In all its greatness. It has told itself
To the astonished gaze of awe-struck kings,
At Marathon,' at Bannockburn,' and here,
Where first our pātriots sent the invader back
Broken and cowed. Let these green elms be all

To tell us where they fought, and where they lie. 4. Their feelings were all nature, and they need

No art to make them known. They live in us,
While we are like them, simple, hardy, bold,
Worshiping nothing but our own pure hearts,
And the one universal Lord. They need
No column pointing to the heaven they sought,
To tell us of their home. The heart itself,
Left to its own free purpose, hastens there,
And there alone reposes.

Let these elms
Bend their protecting shadow o’er their graves,
And build with their green roof the only fane,
Where we may găther on the hăllowed day
That rose to them in blood, and set in glory.
Here let us meet, and while our motionless lips
Give not a sound, and all around is mute
In the deep Sabbath of a heart too full
For words or tears—here let us strew the sod
With the first flowers of spring, and make to them
An offering of the plenty Nature gives,

And they have rendered ours-perpetually. PERCIVAL. JAMES GATES PERCIVAL, the poet, was born in Berlin, near Hartford, in Connecticut, on the 15th of September, 1795. He entered Yale College when fifteen years of age, and graduated with the highest honors in 1815. From Yale Medical School, in 1820, he received the degree of Doctor of Medicine. He first appeared before the public, as an author, in 1821, when he published some minor poems, and the first part of his " Prometheus," which at once attracted attention, and was favorably noticed by Edward Everett, in the N. A. Review. In 1822 hc published two volumes of miscellaneous pocms and prose writings, entitled “Clio," and the second part of “Prometheus.” An edition of his principal poetical writings soon after appeared in New York, and was republished in Lon

Már a thon, a hamlet, a small 'Băn' nock burn, a town of Scotriver, and a plain of, Greece, govern- land, famous for the great victory ment of Attica. The plain is noted gained here, 24th of June, 1314, by for the victory of Miltiades over the the Scots, under Bruce, over the army of Xerxes, B. c. 490.

English, commanded by Edward II.

don. He was appointed assistant surgeon in the U. S. army in 1824, and acted as Professor of Chemistry in the Military Academy at West Point. The third vol. ume of “Clio" appeared in New York early in 1827. For two years subsequent he superintended the printing of the first quarto edition of Dr. Webster's American Dictionary. In 1835 he was employed by the government of Connecticut to make a geological survey of that State, an elaborate and very able report of which was printed in 1812.

While engaged in these duties, he published poetical translations from eleven modern languages, and wrote a portion of "The Dream of Day and other Poems,” which appeared in 1843. In 1854 he was appointed State Geologist of Wisconsin. He died in 1856. Few men possessed higher poetical qualities than Percival. His learning was comprehensive and thorough. He had a rich imagination, a remarkable command of language, and wrote with a facility rarely cqualed.

H

VIII.
84. THE ANTIQUITY OF FREEDOM.
ERE are old trees, tall oaks, and gnarlèd pines,
That stream with

Have forged thy chain ; yet while he deems thee bound,
The links are shivered, and the prison walls
Fall outward : tērribly thou springést förth,
As springs the flame above a burning pile,
And shoutest to the nations, who return

Thy shoutings, while the pale oppressor flies.
4. Thy birth-right was not given by human hands :

Thou wert twin-born with man. In pleasant fields,
While yět our race was few, thou sat'st with him,
To tend the quiet flock and watch the stars,
And teach the reed to utter simple airs.
Thou by his side, amid the tangled wood,
Didst war upon the panther and the wolf,
His only foes; and thou with him didst draw
The earliest furrows on the mountain side,
Sõft with the Deluge. Týranny himself,
The enemy, although of reverend look,
Hòary with many years, and far obeyed,
Is lāter born than thou; and as he meets
The grave defiance of thine elder eye,

The usurper trembles in his fastnesses.
5. Thou shalt wax stronger with the lapse of years,

But he shall fade into a feebler age ;
Feebler, yět subtler : he shall weave his snares,
And spring them on thy careless steps, and clap
His withered hands, and from their ambush call
His hördes to fall upon thee. He shall send
Quaint maskers, forms of fair and gallant mien,
To cătch thy gaze, and uttering graceful words
To charm thy ear ; while his sly imps, by stealth,
Twine round thee threads of steel, light thread on thread,
That grow to fetters ; or bind down thy arms
With chains concealed in chaplets.

Oh! not yět
Mayst thou unbrace thy corslet, nor lay by
Thy sword, nor yet, О Freedom! close thy lids
In slumber ; for thine enemy never sleeps.
And thou must watch and combat, till the day
Of the new Earth and Heaven, But wouldst thou rest
Awhile from tumult and the frauds of men,

These old and friendly solitudes invite
Thy visit. They, while yet the forest trees
Were young upon the unviolated earth,
And yet the moss-stains on the rock were new,
Beheld thy glorious childhood, and rejoiced..

BRYANT.

85. LIBERTY. T IBERTY, gentlemen, is å solemn thing—a welcome, a joyous,

U a glorious thing, if you please ; but it is a solemn thing. A free people must be a thoughtful people. The subjects of a despot may be reckless and gay if they can. A free people must be serious; for it has to do the greatest thing that ever was done in the world-to govern itself.

2. That hour in human life is most serious, when it passes from parental control, into free manhood : then must the man bind the righteous law upon himself, more strongly than father or mother ever bound it upon him. And when a people leaves the leading-strings of prescriptive authority, and enters upon the ground of freedom, that ground must be fenced with law; it must be tilled with wisdom ; it must be băllowed with prayer. The tribunal of justice, the free school, the holy church must be built there, to intrench, to defend, and to keep the sacred hěritage.

3. Liberty, I repeat, is a solemn thing. The world, up to this time, has regarded it as a boon—not as a bond. And there is nothing, I seriously believe, in the present crises of human affairs -there is no point in the great human welfare, on which men's ideas so much need to be cleared up—to be advanced-to be raised to a higher standard, as this grand and těrrible responsibility of freedom.

4. In the universe there is no trust so awful as móral freedom ; and all good civil freedom depends upon the use of that. But look at it. Around ěvery human, every rătional being, is drawn a circle ; the space within is cleared from obstruction, or, at least, from all coërcion ; it is sācred to the being himself who stands there ; it is secured and consecrated to his own responsibility. May I say it?-Gòd himself does not penetrate there with any absolute, any coërcive power! He compels the winds and waves to obey him ; he compels animal instincts to obey

him ; but he does not compel man to obey. That sphere he leaves free; he brings influences to bear upon it ; but the last, final, solemn, infinite question between right and wrong, he leaves to man himself.

5. Ah! instead of madly delighting in his freedom, I could imagine a man to protest, to complain, to tremble that such a tremendous prerogative' is accorded to him. But it is accorded to him ; and nothing but willing obedience can discharge that solemn trust ; nothing but a hěroism greater than that which fights battles, and pours out its blood on its country's altar--the kieroism of self-renunciation' and self-control.

6. Come that liberty! I invoke it with all the ardor of the poëts and orators of freedom ; with Spenser' and Milton, with Hampden' and Sydney, with Rienzio and Dante,' with Hamiltonand Washington, I invoke it. Come that liberty! come

· Pre rog'a tive, an exclusive or death with iron resolution. His very peculiar privilege or right.

able “Discourses concerning Govern"Renunciation, ('nun`shi å’shun), ment was a posthumous work.

• Edmund Spenser, excepting * Rienzi, (re én' ze), the orator, Shakspeare, the greatest poet of his famous in Roman history for his time, author of the “Faerie Queene," assumption of dictatorship in that was born in London about 1553, where capital, born about 1310, was distinhe died on the 16th of January, 1599. guished by his love of the ancient

4 John Hampden, celebrated for republican institutions of Rome, and his resistance to the imposition of by his profound knowledge of antitaxes without authority of parlia- quity. He was massacred in 1354. ment, and to the royal prerogative Dante, (dån' te), the poet, author of Charles I., commander of a troop of the · Divina Commedia,” was in the parliamentary army, was born born at Florence in 1265, and died at London in 1594, and was mortally at Ravenna, in 1321. wounded in an affair with Prince Alexander Hamilton, distin. Rupert on 18th of June, 1643. guishedasa statesman, jurist, soldier,

Algernon Sydney, second son of and financier, one of the ablest offiRobert, Earl of Leicester, England, cers in the American Revolution, was was born about the year 1621. In born in the West Indies, in 1757. In early youth he fought in the ranks 1782 he was a member of Congress of the parliamentary forces. A thor- from New York. In 1789, Washington, ough republican, he was inimical to the first President, placed him at the all monarchy, and opposed to the as- head of the Treasury. On the death cendancy of Cromwell. He was of Washington, in 1799, his rank abroad at the Restoration, and was made him commander-in-chief of the permitted to return to England in American army. He was 1677. For his supposed connection by Aaron Burr, and a duel was the with the Rychouse Plot, he was be- consequence, in which he was mortalheaded December 7th, 1683. He met ly wounded, at the age of forty-seven.

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