And O, 'twas an awful thing, to be
Alone in such fearful company!

On the rostrum now a shape arose,
Whose look my blood with horror froze;
To his brow he lifted his skinny hand,
And glower'd around on that grisly band,
I looked as pale, I ween, as he,

When he fixed that glassy eye on me.

He comes, he comes, that fearful one!
He has left his rostrum high-

He comes !-each head is slowly turned,
And on me is fixed each eye.

I strove to rush from that haunted place,
But my limbs were smote with fear;
I strove to shriek, but my voice was mute-
That dreadful shape was near.

He comes, he comes, that fearful one!
His breath, it fans my cheek-

'Tis chill as the breeze of the polar seas,
When it blows from the icy peak ;-

His shrunken face is close to mine,

His hand is on my arm,

And his lips, those skinny lips, they move-
O God! forfend the charm!

A voice came forth-it said to me,
"Will you join the Graham Society?"

275

HENRY CLAY IN THE SENATE.

BY THE HON. JOHN WHIPPLE.

MR. CLAY had listened, day after day, with the determination to say nothing upon the subject which had been so long under debate. At last his patience became exhausted. His feelings impelled him to take the floor, and though calm, collected and full of dignity, his whole port and bearing heralded the approach of the godlike eloquence which was about to burst upon the American Senate. He rose with

a sort of halo around him. Thoughts that breathe and words that burn, issued not from his lips alone, but from every attitude, every gesture, every look. It was not merely a resistless tide, a tide of power and giant strength, but a stream of glowing light, of sparkling beauty, of bewitching charms. You would have felt your hearts swelling within you, as he described the beauty and loveliness of your own, your native land. At one moment he was seen diving down to lowest depths of a clear and convincing logic; at another soaring aloft amidst the highest heaven of pure and patriotic feeling. At one moment piercing his antagonist with the sharp edge of the keenest irony. At another, overwhelming him with the bolt of thundering indignation. Patriotism filled his heart with the warmest emotions,

a clear and crystal head supplied him with the loftiest thoughts, and poetry yielded to his use her whole store of syren words, each one glittering with the rosy touch of her own heavenly pencil. On he moved in his own path of light, his country's welfare in his heart, and her standard in his hand, and he paused not, till the banner of freedom was seen floating aloft upon the ramparts of the constitution.

Let it not be supposed, that I have alluded to the brilliant effort of this distinguished man, for the mere purpose of personal eulogy. I have alluded to it as but one of the many similar efforts, some of them quite its equal, of lofty, commanding and energetic eloquence, which for the last ten years have characterized the friends of constitutional freedom in the American Senate. That little band have earned for themselves a durable and a lasting fame. For years they have stood upon the outward wall, and they have never for a moment, shrunk from the arduous duties of their dangerous position, but through good report and through evil report, they have delivered the whole word of the law, as received by them from the inspired framers of the constitution.

They have received, what to lofty and noble minds is above all rewards, the approbation of their

own consciences. Some of them have fallen by the wayside, worn out in the service of their country. But many of them now live to enjoy the high reward of having imparted their own patriotic spirit to the people whose cause they have so nobly defended. That spirit it is which is now abroad in the land. It is no selfish, office-seeking spirit. It is the spirit of Brutus, which laid the imperial tyrant of Rome low in the dust. It is the spirit of Hampden, which brought to the block the head of a perjured King. Nay, it is the still loftier spirit of Washington, which awakened the energies of a great and free people, led them through a long and painful struggle, and finally crowned them with an undying glory on the heights of Yorktown. That spirit will surely prevail, for it is abroad all over the land. From the mountain tops and from the valleys of the east, upon every peak of the extended Alleghany ridge-all over the ocean-like prairies of the west, and upon every mile of the great father of waters, from the Falls of St. Anthony down to the Gulf of Mexico, the banner of freedom proudly floats aloft in the breeze of heaven. Beneath that banner, the ocean roll of this grand and glorious sentiment, is heaving and swelling over a population of fifteen millions of freeborn men.

A SEPTEMBER EVENING ON THE BANKS OF THE

MOSHASSUCK.

BY SARAH H. WHITMAN.

"Now to the sessions of sweet, silent thought,
I summon up remembrance of things past.”

Shakspeare's Sonnets.

AGAIN September's golden day

Serenely still, intensely bright,
Fades on the umbered hills away
And melts into the coming night.
Again Moshassuck's silver tide

Reflects each green herb on its side,
Each tasselled wreath and tangling vine
Whose tendrils o'er its margin twine.

And standing on its velvet shore

Where yesternight with thee I stood,

I trace its devious course once more
Far winding on through vale and wood.
Now glimmering through yon golden mist,
By the last glinting sunbeams kissed,
Now lost where lengthening shadows fall
From hazel-copse and moss-fringed wall.

Near where yon rocks the stream inurn
The lonely gentian blossoms still,
Still wave the star-flower and the fern

O'er the soft outline of the hill;

While far aloft where pine-trees throw