pride!―They offer us their protection—yes, such protection as vultures give to lambs-covering and devouring them! They call on us to barter all of good we have inherited and proved, for the desperate chance of something better which they promise.-Be our plain answer this: The throne we honour, is the people's choice-the laws we reverence, are our brave fathers' legacy-the faith we follow, teaches us to live in the bonds of charity with all mankind, and die with the hope of bliss beyond the grave, -Tell your invaders this, and tell them, too, we seek no change; and least of all, such change as they would bring

us.

LESSON XCIV.

Cato's Soliloquy on the Immortality of the Soul.-ADDISON.
Ir must be so- -Plato, thou reason'st well !—
Else, whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?

Or, whence this secret dread, and inward horror,
Of falling into nought? Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself, and startles at destruction ?—
'Tis the Divinity that stirs within us;

'Tis Heaven itself that points out an Hereafter,
And intimates Eternity to man!

Eternity!-thou pleasing-dreadful thought!
Through what variety of untried being,

Through what new scenes and changes, must we pass !
The wide, the unbounded prospect, lies before me—
But shadows, clouds, and darkness, rest upon it.
Here will I hold. If there's a Power above us-

And that there is, all Nature cries aloud

Through all her works-He must delight in virtue;
And that which He delights in, must be happy.

But when? or where? This world was made for Cæsar.
I'm weary of conjectures-this must end them.

[Laying his hand on his sword. Thus am I doubly arm'd:-My death and life, My bane and antidote, are both before me. This—in a moment-brings me to an end; But this informs me I shall never die!

The soul, secure in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.-
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years;
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
Unhurt amid the war of elements,

The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds!

LESSON XCV.

The Coral Grove.-J. G. PERCIVAL.

DEEP in the wave is a coral grove,
Where the purple mullet and goldfish rove,
Where the sea-flower spreads its leaves of blue,
That never are wet with falling dew,

But in bright and changeful beauty shine,
Far down in the green and glassy brine;
The floor is of sand, like the mountain drift,
And the pearl shells spangle the flinty snow;
From coral rocks the sea-plants lift

Their boughs, where the tides and billows flow;
The water is calm and still below,

For the winds and waves are absent there,
And the sands are bright as the stars that glow
In the motionless fields of upper

air:

There with its waving blade of green,

The sea-flag streams through the silent water,
And the crimson leaf of the dulse is seen

To blush, like a banner bathed in slaughter:
There, with a light and easy motion,

The fan-coral sweeps throngh the clear deep sea·
And the yellow and scarlet tufts of ocean

Are bending like corn on the upland lea:
And life, in rare and beautiful forms,

Is sporting amid those bowers of stone,
And is safe, when the wrathful spirit of storms
Has made the top of the wave his own:
And when the ship from his fury flies,

Where the myriad voices of ocean roar,
When the wind-god frowns in the murky skies,
And demons are waiting the wreck on shore;

Then far below in the peaceful sea,

The purple mullet and goldfish rove,
Where the waters murmur tranquilly,
Through the bending twigs of the coral grove.

LESSON XCVI.

On the Bill to refund to Gen. Jackson the Fine imposed upon him at New Orleans, 1815.-W. C. PRESTON.

ESCAPING for an instant from our bitter party struggles, and going back to mingle our recollections and sympathies upon the battle-ground of New Orleans, I would not tarnish the moment of pure and generous feeling with any emotion or act inconsistent with them. For one, my memory and my heart revert to that scene and that time, with an entire oblivion of all the circumstances that have separated me from, and placed me in opposition to, General Jackson since. I will not detract from the glory, or diminish my admiration, of the illustrious chief, by the retro-active influence of subsequent events; but, forgetting and overlooking the intervening space, I place myself where I was twenty-five years ago, with the glow of patriotic gratitude and exulting admiration that then swelled my bosom, enhanced as it was by personal affection for its object.

I see him amidst his victorious fellow-soldiers, and in the presence of a city which his skill and courage had rescued from rapine and ruin, the theme of all praise, the object of all gratitude, the depository of all the tributes of the human heart. But by the transaction (now brought to mind by this bill,) he was placed, as it seems to me, in a still higher and nobler attitude. In the very flush of victory, with his soldiers around him, and in the city he had saved, he was summoned to a trial for an imputed misdemeanour; and I confess, Mr. President, that, more than the battle, it swells my bosom to see him bend that laurelled brow before the seat of justice-patiently taking its censure and submitting to its award.

Indeed, it was a very noble spectacle, and has embla

zoned the principle of our institutions, that the military is subordinate to the civil authority, and that all men are equal in the law. General Jackson, however, was not the only person in this grand spectacle. There was, too, the representative of that quiet authority, which rests upon an unseen moral power. There was the judge, who summoned the General, who pronounced judgment upon him, at such a moment, under such circumstances. An English monarch congratulated himself, and with good cause, that he had

"A man so bold

That dare do justice on my proper son;
And not less happy having such a son,
That would deliver up his greatness so
Into the hands of justice."

And our republic may with equal truth congratulate herself upon having such a judge and such a general.

While we propose to throw a bright and warm colouring upon one of the figures in this picture, it is equally the dictate of taste, of sentiment, and of justice, that we do not throw a shade upon the other; and this, I fear, will be or may be the case, if we pass the bill in its present shape, without guarding it against unjust implications, or accompanying it with a statement of the facts. To this end, I am inclined to move a recommitment of the bill, with instructions to report the facts connected with the levying of the fine. I should be very much ashamed of having so imperfect a recollection of the minute particulars of an affair so honourable to the country, did I not reflect, that in all striking events of this kind, details are forgotten in the general result; or rather that the impression made by the whole is so strong as to prevent any impression by the parts; and this accounts for the varying recollections of each of the gentlemen who have spoken.

The senator from Pennsylvania, whose speech purported to be the most circumstantial detail, I rather think has fallen into the greatest error of any one, who has spoken. He attributes the conduct of the judge, who imposed the fine on General Jackson, to some supposed personal offence; whereas, I take the fact to have been, that the process of contempt was issued against the general for disobeying the exigency of a writ of habeas corpus, directing him to produce a person held in confinement by his orders. The case

I take to be shortly this: The general had established martial law, and, by virtue of it, had arrested an individual. The prisoner sued out his writ of habeas corpus, returnable before Judge Hall. The general refused to produce him, and the judge fined the general a thousand dollars.

I cannot but believe the senator makes an unjust, as he certainly does an unnecessary imputation upon Judge Hall, when he attributes to him motives so paltry as personal pique and irritation. The relative conditions of the judge and general forbid such a conclusion. The judge could not have been prompted to or restrained in so high and bold a course, by motives so petty and unworthy. They could not have inspired him with the courage necessary for the performance of such an act. How he lacked the support of all sympathy-how utterly solitary he was in performing his duty, is proved by the fact, that when he pronounced judgment, the assembled multitude rushed forward to pay the fine the ladies begged the honour to be permitted to discharge it; and, doubtless, ten times the sum would have been advanced by the eager and grateful citizens, if General Jackson had not thought it a fit occasion to inculcate in his own person a lesson of submission to the laws. As it was, the ladies did subscribe a thousand dollars for this purpose, which, by the direction of the general, was appropriated to the widows and orphans of the late battle, and he paid the fine with his own money.

Amidst the state of feeling, evinced by such acts, the judge could have found no support, but rather cause for dismay and shrinking, from the influence of any unworthy impulses. The consciousness of malice would have made him a coward. Nothing but an ennobling sense of duty could have endowed him with a courage as heroical as that which he confronted, and which enabled him to withstand the ardour of the citizens and the brow of the conqueror.

The case, therefore, presents itself to us, as I trust it will to posterity-as one in which a commanding general, in the zealous and honest discharge of his duty, in time of war, did an act, which a judge, in the zealous and honest discharge of his duty, pronounced against. In this view of the matter, we may remit the fine without inflicting censure any where; and while we manifest our gratitude to