This duty was so discharged as to extort the admiration of the President and his cabinet, without offending or disaffecting any portion of the Whigs.

The very able Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Spencer, remarked to the writer that the country and the government were alike indebted to Mr. Evans,-that the government could not have gone on without the assistance of his ability and liberality during the whole ses

sion.

A new Congress assembled in December, 1843. The disagreement between the Whigs and Mr. Tyler had necessarily resulted in giving to the Democrats a large majority in the House of Representatives. The Whigs retained the preponderance in the Senate; but their numbers were considerably diminished. A concerted and determined attack was early projected in both Houses upon the system of imposts perfected in 1812, and which had been in operation but little more than a year. In the Senate the assault was led by Mr. McDuffie, one of the most zealous, able, and adroit opponents of the protective system in the country. The discussion lasted many days, involving the question of Free Trade versus Protection, in all its relations; and enlisted the powers of the principal orators on both sides in the Senate. It was the great debate of the session, and never has the subject been more thoroughly and ably illustrated. The chief burden of the debate on the Whig side was borne by Mr. Evans. He delivered two set speeches; the first was pronounced by Hunt's Magazine to be "one of the best digested and ablest arguments in favor of Protection delivered in Congress since the revival of the tariff policy."

To this speech Mr. McDuffie replied, and Mr. Evans rejoined in a masterly ef. fort. For statistical research, elaboration of argument, variety and felicity of illustration, and true eloquence, this speech has been rarely excelled. It is a triumphant vindication of the wisdom of the protective policy. Though chiefly devoted to the dry details of figures and calculations, he was listened to with profound attention; and he imparted to every sentence an interest which is rarely produced except upon exciting or popular subjects.

We are strongly tempted to extract several portions of this speech, but admonished by our circumscribed limits, we

must content ourselves with a few sentences at the close.

"Mr. President, the honorable Senator, in his estimate of the advantages to be gained by the South from a separate confederacy, makes no account whatever of national strength and national renown. He forgets that ordeal of fire through which we passed in the establishment of our independence, and through which we could never have gone if we had not been united. The glorious past he leaves out of view altogether, while his ardent imagination revels in the brighter visions of the future. Let the separation of which he speaks take place, and that day, on whose annual re

turn ten thousand times ten thousand
American hearts beat higher and quicker-
that day which first beheld us an indepen-
dent nation-is to be blotted from the cal-
endar. For the South, at least, it can
bring no joyous recollections, no patriotic,
heart-stirring emotions. The achievements
of our ancestors are to be all forgotten.
Camden and King's Mountain may indeed
remain within the limits of the new con-
federacy-but none of the renown and the
glory which attach to them will belong to
it. All of gallantry, and prowess, and no-
ble bearing which were then displayed,
all of high renown, ever-during fame,
honor, glory, there acquired, belonged,and
ever will belong, in all history, to United,
United, United America, It can never be
divided-God grant it may never be oblite-
rated and forgotten. No account is to be
taken of the glorious spectacle which we
have presented to the world, in the solu-
tion of the great problem of the capacity of
mankind for self-government-no account
of the great advance which has taken place
in government, and the progress of free in-
stitutions. all over the world, from our ex-
ample. The various events of our unpar
alleled revolution, the renown achieved in
that momentous struggle-the veneration
for the GREAT and GOOD, the patriots whose
fame is our country's inheritance, the sacred
bequest of liberty, unity, strength, pur-
chased with so much blood and so much
treasure, are all, all to be abandoned, all
sacrificed, if, in the providence of God, so
deplorable an event should occur, as that
which the Senator, for the purposes of illus-
tration, has supposed. But no, sir; none of
these things will happen. I have no belief
that the honorable Senator himself contem-
plates or desires such a calamity-I have no
belief that his honored State entertains the
slightest wish, the faintest hope, for a sepa-
him, and it, great injustice, to attribute
such a purpose to either. No man is reck-
less enough to covet the fame, the eternity
of infamy, which must await him who shall
bring upon this happy land the desolation

ration of our union. I am sure I should do

A GRACEFUL young elm, with a maidenly form,
That swings in the sunlight and bends in the storm,
Has shaded my window for many long years;

And year after year its pavilion it rears

Still grows with my growth and endures with my strength,
Till it folds me in shade as I lie at my length.

It whispers me dreams in the faint summer days,

And sprinkles my table with gold-dropping rays;

It sings me bland music through all the hush'd night,
And shows a sweet glimpse of the stars' stealthy light;
It curtains the glare of the impudent dawn,
And woos back the dusk like a shivering fawn.
Oh, long have I loved thee, my Elm-gentle Elm !
Thou standest as proud as the queen of a realm,
And winningly wavest thy soft leafy arms,
Like a beautiful maid who is conscious of charms.
Oh, oft have I leaned on thy rough-rinded breast,
And thought of it oft as an iron-like vest-
No breastplate of steel, but a corslet of bark
That hid the white limbs of my Joan of Arc!
Shout-shout to thy brothers, the forests, I said,
And lead out the trees with a soldierly tread;

Thou art armed to the teeth, and hast many a plume--
Then marshal the trees, and avenge their sad doom;
Enroll all their squadrons and lead out the van,
And turn the swift axe on your murderer-man!
But ah, thus I said evermore,-the tall trees,

Though they shriek in the tempest and sing in the breeze,
Have never a soul and are rooted in earth!

They live and they die where they spring into birth;

The stories of Dryads are only a dream,

And trees are no more than they outwardly seem.

One night the wind blew with a murmuring plaint,

Like the wandering ghost of a heaven-banished saint;
It restlessly swayed by my window the tree
That told all its griefs and its joyings to me.

The moon, overspread with a white misty veil,
Seemed quitting its grave, like a spectre face pale;
I looked at the elm, and I gazed at the moon-
How long I know not--but I started, as soon
A smooth little hand, with a velvet embrace,
Took mine in its clasp-but I saw not a face;
I saw but a hand stealing out from a branch,
Whose leaves 'gan to wither, the rough rind to blanch,
And soon all the trunk and the off-shoots to strain-
To writhe and to swell like a serpent in pain-
Or like the nymph, Daphne, when she was pursued,
And, changed to a laurel tree, pantingly stood.
An arm-lily arm!--and a neck-snowy neck!-
And, lo, all the elm tree is falling a wreck;
Like a butterfly's chrysalis, bursts all the bark,
And forth as a sylph springs my Joan of Arc!

Ye Gods! how she struggled and swayed, when the wind
Blew hither and thither, and shrieked like a fiend :

With the strong wind she wrestled, then flew to my side—
Said silverly, "Haste with me!-now for a ride!
O'er the breadth of a world, in a martial array,
The forests are moving-so up and away !"

Away and away through the billowy air—
One arm clasped around me, her long wavy hair
Streamed back like a pennon of silk to the wind,
As we left the still town and its glimmer behind.
Away and away o'er the mountains and meads,
I darted, upborne by no magical steeds,

But buoyed by the hand of my glorying Elm,

Whose wishes were wings that no storm could o'erwhelm. We paused in mid air, and “ Look downward!" she cried, "O'er a battle-ground, now, like the eagles, we ride."

I gazed and I quailed at the dizzying height,
Made giddier still by the vagueness of night-
But, gathering heart, the horizon I scanned,
As it swept all about, like a maelstrom of land;
Wide-wide as eternity, towered its bound,
And, deeper than hell, all the world spun around!
Then nearer and slower it wheeled to my sight,
As we sank gently down from the wildering height.
It ceased, and, ye Gods !-what a vision I saw,
As I looked down intently with shuddering awe-
The forests were marching with far-shaking tread,
As if ages of men had been raised from the dead
Interminable armies-a dark moving throng-
Were crossing and wheeling and pressing along,
And ranks upon ranks they were stretching afar,
Till they shone by the face of a just setting star.
Down, down we alighted, the Elm-sylph and 1,
On a mountain that lifted its bare summit high.
And why are yon trees on these thunder-scarr'd rocks?
And why does the giant one shake his green locks?
"Tis the Emperor Elm!" said the sylph as she kneeled,
"And he marshals the trees to a stern battle-field!"

I gazed at the Shape, and it seemed both to be
A warrior king and a towering tree,
That strode like a god, looking loftily down,
And royally nodding his broad leafy crown.

:

I saw all his gestures, but heard not his words,
As he gathered around him his counselling lords :-
A willow that bowed with its courtliest grace;
A birch with its ruffles and silvery lace;

A veteran oak and a tall gallant pine,

Who spoke of the Danube, the Elbe, and the Rhine;
A rough, stalwart hemlock; a cedar bedight
With helmet and lance, like a chivalrous knight;
A chestnut and maple and sycamore old,

In red autumn dresses, emblazoned with gold.
I heard their low murmur and little beside,
Till the Emperor Elm, with a hurrying stride,
Advanced to the brink of the rock's giddy brow,
And waved his broad hand to the forests below.
"Halt!-halt, and attend you!" he shouted aloud,
And a hush smote along the tumultuous crowd,
Like a surge circling out where a Titan had hurled
An Alp into seas that engirdle a world.
"Halt!-halt, and attend ye, my gallant array,
And list to the words that I hasten to say.
No longer to stand like insensible mutes,
It is given us to-night to unloosen our roots-
To wield our lithe arms, to step forth at our will,
By valley and mountain, by river and rill.
The term of our bondage and groaning is o'er;
We start from our sleep with tempestuous roar,
And while the pale nations lie closer and cower,
And mutter of storms, 'tis the Trees' waking hour.
We fight not each other, with man's demon lust,
But one common foe let us trample to dust.
For men, with the axe and the furious fires,
Have slain us and lighted our funeral pyres;
They have sawn us asunder, they pile up our bones,
And call them their cities, their temples, their thrones:
They drink from our skulls, or, invoking the breeze,
They ride in our skeletons over the seas;
They pierce us with shot, and they make of us wheels
To drag the hot cannon where red Battle reels.
Oh, curs'd be the traffics we help them to wage,
And curs'd be the ages of man's bloody rage!
Battalions, stand firm !-for the dawn breaks afar
That will startle the world with the earthquake of war.
Await ye the watchword-then pass it around,
Till the rim of the heavens bend aside at the sound;
Keep close in your ranks, troop, squadron and square,
Then rush like the whirlwinds ingulfing the air,

On cities and palaces fearlessly fall,

Crush the homesteads of mortals by hearthstone and hall! Oh, rich is the blood that shall deluge the earth,

And sweeten the soil that has nursed us to birth!"

He ceased. Like the roar of the triumphing sea,
When it surges aloud on a far distant lee,
Re-echoed applauses ran rattling away
Wherever the listening wilderness lay.
The Elm-spirit rocked on the shuddering air,
That loosened and lifted her beautiful hair,

As she clung to my arm, and extended her hand
Where circled the billowy ocean of land.

I looked, and the daylight was brightening the scene,
And changing the landscape from duskness to green;
The forests seemed watching with myriad eyes,
Awaiting the war-cry to shout and to rise ;-