fire had been vouchsafed for Nelson's translation, he could scarcely have departed in a brighter blaze of glory. He has left us, not indeed his mantle of inspiration, but a name and an example, which are at this hour inspiring thousands of the youth of England : a name which is our pride, and an example which will continue to be our shield and our strength.”-SOUTHEY's Life of Nelson.

Well hast thou done thy duty, gallant son ;

What truer fame can greet a mortal's ear
Than duty's task heroically done ?-
So are they hailed, who better crowns have won:

Thou, to the patriot's soul, art truly dear!

O let us blot thy failings with a tear,
And read alone the record of thy worth.

Man without pride, or hate, or fraud, or fear;
Who banished discord, and gave peace to earth;

Thine was the generous heart, though gentle, brave,

The will to bless, the godlike power to save :
What nobler pæan can the poet raise ?

A glorious life, an honourable grave,
Trafalgar, Nile and Baltic, be thy praise !

TUPPER's Ballads and Poems. Trafalgar is noted for the complete defeat of the combined French and Spanish teets, on the 21st October, 1805. This is considered the greatest naval victory which the British have ever gained. In it the gallant Nelson fell, on board the Victory.

THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE. *

Not a drum was heard, not a funeral-note,

As his corse to the rampart we hurried ;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot

O’er the grave where our hero we buried.
We buried him darkly at dead of night,

The sods with our bayonets turning;
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light,

And the lantern dimly burning.
No useless coffin enclosed his breast,

Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him;
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,

With his martial cloak around him.
Few and short were the prayers we said,

And we spoke not a word of sorrow;
But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead,

And we bitterly thought of the morrow.

* Killed in 1809, while repulsing the French at Corunna.

We thought—as we hollowed his narrow bed,

And smoothed down his lonely pillow-
How the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head,

While we were far on the billow !

Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone,

And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him,-
But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on,

In the grave where a Briton has laid him.

But half of our heavy task was done,

When the clock struck the hour for retiring; And we heard the distant and random gun

That the foe was suddenly firing.

Slowly and sadly we laid him down,

From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone-

But we left him alone with his glory.-WOLPE.

RETREAT OF THE FRENCH ARMY IN RUSSIA.*

Magnificence of ruin! what has time
In all it ever gazed upon

of

war,
Of the wild rage of storm, or deadly clime,
Seen, with that battle's vengeance to compare ?
How glorious shone the invader's pomp afar !
Like pampered lions from the spoil they came;
The land before them silence and despair,

The land behind them massacre and flame;
Blood will have tenfold blood. What are they now? A name.

Homeward by hundred thousands, column-deep,
Broad square, loose squadron, rolling like the flood
When mighty torrents from their channels leap,
Rushed through the land the haughty multitude,
Billow on endless billow; on through wood,
O’er rugged hill, down sunless, marshy vale,
The death-devoted moved, to clangour rude

Of drum and horn, and dissonant clash of mail,
Glancing disastrous light before that sunbeam pale.

* At the close of 1812. In this invasion the French lost nearly 500,000 men-either killed, taken prisoners, or through exces cold and hard. ships.

The hour of vengeance strikes. Hark to the gale!
As it bursts hollow through the rolling clouds,
That froin the north in sullen grandeur sail
Like floating Alps. Advancing darkness broods
Upon the wild horizon, and the woods,
Now sinking into brambles, echo shrill,
As the gust sweeps them, and those upper floods

Shoot on their leafless boughs the sleet-drops chill,
That on the hurrying crowds in freezing showers distil.

Still on they sweep, as if their hurrying march
Could bear them from the rushing of His wheel
Whose chariot is the whirlwind. Heaven's clear arch
At once is covered with a vivid veil ;
In mixed and fighting heaps the deep clouds reel;
Upon the dense horizon hangs the sun,
In sanguine light, an orb of burning steel;

The snows wheel down through twilight, thick and dun; Now tremble, men of blood, the judgment has begun !-CROLY.

THE FIELD OF WATERLOO.

Stop:—for thy tread is on an Empire's dust!
An earthquake's spoil is sepulchred below!
Is the spot mark'd with no colossal bust,
Nor column trophied for triumphal show?
None; but the moral's truth tells simpler so.
As the ground was before thus let it be.-
How that red rain hath made the harvest grow!

And is this all the world hath gain'd by thee,
Thou first and last of fields, king-making Victory?

There was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgium's capital had gather'd then
Her beauty and her chivalry; and bright
The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men ;*
A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
Music arose, with its voluptuous swell,
Soft eyes look'd love to eyes which spake again,

And all went merry as a marriage bell;
But hush ! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell !

* The Duke of Wellington was-with his officers-at a ball, in Brussels, when he heard that the French were advancing. He immediately prepared for the decisive battle, which was won June 18, 1815.

Did you not hear it?-No; 'twas but the wind,
Or the car rattling o'er the stony street;
On with the dance ! let joy be unconfin'd;
No sleep till morn, when youth and pleasure meet
To chase the glowing hours with flying feet-
But hark! that heavy sound

breaks in once more,
As if the clouds its echo would repeat;

And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before !
Arm! arm! it is !-it is! the cannon's op'ning roar!

Within a window'd niche of that high hall
Sate Brunswick's fated chieftain; he did hear
That sound the first amidst the festival,
And caught its tone with Death's prophetic ear;
And when they smiled because he deem'd it near,
His heart more truly knew that peal too well
Which stretch'd his father on a bloody bier,

And rous’d the vengeance blood alone could quell :
He rush'd into the field, and, foremost fighting fell!

Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro,
And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress ;
And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago,
Blush'd at the praise of their own loveliness;
And there was sudden partings, such as press
The life from out young hearts; and choking sighs
Which ne'er might be repeated; who could guess

If ever more should meet those mutual eyes,
Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise ?

And there was mounting in hot haste: the steed,
The mustering squadron, and the clattering car,
Went pouring forward with impetuous speed,
And swiftly forming in the ranks of war;
And the deep thunder, peal on peal afar;
And near, the beat of the alarming drum
Rous'd up the soldier ere the morning star;

While throng'd the citizens with terror dumb,
Or whispering with white lips, “ The foe! they come, they come!”

And wild and high the “Cameron's gathering” rose !
The war-note of Lochiel, which Albyn's hills
Have heard, and heard too have her Saxon foes :
How in the noon of night that pibroch thrills,
Savage and shrill! but with the breath which fills
Their mountain pipe, so fill the mountaineers
With their fierce native daring, which instills

The stirring memory of a thousand years :
And Evan's, Donald's fame rings in each clansman's ears.

And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves,
Dewy with nature's tear-drops as they pass,
Grieving—if aught inanimate e'er grieves-
Over the unreturning brave--alas!
Ere evening to be trodden like the grass
Which now beneath them, but above shall grow
In its next verdure: when this fiery mass

Of living valour, rolling on the foe
And burning with high hope, shall moulder cold and low.

Last noon beheld them full of lusty life,
Last eve in Beauty's circle proudly gay:
The midnight brought the signal sound of strife-
The morn, the marshalling in arms—the day, battle's magnifi-

cently stern array !
The thunder-clouds close o'er it, which when rent,
The earth is cover'd thick with other clay,

Which her own clay shall cover-heap'd and pent,
Rider and horse,-friend, foe,-in one red burial blent !-BYRON.

THE REIGN OF GEORGE III. “During the reign of George III. England had to undergo the revolt of the American colonies; to submit to defeat; to shake under the volcano of the French revolution; to grapple and fight for the life with her gigantic enemy Napoleon ; to gasp and rally after that tremendous struggle; the old society, with its courtly splendour, had to pass away; generations of statesmen to rise and disappear; Pitt to follow Chatham to the tomb; the memory of Rodney and Wolfe to be succeeded by Nelson's and Wellington's glory; the old poets who unite us to Queen Anne's time had to sink into their graves; Johnson to die, and Scott and Byron to arise ; Garrick to delight the world with his dazzling dramatic genius, and Kean to leap on the stage and take possession of the astonished theatre. Steam had to be invented; kings to be beheaded, deposed, restored ; Napoleon to be but an episode; and George III. is to be alive through all these varied changes, to accompany his people through those revolutions of thought, government, society, and survive out of the old world into ours.” After describing some of the court scenes of that time, and the eminent characters that flourished during the reign, and the spirit of the monarch that “beat North and Fox, and even bound the stately neck of the younger Pitt,' by his'indomitable determination, Mr. Thackeray sketched the king's special affection for the Princess Amelia, whose death finally overset his reason, so that from the 10th of November, 1810, he ceased to reign. “History,” thus concluded the lecturer, “presents no sadder picture than that old man, blind and deprived of reason, wandering through his palace, haranguing imaginary parliaments and reviewing ghostly troops. He became utterly deaf too. All sight, all reason, all sound of human voices, all the plea

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