AMERICAN LABORERS.

THE gentleman, sir, has misconceived the spirit and tendency of northern institutions. He is ignorant of northern character. He has forgotten the history of his country. Preach insurrection to the northern laborers! Who are the northern laborers? The history of your country is their history. The renown of your country is their renown. The brightness of their doings is emblazoned on its every page. Blot from your annals the words and the doings of northern laborers, and the history of your country presents but a universal blank.

Sir, who was he that disarmed the Thunderer; wrested from his grasp the bolts of Jove; calmed the troubled ocean; became the central sun of the philosophical system of his age, shedding his brightness and effulgence on the whole civilized world; whom the great and mighty of the earth delighted to honor; who participated in the achievement of your independence, prominently assisted in moulding your free institutions, and the beneficial effects of whose wisdom will be felt to the last moment of "recorded time?" Who, sir, I ask, was he? A northern laborer, a Yankee tallowchandler's son, printer's runaway boy!

And who, let me ask the honorable gentleman, who was he that, in the days of our Revolution, led forth a northern army, ― yes, an army of northern laborers, — and aided the chivalry of South Carolina in their defence against British aggression, drove the spoilers from their firesides, and redeemed her fair fields from foreign invaders? Who was he? A northern laborer, a Rhode Island blacksmith, - the gallant General Green, who left his hammer and his forge, and went forth conquering and to conquer in the battle for our independence! And will you preach insurrection to men like these?

Sir, our country is full of the achievements of northern laborers? Where is Concord, and Lexington, and Prince

ton, and Trenton, and Saratoga, and Bunker Hill, but in the north? And what, sir, has shed an imperishable renown on the never-dying names of those hallowed spots, but the blood and the struggles, the high daring, and patriotism, and sublime courage, of northern laborers? The whole north is an everlasting monument of the freedom, virtue, intelligence, and indomitable independence, of northern laborers! Go, sir, go preach insurrection to men like these!

The fortitude of the men of the north, under intense suffering for liberty's sake, has been almost godlike! History has so recorded it. Who comprised the gallant army, without food, without pay, shelterless, shoeless, penniless, and almost naked, in that dreadful winter, the midnight of our Revolution, whose wanderings could be traced by their blood-tracks in the snow; whom no arts could seduce, no appeal lead astray, no sufferings disaffect; but who, true to their country and its holy cause, continued to fight the good fight of liberty, until it finally triumphed? Who, sir, were these men? Why, northern laborers! —yes, sir, northern laborers! Who, sir, were Roger Sherman and — but it is idle to enumerate. To name the northern laborers who have distinguished themselves, and illustrated the history of their country, would require days of the time of this House. Nor is it necessary. Posterity will do them justice. Their deeds have been recorded in characters of fire.

NAYLOR.

A LEGEND OF BREGENZ.

GIRT round with rugged mountains the fair Lake Constance

lies;

In her blue heart reflected, shine back the starry skies: And watching each white cloudlet float silently and slow, You think a piece of heaven lies on our earth below!

Midnight is there: and silence enthroned in heaven, looks down

Upon her own calm mirror, upon a sleeping town:
For Bregenz, that quaint city upon the Tyrol shore,
Has stood above Lake Constance, a thousand years and

inore.

Her battlements and towers, upon their rocky steep,
Have cast their trembling shadows for ages on the deep;
Mountain, and lake, and valley, a sacred legend know,
Of how the town was saved one night, three hundred years

ago.

Far from her home and kindred, a Tyrol maid had fled,
To serve in the Swiss valleys, and toil for daily bread;
And every year that fleeted so silently and fast,

Seemed to bear farther from her the memory of the past.

She served kind, gentle masters, nor asked for rest or change; Her friends seemed no more new ones, their speech seemed no more strange;

And when she led her cattle to pasture every day,

She ceased to look and wonder on which side Bregenz lay.

She spoke no more of Bregenz, with longing and with tears;
Her Tyrol home seemed faded in a deep mist of years;
She heeded not the rumors of Austrian war or strife;
Each day she rose contented, to the calm toils of life.

Yet, when her master's children would clustering round her stand,

She sang them the old ballads of her own native land; And when at morn and evening she knelt before God's throne,

The accents of her childhood rose to her lips alone.

And so she dwelt: the valley more peaceful year by year; When suddenly strange portents of some great deed seemed

near.

The golden corn was bending upon its fragile stalk,
While farmers, heedless of their fields, paced up and down

in talk.

The men seemed stern and altered, with looks cast on the

ground;

With anxious faces, one by one, the women gathered round ;
All talk of flax, or spinning, or work, was put away;
The very children seemed afraid to go alone to play.

One day, out in the meadow with strangers from the town, Some secret plan discussing, the men walked up and down. Yet now and then seemed watching a strange uncertain gleam,

That looked like lances 'mid the trees that stood below the stream.

At eve they all assembled, all care and doubt were fled;
With jovial laugh they feasted, the board was nobly spread.
The elder of the village rose up, his glass in hand,
And cried, "We drink the downfall of an accursed land!

"The night is growing darker, ere one more day is flown, Bregenz, our foemen's stronghold, Bregenz shall be our

own!"

The women shrank in terror, (yet pride, too, had her part,) But one poor Tyrol maiden felt death within her heart.

Before her, stood fair Bregenz, once more her towers arose ;
What were the friends beside her? Only her country's foes!
The faces of her kinsfolk, the days of childhood flown,
The echoes of her mountains reclaimed her as their own!

Nothing she heard around her, (though shouts rang forth again.)

Gone were the green Swiss valleys, the pasture, and the plain;

Before her eyes one vision, and in her heart one cry,

That said, "Go forth, save Bregenz, and then if need be,

die!"

With trembling haste and breathless, with noiseless step she

sped;

Horses and weary cattle were standing in the shed;

She loosed the strong white charger, that fed from out her

hand,

She mounted, and she turned his head toward her native

land.

Out out into the darkness

faster, and still more fast;

The smooth grass flies behind her, the chestnut wood is

passed;

She looks up; clouds are heavy: why is her steed so slow? — Scarcely the wind beside them can pass them as they go.

"Faster!" she cries, "Oh, faster!" Eleven the church-bells

chime;

"O God," she cries, "help Bregenz, and bring me there in time!"

But louder than bells' ringing, or lowing of the kine,
Grows nearer in the midnight the rushing of the Rhine.

Shall not the roaring waters their headlong gallop check?
The steed draws back in terror, she leans above his neck
To watch the flowing darkness, the bank is high and steep;
One pause he staggers forward, and plunges in the deep.

She strives to pierce the blackness, and looser throws the rein;
Her steed must breast the waters that dash above his mane.
How gallantly, how nobly, he struggles through the foam,
And see
in the far distance, shine out the lights of home!

Up the steep bank he bears her, and now they rush again.
Towards the heights of Bregenz, that tower above the plain.
They reach the gate of Bregenz, just as the midnight rings,
And out come serf and soldier to meet the news she brings.