10. And now, go bring your sharpest torments. The woes I see impending over this guilty realm shall be enough to sweeten death, though every nerve and artery were a shooting pang. I die! but my death shall prove a proud triumph; and, for every drop of blood ye from my veins do draw, your own shall flow in rivers. Woe to thee, Carthage! Woe to the proud city of the waters! I see thy nobles wailing at the feet of Roman senators! thy citizens in terror! thy ships in flames! I hear the victorious shouts of Rome! I see her eagles glittering on thy ramparts. Proud city, thou art doomed! The curse of God is on thee—a clinging, wasting curse. It shall not leave thy gates till hungry flames shall lick the fretted 10 gold from off thy proud palaces, and every brook runs crimson to the sea. 1RĂM/PÄRTS. Elevations of earth round a place as a means of defence. TRI'REME. An ancient kind of vessel, with three ranks of oars on a side. BEAK. The upper part of the stem of a ship. 4 ÄR TI-SAN. A mechanic. 5 SANCT V-A-RY. The most retired and ought to be free from all passions, 7 CO-LŎS'SAL. Gigantic; huge. sacred part of a temple; a holy 9 PUNIC. Carthaginian; hence, unplace; a church. • STŌ'ICS. A sect of ancient philosophers, who taught that a man worthy of trust, as the Romans thought the Carthaginians were. 10 FRET'TED. Formed into raised work. CVII. -THE BATTLE OF NASEBY. MACAULAY. [The battle of Naseby was fought June 14, 1645, between Charles I. and the parliamentary army under Fairfax and Cromwell. The main body of the royal army was commanded by Lord Astley; Prince Rupert, the king's nephew and a German by birth, led the right wing, and Sir Marmaduke Langdale the left. Skippon was a general on the parliamentary side. The royal army, though successful in the early part of the action, was totally defeated. Alɛatia was a disorderly quarter of London, and Whitehall was the royal palace. Temple Bar was a place in London where, formerly, the heads of traitors were exposed. This ballad is supposed to be written by an officer in the victorious army, and expresses the sentiments which such a man would naturally feel at the triumph of a cause which he believed to be right.] 1. O, WHEREFORE come ye forth, in triumph from the North, With your hands, and your feet, and your raiment1 all red? And wherefore doth your rout send forth a joyous shout? And whence be the grapes of the wine-press which ye tread? 2. O, evil was the root, and bitter was the fruit, And crimson was the juice of the vintage that we trod; 3. It was about the noon of a glorious day of June, That we saw their banners dance, and their cuirasses shine; And the Man of Blood was there, with his long essenced hair, And Astley, and Sir Marmaduke, and Rupert of the Rhine. 4. Like a servant of the Lord, with his Bible and his sword, 5. And, hark! like the roar of the billows on the shore, 6. The furious German comes, with his clarions and his drums, His bravoes of Alsatia, and pages of Whitehall; They are bursting on our flanks. Grasp your pikes, close your ranks, For Rupert never comes but to conquer or to fall. 7. They are here! They rush on! We are broken! We are gone! Our left is borne before them like stubble on the blast. O Lord, put forth thy might! O Lord, defend the right! Stand back to back, in God's name, and fight it to the last. 8. Stout Skippon hath a wound; the centre hath given ground: Hark! hark! What means this trampling of horsemen in our rear? Whose banner do I see, boys? "Tis he, thank God, 'tis he, boys. 9. Their heads all stooping low, their points all in a row, 10. Fast, fast, the gallants ride, in some safe nook to hide 1 RAI'MENT. Apparel; dress. RÖUT. A noisy crowd; rabble. 8 CUî'RASS (kwē'ras). A piece of de 4 DYKE. A channel to receive water; a ditch; also, a mound to hinder inundation. Decreed; foreor dained; preordained. fensive armor for the upper part 5 PRE-DES/TINED. of the body. CVIII.-APPEAL FOR IRELAND. HENRY CLAY. and [Henry Clay, an eminent American statesman and orator, was born in the county of Hanover, Virginia, April 12, 1777, and died June 29, 1852. In his twenty-first year he removed to Kentucky, and commenced the practice of law. In 1806 he was chosen to the Senate of the United States, to fill a vacancy, from this time to that of his death he was almost always in the service of his country, as member of the House of Representatives or of the Senate. During the presidency of John Quincy Adams, he was Secretary of State. He was a man of commanding eloquence, powerful understanding, energetic will, and peculiarly fascinating manners. The following piece is from a speech delivered by him at New Orleans, February 4, 1847.] 1. MR. PRESIDENT: If we were to hear that large numbers of the inhabitants of Asia, or Africa, or Australia, or the remotest part of the globe, were daily dying with hunger and famine, -no matter what their color, what their religion, or what their civilization, we should deeply lament their condition, and be irresistibly prompted to mitigate', if possible, their sufferings. 2. But it is not the distresses of any such distant regions that have summoned us together on this occasion. The appalling and heart-rending distresses of Ireland and Irishmen form the object of our present consultation. That Ireland, which has been, in all the vicissitudes * of our national existence, our friend, and has ever extended to us her warmest sympathy-those Irishmen, who, in every war in which we have been engaged, on every battle-field, from Quebec to Monterey, have stood by us, shoulder to shoulder, and shared in all the perils and fortunes of the conflict. 3. The imploring appeal comes to us from the Irish nation, which is so identified with our own as to be almost part and parcel of ours, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. Nor is it any ordinary case of human misery, or a few isolated3 cases of death by starvation, that we are called upon to consider. Famine is stalking* abroad throughout Ireland; whole towns, counties - countless human beings, of every age, and of both sexes at this very moment are starving, or in danger of starving, to death. -- 4. Behold the wretched Irish mother, with haggard looks and streaming eyes, her famished children clinging to her tattered garments, and gazing piteously in her face, begging for food! And see the distracted husband and father, with palid cheeks, standing by, horror and despair depicted in his countenance - tortured with the reflection that he can afford no succor or relief to the dearest objects of his heart, about to be snatched forever from him by the most cruel of all deaths! 5 5. This is no fancy picture; but, if we are to credit the terrible accounts which reach us from that theatre of misery and wretchedness, is one of daily occurrence, Indeed, no imagination can conceive, no tongue express, no pencil paint the horrors of the scenes which are there daily exhibited. 6. Shall starving Ireland plead in vain?-shall the young and the old - dying women and children stretch out their hands to us for bread, and find no relief? Will not this great city, the world's storehouse of an exhaustless supply of all kinds of food, borne to its overflowing warehouses by the Father of Waters,* act, on this occasion, in a manner worthy of its high destiny, and obey the noble impulses of the generous hearts of its blessed inhabitants? MIT I-GATE. Render less severe; | 4 STÂLK'ING. Walking proudly, as on [John Gorham Palfrey is a native of Boston. He was for many years a settled clergyman in his native city, and afterwards a professor in the Divinity School of Harvard College. Retiring from the pulpit, he was, for three years, Secretary of State in Massachusetts, and was chosen to Congress in 1847. He is the author of a History of New England, of "Lectures on the Jewish Scriptures and Antiquities," and various other works.] 1. A GOOD daughter! - there are other ministries1 of ove, more conspicuous than hers, but none in which a gentler, lovelier spirit dwells, and none to which the heart's warm requitals 2 more joyfully respond. There is no such thing as a comparative estimate of a parent's affection for one or another child. There is little which he needs to covet, to whom the treasure of a good child has been given. * A name sometimes given to the Mississippi River. |