Oh! rouse ye, ere the storm comes forthThe gather'd wrath of God and manLike that which wasted Egypt's earth, When hail and fire above it ran. Hear ye no warnings in the air? Feel ye no earthquake underneath? Up-up-why will ye slumber where The sleeper only wakes in death? Up now for Freedom!-not in strife The glory and the guilt of war: Down let the shrine of Moloch sink, Nor longer let its idol drink His daily cup of human blood: But rear another altar there, To Truth and Love and Mercy given, And Freedom's gift, and Freedom's prayer, Shall call an answer down from Heaven! THE CONTRAST. BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. Thy love thou sentest oft to me, In those who every thing did lack, Pride held his hand before mine eyes, The world with flattery stuffed mine ears; I looked to see a monarch's guise, Nor dreamed thy love would knock for years, Poor, naked, fettered, full of tears. Yet, when I sent my love to thee, Thou with a smile didst take it in, And entertained it royally Though grimed with earth, with hunger thin, And leprous with the taint of sin. Now, every day thy love I meet With weary step and bleeding feet, Still knocking at the heart of pride, THE ARSENAL AT SPRINGFIELD. BY HENRY W. LONG FELLOW. This is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling, Ah! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary, Will mingle with their awful symphonies! I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus, On helm and harness rings the Saxon hammer, O'er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong. I hear the Florentine, who from his palace Beat the wild war-drums made of serpent's skin; The bursting shell, the gateway wrenched asunder, Is it, O man, with such discordant noises, Were half the power, that fills the world with terror, courts, Given to redeem the human mind from error, The warrior's name would be a name abhorred ! I hear once more the voice of Christ say, "Peace!" Peace and no longer from its brazen portals THE ECONOMY OF SLAVERY. BY LYDIA MARIA CHILD. pected soon to see the slaves of Virginia advertising for runaway masters." Washington, in a letter to Sir John Sinclair, describes the land in the neigh On the Battery, the other day, I met an acquaint-bourhood of Mount Vernon as exhausted and miseraance from New England. He was on his way from Virginia, where he had been making contracts for wood at a dollar an acre. In the true spirit of Yankee enterprise, he buys up the produce of waste lands, fells the trees, ships them to New York and Boston, and finds the trade profitable. ble. He alludes to the fact, that the price of land in Pennsylvania and the free States, then averaged more than twice as much as land in Virginia: «because," says he, "there are in Pennsylvania laws for the gradual abolition of slavery and because foreign emigrants are more inclined to settle in free States." Mr. Custis says, "Of the multitude of foreigners who daily seek an asylum and home in the empire of liberty, how many turn their steps to the region of the slave? None. There is a malaria in the atmosphere of those regions, which the new comer shuns, as being deleterious to his views and habits. See the wide-spreading ruin, which the avarice of our ancestral government has produced in A large emigration of substantial farmers from Orange, Duchess, and Columbia counties, in this State, have, within a few years, emigrated to the counties of Loudon, Culpepper and Fairfax, in Virginia. They bought up the worn-out plantations for a mere song, and, by judicious application of free labour, they are "redeeming the waste places, and making the wilderness blossom as the rose." A traveller recently told me that the farms culti-the South, as witnessed in a sparse population of vated by Quakers, who employ no slaves, formed freemen, deserted habitations and fields without such a striking contrast to other portions of VirStrange to tell, even the wolf, driven ginia, that they seemed almost like oases in the back long since by the approach of man, now returns, after the lapse of a hundred years, to howl over the desolations of slavery." desert. What a lesson this teaches concerning the compa. rative effect of slave labour and free labour, on the prosperity of a State! It seems strange, indeed, that enlightened self-interest does not banish the accursed system from the world; for political economists ought to see that "it is worse than a crime, it is a blunder," as Napoleon once said of some error in state policy. But the fact is, self-interest never can be very much enlightened. All true vision derives its clearness from the heart. If ever this truth were legibly written on the face of the earth, it is inscribed on Virginia. No State in the Union has superior natural advantages. Look at its spacious bays, its broad and beautiful rivers, traversing the country in every direction; its majestic forests, its grand and picturesque mountains, its lovely and fertile valleys, and the abundance of its mineral wealth. Words could hardly be found enthusiastic enough to express the admiration of Europeans, who first visited this magnificent region. Some say her name was given. «because the country seemed to retain the virgin plenty and purity of the first creation, and the people their primitive innocency of life and manners." Waller describes it thus: "So sweet the air, so moderate the clime, culture. The allusion to the wolf, is no figure of speech. Wild beasts have returned to extensive districts of Virginia, once inhabited and cultivated. Some eighteen years ago, when I lived in the dream-land of romantic youth, and thought nothing of slavery, or any other evils that infest the social system, an intelligent young lady from the South told me an adventure, which made a strong impres sion on my imagination. She was travelling with her brother in the interior of eastern Virginia. Marks of diminishing prosperity everywhere met their view. One day, they entered upon a region which seemed entirely deserted. Here and there some elegant villa indicated the former presence of wealth; but piazzas had fallen, and front doors had either dropped, or hung suspended upon one hinge. Here and there a stray garden-flower peeped forth, amid the choking wilderness of weeds; and vines once carefully trained on lattices, spread over the silence, save the twittering of some startled bird, or ground in tangled confusion. Nothing disturbed the the hoot and scream of gloomy wood creatures. scared by the unusual noise of travellers. At last, they came to a church, through the roof of which a tree, rooted in the central aisle beneath, sent up its verdant branches into the sunlight above. Leaving their horse to browse on the grass-grown road, they passed into the building, to examine the interior. Their entrance startled innumerable birds Alas, that the shores of that beautiful State should and bats which flew circling round their heads, and become the Guinea coast of the New World!-our through the broken windows. The pews had coatscentral station of slavery and the slave trade! Of of-arms blazoned on the door-pannels, but birds had the effects produced, we need not question abolition- built their nests in the corners, and grass had grown ists, for we learn them from the lips of her own up through the chinks of the floor. The handsome sons. John Randolph said, years ago, that he "ex-trimmings of the pulpit were so covered with dust, as to leave the original colour extremely doubtful. I tradition, like most others, is born of truth. It is On the cushion lay a gilt-edged Bible, still open not, as some suppose, a special vengeance on the probably at the place where religious lessons had wicked system; it is a simple result of the universal last been read. and intimate relation between spirit and matter. Freedom writes itself on the earth in growth and beauty; oppression, in dreariness and decay. If we attempt to trace this effect analytically, we shall find that it originates in landholders too proud to work, I have before my mind's eye a vivid picture of that lonely church, standing in the silence of the forest. In some moods of mind, how pleasant it would be to spend the Sabbath there alone, listening to the insects singing their prayers, or to the plain-in labourers deprived of healthful motive, in the intive voice of the ring-dove, coming up from the in most heart of the shaded forest, "Whose deep, low note, is like a gentle wife, While her tired husband and her children sleep." "Neath cloistered boughs, each floral bell that swingeth, A call to prayer." I can never forget that adventure in the wilderness. There is something sadly impressive in such complete desolation, where life has once been busy and gay-and where human pride has inscribed its transient history with the mouldering insignia of rank and wealth. evitable intermediate class of overseers, who have no interest in the soil or the labourers; but whose pay depends on the forced product they can extort from both. Mr. Faulkner, of Virginia, has stated the case impressively: "Compare the condition of the slaveholding portion of this commonwealth, barren, desolate, and seared as it were by the avenging hand of Heaven, with the description which we have of this same country from those who first broke its soil. To what is this change ascribable? Alone to the blasting and withering effects of slavery. To that vice in the organization of society, by which one-half its inhabitants are arrayed in interest and feeling against the other half; to that condition of things, in which half a million of your population can feel no sympathy with society, in the prosperity of which they are forbidden to participate, and no attachment to a government at whose hands they receive nothing but injustice." Dr. Meade, of Virginia, in the records of an official tour through the State, speaks of great numbers of churches fallen absolutely into ruin, from the gradual impoverishment of surrounding estates, and the consequent dispersion of the population. Pope's Creek Church, where General Washington was baptized, fell into such complete decay, that it was a resort for beasts and birds. It was set on fire a few years ago, lest the falling in of the roof should kill the cattle, accustomed to seek shade and shelter there. The rapid ruin and the unbroken stillness seemed so much like a work of enchantment, that the travellers named the place The Hamlet of the Seven Sleepers. At the next inhabited village, they obtained a brief outline of its history. It had been originally settled by wealthy families, with large plantations and numerous slaves. They were VirYet in view of these facts, statesmen, for tempoginian gentlemen of the olden school, and would have felt themselves disgraced by the modern busi-rary purposes, are willing to spread over the rich ness of breeding slaves for market. In fact, strong prairies of Texas this devastating system, to devour, family pride made them extremely averse to sell like the locusts of Egypt, every green thing in its any slave that had belonged to their ancestors. So path. the slaves multiplied on their hands, and it soon And while we are thus wilfully perpetuating and took all their corn to feed their hogs, and all their extending this terrible evil, priests and politicians hogs to feed their negroes." Matters grew worse are not ashamed to say that it must be so, because and worse with these old families. The strong soil the system was entailed upon us by the avarice of was at last exhausted by the miserable system of our ancestral government." Would any other evil, slavery, and would no longer yield its increase. any evil which we ourselves did not choose, be toWhat could these aristocratic gentlemen do for their lerated among us, because it was a legacy from sons, under such circumstances? Plantations must | Great Britain, I never hear this weak apology be bought for them in the far Southwest, and they offered, without thinking of the answer made to must disperse, with their trains of human cattle, to it by the eloquent George Thompson: "Yes, blight other new and fertile regions. There is an charge the guilt upon England; but, as you have old superstition, that no grass grows where the devil copied England in her sin, copy her in her repenthas danced; and the effects of slavery show that this | ance." Heart-Leap Well is a small spring of water, about five miles, from Richmond in Yorkshire, and near the side of the road that leads from Richmond to Askrigg. Its name is derived from a remarkable Chase, the memory of which is preserved by the monuments spoken of in the second Part of the follow. ing Poem, which monuments do now exist as I have there described them. The Knight had ridden down from Wensley Moor And now as he approached a vassal's door, Bring forth another horse!" he cried aloud. "Another horse!"-That shout the vassal heard, Joy sparkled in the prancing courser's eyes; A rout this morning left Sir Walter's Hall, Sir Walter, restless as a veering wind, The knight hallooed, he cheered and chid them on This chase it looks not like an earthly chase; The poor Hart toils along the mountain sile; Close to the thorn on which Sir Walter leaned, Upon his side the Hart was lying stretched: And now, too happy for repose or rest, Sir Walter wiped his face, and cried, «Till now A cunning artist will I have to frame A basin for that fountain in the dell! And they who do take mention of the same, And, gallant Stag! to make thy praises known, Then home he went, and left the Hart stone-dead, Ere thrice the Moon into her port had steered, And thither, when the summer days were long, PART SECOND. The moving accident is not my trade; What this imported I could ill divine: The trees were grey, with neither arms nor head; I looked upon the hill both far and near, I stood in various thoughts and fancies lost, The Shepherd stopped, and that same story told You see these lifeless stumps of aspen wood- The arbour does its own condition tell; You see the stones, the fountain, and the stream; There's neither dog nor heifer, horse nor sheep, Some say that here a murder has been done, What thoughts must through the creature's brain have Even from the topmost stone, upon the steep, For thirteen hours he ran a desperate race; Here on the grass perhaps asleep he sank, Till trees, and stones, and fountain, all are gone." Grey-headed Shepherd, thou hast spoken well; She leaves these objects to a slow decay, One lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide, "MAY I COME UP?" May I come up?" the waking germ inquires? "All winter long; the fearful frost has bound Above my head a mass of icy ground. I've slept in silence, till the solar fires Have driven away the frost; the softened earth Within thy cell: ere long shalt tho arise Soon weepingcome, with warm and genial skies, The germ springs up, and bears a crown of buds and flowers. |