Page images
PDF
EPUB

ADVANCED READINGS AND RECITATIONS.

AUDICANT DATTI

My judg

Sir, before God, I believe the hour is come. ment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I hope in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it! and I leave off as I begun, that live or die, survive or perish, I am for the declaration. It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment, independence now, and independence forever.

WEBSTER.

"Farewell! farewell? base world, farewell!"
In touching tones exclaimed a bell;

"Life is a boon, to mortals given,

To fit the soul for bliss in Heaven;
Do not invoke the avenging rod,
Come here and learn the way to God;
Say to the world, Farewell! farewell!
Pealed forth the Presbyterian bell.

[ocr errors]

upon

BUNGAY.

I call upon that right reverend, and this most learned bench, to vindicate the religion of their God, to support the justice of their country. I call upon the bishops to interpose the unsullied sanctity of their lawn; the judges to interpose the purity of their ermine, to save us from this pollution. I call upon the honor of your lordships to reverence the dignity of your ancestors, and maintain your own, I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country, to vindicate the national character.

LORD CHATHAM.

It is a pleasing sight of a Sunday morning, when the bell is sending its sober melody across the quiet fields, to behold the peasantry in their best finery, with ruddy faces and modest cheerfulness, thronging tranquilly along the green lanes to church; but it is still more pleasing to see them in the evenings, gathering about their cottage doors, and appearing s to exult in the humble comforts and embellishments which their own hands have spread around them. IRVING

Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

Calm or convulsed in breeze or gale or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark heaving; — boundless, endless, and sublime —
The image of Eternity - the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime

The monsters of the deep are made; each zone

Obeys thee! thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

Hark! on the winds,

BYRON.

The bell's 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, -

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.

GEO. D. PRENTICE.

[ocr errors]

ADVANCED READINGS AND RECITATIONS.

AMERICAN BATTLE-FLAGS.

FROM Europe Mr. Sumner returned late in the fall of 1872, much strengthened, but far from being well. At the opening of the session he reintroduced two measures, which, as he thought, should complete the record of his political life. One was his civil-rights bill, which had failed in the last Congress; and the other, a resolution providing that the names of the battles won over fellow-citizens in the war of the Rebellion should be removed from the regimental colors of the army, and from the army register.

It was in substance only a repetition of a resolution which he had introduced ten years before, in 1862, during the war, when the first names of victories were put on American battle-flags. This resolution called forth a new storm against him. It was denounced as an insult to the heroic soldiers of the Union, and a degradation of their victories and well-earned laurels. It was condemned as an unpatriotic act.

Charles Sumner insult the soldiers who had spilled their blood in a war for human rights! Charles Sumner degrade victories, and depreciate laurels, won for the cause of universal freedom! - how strange an imputation!

Let the dead man have a hearing. This was his thought: No civilized nation, from the republics of antiquity down to our days, ever thought it wise or patriotic to preserve in conspicuous and durable form the mementos of victories won over fellow-citizens in civil war. Why not? Because

9

every citizen should feel himself with all others as the child of a common country, and not as a defeated foe. All civilized governments of our days have instinctively followed the same dictate of wisdom and patriotism.

The Irishman, when fighting for old England at Waterloo, was not to behold on the red cross floating above him the name of the Boyne. The Scotch Highlander, when standing in the trenches of Sebastopol, was not by the colors of his regiment to be reminded of Culloden. No French soldier at Austerlitz or Solferino had to read upon the tricolor any reminiscence of the Vendee. No Hungarian at Sadowa was taunted by any Austrian banner with the surrender of Villagos. No German regiment from Saxony or Hanover charging under the iron hail of Gravelot, was made to remember, by words written on a Prussian standard, that the black eagle had conquered them at Koniggratz and Langensalza.

Should the son of South Corolina, when at some future day defending the Republic against some foreign foe, be reminded, by an inscription on the colors floating over him, that under this flag the gun was fired that killed his father at Gettysburg? Should this great and enlightened Republic, proud of standing in the front of human progress, be less wise, less large-hearted, than the ancients were two thousand years ago, and the kingly governments of Europe are to-day?

Let the battle-flags of the brave volunteers, which they brought home from the war with the glorious record of their victories, be preserved intact as a proud ornament of our State Houses and armories, but let the colors of the army, under which the sons of all the States are to meet and mingle in common patriotism, speak of nothing but union, not a union of conquerors and conquered, but a union which is the mother of all, equally tender to all, knowing of nothing but equality, peace, and love among her children.

Do you want conspicuous mementos of your victories? They are written upon the dusky brow of every freeman

who was once a slave; they are written on the gate-posts of a restored Union; and the most glorious of all will be written on the faces of a contented people, reunited in common national pride.

Such were the sentiments which inspired that resolution. Such were the sentiments which called forth a storm of obloquy. Such were the sentiments for which the Legislature of Massachusetts passed a solemn resolution of censure upon Charles Sumner, Massachusetts, his own Massachusetts, whom he loved so ardently with a filial love, of whom he was so proud, who had honored him so much in days gone by, and whom he had so long and so faithfully labored to serve and to honor.

[ocr errors]

Oh! those were evil days, that winter; days sad and dark, when he sat there in his lonesome chamber, unable to leave it, the world moving around him, and in it so much that was hostile, and he- prostrated by the tormenting disease, which had returned with fresh violence unable to defend himself, and with this bitter arrow in his heart. Why was that resolution held up to scorn and vituperation as an insult to the brave, and an unpatriotic act? Why was he not attacked and condemned for it when he first offered it, ten years before, and when he was in the fulness of manhood and power? If not then, why now? Why now?

I shall never forget the melancholy hours I sat with him, seeking to lift him up with cheering words, and he his frame for hours racked with excruciating pain, and then exhausted with suffering-gloomily brooding over the thought that he might die so.

How thankful I am, how thankful every human soul in Massachusetts, how thankful every American must be, that he did not die then! and, indeed, more than once death seemed to be knocking at his door, how thankful that he was spared to see the day, when the people, by striking developments, were convinced that those who had acted as he did had after all not been impelled by mere whims of vanity, or reckless ambition, or sinister designs, but had

« PreviousContinue »