BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 'IS mind a maxim, plain, yet keenly shrewd, A TRIBUTE TO SAMUEL ADAMS ET fame to the world sound America's voice; No intrigues can her sons from their government sever; Her pride is her Adams; her laws are his And shall flourish till liberty slumbers forever. Like Leonidas' band, And swear to the God of the ocean and land, That ne'er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves, While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves. ROBERT TREAT PAINE. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. O ye dead poets, who are living still E mourn for those whose laurels fade, Wan is the grief of those whose faith Still shall thy gentle presence prove Again the mystery will be clear; As in our dreams we follow thee FRANCIS F. BROWNE. THE WELCOME TO LAFAYETTE ON HIS RETURN TO AMERICA. 'HE multitudes we see are not assembled to talk over their private griefs, to indulge in querulous complaints, to mingle their murmurs of discontent, to pour forth tales of real or imaginary wrongs, to give utterance to political recriminations. The effervescence of faction seems for the moment to be settled, the collision of discordant interests to subside, and hushed is the clamor of controversy. There is nothing portentous of danger to the commonwealth in this general awakening of the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the old and the youngthis "impulsive ardor" which pervades the palace of wealth and the hovel of poverty, decrepit age and lisping fancy, virgin loveliness and vigorous manhood. No hereditary monarch graciously exhibits his august person to the gaze of vulgar subjects. No conquering ty rant comes in his triumphal car, decorated with the spoils of vanquished nations, and followed by captive princes, marching to the music of their chains. No proud and hypocritical hierarch, playing “fantastic airs before high Heaven," enacts his solemn mockeries to deceive the souls of men and secure for himself the honor of an apotheosis. The shouts which announce the approach of a chieftain are unmingled with any note of sorrow. No lovelorn maiden's sigh touches his ear; no groan from a childless father speaks reproach; no widow's curse is uttered, in bitterness of soul, upor the destroyer of her hope; no orphan's tear falls upor his shield to tarnish its brightness. The spectacle now exhibited to the world is of the purest and noblest character-a spectacle which man may admire and God approve an assembled nation offering the spontaneous homage of a nation's gratitude to a nation's bene factor. JOSEPH T. BUCKINGHAM, 1 WASHINGTON ALLSTON. 'HE element of beauty which in thee Was a prevailing spirit, pure and high, For nature's priests we shed no idle tear: Though thy white locks at length have pressed the bier Its shades with heaven's radiance illume: HENRY THEODORE TUCKERMAN. WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING. 'HOU livest in the life of all good things; Burst from decorous quiet as he came. Yelled its frank welcome. And from main to main Thundered the mighty cry, HONOR TO KANE! In vain—in vain beneath his feet we flung With the thrice-tripled honors of the feast! Faded and faded! And the brave young heart What words thou spakest for freedom shall For the lost captain, now within his breast not die; Thou sleepest not, for now thy love hath wings To soar where hence thy hope could hardly fly. Farewell, good man, good angel now! this hand Soon, like thine own, shall lose its cunning too; And underneath, upon the lifeless front Of that drear cliff, a simple name is traced; Clung to the drifting floes, By want beleaguered, and by winter chased, Seeking the brother lost amid that frozen waste. Not many months ago we greeted him, Crowned with the icy honors of the North, More and more faintly throbbed. Death launched a whistling dart; And ere the thunders of applause were done Till on some rosy even And melted into heaven. He needs no tears, who lived a noble life! Such homage suits him well; What tale of peril and self-sacrifice! With hunger howling o'er the wastes of snow! The lethargy of famine: the despair Urging to labor, nervously pursued; Toil done with skinny arms, and faces hued Upon the ghastly foreheads of the crew; To all around him. By a mighty will He stands, until spring, tardy with relief, Unlocks the icy gate, And the pale prisoners thread the world once more, Time was when he should gain his spurs of gold And the world's knights are now self-consecrate. In all its annals, back to Charlemagne, or triumphs of this world, on that quiet July morning James A. Garfield may well have been a happy man. No foreboding of evil haunted him; no slightest premonition of danger clouded his sky. His terrible fate was upon him in an instant. One moment he stood erect, strong, confident in the years stretching peacefully out before him; the next he lay wounded, bleeding, helpless, doomed to weary weeks of torture, to silence and the grave. Great in life, he was surpassingly great in death. For no cause, in the very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness, by the red hand of murder, he was thrust from the full tide of this world's interest-from its hopes, its aspirations, its victories, into the visible presence of death, and he did not quail. Not alone for the one short moment in which, stunned and dazed, he could give up life hardly aware of its relinquishment, but through days of deadly languor, through weeks of agony that was not less agony because silently borne, with clear sight and calm courage he looked into his open grave. What blight and ruin met his anguished eyes whose lips may tell—what brilliant, broken plans, what baffled, high ambitions, what sundering of strong, warm, manhood's friendships, what bitter rending of sweet household ties! Behind him a proud, expectant nation; a great host of sustaining friends; a cherished and happy mother, wearing the full, rich. honors of her early toil and tears: the wife of his youth, whose whole life lay in his; the little boys, not yet emerged from childhood's day of frolic; the fair young daughter; the sturdy sons just springing EXTRACT FROM AN ORATION ON JAMES A. into closest companionship, claiming every day and GARFIELD. every day rewarding a father's love and care; and in his heart the eager, rejoicing power to meet all de mands. Before him desolation and great darknessand his soul was not shaken. His countrymen were thrilled with instant, profound and universal sympathy. Masterful in his mortal weakness, he became the centre of a nation's love enshrined in the prayers of a world. But all the love and all the sympathy could not share with him his suffering. He trod the winepress alone. With unfaltering front he faced death. With unfailing tenderness he took leave of life. Above the demoniac hiss of the assassin's bullet he heard the voice of God. With simple resignation he bowed to the divine decree. N the morning of Saturday, July 2d, the Presisident was a contented and happy man-not in an ordinary degree, but joyfully, almost boyishly happy. On his way to the railroad station, to which he drove slowly, in conscious enjoyment of the beautiful morning, with an unwonted sense of leisure and keen anticipation of pleasure, his talk was all in the grateful and gratulatory vein. He felt that after four months of trial his administration was strong in its grasp of affairs, strong in popular favor, and destined to grow stronger; that grave difficulties confronting him at his inauguration had been As the end drew near his early craving for the sea safely passed; that trouble lay behind him and not be- returned. The stately mansion of power had been to fore him; that he was soon to meet the wife whom he him the wearisome hospital of pain, and he begged to loved, now recovering from an illness which had but be taken from its prison walls, from its oppressive, lately disquieted and at times almost unnerved him; stifling air, from its homelessness and its hopelessness. that he was going to his Alma Mater to renew the Gently, silently, the love of a great people bore the most cheerful associations of his young manhood and pale sufferer to the longed-for healing of the sea to to exchange greetings with those whose deepening in- live or to die, as God should will, within sight of its terest had followed every step of his upward progress heaving billows, within sound of its manifold voices. from the day he entered upon his college course until With wan, fevered face tenderly lifted to the cooling he had attained the loftiest elevation in the gift of his breeze he looked out wistfully upon the ocean's changcountrymen. ing wonders; on its far sails, white ning the morning Surely if happiness can ever come from the honors light; on its restless waves, rolling shoreward to break ER singular talents for government were founded equally on her temper and on her capacity. Endowed with a great command over herself, she soon obtained an uncontrolled ascendant over her people; and while she merited all their esteem by her real virtues, she also engaged their affections by her pretended ones. Few sovereigns of England succeeded to the throne in more difficult circumstances; and none ever conducted the government with such uniform success and felicity. Though unacquainted with the practice of tolerationthe true secret for managing religious factions-she preserved her people, by her superior prudence, from those confusions in which theological controversy had involved all the neighboring nations: and though her enemies were the most powerful princes of Europe, the most active, the most enterprising, the least scrupulous, she was able by her vigor to make deep impressions on their states; her own greatness meanwhile remained untouched and unimpaired. The wise ministers and brave warriors who flour. ished under her reign, share the praise of her success; but instead of lessening the applause due to her, they make great addition to it. They owed, all of them, their advancement to her choice; they were supported by her constancy, and with all their abilities, they were never able to acquire any undue ascendant over her. In her family, in her court, in her kingdom, she remained equally mistress: the force of the ten der passions was great over her, but the force of her mind was still superior; and the combat which her victory visibly cost her, serves only to display the firmness of her resolution, and the loftiness of her ambitious sentiments. The fame of this princess, though it has surmounted the prejudices both of faction and bigotry, yet lies still exposed to another prejudice, which is more durable because most natural, and which, according to the different views in which we survey her, is capable either of exalting beyond measure or diminishing the lustre of her character. This prejudice is founded on the consideration of her sex. When we contemplate her as a woman, we are apt to be struck with the highest admiration of her great qualities and extensive capacity; but we are also apt to require some more softness of disposition, some greater lenity of temper, some of those amiable weaknesses by which her sex is distinguished. But the true method of estimating her merit is to lay aside all these considerations, and consider her merely as a rational being placed in au thority, and intrusted with the government of mankind. We may find it difficult to reconcile our fancy to her as a wife or a mistress; but her qualities as a sovereign, though with some considerable exceptions are the object of undisputed applause and approbation DAVID HUNT. CŒUR DE LION AT THE BIER OF HIS FATHER. The body of Henry the Second lay in state in the abbey-church of Fontevrault, where it was visited by Richard Cœur de Lion, who, on beholding it, was struck with horror and remorse, and been the means of bringing his father to an untimely grave. bitterly reproached himself for that rebellious conduct which had ORCHES were blazing clear, Hymns pealing deep and slow, Where a king lay stately on his bier In the church of Fontevrault. Banners of battle o'er him hung, And warriors slept beneath, And light as noon's broad light was flung On the settled face of death: On the settled face of death A strong and ruddy glareThough dimmed at times by the censer's breath, Yet it fell still brightest there; As if each deeply furrowed trace Of earthly years to show- Had surely closed in woe! Through the stillness of the night, There was heard a heavy clang. And the tombs and the hollow pavement rang As of steel-girt men the tread, With a sounding thrill of dread; And the holy chant was hushed awhile, He stood there still with a drooping brow, And clasped hands o'er it raised ; For his father lay before him low, It was Cœur de Lion gazed! And silently he strove With the workings of his breast; But there's more in late repentant love Than steel may keep suppressed! And his tears brake forth at last like rain Men held their breath in awe, For his face was seen by his warrior-train, And he recked not that they saw. He looked upon the dead, A weight of sorrow, even like lead, He stooped-and kissed the frozen cheek, Till bursting words—yet all too weak-- "Oh, father! is it vain, This late remorse and deep? Speak to me, father! once again, Were but this work undone, I would give England's crown, my sire! To hear thee bless thy son. 'Speak to me! mighty grief Ere now the dust hath stirred! Hear me, but hear me !-father, chief, My king! I must be heard! Hushed, hushed-how is it that I call, And that thou answerest not? When was it thus, woe, woe for all The love my soul forgot! "Thy silver hairs I see, So still, so sadly bright! And father, father! but for me, They had not been so white! I bore thee down, high heart! at last, To kneel and say—‘Forgive!' "Thou wert the noblest king On royal throne ere seen; And thou didst prove, where spears are proved, Oh, ever the renowned and loved Thou wert-and there thou art! "Thou that my boyhood's guide Didst take fond joy to be! a The times I've sported at thy side, And climbed thy parent knee! And there before the blessed shrine, My sire! I see thee lieHow will that sad still face of thine Look on me till I die!" FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS. FARRAGUT. FTER life's long watch and ward Day and night who stood a guard, ROBERT BURNS TOP, mortal! Here thy brother lies- His books were rivers, woods, and skies His teachers were the torn heart's wail. Sin met thy brother everywhere! |