my brother. I am not About to crave a miserable life. Without thy love, thy honor, thy esteem, Life were a burden to me. Thiuk not, either, The justice of thy sentence I would question. But one request now trembles on my tongue, — One wish still clinging round the heart, which soon Not even that shall torture, — will it, then, Think'st thou, thy slumbers render quieter, Thy waking thoughts more pleasing, to reflect, That when thv voice had doomed a brother's death, The last request which e'er was his to utter, 566 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Thy harshness made him carry to the grave ? Sal. Speak, then ; but ask thyself if thou hast reason To look for much indulgence here. Mai. Ad. I hare not ! Yet will 1 ask for it. We part forever ; This is our last farewell ; the king is satisfied ; The judge has spoke the irrevocable sentence. None sees, none hears, save that omniscient Power, "Which, trust me, will not frown to look upon Two brothers part like such. When, in the face Of forces once my own, I'm led to death, Then be thine eye unmoistened ; let thy voice Then speak my doom untrembling ; then Unmoved, behold this stiff and blackened corse : But now I ask — nay, turn not, Saladin ! — I ask one single pressure of thy hand ; From that stern eye one solitary tear — Oh, torturing recollection ! — one kind word From the loved tongue which once breathed naught but kindness. Still silent ? Brother ! friend ! beloved companion Of all my youthful sports ! — are they forgotten ? Strike me with deafness, make me blind, O Heaven ! Let me not see this unforgiving man Smile at my agonies ! nor hear that voice Pronounce my doom, which would not say one word, One little word, whose cherished memory Would soothe the struggles of departing life ! Yet, yet thou wilt ! Oh, turn thee, Saladin ! Look on my face — thou canst not spurn me then ; Look on the once-loved face of Malek Adhel For the last time, and call him — Sal. [seizing his hand.] Brother! brother! Mai. Ad. [breaking away.] Now, call thy followers. Death has not now a single pang in store. Proceed ! I'm ready. Sal. Oh, art thou ready to forgive, my brother ? To pardon him who found one single error, One little failing, mid a splendid throng Of glorious qualities — Mai. Ad. Oh, stay thee, Saladin ! I did not ask for life. I only wished THE SARACEN BROTHERS. 567 To carry thy forgiveness to the grave. No, Emperor, the loss of Cesarea Cries loudly for the blood of Malek Adhel. Thy soldiers, too, demand that he who lost What cost them many a weary hour to gain, Should expiate his offences with his life. Lo ! even now they crowd to view my death, Thy just impartiality. I go ! Pleased by my fate to add one other leaf To thy proud wreath of glory. [Going. Sal. Thou shalt not. [Enter Attendant. Atten. My lord, the troops assembled by your order Tumultous throng the courts. The prince's death Not one of them but vows he will not suffer. The mutes have fled ; the very guards rebel. Nor think I, in this city's spacious round, Can e'er be found a hand to do the office. Mai. Ad. O faithful friends ! [To Atten.] Thine shalt. Atten. Mine ? — Never ! — The other first shall lop it from the body. Sal. They teach the Emperor his duty well. Tell them he thanks them for it. Tell them, too, That ere their opposition reached our ears, Saladin had forgiven Malek Adhel. Atten. O joyful news ! I haste to gladden many a gallant heart, And dry the tear on many a hardy cheek, Unused to such a visitor. [Exit. Sal. These men, the meanest in society, The outcasts of the earth, — by war, by nature Hardened, and rendered callous, — these, who claim No kindred with thee, — who have never heard The accents of affection from thy lips, — Oh, these can cast aside their vowed allegiance, Throw off their long obedience, risk their lives, To save thee from destruction ! While I, I, who can not, in all my memory, Call back one danger which thou hast not shared, One day of grief, one night of revelry, Which thy resistless kindness hath not soothed, 5ft8 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Or thy gay smile and converse rendered sweeter, — I, who have thrice in the ensanguined field, When death seemed certain, only uttered " Brother !" And seen that form like lightning rush between Saladin and his foes, and that brave breast Dauntless exposed to many a furious blow Intended for my own, — I could forget That 'twas to thee I owed the very breath Which sentenced thee to perish ! Oh, 'tis shameful I Thou canst not pardon me ! Mai. Ad. By these tears, I can ! O brother ! from this very hour, a new, A glorious life commences ! I am all thine ! Again the day of gladness or of anguish Shall Malek Adhel share ; and 6ft again May this siuord fence thee in the bloody field. Henceforth, Saladin, My heart, my soul, my sword, are thine forever. ni. 184. BRUTUS AND TITUS. BRUTUS. Well, Titus, speak ; how is it wifli thee now? I would attend awhile this mighty motion, Wait till the tempest were quite overblown, That I might take thee in the calm of nature, With all thy gentler virtues brooding on thee : So hushed a stillness, as if all the gods Looked down and listened to what we were saying : Speak, then, and tell me, O my best beloved, My son, my Titus ! is all well again ? Titus. So well, that saying how must make it nothing : So well, that I could wish to die this moment, For so my heart, with powerful throbs, persuades me That were indeed to make you reparation ; That were, my lord, to thank you home — to die And that, for Titus, too, would be most h#ppy. Brutus. How's that, my son ? would death for thee be happy ? Titus. Most certain, Sir ; for in my grave I 'scape All those affronts which I, in life, must look for ; BRUTUS AND TITUS. 50 f J All those reproaches which the eyes, the fingers, And tongues of Home will daily cast upon me,— From whom, to a soul so sensible as mine, Each single scorn would be far worse than dying. Besides, I 'scape the stings of my own conscience, Which will forever rack me with remembrance, Haunt me by day, and torture me by night, Casting my blotted honor in the way, Where'er my mel'ancholy thoughts shall guide me. Brutus. But, is not death a very dreadful thing ? Titus. Not to a mind resolved. No, Sir ; to mo It seems as natural as to be born. Groans and convulsions, and discolored faces, Friends weeping round us, crapes and obsequies, Make it a dreadful thing : the pomp of death Is far more terrible than death itself Yes, Sir ; I call the powers of heaven to witness, Titus dares die, if so you have decreed ; Nay, he shall die with joy to honor Brutus. Brutus. Thou perfect glory of the Junian race ! Let me endear thee once more to my bosom ; Groan an eternal farewell to thy soul ; Instead of tears, weep blood, if possible ; — Blood, the heart-blood of Brutus, on his child ! For thou must die, my Titus — die, my son ! I swear, the gods have doomed thee to the grave. The violated genius of thy country Bares his sad head, and passes sentence on thee. This morning sun, that lights thy sorrows on To the tribunal of this horrid vengeance, Shall never see thee more ! Titus. Alas ! my lord, Why art thou moved thus? Why am I worth thy sorrow ? Why should the godlike Brutus shake to doom me? Why all these trappings for a traitor's hearse ? The gods will have it so. Brutus. They will, my Titus ; Nor heaven nor earth can have it otherwise. Nay, Titus, mark ! the deeper that I search, My harassed soul returns the more confirmed. 570 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Methinks I see the very hand of Jove Moving the dreadful wheels of this affair, — Like a machine, they whirl thee to thy fate. It seems as if the gods had preordained it, To fix the reeling spirits of the people, And settle the loose liberty of Rome. 'Tis fixed ; O, therefore let not fancy dupe thee ! So fixed thy death, that 'tis not in the power Of gods or men to save thee from the ax. Titus. The ax! O Heaven! must I, then, fall so basely? "What ! shall I perish by the common hangman ? Brutus. If thou deny me this, thou givest me nothing. Yes, Titus, since the gods have so decreed That I must lose thee, I will take the advantage Of thy important fate ; cement Rome's flaws, And heal her wounded freedom with thy blood. I will ascend myself the sad tribunal, And sit upon my son — on thee, my Titus ; Behold thee suffer all the shame of death, The lictor's lashes, bleed before the people ; Then, with thy hopes and all thy youth upon thee, Soe thy head taken by the common ax, Without a groan, without one pitying tear (If that the gods can hold me to my purpose), To make my justice quite transcend example. Titus. Scourged like a bondman ! Ha ! a beaten slave I But I deserve it all : yet, here I fail ; The image of this suffering quite unmans me. O Sir! O Brutus! must I call you father, Yet have no token of your tenderness — No sign of mercy ? What ! not bate me that ? Can you resolve on all the extremity Of cruel rigor ? To behold me, too — To sit, unmoved, and see me whipped to death — Is this a father ? Ah, Sir, why should you make my heart suspect That all your late compassion was dissembled ? How can I think that you did ever love me ? Brutus. Think that I love thee, by my present passion, By these unmanly tears, these earthquakes here ; THE PHRENSY OF ORRA. 571 These sighs, that twitch the very strings of life ; Think that no other cause on earth could move me To tremble thus, to sob, or shed a tear, Nor shake my solid virtue from her point, But Titus' death. 0, do not call it shameful That thus shall fix the glory of the world. I own thy suffering ought to unman me thus, To make me throw my body on the ground, To bellow like a beast, to gnaw the earth, To tear my hair, to curse the cruel fates That force a father thus to kill his child ! Titus. O, rise, thou violated majesty ! I now submit to all your threatened vengeance. Come forth, ye executioners of justice! Nay, all ye lictors, slaves, and common hangmen Come, strip me bare, unrobe me in his sight, And lash me till I bleed ! Whip me, like furies ! Ajid, when you've scourged me till I foam and fall For want of spirits, groveling in the dust, Then take my head, and give it to his justice : By all the gods, I greedily resign it ? Lee. Nathaniel Lee, an English dramatic writer, was born in Hertfordshire in 1651. He received a classical education at Westminster school, and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He tried the stage both as an actor and author; was four years in bedlam from wild insanity; but recovered his reason, resumed his labors as a dramatist, and though subject to fits of partial derangement, con- tinued to write till the end of his life. He was the author of eleven tragedies, besides assisting Dryden in the composition of "(Edipns" and u The Duke of Guise." His best tragedies are the "Rival Queens," " Mithridates," "Theo- dosius," and Lucius Junius Brutus." He possessed no small degree of the tire of genius, excelling in tenderness and genuine passion; but his style often de- generates Into bombast and extravagant phrensy, in part caused by his mental malady. He died in London on the 6th of April, 1692. IV. 185. THE PHRENSY OF ORRA. HARTMAN. Is she well ? Tlicobahl Her body is. Hart. And not her mind? Oh, direst wreck of all! That noble mind ! — But 'tis some passing seizure, Some powerful movement of a transient nature ; It is not madness ! 572 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Theo. 'Tis Heaven's infliction ; let us call it so ; Give it no other name. Eleanora. Nay, do not thus despair ; when she beholds us, She'll know her friends, and, by our kindly soothing, Be gradually restored — Alice. Let me go to her. T)ieo. Nay, forbear, I pray thee ; I will myself with thee, my worthy Hartman, Go in and lead her forth. Orra. Come back, come back! the fierce and fiery light! Theo. Shrink not, dear love ! it is the light of day. Orra. Have cocks crowed yet ? TJieo. Yes ; twice I've hearxl already Their matin sound. Look up to the blue sky — Is it not daylight ? And these green boughs Are fresh and fragrant round thee : every sense Tells thee it is the cheerful early day. Orra. Aye, so it is ; day takes his daily turns, Rising between the gulfy dells of night, Like whitened billows on a gloomy sea. Till glow-worms gleam, and stars peep through the dark, And will-o'-the wisp his dancing taper light," They will not come again. [Bending her ear to the ground. Hark, hark ! aye, hark ! They are all there : I hear their hollow sound Full many a fathom down. Theo. Be still, poor troubled soul ! they'll ne'er return — They are forever gone. Be well assured Thou shalt from henceforth have a cheerful home, Wim crackling fagots on thy midnight fire, Blazing like day around thee ; and thy friends — Thy living, loving friends — still by thy side, To speak to thee and cheer thee. See, my Orra ! They are beside thee now ; dost thou not know them? Orra. No, no ! athwart the wavering, garish light, Things move and seem to be, and yet are nothing. Elca. My gentle Orra, hast thou then forgot me ? Dost not thou know my voice? Orra. 'Tis like an old tune to my ear returned. For there be those who sit in cheerful halls, THE PHRENSY OF ORRA. 573 And breathe sweet air, and speak with pleasant sounds ; And once I lived with such ; some years gone by, — I wot not now how long. Hughobcrt. Keen words that rend my heart : thouhadstahome, And one whose faith was pledged for thy protection. Urston. Be more composed, my lord ; some faint remembrance Returns upon her with the well-known sound Of voices once familiar to her ear. Let Alice sing to her some favorite tune That may lost thoughts recall. [Alice sings. Orra. Ha, ha ! the witched air sings for thee bravely. Hoot owls through mantling fog for matin birds ? It lures not me. — I know thee well enough : The bones of murdered men thy measure beat, And lleshless heads nod to thee. — Off, I say! Why are ye here ? That is the blessed sun. Elca. Ah, Orra ! do not look upon us thus : These are the voices of thy loving friends That speak to thee ; this is a friendly hand That presses thine so kindly. Hart. Oh, grievous state ! what terror seizes thee ? Orra. Take it away ! It was the swathed dead ; I know its clammy, chill, and bony touch. Come not again ; I'm strong and terrible now : Mine eyes have looked upon all dreadful things ; And when the earth yawns, and the hell-blast sounds, I'll bide the trooping of unearthly steps, "With stiff, clenched, terrible strength. Hugh. A murderer is a guiltless wretch to me. Hart. Be patient ; 'tis a momentary pitch ; Let me encounter it. Orra. Take off from me thy strangely fastened eye ; 1 may not look upon thee — yet I must. Unfix thy baleful glance. Art thou a snake ? Something of horrid power within thee dwells. Still, still that powerful eye doth suck me in, Like a dark eddy to its wheeling core. Spare me ! oh spare me, Being of strange power, And at thy feet my subject head I'll lay. Elea. Alas, the piteous sight ! to see her thus, 574 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. The noble, generous, playful, stately Orra ! Theo. Out on thy hateful and ungenerous guile ! Tliink'st thou I'll suffer o'er her wretched state The slightest shadow of a base control ? [Raising Ore a. from the ground. No ; rise, thou stately flower with rude blasts rent : As honored art thou with thy broken stem And leaflets strewed, as in thy summer's pride. I've seen thee worshiped like a regal dame, With every studied form of marked devotion, Whilst I, in distant silence, scarcely proffered Even a plain soldier's courtesy ; but now, No liege man to his crowned mistress sworn, Bound and devoted is as I to thee ; And he who offers to thy altered state The slightest seeming of diminished reverence, Must in my blood — [To Haetman]. Oh pardon me, my friend! Thou'st wrung my heart. Hart. Nay, do thou pardon me, — I am to blame : Thy noble heart shall not again be wrung. But what can now be done ? O'er such wild ravings There must be some control. Theo. O none ! none ! none ! but gentle sympathy, And watchfulness of love. — My noble Orra ! Wander where'er thou wilt, thy vagrant steps Shall followed be by one who shall not weary, Nor e'er detach him from his hopeless task ; Bound to thee now as fairest, gentlest beauty Could ne'er have bound him. Alice. See how she gazes on him with a look, Subsiding gradually to softer sadness, Half saying that she knows him. Elca. There is a kindness in her changing eye. Baillie. Joanna Baillie was born in 1762, at Bothwell, in Lanark, Scotland, of which place her father was the parish minister. She removed to London at an early age, and resided in that city, or its neighborhood, almost constantly. Her first volume of dramas, " Plays of the Passions," was published in 1798, her second in 1802, her third in 1812, and her fourth in 1836. A volume of her miscellaneous poems, of which some of the small ones are exceedingly good, appeared in 1841. Her tragedies, though not well adapted to the stage, are fine poems, noble in sentiment, and classical and vigorous in language. Scott numbered the description of Orra's madness with the sublimest scenes ever written, and compared the language to Shakspeare's. She died at Hampstead in Feb.. 1841, MILTON. 575 SECTION XXXVII. L 186. MILTON. PART FIRST. WE venture to say, paradoxical ' as the remark may appear, that no poet has ever had to struggle with more unfavora- ble cir'cumstances than Milton. He doubted, as he has himself owned, whether he had not been born " an age too late." For this notion Johnson has thought lit to make him the butt of his clumsy ridicule. The poet, we believe, understood the nature of his art better than the critic. He knew that his poetical genius derived no advantage from the civilization which surrounded him, or from the learning which he had acquired ; and he looked back with something like regret to the ruder age of simple words and vivid impressions. 2. "We think that as civilization advances, poetry almost nec- essarily declines. Therefore, though we admire those great works of imagination which have appeared in dark ages, we do not admire them the more because they have appeared in dark ages. On the contrary, we hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age. We can not understand why those who believe in that most orthodox article of literary faith, that the earliest poets are generally the best, should wonder at the rule as if it were the exception. Surely the uniformity of the phenomenon indicates a corresponding uniformity in the cause. 3. He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child. He must take to pieces the whole web of his mind. He must unlearn much of that knowledge which has, perhaps, constituted hitherto his chief title of superiority. His very talents will be a hinderance to him. His difficulties will be proportioned to his proficiency in the pursuits which are fashionable among his contemporaries; and that proficiency will in general be proportioned to the vigor and activity of his mind. And it is well, if, after all his saeri- 1 Par x a d&x' ic al, seemingly absurd ; inclined to tenets contrary to received opinions. 576 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. fices and exertions, his works do not resemble a lisping man or a modern ruin. We have seen, in our own time, great talents, intense labor, and long meditation employed in this struggle against the spirit of the age ; and employed, we will not say ab- solutely in vain, but with dubious success and feeble applause. 4. If these reasonings be just, no poet has ever triumphed over greater difficulties than Milton. He received a learned education. He was a profound and elegant classical scholar : he had studied all the mysteries of Rabbinical 1 literature : he was intimately acquainted with every language of modern Europe, from which either pleasure or information was then to be de- rived. He was, perhaps, the only great poet of later times who has been distinguished by the excellence of his Latin verse. 5. It is not our intention to attempt any thing like a complete examination of the poetry of Milton. The public has long been agreed as to the merit of the most remarkable passages, the in- com'parable harmony of the numbers, and the excellence of that style which no rival has been able to equal, and no parodist 2 to degrade ; which displays in their highest perfection the idiom- atic 3 powers of the English tongue, and to which every ancient and every modern language has contributed something of grace, of energy, or of music. In the vast field of criticism in which we are entering, innumerable reapers have already put their sickles. Yet the harvest is so abundant that the negligent search of a straggling gleaner may be rewarded with a sheaf. . 6. The most striking characteristic of the poetry of Milton is the extreme remoteness of the associations by means of which it acts on the reader. Its effect is produced, not so much by what it expresses as by what it suggests ; not so much by the ideas which it directly conveys, as by other ideas which are connected with them. He electrifies the mind through conductors. The most unimaginative man must understand the " Iliad." Homer gives him no choice, and requires from him no exerticn ; but takes the whole upon himself, and sets his images in so clear a light that it is impossible to be blind to them. The works of Milton can not be comprehended or enjoyed, unless the mind of 1 Rab bin' ic al, pertaining to Rab- which poetry written on one subject bins, or Jewish doctors of the law. is applied to another. a PaVo dist, one who makes slight 8 Id v i o mat' ic, peculiar to the alterations, ironical or jocular, by structure of a language. MILTON. 577 the reader cooperate with that of the writer. He dues not paint a finished picture, or play for a mere passive listener. He sketches, and leaves others to fill up the outline. He strikes the key-note, and expects his hearer to make out the melody. 7. We often hear of the magical influence of poetry. The expression in general means nothing ; but, applied to the writ- ings of Milton, it is most appropriate. It is poetry arts like an incantation. Its merit lies less in its obvious meaning than in its occult 1 power. There would seem, at first sight, to be no more in his words than in other words. But they are words of enchantment ; no sooner arc they pronounced than the past, is present, and the distant near. New forms of beauty start at once into existence, and all the burial-places of the memory give up their dead. Change the structure of the sentence, substitute one synonym a for another, and the whole effect is destroyed. The spell loses its power ; and he who should then hope to con- jure' with it would find himself as much mistaken as Cassim in the Arabian tale, when he stood crying "Open Wheat/' "Open Barley," to the door which obeyed no sound but " Open Sesa- me!" 3 The miserable failure of Dryden, in his attempt to re-write some parts of the "Paradise Lost," is a remarkable instance of this. n. 187. MILTON. PART SECOND. THE character of Milton was peculiarly distinguished by loftiness of thought. He had survived his health and his sight, the comforts of his home and the prosperity of his party. Of the great men by whom he had been distinguished ;it his entrance into life, some had been taken awav from the evil to come ; some had carried into foreign climates their unconquer- able hatred of oppression ; some were pining in dungeons ; and some had poured forth their blood on scaffolds. That hateful proscription, facetiously termed the Act of Indemnity and Ob- 1 Oc cult', invisible : concealed other, or which have very nearly from the eye or understanding. the Bame signification. 2 Syn' o nym, one of two or more 3 Ses'ame.Mi tin: an herb- words in the same language which like plant from the seeds oi which are the precise equivalents of each oil is expressed. 578 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. livion, had set a mark on the poor, blind, deserted poet, and held him up by name to the hatred of a profligate court and an inconstant people ! 2. Venal arid licentious scribblers, with just sufficient talent to clothe the thoughts of a pander in the style of a bellman, were now the favorite writers of the sovereign (suv'er in) and the public. It was a loathsome herd, which could be compared to nothing so fitly as to the rabble of Comus, — grotesque' monsters, half-bestial, half-human, dropping with wine, bloated with glut- tony, and reeling in obscene dances. Amidst these his Muse was placed, like the chaste lady of the Masque, lofty, spotless, and serene — to be chatted at, and pointed at, and grinned at by the whole rabble of Satyrs and Goblins. 3. If ever despondency and asperity could be excused in any man, it might have been excused in Milton. But the strength of his mind overcame every calamity. Neither blindness, nor gout, nor age, nor penury, nor domestic afflictions, nor political disappointments, nor abuse, nor proscription, nor neglect, had power to disturb his sedate and majestic patience. His spirits do not seem to have been high, but they were singularly equa- ble. His temper was serious, perhaps stern ; but it was a tem- per which no sufferings could render sullen or fretful. Such it was when, on the eve of great events, he returned from his travels, in the prime of health and manly beauty, loaded with literary distinctions, and glowing with patriotic hopes : such it continued to be when, after having experienced every calamity which is incident to our nature, old, poor, sightless, and dis- graced, he retired to his hovel to die ! 4. His public conduct was such as was to be expected from a man of a spirit so high and an intellect so powerful. He lived at one of the most memorable eras in the history of mankind ; at the very crisis of the great conflict between liberty and des- potism, reason and prejudice. That great battle was fought for no single generation, for no single land. The destinies of tho human race were staked on the same cast with the freedom of tho English people. Then were first proclaimed those mighty prin- ciples which have since worked their way into the depths of the American forests ; which have roused Greece from the slavery and degradation of two thousand years ; and which, from one end of Europe to the other, have kindled an unquenchable fire MILTON. 579 in the hearts of the oppressed, and loosed the knees of the op- pressors with a strange and unwonted fear ! 5. We must conclude. And yet we can scarcely tear our- selves away from the subject. The days immediately following the publication of this relic of Milton ' appear to be peculiarly set apart and consecrated to his memory. And we shall scarcely be censured if, on this his festival, we be found lingering near his shrine, how worthless soever may be the offering which w r e bring to it. While this book lies on our table, we seem to be contemporaries of the great poet. We are transported a hun- dred and fifty years back. We can almost fancy that we arc visiting him in his small lodging ; that we see him sitting at the old organ beneath the faded green hangings ; that we can catch the quick twinkle of his eyes rolling in vain to find the day ; that we are reading in the lines of his noble countenance the proud and mournful history of his glory and his affliction ! G. We image to ourselves the breathless silence in which we should listen to his slightest word ; the passionate veneration with which we should kneel to kiss his hand, and weep upon it; the earnestness with which we should endeavor to console him, if, indeed, such a spirit could need consolation, for the neglect of an age unworthy of his talents and his virtues ; the eagerness with which we should contest with his daughters, or with his Quaker friend, Elwood, the privilege of reading Homer to him, or of taking down the immortal accents which flowed from his lips. 7. These are, perhaps, foolish feelings. Yet we can not be ashamed of them ; nor shall we be sorry if what we have written shall, in any degree, excite them in other minds. We are not much in the habit of idolizing either the living or the dead. And we think that there is no mure certain indication of a weak and ill-regulated intellect than that propensity which, for want of a better name, we will venture to christen Bosicellism. 1 But there are a few characters which have stood the closest scrutiny and the severest tests, which have been tried in the furnace and have proved pure ; which have been weighed in the balance, and have not been found wanting ; which have been declared sterling by the general consent of mankind, and which are visibly stamped with the image and superscription of the Most High. 1 Relic of Milton. " A Treatise from the Holy Scriptures alone." on the Christian Doctrine, compiled ' B5s' well ism, see p. 210. 580 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 8. These great men we trust that we know how to prize ; and of these was Milton. The sight of his books, the sound of his name, are refreshing to us. His thoughts resemble those celes- tial fruits and flowers which the Virgin Martyr of Massinger ' sent down from the gardens of Paradise to the earth, distin- guished from the productions of other soils, not only by their superior bloom and sweetness, but by their miraculous efficacy to invigorate and to heal. They are powerful, not only to delight, but to elevate and purify. 9. Nor do we envy the man who can study either the life or the writings of the great poet and patriot without aspiring to emulate, not indeed the sublime works with which his genius has enriched our literature, but the zeal with which he labored for the public good, the fortitude with which he endured every private calamity, the lofty disdain with which he looked down on temptation and dangers, the deadly hatred which he bore to bigots and tyrants, and the faith which he so sternly kept with his country and with his fame. T. B. Macaulay. ILL 188. SATAN'S ENCOUNTER WITH DEATH. BLACK it stood as night, Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell, And shook a dreadful dart : what seemed his head, The likeness of a kingly crown had on. Satan was now at hand ; and from his seat The monster moving onward came as fast, "With horrid strides ; hell trembled as he strode. The undaunted iiend what this might be admired — Admired, not feared : God .and his Son except, Created thing naught valued he, nor shunned ; And with disdainful look thus first began : — 2. " Whence, and what art thou, execrable shape ! That darest, though grim and terrible, advance 1 Philip Massinger, one of the preserved. The " Virgin Martyr," very best of the old English drama- the " Bondman," the " Fatal Dowry," tists, was born in 1584, and died in " The City Madam," and " A New 1640. He wrote a great number of Way to Pay Old Debts," are his best pieces, of which eighteen have been known productions. SATAN'S ENCOUNTEH WITH DEATH. 581 Thy miscreated front athwart my way To yonder gates? Through them I mean to jmss, That be assured, without leave asked of thee : Retire, or taste thy folly ; and learn by proof, Hellborn! not to contend with spirits of heaven 1" 3. To whom the goblin, full of wrath replied : — "Art thou that traitor angel, art thou he, "Who first broke peace in heaven, and faith, till then Unbroken, and in proud rebellious arms Drew after him the third part of heaven's sons, Conjured against the Highest ; for which both thou And they, outcast from God, are here condemned To Waste eternal days in woe and pain? And reckon'st thou thyself with spirits of heave n, Hell-doomed ! and breathest defiance here and scorn, "Where I reign king, and, to enrage thee more, Thy king and lord ! Back to thy punishment, False fugitive! and to thy speed add wings ; Lest with a whip of scorpions I pursue Thy lingering, or with one stroke of this dart Strange horror saize thoe, and pangs unfelt before." 4. So spake the grisly terror : and in shape, So speaking, and so threatening, grew ten-fold More dreadful and deform : on the other side, Incensed with indignation, Satan stood Unterrified, and like a comet burned, That fires the length of Ophiuchus 1 huge In the Arctic sky, and from his horrid hair Shakes pestilence* and war. 5. Each at the head Leveled his deadly aim ; their fatal hands No second stroke intend ; and such a frown Each cast at the other, as when two black clouds, With heaven's artillery fraught, come rattling on Over the Caspian ; then stand front to front Hovering a space, till winds the signal blow To join their dark encounter in mid air : 1 Ophiuchus, (6fMii'kus\ the Serpent-bearer; a cluster of fixed stars whose center is nearly over the equator, opposite to Orion. 582 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. So frowned the mighty com'batants, that hell Grew darker at their frown ; so matched they stood ; For never but once more was either like To meet so great a Foo : and now great deeds Had been achieved, whereof all hell had rung, Had not the snaky sorceress that sat Fast by hell-gate and kept the fatal key, Risen, and with hideous outcry rushed between. John Milton. JonN Milton, one of the greatest of all poets and scholars, was born in London on the 9th of December, 1G08. His father, liberally educated and from a good family, having been disinherited for embracing Protestantism, became a scriv- ener, and acquired a competent fortune. The tirmness and the sufferings of the father for conscience' sake were not lost upon the son, who became a stern, un- bending champion of religious freedom. Milton was educated with great care. He studied ancient and modern languages, delighted in poetical reading, and cultivated the musical taste which he inherited from his father. At fifteen he was sent to St. Paul's School, London, and two years later to Christ's College, Cambridge, where he graduated in due course. He wro*te several poems at an early age. His " Hymn on the Nativity," composed in his twent}*-first year, is one of the noblest of his works, and perhaps the finest lyric in the English lan- guage. Leaving the university in 1632, he went to the house of his father, at Hutton in Buckinghamshire, where he lived five j'ears, studying classical litera- ture and writing poems. During this happy period of his life he wrote " L' Alle- gro," "II Penseroso," "Arcades," "Lycidas," and "Comus." In 1638 the poet visited the Continent, where he remained fifteen months, principally in Italy and France. His study of the works of art during this period probably sug- gested some of his best poetical creations. On his return to England in 1639 he took up his residence in London. The next twenty years, during the Civil War, the Commonwealth, and the Protectorate, the poet's lyre was mute. A Repub- lican in politics and an Independent in religion, during this stormy period ho threw himself promptly and fearlessly into the vortex of the struggle, and, as a controversialist, enrolled his name among the noblest and most eloquent of tho writers of old English prose. In 1643 Milton married Mary Powell, the daugh- ter of a high cavalier of Oxfordshire. In 1649 he was appointed Foreign or Latin Secretary to the Council of State, and retained the same position during the Pro- tectorate. For ten years his eyesight had been failing, when, in 1652, he became totally blind. About the same period his first wife died, but he married soon after. His second wife, Catharine Woodcock, died in 1656. The Restoration of 1660 consigned the poet, for the last fourteen years of his life, to an obscurity "which gave him leisure to complete the mighty poetical task which was to se- cure him an immortality of literary fame. In 1664 he married his third wife, Elizabeth Minshul, of a good Cheshire family. In 1665 he completed " Para- dise Lost," which was first published in 1667. In 1671 appeared the " Paradise Regained," to which was subjoined "Samson Agonistes." He died on the Sth of November, 1674. For a further description of Milton and his poetry, the reader is referred to the two exercises immediately preceding the above. MURDER OF KING DUNCAN. 583 IV. ISO. TIIE DYING CHRISTIAN TO HIS SOUL. 1 YITAL spark of heavenly flame, Quit, oh ! quit this mortal frame ! Trembling, hoping, lingering, flying, — Oh the pain — the bliss of dying ! Cease, fond nature, cease thy strife, And let me languish into life ! 2. Hark ! they whisper : angels say, "Sister spirit, come away !" What is this absorbs me quite, — Steals my senses, shuts my sight, Drowns my spirits, draws my breath ? — Tell me, my soul! can this be death? 3. The world recedes — it disappears ; Heaven opens on my eyes ; my ears With sounds seraphic ring : Lend, lend your wings ! I mount, I fly I O Grave ! where is thy victory ? O Death ! where is thy sting ? Alexandteb Pope. SECTION XXXVIII. L 190. MURDER OF KING DUNCAN. MACBETH. 2 Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand ? Come, let me clutch thee. — I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling as to sight? or art thou but Expression, in the delivery of confidence of the hopeful Christian, this exquisite little poem, the reader 'Macbeth', afterward king of must bear in mind, requires the con- Scotland, prompted by ambition, an 1 tinued production of the feeble and urged on by his wife, resolves to failing tone of the dying man, while murder the king, then his guest, conveying the perfect, enthusiastic and seize the crown. 584: NATIONAL FIFTH READER. A dagger of the mind ; a false creation, Proceeding from the heat oppressed brain? I see thee yet, in form as palpable As this which now I draw. Thou marshal' st me the way that 1 was going ; And such an instrument I was to use. Mine eyes are made the fool o' th' other senses, Or else worth all the rest. I see thee ntill ; And on thy blade and dudgeon, gouts of blood, Which was not so before. — There's no such tiring' i It is the bloody business, which informs Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one half world Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtained sleep : now witchcraft celebrates Pale Hec'ate's offerings ; and withered murden Alarumed by his sentinel, the wolf, Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, W T ith Tarquin's ' ravishing strides, toward his desigj* Moves like a ghost. — Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear Thy very stones prate of my where-about, xind take the present horror from the time, Which now suits with it. While I threat he lives ; Words to the heat of deeds to cold breath gives. [A bell ring? I go, and it is done ; the bell invites me : Hear it not, Duncan ; for it is a knell That summons thee to heaven, or to hell. [Exit. Enter Lady Macbeth. Lady M. That which hath made them drunk, hath made me bold : What hath quenched them, hath given me fire. — Hark ! — peace' It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman, Which gives the sternest good-night. He is about it — The doors are open ; and the surfeited grooms Do mock their charge with snores : I have drugged their possets, That death and nature do contend about them, 1 Tar' quin, two kings of Rome : tained the throne by the murder of L.TarquiniusSuperbus, here alluded Servius Tullius, whose daughter, to, seventh in the line of kings, ob- Tullia, he had married. MURDER OF KING DUNCAN. 585 Whether they live or die. Macbeth [within."] Who's there? — what, ho! Lady M. Alack ! I am afraid they have awaked, And 'tis not done. The attempt, and not the deed, Confounds u s. Hark ! — I laid their daggers ready ; He could not miss them. — Had he not resembled My father as he slept, I had don't. — My husband ! Enter Macbeth. Macb. I've done the deed ! — didst thou not hear a noise ? Lady M. I heard the owl scream, and the cricket's cry. Did not you speak ? Macb. " When ? Lady M. Now. Mwb. As I descended? Lady M. Aye. Macb. Hark! — Who lies i' the second chamber? Lady M. Donalbain. Macb. This is a sorry sight. [Looking on his hands*. Lady 31. A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight. Macb. There's one did laugh in's sleep, and one cried, Murder ! That they did wake each other ; I stood and heard them ; But they did say their prayers, and addressed them Again to sleep. Lady 31. There are two lodged together. Macb. One cried, God bless us! and Amen ! the other ; As they had seen me with these hangman's hands Listening their fear. I could not say, Amen, When they did say, God bless us. Lady M. Consider it not so deeply. Macb. But wherefore could not I pronounce, Amen? I had most need of blessing, and amen Stuck in my throat. Lady M. These deeds must not be thought After these ways ; so, it will make us mad. 3Iacb. Me thought I heard a voice cry, Sleep no more! Macbeth doth murder sleep — the innocent sleep — Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care, Tlie death of each days life, sore laboi-'s bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second c'urse, 586 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. Chief n&itrisher in life's feast : — Lady M. What do you mean ? Macb. Still it cried, Sleep no more, to all the house ; Glamis hath murdered sleep ; and therefore Cawdor Shall sleep no more — Macbeth shall sleep no more ! Lady M. Who was it that thus cried ? Why, worthy thane, You do unbend your noble strength, to think So brain-sickly of things. Go, get some water, And wash this filthy witness from your hand. — Why did you bring these daggers from the place ? They must lie. Go, carry them, and smear The sleepy grooms with blood. Macb. I'll go no more : I am afraid to think what I have done : Look on't again, I dare not. Lady M. Infirm of purpose ! Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead Are but as pictures : 'tis the eye of childhood That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed, 111 gild the faces of the grooms withal, For it must seem their guilt. [Exit. Knocking within* Macb. Whence is that knocking ? How is't with me, when every noise appalls me ? What hands are here ? — Ha ! they pluck out mine eyes ! Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood Clean from my hands ? No : this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine," l Making the green — one red. Beenter Lady Macbeth. Lady 31. My hands are of your color ; but I shame To wear a heart so white. [Knocking.'] I hear a knocking At the south entry. Retire we to our chamber : A little water clears us of this deed : How easy is it, then? Your constancy' Hath left you unattended. [Knocking.] Hark! more knocking : Get on your night-gow r n, lest occasion call us, And show us to be watchers. Be not lost So poorly in your thoughts. 1 Incarnadine, (in kur' na din), to a Con' stan cy, fixedness or Urin- staln rod, or of a flesh-color. ness of mind ; resolution. THE KNOCKING AT THE GATE, IN MACBETH. £S7 Macb. To know my deed, — 'twere best not know myself. [Knocking. Wake Duncan with thy knocking ! I would thou couldst. n. 191. THE KNOCKING AT THE GATE, IN MACBETH. FROM my boyish days I had always felt a great perplexity 0:1 one point in Macbeth'. It was this : the knocking at the gate, which succeeds to the murder of Duncan, produced to my feelings an effect for which I never could account. The effect was, that it reflected back upon the murder a peculiar awfulness and a depth of solemnity ; yet, however obstinately I endeavored wifh my understanding to comprehend this, for many years I never could see why it should produce such an effect. Hero I pause for one moment, to exhort the reader never to pay any attention to his understanding when it stands in opposition to any other faculty of his mind. The mere un- derstanding, however useful and indispensable, is the meanest faculty in tho human mind, and the most to be distrusted ; and yet the great majority of people trust to nothing else ; which may do for ordinary life, but not for philosophical purposes. 2. My understanding could furnish no reason why the knock- ing at the gate in Macbeth should produce any effect, direct or reflected. In fact, my understanding said positively that it could not produce any effect. But I knew better : I felt that it did ; and I waited and clung to the problem until further knowl- edge should enable me to solve it. At length I solved it to my own satisfaction, and my solution is this : Murder in ordinary- cases, where the sympathy is wholly directed to the case of the murdered person, is an incident of coarse and vulgar horror; and for this reason, that it flings the interest exclusively upon the natural but ignoble instinct bv which we cleave to life ; an instinct which, as being indispensable to the primal law of self- preservation, is the same in kind (though different in degree) among all living creatures : this instinct, therefore, because it annihilates all distinctions, and degrades the greatest of men to the level of "the poor beetle that we tread on," exhibits human nature in its most ab'ject and humiliating attitude. 3. Such an attitude would little suit the purposes of the poet. 588 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. ■ What, then, must he do ? He must throw the interest on the murderer. Our sympathy must be with him (of course I mean a sympathy of comprehension, a sympathy by which we enter into his feelings and are made to understand them — not a sym- pathy of pity or approbation). In the murdered person all strife of thought, all flux and reflux of passion and of purpose, are crushed by one overwhelming panic : the fear of instant death smites him " with its petrific mace." But in the murderer — such a murderer as a poet will condescend to — there must be raging some great storm of passion — jealousy, ambition, venge- ance, hatred — which will create a hell within him ; and into this . hell we are to look. 4. In Macbeth, for the sake of gratifying his own enormous and teeming faculty of creation, Shakspeare has introduced two murderers ; and, as usual in his hands, they are remarkably dis- criminated : but, though in Macbeth the strife of mind is greater than in his wife — the tiger spirit not so awake, and his feelings caught chiefly by contagion from her, — yet, as both were finally involved in the guilt of murder, the murderous mind of necessity is finally to be presumed in both. This was to be expressed ; and on its own account, as well as to make it a more proportion- able antagonist to the unoffending nature of their victim, " the gracious Duncan," and adequately to expound " the deep damna- tion of his taking off," this was to be expressed with peculiar energy. We were to be made to feel that the human nature, i. e. } the divine nature of love and mercy, spread through the hearts of all creatures, and seldom utterly withdrawn from man, was gone, vanished, extinct ; and that the fiendish nature had taken its place. And, as this effect is marvelously accomplished in the dialogues and soliloquies themselves, so it is finally con- summated by the expedient under consideration ; and it is to this that I now solicit the reader's attention. 5. If the reader has ever witnessed a wife, daughter, or sister in a fainting fit, he may chance to have observed that the most affecting moment in such a spectacle is that in which a sigh and a stirring announce the recommencement of suspended life. Or, if the reader has ever been present in a vast metropolis on tho day when some great national idol was carried in funeral pomp to his grave, and chancing to walk near the course through which it passed, has felt powerfully, in the silence and desertion THE KNOCKING AT THE GATE, IN MACBETH. 580 of the streets, and in the stagnation of ordinary business, the deep interest which at that moment was possessing the heart of man, — if all at once he should hear the deathlike stillness bro- ken up by the sound of wheels rattling away from the scene, and making known that the transitory vision was dissolved, he will be aware that at no moment was his sense of the complete suspension and pause in ordinary human concerns so full and affecting, as at that moment when the suspension ceases and the goings-on of human life are suddenly resume i. 6. All action in any direction is best expounded, measured, and made apprehensible by reaction. Now apply this to the case in Macbeth. Here, as I have said, the retiring of the human heart and the entrance of the fiendish heart was to be expressed and made sensible. Another world has stepped in, and the murderers are taken out of the region of human things, human purposes, human desires. They are transfigured : Lady Macbeth is "unsexed ;" Macbeth has forgot that he was born of woman : both are conformed to the image of devils ; and the world of devils is suddenly revealed. But how shall this be conveyed and made palpable ? 7. In order that a new world may step in, this world must for a time disappear. The murderers and the murder must be in- sulated — cut off by an immeasurable gulf froin the ordinary tide and succession of human affairs — locked up and sequestered in some deep recess'; we must be made sensible that the world of ordinary life is suddenly arrested — laid asleep — tranced — racked into a dread armistice : time must be annihilated ; relation to things without abolished ; and all must pass self-withdrawn into a deep syncope ' and suspension of earthly passion. Hence it is, that when the deed is done, when the work of darkness is perfect, then the world of darkness passes away like a pageantry in the clouds : the knocking at the gate is heard, and it makes known audibly that the reaction has commenced : the human has made its reflux upon the fiendish ; the pulses of life are beginning to beat again, and the reestablishment of the goings- on of the world in which we live, first makes us profoundly sensible of the awful parenthesis that had suspended them. 'Syncope, (sing' ko pe), a faint- accompanied with a suspension of ing or swooning; a diminution, de- the action of the brain, and a tem- crcase, or interruption of the motion porary loss of sensation, volition, of the heart, and of respiration, and other faculti :*. 590 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 8. O mighty poet ! Thy works are not as thoce of other men, simply and merely great works of art, but are also like the phenomena of nature — like the sun and the sea, the stars and the flowers, like frost and snow, rain and dew, hail-storm and thunder, — which are to be studied with entire submission of our own faculties, and in the perfect faith that in them there can be no too much or too little, nothing useless or inert ; but that, the further we press in our discoveries, the more we shall see proofs of design and self-supporting arrangement where the careless eye had seen nothing but accident. Db Quincey. SECTION XXXIX. I. 192. MESSIAH. YE nymphs of Solyrna ! ' begin the song — To heavenlv themes sublimer strains belong. The mossy fountains and the sylvan shades, The dreams of Pindus 2 and the Aoni'an maids, 3 Delight no more — O thou my voice inspire Who touched Isaiah's 4 hallowed lips with fire ! 2. Rapt into future times the bard began : A virgin shall conceive — a virgin bear a son! From Jesse's root behold a branch arise Whose sacred flower with fragrance fills the skies ! Th' ethereal spirit o'er its leaves shall move, And on its top descends the mystic dove. 3. Ye heavens ! from high the dewy nectar pour, And in soft silence shed the kindly shower ! The sick and weak the healing plant shall aid — From storm a shelter, and from heat a shade. All crimes shall cease, and ancient frauds shall fail ; Returning Justice lift aloft her scale, 1 S51' y ma, another name for Je- called, because they frequented ML rusalem. Helicon and the fountain Aganippe. 3 Pin' dus, a lofty range of moun- which were in Aonia, one of the tains in Northern Greece. ancient names of Bceotw. • Aonian maids, tlie Muses, so 4 Isaiah, (1 za' ya). THE MESSIAH. 591 Peace o'er the world her olive wand extend, And white-robed Innocence from heaven descend. 4. Swift fly the years, and rise the expected morn ! O spring to light! auspicious babe, be born! See, nature hastes her earliest wreaths to bring, "With all the incense of the breathing spring ! See loftv Lebanon his head advance : See nodding forests on the mountains dance ; See spicy clouds from lowly Sharon rise, And Carmcl's flowery top perfumes the skies I 6. Hark ! a glad voice the lonely desert cheers : Prepare the way ! a God, a God appears ! A God, a God ! the vocal hills reply — The rocks proclaim the approaching Deity. Lo, earth receives Him from the bending skies! Sink down, ye mountains ; and }*e valleys, rise I "With heads declined, ye cedars, homage pay ! Be smooth, ye rocks ; ye rapid floods, give way ! 6. The Saviour comes! by ancient bards foretold — Hear Him, ye deaf ; and all ye blind, behold ! He from thick films shall purge the visual ray, And on the sightless eyeball pour the day ; 'T is He th' obstructed paths of sound shall clear, And bid new music charm th' unfolding ear ; The dumb shall sing ; the lame his crutch forego, And leap exulting like the bounding roe. No sigh, no murmur, the wide world shall hear — From every face He wipes off every tear. In ad x aman'tmc chains shall Death be bound. And hell's grim tyrant feel th' eternal wound. 7. As the good shepherd tends his fleecy care, Seeks freshest pasture, and the purest air, Explores the lost, the wandering sheep directs, By day o'ersees them, and by night protects ; The tender lambs He raises in his arms — Feeds from His hand, and in His bosom warms : Thus shall mankind His guardian care engage — The promised father of the future age. 592 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 8. No more shall nation against nation rise, Nor ardent warriors meet with hateful eyes ; Nor fields with gleaming steel be covered o'er, The brazen trumpets kindle rage no more ; But useless lances into scythes shall bend, And the broad falchion in a plough-share end. Then palaces shall rise ; the joyful son Shall finish what his short-lived sire begun ; Their vines a shadow to their race shall yield, And the same hand that sowed shall reap the field. 9. The swain in barren deserts, with surprise, Sees lilies spring, and sudden verdure rise ; And starts, amidst the thirsty wilds, to hear New falls of water murmuring in his ear. On rifted rocks, the dragon's late abodes, The green reed trembles, and the bulrush nods ; Waste sandy valleys, once perplexed with thorn, The spiry fir and shapely box adorn : To leafless shrubs the flowery palms succeed, And odorous myrtle to the noisome weed. 10. The lambs with wolves shall graze the verdant mead, And boys in flowery bands the tiger lead : The steer and lion at one crib shall meet, And harmless serpents lick the pilgrim's feet. The smiling infant in his hand shall take The crested basilisk and speckled snake — Pleased, the green luster of the scales survey, And with their forked tongues shall innocently play. 11. Rise, crowned with light, imperial Salem, rise ! Exalt thy towery head, and lift thy eyes ! See a long race thy spacious courts adorn ; See future sons and daughters, yet unborn, In crowding ranks on every side arise, Demanding life, impatient for the skies ! See barbarous nations at thy gates attend, Walk in thy light, and in thy temple bend ; See thy bright altars thronged with prostrate kings, And heaped with products of Sabean ' springs ! 1 Sa be' an, pertaining to Saba, in Arabia, celebrated for producing ar* cicatic planta OMNIPRESENCE AND OMNISCIENCE OF GOD. 593 For Thee Mimic's ' spicy forests blow, And seeds of gold in Ophir's 2 mountains glow. See heaven its sparkling portals wide display, And break upon thee in a flood of day ! 12. No more the rising sun shall gild the morn, Nor evening Cynthia 1 till her silver horn ; But lost, dissolved in thy superior rays, One tide of glory, one unclouded blaze, O'erflow thy courts ; the Light Himself shall shine Ilevealed, and God's eternal day be thine! The seas shall waste, the skies in smoke decay, Rocks fall to dust, and mountains melt away ; But fixed His word, His saving power remains ; Thy realm for ever lasts, thy own Messiah reigns ! Pope. n. 193. OMNIPRESENCE AND OMNISCIENCE OF GOD. I WAS yesterday about sunset walking in the open fields, until the night insensibly fell upon me. I at first amused myself with all the richness and variety of colors which appear- ed in the western parts of heaven : in proportion as they faded away and went out, several stars and planets appeared, one after another, until the whole firmament was in a glow. The blueness of the ether was exceedingly heightened and enlivened by the season of the year, and by the rays of all those lumina- ries that passed through it. The galaxy 4 appeared in its most beautiful white. To complete the scene, the full moon rose at length in that clouded majesty which Milton takes notice of, and opened to the eye a new picture of nature, which was more finely shaded and disposed among softer lights than that which the sun had before discovered to us. 1 1 du' me, or Id a' mae a, an an- ed from the earliest times for its cient country of Western Asia, com- gold. Some suppose it to be the prising the mountainous tract on the same as the modern Sofala ; and east side of the great valleys of El- others conjecture it was situated in Ghor and El-Arabah, and west and the East Indies, southwest of the Dead Sea, with a 3 Cyn' thi a, the moon, a name portion of Arabia. given to Diana, derived fruin Mount a O' phir, an ancient country men- Cynthus, her birthplace, tionedin the Scriptures, and renown- * Gal' ax y, the Milky Way. 594 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. 2. As I was surveying the moon walking in her brightness, and taking her progress among the constellations, a thought rose in me which I believe very often perplexes and disturbs men of serious and contemplative natures. David himself fell into it in that reflection, " When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained : what is man, that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man, that thou regardest him !" In the same manner when I considered that infinite host of stars, or, to speak more philosophically, of suns which were then shining upon me, with those innumerable sets of planets or worlds which were moving round their respective suns ; when I still enlarged the ide'a, and supposed another heaven of suns and worlds rising still above this which we discovered, and these still enlightened by a superior firmament of luminaries, which are planted at so great a distance that they may appear to the inhabitants of the former as the stars do to us ; in short, while I pursue this thought, I could not but reflect on that little insignificant figure which I myself bore amidst the immensity of God's works. 3. If we consider God in his omnipresence, his being passes through, actuates, and supports the whole frame of nature. His creation, and every part of it, is full of him. There is nothing he has made that is either so distant, so little, or so inconsiderable, which he does not, essentially inhabit. His sub- stance is within the substance of every being, whether material or immaterial, and as intimately present to it as that being is to itself. It would be an imperfection in him were he able to remove out of one place into another, or to withdraw himself from any thing he has created, or from any part of that space which is diffused and spread abroad to infinity. In short, to speak of him in the language of the old philosopher, he is a Being whose center is everywhere, and his circumference nowhere. 4. In the second place, he is omniscient ' as well as omnipres- ent. 3 His omniscience, indeed, necessarily and naturally flows from his omnipresence ; he can not but be conscious of every motion that arises in the whole material world, which he thus essentially pervades, and of every thought that is stirring in the intellectual world, to every part of which he is thus inti- 1 Omniscience, (om nfsh' ent), a Om^ni preV ent, present in nil having all knowledge ; all-seeing. places at the same time. OMNIPRESENCE AND OMNISCIENCE OF GOD. 595 mately united. Several moralists have considered the creation as the temple of God, which he has built with his own hands, and which is tilled with his presence. Others have considered infinite space as the receptacle, or rather the habitation of tho Almighty ; but the noblest and most exalted way of considering this infinite space is that of Sir Isaac Newton, who calls it tho sensorium i of the Godhead. Brutes and men have their sen- soriola, or little sensoriums, by which they apprehend the pres- ence and perceive the actions of a few objects that lie con- tiguous to them. Their knowledge and observation turn within a very narrow circle. But as God Almighty can not but per- ceive and know eveiwthing in which he resides, infinite spaco gives room to infinite knowledge, and is, as it were, an organ to omniscience. 5. AVere the soul separate from the body, and with one glanco of thought should start beyond the bounds of the creation ; should it for millions of years continue its progress through infinite space with the same activity, it would still find itself within the embrace of its Creator, and encompassed round with the immensity of the Godhead. "Whilst we are in the body, he is not less present with us because he is concealed from us. " that I knew where I mi^ht find him !" savs Job. "Behold I £0 forward, but he is not there ; and backward, but I can not per- ceive him ; on the left hand, where he does work, but I can not behold him ; he hideth himself on the right hand that I can not see him." In short, reason as well as revelation assures us that he can not be absent from us, notwithstanding he is undiscov- ered by us. 6. In this consideration of God Almighty's omnipresence and omniscience, every uncomfortable thought vanishes. He can not but regard every thing that has being, especially such of his creatures who fear they arc not regarded by him. He is privy to all their thoughts, and to that anxiety of heart in par- ticular, which is apt to trouble them on this occasion ; for, as it is impossible he should overlook any of his creatures, so we may be confident that he regards with an eye of mercy those who endeavor to recommend themselves to his notice, and in an unfeisTied humility of heart think themselves unworthy that he should be mindful of them. Addison. 1 Sen so' ri um, tho scat of souse or perception. 596 NATIONAL FIFTH HEADER. in. 104. GOD. OTHOU eternal One ! whose presence bright All space doth occupy, all motion guide — Unchanged through time's all devastating flight! Thou only God — there is no God beside ! Being above all beings ! Mighty One, Whom none can comprehend and none explore "Who fill'st existence with Thyself alone — Embracing all, supporting, ruling o'er, — Being whom we call God, and know no more ! 2. In its sublime research, philosophy May measure out the ocean-deep — may count The sands or the sun's rays — but, God ! for Thee There is no weight nor measure ; none can mount Up to Thy mysteries ; Reason's brightest spark, Though kindled by Thy light, in vain would try To trace Thy counsels, infinite and dark ; And thought is lost ere thought can soar so high, Even like past moments in eternity. 3. Thou from primeval nothingness didst call Eirst chaos, then existence — Lord ! in Thee Eternity had its foundation : all Sprung forth from Thee — of light, joy, harmony, Sole Origin — all life, all beauty Thine ; Thy word created all, and doth create ; Thy splendor fills all space with rays divine ; Thou art, and wert, and shalt be ! Glorious ! Great ! Light-giving, life-sustaining Potentate ! 4. Thy chains the unmeasured universe surround — Upheld by Thee, by Thee inspired with breath ! Thou the beginning with the end hast bound, And beautifully mingled life and death ! As sparks mount upward from the fiery blaze, So suns arc born, so worlds spring forth from Thee ; And as the spangles in the sunny rays Shine round the silver snow, the pageantry Of heaven's bright army glitters in Thy praise. god. 597 5. A million torches, lighted by Thy hand, Wander unwearied through the blue abyss — They own Thy power, accomplish Thy command, All gay with lite, all eloquent with bliss. "What shall we call them ? Piles of crystal light — < A glorious company of golden streams — Lamps of celestial ether burning bright — Suns lighting systems with their joyous beams? But Thou to these art as the noon to night. 6. Yes ! as a drop of water in the sea, All this magnificence in Thee is lost : — What are ten thousand worlds compared to Thee ? And what am I then ? — Heaven's unnumbered host, Though multiplied by myriads, and arrayed In all the glory of sublimest thought, Is but an atom in the balance, weighed Against Thy greatness — is a cipher brought Against infinity ! What am I then ? Naught ! 7. Naught ! But the effluence of Thy light divine, Pervading worlds, hath reached my bosom too ; Yes ! in my spirit doth Thy spirit shine As shines the sun-beam in a drop of dew. Naught ! but I live, and on hope's pinions fly Eager toward Thy presence ; for in Thee I live, and breathe, and dwell ; aspiring high, Even to the throne of Thy divinity. I am, O God ! and surely Thou must be ! 8. Thou art ! — directing, guiding all — Thou art ! Direct my understanding then to Thee ; Control my spirit, guide my wandering heart ; Though but an atom midst immensity, Still I am something, fashioned bv Thv hand ! I hold a middle rank 'twixt heaven and earth — On the last verge of mortal being stand, Close to the realms where angels have their birth, Just on the boundaries of the spirit-land! 9. The chain of being is complete in me — In me is matter's last gradation lost, And the next step is f pirit — Deity i 598 NATIONAL FIFTH READER. I can command the lightning, and am dust ! A monarch and a slave — a worm, a god ! "Whence came I here, and how ? so marvelously Constructed and conceived? unknown! this clod Lives surely through some higher energy ; For from itself alone it could not be ! 10. Creator, yes ! Thy wisdom and Thy word Created me ! Thou source of life and good ! Thou spirit of my spirit, and my Lord ! Thy light, Thy love, in their bright plenitude Tilled me with an immortal soul, to spring Over the abyss of death ; and bade it wear The garments of eternal day, and wing Its heavenly flight beyond this little sphere, Even to its source — to Thee — its Author there. 11. O thoughts ineffable ! O visions blest ! Though worthless our conceptions all of Thee, Yet shall Thy shadowed image fill our breast, And waft its homage to Thy Deity. God ! thus alone my lowly thoughts can soar, Thus seek thy presence — Being wise and good ! Midst Thy vast works admire, obey, adore ; And when the tongue is eloquent no more The soul shall speak in tears of gratitude. Derzhaven. Gabriel Romanovitcii Derziiavin, a Russian lyric poet, was born in Kasan, July 3d, 1743. lie gained distinction in the military and civil service, receiving the appointment of secretary of state in 1791, and of minister of justice in 1S03. Many of his poems abound with beautiful moral sentiments and expressions, especially the above ode to "God," which was translated into several European languages, and into Chinese and Japanese. It is said to have been hung tip in the palace of the emperor of China, printed in gold letters on white satin : it was in like manner placed in the temple of Jeddo. His complete works, in five volumes, appeared at St. Petersburg in 1810. He died July Gth, 1S16. The above olmirablc translation was made by Sir John Bowring, British goverror of Hong Kong. INDEX TO WORDS DEFINED, WORDS PRONOUNCED, ETC. The figures refer to the pages where the words are to be found. A, 77. Abraham, 87. Achaians, 396. Acme, 114. Acropolis, 299. JSolian, 469. Adoratiou, 82. Again, 78, 94. Aid-de-eiunp, 91. Aidenn, 562. Air, 77. Ajax, 242. Alexander, 231. Alexandrine, 242. Alibi, 2z6. Alien, 202. Analogous, 236. Antinous, 226. Antiquarian, 115. Aonian maids, 590. Apollo Belvld., 226. Arable, 200. Arbuthnot, J., 237. Archives, 349. Architrave, 88. Anstarchus, 223. Aromatic, 16S. Arthur, King, 426. Ascham, 11., 362. Astral, 326. Athlete, 281. Au fait, 225. Aunt, 92. Aurora, 891. Avalanche, 95. Awakes, 78. Avaunt, 154. Ay, 117. Bacchus, 528. Bacon, Francis, 211. Bagdad. 180. Bailey, P. J. 476. Bannockburn, 2S7. Barbacan, 37a. Baton, 279. Bat lis, 463. Bcattie, James, 472. Belles-lettres, 115. Bellows, 530. Beneath, 116. Beneficent, 200. Beneficence, 82. Benign, 356. Bergs, 77. Beteem, 490. Bigamy, 116. Birds, '77. Bolingbroke, 514. Bombs, 523. Boreal, 172. Bosom, 78, 364. Bosoms, 153. Boswell, J., 210. Boswellism, 579. Bouquet, 802. Bowles, W. L.,470. Bozzaris, M., 398. Brute, 82. Bunker Hill, 176. Burke, Ed., 237. Iiurr, Aaron, 3">9. Cjssar, C. J., 312. I aliph, 180. Calypso, 860. Cant, 851. ('ap-a-pie, 308. ( 'arr, 285. i Carpio, B. del., 309. I Camilla, 242. Castellated, 463. ( iassock, 119. Catiline, L.S., 387. ICato, M. P., 533. Cecilia, 531. < Vntaur, 556. Cerement, 140. Chalons-sur-Marne, 267. Charon, 382. Chateaubriand, 536. Charybdis, 422. ! Chatam, 238. J Chaucer, G. 88. ! Cicero, M. T., 205. ! Claymore, 154. Coleridge, II., 475. : Coliseum, 258. | Columbus, C, 95. | Command, B4. I Concatenation, 380. \ Concomitant, 843. I Miistabulary, 114. I lonstancy, 586. I loDStantiue I., 255. ; Constellation, Bl. < ionsumuiate, 86. Contemporary, S6. Contumely, 141. Conversazione, 225. Correi, 143. Coronach, 143. Courteous, 494. Cromwell, O., 361. Cuisse, 482. Culloden, 153. Culverin, 307. Cumber, 143. Curacy, 11!'. Curran, J. P., 137. I J nt hia, 598. Cytheris, 3»i7. Czar, 92. Dacian, 257. Dante, 292. Dare, 86. Darius 111., 528. I >ai win E.. 478. Daw, Sir II., 537. Death, 584. Deciduous, r>44. Delfthaven, 284. Demosthenes, 206, Denham, J., 242. Denizen, 202. Derelict, 344. Diana, 226, 367. Diapason, 99. Dilatory, 351. Dodsley, B., 244. ] Durable, 380. Eabth. 77. Ecstatic, 100. , Edwards, J., 464. Effuse, 83. | EI Dorado, 285. Elliot, E., 238. Emmett, R., 136. Epaulettes, 280. , Epictetus, 364. Epicurean, 549. I Equipage, 266. Kiel) us, 520. '■ Et cetera, 279. En regie, 225. Kuril 'ides. Euthanasia, 132. Excursion, 266. Exemplary, 138. Exotic, 168. Extraordinary, 165. Falchion, I Feature. 165. Foray, 143. Franklin, B., 213. Front-de-Bceuf, 375 Fruits. S3. Fuller's bird, 147. ; Gaiuisu. 13S. Galaxy, 593. Gape, 493. Ger-falcon, 434. Ghoul, 553. Gibbon, E., 95. Gifford, Win, 238. ; Gil Bias, 222. i Gladiator, 254. , Gone, 77. I Gorgon, 356. Gospel, 200. Goths, 257. 'Graphic, 115. Greaves, 432. Green Harbor. 340. ( Irey, Jane. 862. Guerdon, 422. Gymnosop lusts, 118 Halt, 93. Hall, Robert, 213. llallain. Henry, 239 Halleluiah, 99. Hamilton, A., 292. Hamlet, 498, 501. Hampden, J., 292. Harpy, 14-<. Hazii'lt, Win, 239. Hearth, 2 .".4. Hecate, 266. Helen, 530. Helicon, 399. Hercules, 226. Herodotus, 343. Hesperus, 577. Ilierocles, 378. Hieroglyphic, 93. ; Homer, B7. Horace, 231. Hortus siccus, 226. ; Howard, Jolm, 301. Hume, David, 237. Hurdle, 123. I Ilurdis, Jas., 473. I Hurrahs, 93. Hurtle, 555. Hyperbolical, 379. Hyperion, 4 Hypothesis, 200. Idiomatic, 576. Idume. 598. ! Immcthodie, 200. Imperatoriai, 812. Importunate, 14 '. Imprecations, 268. Improvise, 44'.'. Incarnadine, 5^6. Indian. 96. Ineffable, S5. Ineradicable, 200. I Inexorable, 92. In procinctu, 312. 600 INDEX TO WORDS. Intrepid, 136. Introspection, 341. Isaiah, 590. J.VCOBITiSil, 371. Jessica, 519. Jove, 367. Jubilee, 144. Jura, 467. Keats, John, 238. Kepler, John, 201. Knowles, J. S., 392. Kopeck, 91. Kosciusko, T., 156. Laocoon, 453. Lateral, 236. Laus Deo, 279. Legerdemain, 359. Leman, 46(5. Lemnian, 367. Leon i das, 95. Lethe, 496. Lets, 495. Leuk, 463. Libyan Jove. 242. Lichen, 73. Livy, 343. Locke, John, 210. Logan, 306. Lucretius, 231. Luther. M., 237. Lydian, 529. Macbeth, 583. Machination, 380. Magician, 205. Maginu, Win. 239. Mahomet, 397. Mammonish, 199. Marathon, 287. Marius, 312. Mars, 502. Marshfield, 339. Massinger, P., 580. Masquerade, 138. Mausoleum, 299. Mayflower, 285. Melliteous, 231. Melnotte, C, 333. Mercury, 502. Merhn/427. Minerva, 300. Mirabeau, 238. Misanthrope, 372. Monody, 5.".:;. Monsieur, 92. Moscow, 146. Muezzin, 476. Mystic, 84, 144. Nepenthe. 561. Newton, Sir i., 201. None, 98. Nooks, 78. North Aa, 157. Nothing, 78. Occult, 577. Olfactory, 116. Oiymp'm, 52o. i Olympus, 298. Omnipresent, 594. Omniscience, 594. Ophir, 593. Ophiuchus, 581. Orchestra, 79. Orpheus, 348. Ostend, 519. P.EAN, 553. Pamim, 307. Palisade, 375. Palms, 78. Pampered, 85. Pantheon, 121. Paradoxical, 575. Parnassus, 241. Parodist, 576. Parrhasius, 366. Passinsr, 802. Past, 77. Paten, 519. 1'ater-patriae, 275. Path, 85. Pauline, 333. Perennial, 199. Pericles, 299. Petit larceny, 115. Phoebus, 238. Phidias, 300. Philomela, 84. Piccini, 224. Picturesque, 234. Pindar, 231. Pindus, 590. Piqued, 224. Platsea, 399. Plato, 88. Plebeian, 388. Pleiad, 344. Plinth, 88. Plutarch, 364. Polybius, 364. Pope Joan, 121. Postern, 376. Posthumous, 277. Potential, 85. Precedent, 350. Pregnant, 86. Pretty, 449. Prerogative, 292. Probing, 79. Prometheus, 367. Puritans, 280. Purple, 95. Python, 453. Rabbinical, 576. Rack, 235. Raconteur. 342. Raschid, H. al, 180. Ravish, 82. Recognition, 94. Redolent, So. Refulgent, 81. ! Relic of Milton, 579. i Rendezvous, olio. Renunciation, 292. Resonant, 79. Return, 154. Reveille, 170. Reversion, 351. Rienzi, 292. Rood, 501. Root, 77, 233. Rouse, 493. Route, 170. Ruble, 91. Runic, 551. Rural, 84. Russell, Wra. 96. Sabean, 592. Sable, 143. Saco, 170. Saga, 434. Saladin, 563. Salamis, 395. Salvo, 157. Samite, 427. Sarmatia, 156. Satirist, 372. Satyr, 489. Savage, R., 204. Scarce, 77. Scarcely, 82. Sensorium, 595. Seraph, 84. Sergeant, 444. Serried, 313. Sesame, 577. Sheen, 313. Shenstone, W. 360. Sheridan, R. B., 86. Sibyl, 327. Simulacrum, 521. Sinai, 201. Simar, 556. Siren, 133. Skald, 434. Skoal, 436. Smith, Mrs. C, 478. Socrates, 231. Solyma, 590. Song, 87. Sovereign, 510. Spenser, E., 292. Spinet, 326. St. Ambrose, 523. Steele, R., 204. Stridulous, 236. St. Paul's Ch., 300. Stupendous, 83. Sublunary, 300. Supernal, 145. Sure, 118. Swamp, 170. , Swift, J., 237. Sydney, A., 292. Syncope, 589. Synonym, 577. JTalfourd,T.N.,238 Talisman, 543. Tamerlane, 86. Tarquin, 584. Tartarus, 390. Tedded, 97. Te Deum, 169. Tempe, 526. Temple, A\ m., 237. Tillotson, J., 535. Timotheus, 242. Tinct, 381, 503. Tintinnabulation, 551. Titans, 175. Thais, 527. Thanatopsis, 129. The, 77. There, 78. Therefore, 114. Thermopylae, 395. Thucydides, 343. Tocsin, 307. Tragedy, 486. Trajan,* 312. Transcendent, 205. Transmutation, 359. Transfigure, 145. j Treason, 186. | Tripod, 510. Turbulent, 78. Ubiquity, 114. Urs, 233. Vails, 351. Vane, Sir II., 96. Vast, 465. Venice, 176. Venus de Medicis, 226. Viking, 315. Vilhers, 285. Vindication, 136. Virgin, 77. Vis-a-vis, 122. Visionary, 165. Vizier, 181. Vortices, 200. Waller, E., 242. Warwick, 382. Wassail-bout, 435. Washington, 275. Weird, 77. Westminster Ab- bey, 300. Wherefore, 93. White, J. 13., 477. Wilberlbrce, 301. W T ilson, John, 238. Winkelried, A., 95. Woman, 100. Wont, 214, 493. Wonted, 476. World, 585. W'ound, 356. Wrath, 154. Ximi.xis, p., 222. Yeoman, 876. Yorktown. 17*'>. You, 83. Your, 83. 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED EDUCATION - PSYCHOLOGY LIBRARY This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. xveneweu duokj> are sudj ecu 10 immediate recall. 7 DAY USE DURING SUMMER SESSIONS 1 LD 21A-15m-4,'63 (D6471sl0)476 General Library University of California Berkeley W 368! 3