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;- Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, Save that, from yonder ivy-mantled tower, Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, The swallow, twittering from the straw-built shed For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, 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, The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, The paths of glory lead but to the grave. Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault, Can storied urn, or animated bust, Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Perhaps, in this neglected spot, is laid Some heart, once pregnant with celestial fire; But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page, Chill Penury repressed their noble rage, 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 applause of listening senates to command, And read their history in a nation's eyes. Their lot forbade : nor circumscribed alone Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined ;- The struggling pangs of conscious Truth to hide, With incense kindled at the muse's flame. Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, They kept the noiseless tenor of their way. Yet even these bones from insult to protect, 'Their names, their years, spelled by the unlettered muse The place of fame and elegy supply; And many a holy text around she strews, 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: For thee, who, mindful of the unhonoured dead Haply, some hoary-headed swain may say, "There, at the foot of yonder nodding beech, "Hard by yon wood, now smiling, as in scorn, 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 Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere: 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. |