from their fields, to take their own cause into their own hands. Such a spectacle is the height of the moral sublime, when the want of every thing is fully made up by the spirit of the cause; and the soul within stands in place of discipline, organization, resources. In the prodigious efforts of a veteran army, beneath the dazzling splendor of their array, there is something revolting to the reflective mind. The ranks are filled with the desperate, the mercenary, the depraved; an iron slavery, by the name of subordination, merges the free will of one hundred thousand men in the unqualified despotism of one; the humanity, mercy, and remorse, which scarce ever desert the individual bosom, are sounds without a meaning to that fearful, ravenous, irrational monster of prey, a mercenary army. It is hard to say who are most to be commiserated, the wretched people, on whom it is let loose, or the still more wretched people, whose substance has been sucked out, to nourish it into strength and fury. But, in the efforts of the people, of the people struggling for their rights, moving not in organized, disciplined masses, but in their spontaneous action, man for man, and heart for heart,-though I like not war, nor any of its works, there is something glorious. They can then move forward without orders, act together without combination, and brave the flaming lines of battle, without entrenchments to cover, or walls to shield them. No dissolute .camp has worn off, from the feelings of the youthful soldier, the freshness of that home, where his mother and his sisters sit waiting, with tearful eyes and aching hearts, to hear good news from the wars; no long service in the ranks of a conqueror has turned the veteran's heart into marble; their valour springs not from recklessness, from habit, from indifference to the preservation of a life, knit by no pledges to the life of others. But in the strength and spirit of the cause alone they act, they contend, they bleed. In this, they conquer. The people always conquer. They always must conquer Armies may be defeated; kings may be overthrown, and new dy'năsties imposed, by foreign arms, on an ignorant and slavish race, that care not in what language the covenant of their subjection runs, nor in whose name the deed of their barter and sale is made out. But the people never invade; and when they rise against the invader, are never subdued. If they are driven from the plains, they fly to the mountains. Steep rocks, and everlasting hills, are their castles; the tangled, pathless thicket their palisado; and

nature,-God, is their ally. Now he overwhelms the hosts of their enemies beneath his drifting mountains of sand; now he buries them beneath a falling atmosphere of polar snows; he lets loose his tempests on their fleets; he puts a folly into their counsels, a madness into the hearts of their leaders; and he never gave, and he never will give, a full and final triumph over a virtuous, gallant people, resolved to be free.

LESSON CXXI.

Elegy written in a Country Churchyard.-GRAY.

THE Curfew tolls the knell of parting day;-
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea;
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

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;

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.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Fach in his narrow cell forever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

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.

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.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield;

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke: How jocund did they drive their team afield'

How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke

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.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await, alike, the inevitable hour;-

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,
If memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where, through the long-drawn aisle, and fretted vault,
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can storied urn, or animated bust,

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flattery soothe the dull, cold ear of death?

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:

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unrol;

Chill Penury repressed their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem, of purest ray serene,

The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear; Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village Hampden, that, with dauntless breast,
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest;
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood.

The 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.

Their lot forbade : nor circumscribed alone

Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined ;-
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind;

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.

Far from the madding 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.

Yet even these bones from insult to protect,
Some frail memorial, still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked,
plores the passing tribute of a sigh.

'Their names, their years, spelled by the unlettered muse The place of fame and elegy supply;

And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.

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?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies:
Some pious drops the closing eye requires:
Even from the tomb the voice of nature cries,
Even in our ashes live their wonted fires.

For thee, who, mindful of the unhonoured dead
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate,
If, chance, by lonely Contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,

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.

"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.

"Hard by yon wood, now smiling, as in scorn,
Muttering his wayward fancies, he would rove;
Now drooping, woful wan, like one forlorn,

Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love

"One morn I missed him on the accustomed hill, Along the heath, and near his favourite tree: Another came; nor yet beside the rill,

Nor up

the lawn, nor at the wood, was he:

"The next, with dirges due, in sad array,

Slow through the churchway path we saw him burne 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:
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 :—
gave to misery all he had a tear;

He

He gained from heaven-'twas all he wished-a friend.

No farther 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 his God.