wealth, and, in the shade of obscurity, the path to greatness; in the maturity of manhood, disarming the thunder of its terrors, the lightning of its fatal blast; and wresting from. the tyrant's hand the still more afflictive sceptre of oppression: while descending into the vale of years, traversing the Atlantic Ocean, braving, in the dead of winter, the battle and the breeze, bearing in his hand the charter of Independence, which he had contributed to form, and tendering, from the self-created Nation to the mightiest monarchs of Europe, the olive-branch of peace, the mercurial wand of commerce, and the amulet of protection and safety to the man of peace, on the pathless ocean, from the inexorable cruelty and merciless rapacity of war.

And, finally, in the last stage of life, with fourscore winters upon his head, under the torture of an incurable disease, returning to his native land, closing his days as the chief magistrate of his adopted commonwealth, after contributing by his counsels, under the Presidency of Washington, and recording his name, under the sanction of devout prayer, invoked by him to God, to that Constitution under the authority of which we are here assembled, as the Representatives of the North American People, to receive, in their name and for them, these venerable relics of the wise, the valiant, and the good founders of our great confederated Republic-these sacred symbols of our golden age. May they be deposited among the archives of our Government! And may every American, who shall hereafter behold them, ejaculate a mingled offering of praise to that Supreme Ruler of the Universe, by whose tender mercies our Union has been hitherto preserved, through all the vicissitudes and revolutions of this turbulent world; and of prayer for the continuance of these blessings, by the dispensations of Providence, to our beloved country from age to age, till time shall be no more!

THE HOUSEKEEPER'S SOLILOQUY.
Mrs. F. D. Gage.

HERE'S a big washing to be done-
One pair of hands to do it-

Sheets, shirts and stockings, coats and pants,
How will I e'er get through it?

Dinner to get for six or more,
No loaf left o'er from Sunday;
And baby cross as he can live-
He's always so on Monday.

'Tis time the meat was in the pot,
The bread was worked for baking,
The clothes were taken from the boil-
Oh dear! the baby's waking!

Hush, baby dear! there, hush-sh-sh !
I wish he'd sleep a little,

'Till I could run and get some wood,
To hurry up the kettle.

Oh dear! oh dear! if P

comes home,

And finds things in this pother,
He'll just begin and tell me all
About his tidy mother!

How nice her kitchen used to be,
Her dinner always ready
Exactly when the noon-bell rang-
Hush, hush, dear little Freddy!

And then will come some hasty words,
Right out before I'm thinking-
They say that hasty words from wives
Set sober men to drinking.

Now, is not that a great idea,

That men should take to sinning,

Because a weary, half-sick wife,

Can't always smile so winning?

When I was young I used to earn-
My living without trouble,
Had clothes and pocket money, too,
And hours of leisure double.

I never dreamed of such a fate,

When I, a-lass! was courted—

Wife, mother, nurse, seamstress, cook, housekeeper, chambermaid, laundress, dairy woman, and scrub generally, doing the work of six,

For the sake of being supported!

THE BRAVE AT HOME.-T. Buchanan Read

THE maid who binds her warrior's sash,
With smile that well her pain dissembles,
The while beneath her drooping lash

One starry tear-drop hangs and trembles,
Though Heaven alone records the tear,
And fame shall never know the story,
Her heart has shed a drop as dear
As e'er bedew'd the field of glory.

The wife who girds her husband's sword,
Mid little ones who weep or wonder,
And bravely speaks the cheering word,
What though her heart be rent asunder,
Doom'd nightly in her dreams to hear
The bolts of death around him rattle,
Hath shed as sacred blood as e'er

Was pour'd upon a field of battle!

The mother who conceals her grief,

While to her breast her son she presses,
Then breathes a few brave words and brief,
Kissing the patriot brow she blesses,
With no one but her secret God

To know the pain that weighs upon her,
Sheds holy blood as e'er the sod

Received on Freedom's field of honor!

PARRIIASIUS AND THE CAPTIVE.—N. P. Wills,

THERE stood an unsold captive in the mart,
A gray-hair'd and majestical old man,
Chain'd to a pillar. It was almost night,
And the last seller from his place had gone,
And not a sound was heard but of a dog
Crunching beneath the stall a refuse bone,
Or the dull echo from the pavement rung,
As the faint captive changed his weary feet.

He had stood there since morning, and had borne
From every eye in Athens the cold gaze
Of curious scorn. The Jew had taunted him
For an Olynthian slave. The buyer came.
And roughly struck his palm upon his breast,

N

And touch'd his unheal'd wounds, and with a sneer
Pass'd on; and when, with weariness o'erspent,
He bow'd his head in a forgetful sleep,

The inhuman soldier smote him, and, with threats
Of torture to his children, summon'd back
The ebbing blood into his pallid face.

'Twas evening, and the half-descended sun
Tipp'd with a golden fire the many domes
Of Athens, and a yellow atmosphere
Lay rich and dusky in the shaded street

Through which the captive gazed. He had borne up
With a stout heart that long and weary day,

Haughtily patient of his many wrongs;
But now he was alone, and from his nerves
The needless strength departed, and he lean'd
Prone on his massy chain, and let his thoughts
Throng on him as they would.

Unmark'd of him,
Parrhasius at the nearest pillar stood,

Gazing upon his grief. The Athenian's check
Flush'd as he measured with a painter's eye
The moving picture. The abandon'd limbs,
Stain'd with the oozing blood, were laced with veins
Swollen to purple fullness; the gray hair,
Thin and disorder'd, hung about his eyes;
And as a thought of wilder bitterness
Rose in his memory, his lips grew white,
And the fast workings of his bloodless face
Told what a tooth of fire was at his heart.

The golden light into the painter's room
Stream'd richly, and the hidden colors stole
From the dark pictures radiantly forth,
And in the soft and dewy atmosphere
Like forms and landscapes magical they lay.
The walls were hung with armor, and about
In the dim corners stood the sculptured forms
Of Cytheris, and Dian, and stern Jove,
And from the casement soberly away
Fell the grotesque long shadows, full and true,
And, like a vail of filmy mellowness,
The lint-specks floated in the twilight air.

Parrhasius stood, gazing forgetfully
Upon his canvas. There Prometheus lay,
Chain'd to the cold rocks of Mount Caucasus-
The vulture at his vitals, and the links

Of the lame Lemnian festering in his flesh ;
And as the painter's mind felt through the dim,
Rapt mystery, and pluck'd the shadows forth
With its far-reaching fancy, and with form
And color clad them, his fine, earnest eye, -
Flash'd with a passionate fire, and the quick curl
Of his thin nostril, and his quivering lip,
Were like the wing'd god's, breathing from his flight.
"Bring me the captive now!

My hand feels skillful, and the shadows lift
From my waked spirit airily and swift,
And I could paint the bow

Upon the bended heavens-around me play
Colors of such divinity to-day.

"Ia! bind him on his back!
Look-as Prometheus in my picture here!
Quick or he faints!- stand with the cordial near!
Now-bend him to the rack!

Press down the poison'd links into his flesh!
And tear agape that healing wound afresh!

"So-let him writhe! How long
Will he live thus? Quick, my good pencil, now!
What a fine agony works upon his brow!
Ha! gray-hair'd, and so strong!
How fearfully he stifles that short moan!
Gods! if I could but paint a dying groan!

"Pity' thee! So I do!

I pity the dumb victim at the altar-
But does the robed priest for his pity falter?
I'd rack thee, though I knew

A thousand lives were perishing in thine-
What were ten thousand to a fame like mine?

"Hereafter!

Ay-hereafter!

A whip to keep a coward to his track!

What gave Death ever from his kingdom back
To check the skeptic's laughter?

Come from the grave to-morrow with that story
And I may take some softer path to glory.

"No, no, old man! we die

Even as the flowers, and we shall breathe away
Our life upon the chance wind, even as they!
Strain well thy fainting eye-.

For when that bloodshot quivering is o'er,
The light of heaven will never reach thee more.