creatures! what hopes of philanthropy have been blighted! and at the same time what magnificent enterprises have been achieved! what new provinces won to science and art! what rights and liberties secured to nations! It is a privilege to have lived in an age so stirring, so pregnant, so eventful. It is an age never to be forgotten. Its voice of warning and encouragement is never to die. Its impression on history is indelible. Amidst its events, the American revolution, the first distinct, solemn assertion of the rights of men, and the French revolution, that volcanic force which shook the earth to its center, are never to pass from men's minds. Over this age the night will, indeed, gather more and more, as time rolls away; but in that night two forms will appear, Washington and Napoleon, the one a lurid meteor, the other a benign, serene, and undecaying star. Another American name will live in history, your Franklin; and the kite which brought lightning from heaven, will be seen sailing in the clouds by remote posterity, when the city where he dwelt may be known only by its ruins. There is, however, something greater in the age than its greatest men; it is the appearance of a new power in the world, the appearance of the multitude of men on the stage where as yet the few have acted their parts alone. This influence is to endure to the end of time. What more of the present is to survive? Perhaps much, of which we now take no note. The glory of an age is often hidden from itself. Perhaps some word has been spoken in our day which we have not deigned to hear, but which is to grow clearer and louder through all ages. Perhaps some silent thinker among us is at work in his closet whose name is to fill the earth. Perhaps there sleeps in his cradle some reformer who is to move the church, and the world, who is to open a new era in history, who is to fire the human soul with new hope and new daring. What else is to survive the age? That which the age has little thought of, but which is living in us all; I mean the soul, the immortal spirit of this all ages are the unfoldings, and it is greater than all. We must not feel, in the contemplation of the vast movements in our own and former times, as if we ourselves were nothing. I repeat it, we are greater than all. We are to survive our age, to comprehend it, and to pronounce its sentence. Ex. CCXXXII.-THE WRECK. ALL night the booming minute gun Looked o'er the tide-worn steep. Had vailed her topsails to the sand, MRS. HEMANS. The queenly ship! brave hearts had striven, We saw her mighty cable riven, Like floating gossamer. We saw her proud flag struck that morn, A star once o'er the seas, Her anchor gone, her deck uptorn, And sadder things than these. We saw her treasures cast away; And gold was strown the wet sands o'er, And gorgeous robes: but oh! that shore We saw the strong man still and low, Yet, by that rigid lip and brow, Not without strife he died. And near him, on the sea-weed lay— But well our gushing hearts might say For her pale arms a babe had pressed, Her very tresses had been flung, To wrap the fair child's form, Where still their wet, long streamers clung, And beautiful, 'mid that wild scene, Deep in her bosom lay his head, He had known little of her dread,— Oh, human love! whose yearning heart, So stamps upon thy mortal part Surely thou hast another lot; There is some home for thee, Where thou shalt rest, remembering not Ex. CCXXXIII—FREEDOM AND PATRIOTISM. DEWEY. GOD has stamped upon our very humanity th's impress of freedom. It is the unchartered prerogative of human nature. A soul ceases to be a soul, in proportion as it ceases to be free. Strip it of this, and you strip it of one or its essential and characteristic attributes. It is this that draws the footsteps of the wild Indian to his wide and boundless desertpaths, and makes him prefer them to the gay saloons and soft carpets of sumptuous palaces. It is this that makes it so difficult to bring him within the pale of civilization. Our roving tribes are perishing-a sad and solemn sacrifice upon the altar of their wild freedom. They come among us, and look with childish wonder upon the perfection of our arts, and the splendor of our habitations: they submit with ennui and weariness, for a few days, to our burdensome forms and restraints; and then turn their faces to their forest homes, and resolve to push those homes onward till they sink in the Pacific waves, rather than not be free. It is thus that 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 and toil; yet it was enough that they were mementos of happy freedom. I have seen my countrymen, and I have been with them a fellow wanderer, in other lands; and little did I see or feel to warrant the apprehension, sometimes expressed, that foreign travel would weaken our patriotic attachments. One sigh for home-home, arose from all hearts. And why, from palaces and courts-why, from galleries of the arts, where the mar›le softens into life, and painting sheds an almost living presence of beauty around it-why, from the mountain's awful brow, and the lonely valleys and lakes touched with the sunset hues of old romance-why, from those venerable and touching ruins to which our very heart grows-why, from all these scenes, were they looking beyond the swellings of the Atlantic wave, to a dearer and holier spot of earth-their own, own country? Doubtless, it was in part because it is their country! But it was also, as every one's experience will testify, because they knew that there was no oppression, no pitiful exaction of petty tyranny; because that there, they knew, was no accredited and irresistible religious domination; becanse that there, they knew, they should not meet the odious soldier at every corner, nor swarms of imploring beggars, the victims of misrule; that there, no curse causeless did fall, and no blight, worse than plague and pestilence, did descend amidst the pure dews of heaven; because, in fine, that there, they knew, was liberty-upon all the green hills, and amidst all the peaceful villages-liberty, the wall of fire around the humblest home; the crown of glory, studded with her ever-blazing stars upon the proudest mansion! 19* Ex. CCXXXIV.-S CENE FROM ION. ION, TIMOCLES, AGENOR, MEDON. TALFOURD. [ION nobly resolves to meet ADRASTUS, notwithstanding the king's decree forbidding entrance to his person.] Enter ION to TIMOCLES and AGENOR. Thou hast borne My childish folly often,-do not frown Tim. Leave thy care. If I am weary of the flutterer life, Ion. And art thou tired of being? Has the grave Hast subdued Those cleavings of the spirit to its prison, Those nice regards, dear habits, pensive memories, Is hope quenched in thy bosom? Thou art free, Standest apart untempted;-do not lose The great occasion thou hast plucked from misery, Tim. What, to strike? to slay? Ion. No!-not unless the audible voice of Heaven Call thee to that dire office; but to shed On ears abused by falsehood, truths of power |