YE MARINERS OF ENGLAND.

A NAVAL ODE.

Ye Mariners of England!

That guard our native seas:

Whose flag has braved, a thousand years,
The battle and the breeze!

Your glorious standard launch again
To match another foe!

And sweep through the deep,

While the stormy winds do blow: While the battle rages loud and long, And the stormy winds do blow.

The spirit of your fathers

Shall start from every wave!-
For the deck was oft their field of fame,
And Ocean was their grave:
Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell,
Your manly hearts shall glow,

As ye sweep through the deep,

While the stormy winds do blow; While the battle rages loud and long, And the stormy winds do blow.

Britannia needs no bulwarks,

No towers along the steep;

Her march is o'er the mountain-waves,
Her home is on the deep.

With thunders from her native oak,
She quells the floods below,-

As they roar on the shore,

When the stormy winds do blow; When the battle rages loud and long, And the stormy winds do blow.

The meteor flag of England
Shall yet terrific burn;

Till danger's troubled night depart,
And the star of peace return.
Then, then, ye ocean-warriors!
Our song and feast shall flow
To the fame of your name,

When the storm has ceased to blow;

When the fiery fight is heard no more,

And the storm has ceased to blow.-CAMPBELL.

THE TRIUMPHS OF OUR LANGUAGE.

Now gather all our Saxon bards,

Let harps and hearts be strung, To celebrate the triumphs of

Our own good Saxon tongue;

For stronger far than hosts that march
With battle-flags unfurled,

It goes, with FREEDOM, THOUGHT, and TRUTH,
To rouse and rule the world.

Stout Albion learns its household lays

On every surf-worn shore,

And Scotland hears it echoing far

As Orkney's breakers roar

From Jura's crags and Mona's hills
It floats on every gale,

And warms with eloquence and song
The homes of Innisfail.

On many a wide and swarming deck
It scales the rough wave's crest,
Seeking its peerless heritage-

The fresh and fruitful West.
It climbs New England's rocky steeps,
As victor mounts a throne;
Niagara knows and greets the voice
Still mightier than its own.

It spreads where winter piles deep snows
On bleak Canadian plains,
And where, on Essequibo's banks,
Eternal summer reigns:

It glads Acadia's misty coasts,
Jamaica's glowing isle,

And bides where, gay with early flowers,
Green Texan prairies smile.

It lives by clear Itasca's lake,
Missouri's turbid stream,
Where cedars rise on wild Ozark,
And Kanzas' waters gleam.
It tracks the loud swift Oregon
Through sunset valleys rolled,
And soars where Californian brooks
Wash down their sands of gold.

It sounds in Borneo's camphor groves,
On seas of fierce Malay,

In fields that curb old Ganges' flood,

And towers of proud Bombay.

It wakes up Aden's flashing eyes,
Dusk brows, and swarthy limbs-
The dark Liberian soothes her child
With English cradle hymns.

Tasmania's maids express their thoughts
In gentle Saxon speech;
Australian boys read Crusoe's life
By Sidney's sheltered beach:

It dwells where Afric's southmost capes
Meet oceans broad and blue,
And Nieuveld's rugged mountains gird
The wide and waste Karroo.

It kindles realms so far apart,
That while its praise you sing,
These may be clad with autumn's fruits,
And those with flowers of spring;
It quickens lands whose meteor-lights
Flame in an arctic sky;

And lands for which the Southern Cross
Hangs its orbed fires on high.

It goes with all that prophets told,
And righteous kings desired,
With all that great apostles taught,
And glorious Greeks admired;

With Shakspeare's deep and wondrous verse,

And Milton's soaring mind,

With Alfred's laws, and Newton's lore,

To cheer and bless mankind.

Mark, as it spreads, how deserts bloom,
And error flees away,

As vanishes the mist of night
Before the star of day!

But grand as are the victories

Whose monuments we see,

These are but as the dawn which speaks

Of noontide yet to be.

Still more then may it speed the time,
By good men prayed for long,

When Christian states, grown just and wise,
Will scorn revenge and wrong;

When earth's oppressed and savage tribes
Shall cease to pine or roam,

All taught to prize these English words

FAITH, FREEDOM, HEAVEN, and HOME.-LYONS.

INFLUENCE OF SHAKSPEARE OVER THE HUMAN

MIND.

Shakspeare was the profoundest thinker, the wittiest, the airiest, the most fantastic spirit (reconciling the extremes of ordinary natures) that ever condescended to teach and amuse mankind. He plunged into the depths of speculation; he penetrated to the inner places of knowledge, plucking out "the heart of the mystery;" he soared to the stars; he trod the earth, the air, the waters. Every element yielded him rich tribute. He surveyed the substances and the spirits of each; he saw their stature, their power, their quality, and reduced them without an effort to his own divine command.

There is nothing more detestable in literature than the system of rating an author by his defects instead of by his merits,—of estimating him by what he does not, rather than by what he does accomplish. The French writers say that Shakspeare is guilty of extravagance, of anachronisms, of undue and coarse jesting, and of fifty other inconsistencies;-and so he is. But we do not build up his pyramid of fame upon such unholy ground. It is not because he has crowded tragedy and farce together, nor because he has laid prostrate the unities, that we worship him. But it is because he has outshone all writers of all nations, in dramatic skill, in fine knowledge of humanity, in sweetness, in pathos, in humour, in wit, and in poetry. It is because he has subdued every passion to his use, and explored and made visible the inequalities and uttermost bounds of the human mind,-because he has embodied the mere nothings of the air, and made personal and probable the wildest anomalies of superstition,-because he has tried everything, and failed in nothing,-because, in fine, he has displayed a more stupendous intellect, a more wondrous imagination, and has attempted and effected more than the whole French dramatists, from Corneille to the author of yesterday,-that we bow down in silent admiration before him, and give ourselves up to a completer homage than we would descend to pay to any other writer. He was the true magician, before whom the astrologers and Hermetic sages were nothing, and the Arabian wizards grew pale. He did not, indeed, trace the Sybils' book, nor the Runic rhyme. Nor did he drive back the raging waters or the howling winds: but his power stretched all over the human mind, from wisdom to fatuity, from joy to despair, and embraced all the varieties of our uncertain nature. He it was, at whose touch the cave of Prospero opened and gave out its secrets. To his bidding Ariel appeared. At his call arose the witches and the earthy Caliban, the ghost who made night hideous," the moonlight fays, Titania and Oberon, and the rest. He was the "so potent" master, before whom bowed kings and heroes, and jewelled queens, men wise as the stars, and women fairer than the morning. All the vices and virtues of life were explained by him; and the passions stood plain before him. From the cradle to the coffin he drew them all. He created, for the benefit of wide posterity and for the aggrandizement of human nature,-lifting earth to Heaven, and revealing the marvels of this lower world, and piercing even the shadowy secrets of the grave.

66

Anonymous.

SHAKSPEARE.

Centuries have roll'd on centuries-years on years;
The never-ceasing progress of decay

Has swept the mighty and the mean away,
Monarchs and multitudes! but there appears,
Towering above all tempests and all time,
A pyramid more glorious and sublime
Than those the imperishable Memphis rears
Over her sandy wilderness; for theirs

Are but unspeaking stones, where lies enshrin'd

Eternal silence. But peerless Shakspeare

Pours forth still from his exhaustless stores of mind,

All truth-all passion-and all poetry;

Mounting with tireless wing on every wind,
And filling earth with sweetest minstrelsy.-BoWRING.

MILTON AND HIS PROSE WRITINGS.

In his character the noblest qualities of both the Puritans and the Royalists were combined in harmonious union. From the Parliament and from the Court, from the conventicle, and from the Gothic cloister, from the gloomy and sepulchral circles of the Roundheads, and from the Christmas revel of the hospitable Cavalier, his nature selected and drew to itself whatever was great and good, while it rejected all the base and pernicious ingredients by which those finer elements were defiled. Like the Puritans he lived

"As ever in his Great Task-master's eye."

Like them he kept his mind constantly fixed on an Almighty Judge and an eternal reward. Hence he acquired their contempt of eternal circumstances, their fortitude, their tranquillity, and their inflexible resolution. But not the coolest sceptic or the most profane scoffer was more perfectly free from the contagion of their frantic delusions, their savage manners, their ludicrous jargon, their scorn of science, and their aversion to innocent pleasures. Hating tyranny with a perfect hatred, he had nevertheless, all the estimable and ornamental qualities which were almost entirely monopolized by the party of the despot. There was none who had a stronger sense of the value of literature, a finer relish for every elegant amusement, or a more chivalrous delicacy of honour and love. Though his opinions were democratic, his tastes and his associations were such as harmonise best with monarchy and aristocracy. He was under the influence of all the feelings by which the gallant Cavaliers were misled. But of those feelings he was the master and not the slave. Like the hero of Homer, he enjoyed all the pleasures of fascination; but he was not fascinated. He listened to the Song of the Syrens; yet he glided by without being seduced to their fatal shore. The illusions which captivated his imagination never impaired his reasoning powers. The states