PRIDE OF ANCESTRY.

And as ladies and nobles the bold deed saw,
Their breath they held through fear and awe.
The glove he brings back, composed and light.
His praise was announced by voice and look,
And Kunigund rose to receive the knight
With a smile that promised the deed to requite;
But straight in her face he flung the glove,-
"I neither desire your thanks nor love;"
And from that same hour the lady forsook.

PRIDE OF ANCESTRY.-GEORGE CROly.
Then that's the bar

Y lack of noble blood!

Disqualifies my suit!—makes perjury
Of slight account against me! I'm untitled!
Parchments and money-bags have precedence
In Cupid's Court, as elsewhere! Sir, your daughter-
But I'll not stoop my free, recovered heart,

To play the mendicant! Farewell to love:
Henceforth, let venerable oaths of men,
And women's vows, though all the stars of Heaven
Were listening, be forgotten,-light as dust!

MY

True, true,—I should have learnt humility!
True, I am nothing: nothing have—but hope!
I have no ancient birth,--no heraldry ;-
No motley coat is daubed upon my shield;
I cheat no rabble, like your charlatans,

By flinging dead men's dust in idiots' eyes;
I work no miracles with buried bones;

I belt no broken and distempered shape

With shrivelled parchments plucked from mouldy shelves;

Yet, if I stooped to talk of ancestry,

I had an ancestor, as old and noble

As all their quarterings reckon,-mine was Adam.

The man who gave me being, though no Lord,
Was nature's nobleman,-an honest man!

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22

OUR DUTIES TO THE REPUBLIC.

And prouder am I, at this hour, to stand,
Unpedestalled, but on his lowly grave,
Than if I towered upon a monument
High as the clouds with rotten infamy!

OUR DUTIES TO THE REPUBLIC.-JUDGE STORY.

THE

HE Old World has already revealed to us, in its unsealed books, the beginning and end of all its own marvellous struggles in the cause of liberty. Greece, lovely Greece,

"The land of scholars and the nurse of arms,"

where Sister Republics, in fair procession,, chanted the praises of liberty and the Gods,-where and what is she? For two thousand years the oppressor has ground her to the earth. Her arts are no more. The last sad relics of her temples are but the barracks of a ruthless soldiery. The fragments of her columns and her palaces are in. the dust, yet beautiful in ruins. She fell not when the mighty were upon her. Her sons were united at Thermopyla and Marathon, and the tide of her triumph rolled back upon the Hellespont. She was conquered by her own factions. She fell by the hands of her own People. The man of Macedonia did not the work of destruction. It was already done, by her own corruptions, banishments, and dissensions. Rome, republican Rome, whose eagles glanced in the rising and setting sun,—where and what is she? The eternal city yet remains, proud even in her desolation, noble in her decline, venerable in the majesty of religion, and calm as in the composure of death. The malaria has but travelled in the paths worn by her destroyers. More than eighteen centuries have mourned over the loss of her empire. A mortal disease was upon her vitals before Cæsar had crossed the Rubicon; and Brutus did not restore her health by the deep probings of the Senate-chamber. The Goths, and Vandals, and Huns, the swarms of the North, completed only what was already begun at home. Romans betrayed Rome. The Legions were bought and sold; but the People offered the tribute-money.

We stand, the latest, and, if we fail, probably the last, experiment of self-government by the People. We have begun it under

1

THE SPARTANS' MARCH.

RTAN

333

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circumstances of the most auspicious nature. We are in the vigor of youth. Our growth has never been checked by the oppressions of tyranny. Our constitutions have never been enfeebled by the vices or luxuries of the Old World. Such as we are, we have been from the beginning,-simple, hardy, intelligent, accustomed to self-government and to self-respect. The Atlantic rolls between us and any formidable foe. Within our own territory, stretching through many degrees of latitude and longitude, we have the choice of many products, and many means of independence. The Government is mild. The Press is free. Religion is free. Knowledge reaches, or may reach, every home. What fairer prospect of success could be presented? What means more adequate to accomplish the sublime end? What more is necessary than for the People to preserve what they have themselves created? Already has the age caught the spirit of our institutions. It has already ascended the Andes, and snuffed the breezes of both oceans. It has infused itself into the life-blood of Europe, and warmed the sunny plains of France and the low lands of Holland. It has touched the philosophy of Germany and the North; and, moving onward to the South, has opened to Greece the lessons of her better days. Can it be that America, • under such circumstances, can betray herself? Can it be that she is to be added to the catalogue of Republics, the inscription upon whose ruins is: THEY WERE, BUT THEY ARE NOT? Forbid it, my countrymen! Forbid it, Heaven!

THE SPARTANS' MARCH.-FELICIA HEMANS.

"TWAS morn upon the Grecian hills, where peasants dressed

the vines;

Sunlight was on Citharon's rills, Arcadia's rocks and pines.
And brightly, through his reeds and flowers, Eurotas wandered by,
When a sound arose from Sparta's towers of solemn harmony.
Was it the hunter's choral strain, to the woodland goddess poured?
Did virgin hands, in Pallas' fane, strike the full-sounding chord?

But helms were glancing on the stream, spears ranged in close array,

And shields flung back a glorious beam to the morn of a fearful

day!

JAFFAR.

And the mountain echoes of the land swelled through the deepblue sky,

While to soft strains moved forth a band of men that moved to die.

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They marched not with the trumpet's blast, nor bade the horn peal out,

And the laurel-groves, as on they passed, rung with no battle

shout!

They asked no clarion's voice to fire their souls with an impulse high,

But the Dorian reed, and the Spartan lyre, for the sons of liberty!
And still sweet flutes, their path around, sent forth Æolian breath:
They needed not a sterner sound to marshal them for death!
So moved they calmly to their field, thence never to return,
Save bringing back the Spartan shield, or on it proudly borne !

JAFFAR.-LEIGH HUNT.

AFFAR', the Barmekide, the good vizier,

The poor man's hope, the friend without a peer,—
Jaffar' was dead, slain by a doom unjust!
And guilty Ha'roun, sullen with mistrust

Of what the good and e'en the bad might say,
Ordained that no man living, from that day,
Should dare to speak his name, on pain of death :-
All Araby and Persia held their breath,

All but the brave Mondeer. He, proud to show
How far for love a grateful soul could go,
And facing death for very scorn and grief
(For his great heart wanted a great relief),
Stood forth in Bagdad daily in the square,
Where once had stood a happy house; and there
Harangued the tremblers at the scimitar
On all they owed to the divine Jaffar'.

Bring me the man!" the calif cried. The man Was brought, was gazed upon. The mutes began

OSSIAN'S ADDRESS TO THE SUN.

To bind his arms. "Welcome, brave cords!" cried he;
"From bonds far worse Jaffar' delivered me;
From wants, from shames, from loveless household fears;
Made a man's eyes friends with delicious tears;
Restored me, loved me, put me on a par
With his great self.--How can I pay Jaffar'?"

Haroun, who felt that on a soul like this
The mightiest vengeance could but fall amiss,
Now deigned to smile, as one great lord of fate
Might smile upon another half as great,

And said: "Let worth grow frenzied, if it will;
The calif's judgment shall be master still.
Go; and, since gifts thus move thee, take this gem,
The richest in the Tartar's diadem,

And hold the giver as thou deemest fit."

"Gifts!" cried the friend. He took; and, holding it High toward heaven, as though to meet his star, Exclaimed, "This, too, I.owe to thee, Jaffar'!"

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OSSIAN'S ADDRESS TO THE SUN.

O

THOU that rollest above, round as the shield of m fathers! Whence are thy beams, O sun, thy everlasting light? Thou comest forth in thy awful beauty; the stars hide themselves in the sky; the moon, cold and pale, sinks in the western wave. But thou thyself movest alone: who can be a companion of thy course?

The oaks of the mountains fall; the mountains themselves decay with years; the ocean shrinks, and grows again; the moon herself is lost in heaven; but thou art forever the same, rejoicing in the brightness of thy course.

When the world is dark with tempests, when thunder rolls, and lightning flies, thou lookest in thy beauty from the clouds, and laughest at the storm. But, to Ossian, thou lookest in vain; for he beholds thy beams no more, whether thy yellow hairs flow on the eastern clouds, or thou tremblest at the gates of the west.