inhabit, and the whole circle of the sun, for all the unborn races of mankind, we seem to hold in our hands, for their weal or woe, the fate of this experiment.

If we fail, who shall venture the repetition? If our example shall prove to be one, not of encouragement but of terror, not to be imitated but fit only to be shunned, where else shall the world look for free models? If this great "Western Sun" be struck out of the firmament, at what other fountain shall the lamp of liberty hereafter be lighted? What other orb shall emit a ray to glimmer, even, on the darkness of the world?

Sir, there is no danger of our overrating or overstating the important part which we are now acting in human affairs. It should not flatter our personal self-respect, but it should reanimate our patriotic virtues, and inspire us with a deeper and more solemn sense both of our privileges and of our duties. We cannot wish better for our country, nor for the world, than that the same spirit which influenced Washington may influence all who succeed him; and that that same blessing from above which attended his efforts may also attend theirs.

A Warning to Young Men.

GEORGE W. CURTIS.

Show me a land in which the young men are cold and skeptical and prematurely wise; in which polite indifference is called political wisdom, contempt for ideas common sense, and honesty in politics Sunday-school statesmanship-show me a land in which the young men are more anxious about doing well than about doing right—and I will show you a country in which public corruption and ruin overtakes private infidelity and cowardice, and in which, if there were originally a hope for mankind, a faith in principle, and a conquering enthusiasm, that faith, hope, and enthusiasm are

expiring like the deserted camp-fires of a retiring army. Woe to a man when his heart grows old! Woe to a nation when its young men shuffle in the gouty shoes and limp on the untimely crutches of age, instead of leaping along the course of life with the jubilant spring of their years and the sturdy play of their own muscles!

Henry V to Citizens of Harfleur.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

How yet resolves the governor of the town?
This is the latest parle we will admit:
Therefore, to our best mercy give yourselves,
Or, like the men proud of destruction,
Defy us to our worst; for, as I am a soldier,
A name that in my thoughts becomes me best,
If I begin the battery once again,

I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur,

Till in her ashes she lie buried.

The gates of mercy shall be all shut up;

And the flesh'd soldier, rough and hard of heart,
In liberty of bloody hand shall range

With conscience wide as hell.

Therefore, you men of Harfleur

Take pity of your town, and of your people,
Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command;
Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace
O'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds

Of heady murder, spoil, and villainy.

If not, why, in a moment look to see

Your fathers taken by the silver beards,

And their most reverend heads dash'd to the walls;
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,

Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confus'd
Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry
At Herod's bloody-hunting slaughtermen.
What say you? will you yield, and this avoid,
Or, guilty, in defence, be thus destroyed?

-Henry V, iii., 3.

TONE OF SUBLIMITY.

(See Tone Drill No. 194.)

[The tone of Sublimity manifests an extreme admiration which almost overwhelms. The speaker seems uplifted by the majesty and the grandeur. While akin to Awe, Sublimity has in it less of Fear and more of Joy.]

The Avalanches of the Jungfrau.

G. B. CHEEVER.

Figure to yourself a cataract like that of Niagara, poured in foaming grandeur, not merely over one great precipice of two hundred feet, but over the successive ridgy precipices of two or three thousand, in the face of a mountain eleven thousand feet high, and tumbling, crashing, thundering down with a continuous din of far greater sublimity than the sound of the grandest cataract. The roar of the falling mass begins to be heard the moment it is loosened from the mountain; it pours on with the sound of a vast body of rushing water; then comes the first great concussion, a booming crash of thunders, breaking on the still air in mid-heaven; your breath is suspended, and you listen and look; the mighty glittering mass shoots headlong over the main precipice, and the fall is so great that it produces to the eye that impression of dread majestic slowness of which I have spoken, though it is doubtless more rapid than Niagara.

But if you should see the cataract of Niagara itself coming down five thousand feet above you in the air, there would be the same impression. The image remains in the

mind, and can never fade from it; it is as if you had seen an alabaster cataract from heaven. The sound is far more sublime than that of Niagara, because of the preceding stillness in those Alpine solitudes. In the midst of such silence and solemnity, from out the bosom of those glorious, glittering forms of nature, comes that rushing, crashing thunderburst of sound! If it were not that your soul, through the eye, is as filled and fixed with the sublimity of the vision as, through the sense of hearing, with that of the audible report, methinks you would wish to bury your face in your hands, and fall prostrate, as at the voice of the Eternal.

TONE OF BITTERNESS.

(See Tone Drill No. 31.)

[The tone of Bitterness has in it the note of grievance, but manifests a deeper resentment.]

The American War.

CHARLES JAMES FOX.

Who is he who arraigns gentlemen on this side of the House with causing, by their inflammatory speeches, the misfortunes of their country? The accusation comes from one whose inflammatory harangues have led the Nation, step by step, from violence to violence, in that inhuman, unfeeling system of blood and massacre, which every honest man must detest, which every good man must abhor, and every wise man condemn! And this man imputes the guilt of such measures to those who had all along foretold the consequences; who had prayed, entreated and supplicated, not only for America, but for the credit of the Nation and its eventual welfare, to arrest the hand of Power, meditating slaughter, and directed by injustice!

What was the consequence of the sanguinary measures recommended in those bloody, inflammatory speeches? Though

Boston was to be starved, though Hancock and Adams were proscribed, yet at the feet of these very men the Parliament of Great Britain was obliged to kneel, flatter, and cringe; and, as it had the cruelty at one time to denounce vengeance against these men, so it had the meanness afterwards to implore their forgiveness. Shall he who called the American "Hancock and his crew,"-shall he presume to reprehend any set of men for inflammatory speeches?

It is this accursed American war that has led us, step by step, into all our present misfortunes and national disgraces. What was the cause of our wasting forty millions of money, and sixty thousand lives? The American war! What was it that produced the French rescript and a French war? The American war! What was it that produced the Spanish manifesto and Spanish war? The American war! What was it that armed forty-two thousand men in Ireland with the arguments carried on the points of forty thousand bayonets? The American war! For what are we about to incur an additional debt of twelve or fourteen millions? accursed, cruel, diabolical American war!

The Patriot.

ROBERT BROWNING.

It was roses, roses, all the way,

With myrtle mixed in my path like mad:
The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway,
The church-spires flamed, such flags they had,
A year ago on this very day.

The air broke into a mist with bells,

The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries.
Had I said, "Good folk, mere noise repels-
But give me your sun from yonder skies!"
They had answered "And afterward, what else?"

This