Their voices meet me in thy breeze; Their blood hath mingled with the tide O be it still a joy, a pride, To live and die for thee! 1. How severed? MRS. HEMANS. VIII. MEN OF ENGLAND. "How many brawny arms, generation after generation, sank down wearied; how many noble hearts, toiling while life lasted, and wise heads that wore themselves dim with scanning and discerning before this waste white cliff, Albion so called, with its other Casiterides, Tin Islands, became a British Empire."- Carlyle. MEN of England! who inherit Rights that cost your sires their blood!1 Men whose undegenerate spirit Has been proved on land and flood: Glow not in your hearts the same. Bared in Freedom's holy cause. "PLACE before your eyes the Island of Britain in the reign of Alfred, its unpierced woods, its wide morasses and dreary heaths, its bloodstained and desolate shores, its untaught and scanty population; behold the monarch listening now to a Bede and now to John Erigena; and then see the same realm, a mighty Empire, full of motion, full of books, where the cotter's son, twelve years old, has read more than archbishops of yore, and possesses the opportunity of reading more than our Alfred himself."-Coleridge. GREAT men have been among us; hands that penned The later Sidney, Marvel, Harrington, Young Vane, and others who called Milton friend. They knew how genuine glory was put on; In splendour: what strength was, that would not bend No single volume paramount, no code, WORDSWORTH. 1. We could have wished that Wordsworth had sung the praises of England without making any reflection on France, but at the time he wrote, national animosities ran high. We live in happier times, and he would now be justly accounted foolish, who should seek to manifest love to England by "bearing false witness against his neighbour. X. ENGLAND'S OAK. "IN point of strength, durability, and general use, oak claims the precedence of all timber; and to England, which has risen to the highest rank among the nations mainly through her commerce and her marine, the oak, the father of ships,' as it has been called, is inferior in value only to her religion, her liberty, and the spirit and industry of her people. The knotty oak of England, when cut down at a proper age, -from fifty to seventy years,-is really the best timber that is known. Some timber is harder, some more difficult to rend, and some less capable of being broken across; but none contains all the three qualities in so great and so equal proportions. For at once supporting a weight, resisting a strain, and not splintering by a cannon-shot, the timber of the oak is superior to every other."-Library of Entertaining Knowledge. LET India boast its spicy trees, Whose fruit and gorgeous bloom Let Portugal and haughty Spain Old England has a tree as strong, 'Tis not the yew-tree, though it lends Nor willow, though it fondly bends Nor birch, although its slender tress As graceful in its loveliness As maiden's flowing hair. "Tis not the poplar, though its height May from afar be seen; Nor beech, although its boughs be dight All these are fair, but they may fling My favourite, and the forest's king, Its stem, though rough, is stout and sound, Their arms in shady blessings round O'er man and beast below ; ENGLAND'S OAK. Its leaf, though late in spring it shares As late and long in autumn wears Type of an honest English heart, Its acorns, graceful to the sight, For childhood, youth, or hoary age, But prouder yet its glories shine, And braves the bursting storm; Oh! then, triumphant in its might, It seems, in Heaven's approving sight, On earth the forest's honour'd king! Who will, another tree may sing, Old England's Oak for me! 77 BERNARD BARTON. XI. HOME JOYS. "INDEED the great sources of a nation's power and happiness must always lie about the domestic hearth. There or nowhere are sown, and for many years cherished by culture, all those virtues which bloom afterwards in public, and form the best ornaments of the commonwealth. Men are everywhere what their mothers make them. If these are slaves, narrowminded, ignorant, unhappy, those in their turn will be so also. The domestic example, small and obscure though it be, will impress its image on the state; since that which individually is base and little, can never by congregating with neighbouring littleness become great, or lead to those heroic efforts, those noble selfsacrifices, which elevate human nature to a sphere in which it appears to touch upon and partake something of the divine."-A. St. John. SWEET are the joys of home, And pure as sweet; for they Like dews of morn and evening come, The world hath its delights, But home to calmer bliss invites, The mountain flood is strong, While gently rolls the stream along The peaceful valley's side. Life's charities, like light, Spread smilingly afar; But stars approached, become more bright, And home is life's own star. The pilgrim's step in vain Seeks Eden's sacred ground! But in home's holy joys, again A glance of heaven to see, Is but an earlier heaven. JOHN BOWRING. XII. HOME. "EVERY people is attached to its country just in proportion as it is free. No matter if that country be in the rocky fastnesses of Switzerland, amidst the snows of Tartary, or on the most barren and lonely island shore: no matter if that country be so poor as to force away its children to other and richer lands for employment and sustenance; yet when the songs of those free homes chance to fall upon the exile's ear, no soft and ravishing airs that wait upon the timid feastings of Asiatic opulence ever thrilled the heart with such mingled rapture and agony as those simple tones. Sad mementos might they be of poverty and want of toil; yet it was enough that they were mementos |