Roxbury to Lexington, and at the same time desired Paul Revere to set off by way of Charlestown.

3. Revere stopped only to engage a friend to raise the concerted signals, and five minutes before the sentinels received the order to prevent it, two friends rowed him past the Somerset man-of-war across Charles River. All was still, as suited the hour. The ship was winding with the young flood; the waning moon just peered above a clear horizon; while from a couple of lanterns in the tower of the North Church, the beacon streamed to the neighboring towns as fast as light could travel. A little beyond Charlestown Neck, Revere was intercepted by two British officers on horseback; but being himself well mounted, he turned suddenly, and leading one of them into a clay pond, escaped from the other by the road to Medford. As he passed on, he waked the captain of the minutemen of that town, and continued to rouse almost every house on the way to Lexington.

4. At two in the morning, under the eye of the minister, and of Hancock and Adams, Lexington Common was alive with the minute-men; and not with them only, but with the old men also, who were exempts, except in case of immediate danger to the town. The roll was called, and of militia and alarm men, about one hundred and thirty answered to their names. The captain, John Parker, ordered every one to load with powder and ball, but to take care not to be the first to fire. Messengers sent to look for the British regulars reported that there were no signs of their approach. A watch was therefore set, and the company dismissed with orders to come together at beat of drum.

5. The last stars were vanishing from night, when the foremost party, led by Pitcairn, a major of marines,

was discovered, advancing quickly and in silence Alarm guns were fired, and drums beat — not a call to village husbandmen only, but the reveille to humanity. Less than seventy, perhaps less than sixty, obeyed the summons, and, in sight of half as many boys and unarmed men, were paraded in two ranks, a few rods north of the meeting-house.

There

6. How often in that building had they, with renewed professions of their faith, looked up to God as the stay of their fathers and the protector of their privileges! How often on that village green, hard by the burial-place of their forefathers, had they pledged themselves to each other to combat manfully for their birthright inheritance of liberty! they now stood, side by side, under the provincial banner, with arms in their hands, silent and fearless, willing to fight for their privileges, scrupulous not to begin civil war, and as yet unsuspicious of immediate danger. The ground on which they trod was the altar of freedom, and they were to furnish its victims.

7. The British van, hearing the drum and the alarm guns, halted to load; the remaining companies came up; and at half an hour before sunrise, the advance party hurried forward at double-quick time, almost upon a run, closely followed by the grenadiers. Pitcairn rode in front, and when within five or six rods of the minute-men, cried out, "Disperse, ye villains; ye rebels, disperse; lay down your arms; why don't you lay down your arms and disperse?" The main part of the countrymen stood motionless in the ranks, witnesses against aggression; too few to resist, too brave to fly. At this, Pitcairn discharged a pistol, and with a loud voice cried, "Fire!" The order was

instantly followed, first by a few guns, which did no execution, and then by a heavy, close, and deadly dis charge of musketry. In the disparity of numbers, the Common was a field of murder, not of battle; Parker therefore ordered his men to disperse. Then, and not till then, did a few of them, on their own impulse, return the British fire.

8. Day came in all the beauty of an early spring: but distress and horror gathered over the inhabitants of the peaceful town. There, on the green, lay in death the gray-haired and the young; the grassy field was redwith the innocent blood of their brethren slain," crying unto God for vengeance, from the ground. Seven of the men of Lexington were killed, nine wounded a quarter part of all who stood in arms on the green. These are the village heroes, who were more than of noble blood, proving by their spirit that they were of a race divine. They gave their lives in testimony to the rights of mankind. Their names are had in grateful remembrance, and the expanding millions of their countrymen renew and multiply their praise from generation to generation.

LXXXIV. THE BURIAL OF MOSES.

[This noble poer was written by Mrs. Cecil Frances Alexander, wife of a clergyman, resident at Strabane, in Scotland.]

"And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Bethpeor; but nc man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day."- Deut. xxxiv. 6.

1. By Nebo's lonely mountain,

On this side Jordan's wave,
In a vale in the land of Moab,
There lies a lonely grave.

And no man dug that sepulchre,
And no man saw it e'er;

For the angels of God upturned the sod,
And laid the dead man there.

2. That was the grandest funeral
That ever passed on earth;
But no man heard the trampling,
Or saw the train go forth.

Noiselessly as the daylight

Comes when the night is done,

And the crimson streak on ocean's cheek
Grows into the great sun,-

3. Noiselessly as the spring time

Her crown of verdure weaves,
And all the trees on all the hills
Open their thousand leaves, -
So, without sound of music,

Or voice of them that wept,

Silently down from the mountain crown
The great procession swept.

4. Perchance the bald old eagle,
On gray Bethpeor's height,
Out of his rocky eyrie

Looked on the wondrous sight.
Perchance the lion, stalking,1

Still shuns that hallowed spot;
For beast and bird have seen and heard

That which man knoweth not.

5. But when the warrior dieth, His comrades in the war.

With arms reversed and muffled 2 drum,

Follow the funeral car.

They show the banners taken,

They tell his battles won,

And after him lead his masterless steed
While peals the minute gun.

6. Amid the noblest of the land

Men lay the sage to rest,