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Bid nations shout the word whica ne'er before they heard,
The name of Glory, fearful yet sublime.
The Pharaohs' are forgot, their works confess them not:
Pass, Hero! pass! poor straw upon the gulf of Time."

CHARLES MACKAY.

56. A CONQUEROR'S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF.

THE

am

1. THE good of France and mine are mix'd. I ar
The leaf of laurel on her tree,

no more:

One of her sons. I stand, indeed, the First,

Because necessity will have a man

To front the aspect of alarming times.

Still I am one o' the people. I claim not

A line stretch'd backward beyond Nimrod's' reign;
Nor call on Cæsar, or Semiramis,

To answer for a weak or daring son.

2. I am―myself; the first,-perhaps the last
Of all my race who won or wore a crown.
Yět have I ambition still; for I would feel
My soldiers' tears raining upon my grave;
And have, on lasting brass, my nobler deeds
Thus written :-

"HERE LIES

NAPOLEON, EMPEROR;

WHO ROSE BY COURAGE AND A PEOPLE'S WILL
UP TO A THRONE: HE WON A HUNDRED BATTLES-

AT ARCOLA, AT RIVOLI, AT MARENGO,

AT AUSTERLITZ, at Jena, and bY THE SNOWS
OF MOSCOW, AND THE LIBYAN PYRAMIDS:

'PHARO, a name common to all the kings of Egypt.-'See Biographical Sketch, p. 91. See Bible, Genesis, 10th chapter, 8th verse.CAIUS JULIUS CAESAR, Dictator of Rome, was born on the 12th of July, B. C. 100, and died by the hands of assassins, in the Senate House, on the 15th of March, in the fifty-sixth year of his age. As a warrior, a statesman, and a man of letters, CESAR was one of the most remarkable men of any age.. - SEMIRAMIS, a queen of Assyria, wife of Ninus, who put him to death She was called REA, on account of her atrocities

He cut, like Hannibal, the White Alps throuGH: LEARNING HE RAISED; BUILT PUBLIC ROADS AND FOUNTAINS; AND MADE ONE EQUAL LAW FOR ALL THE LAND."

W. B. PROCTER '

57. RURAL LIFE IN ENGLAND IN 1763.

UT if aristocracy was not excluded from towns, still more did

of

enjoyed the softer atmosphere that belongs to the western side of masses of land, but was further modified by the proximity of every part of it to the sea. It knew neither long-continuing heat nor cold; and was more friendly to daily employment throughout the whole year, within doors or without, than any in Europe.

2. The island was "a little world" of its own; with a "happy breed of men" for its inhabitants, in whom the hardihood of the Norman was intermixed with the gentler qualities of the Celt and the Saxon, just as nails are rubbed into steel to temper and harden the Damascus blade. They loved country life, of which the mildness of the clime increased the attractions; since every grass and flower and tree that had its home between the remote north and the neighborhood of the tropics would live abroad, and such only excepted as needed a hot sun to unfold their bloom, or concentrate their arō'ma, or ripen their fruit, would thrive in perfection; so that no region could show such a varied wood. The moisture of the sky favored a soil not naturally věry rich; and so fructified the earth, that it was clad in perpetual verdure.

3. Nature had its attractions even in winter. The ancient trees were stripped indeed of their foliage; but showed more clearly their fine proportions, and the undisturbed nests of the noisy rooks among their boughs; the air was so mild, that the flocks and herds still grazed on the freshly springing herbage; and the deer found shelter enough by crouching amongst the fern; the smoothly shaven grassy walk was soft and yielding

'See Biographical Sketch, p. 128.

under the foot; nor was there a month in the year in which the plow was idle.

4. The large landed proprietors dwelt often in houses which had descended to them from the times when England was gemmed all over with the most delicate and most solid struc tures of Gothic art. The věry lanes were memorials of early days, and ran as they had been laid out before the Conquest; and in mills for grinding corn, water-wheels revolved at their work just where they had been doing so for at least eight hun dred years. Hospitality also had its traditions; and for untold centuries Christmas had been the most joyous of the reasons.

5. The system was so completely the ruling element in English history and English life, especially in the country, that it seemed the most natural organization of society, and was even endeared to the dependent people. Hence the manners of the aristocracy, without haughtiness or arrogance, implied rather than expressed the consciousness of undisputed rank; and female beauty added to its loveliness the blended graces of dignity and humility-most winning, where acquaintance with sorrow had softened the feeling of superiority, and increased the sentiment of compassion.

6. Yet the privileged class defended its rural pleasures and its agricultural interests with impassioned vigilance. The game laws parceling out among the large proprietors the exclusive right of hunting, which had been wrested from the king as too grievous a prerogative, were maintained with relentless severity; and to steal or even to hamstring a sheep was as much punished by death as murder or treason. During the reign of George the Second, sixty-three new capital offences had been added to the criminal laws, and five new ones, on the average, continued to be discovered annually; so that the criminal code of England, formed under the influence of the rural gentry, seemed written in blood, and owed its mitigation only to executive clemency.

7. But this cruelty, while it encouraged and hardened offenders, did not revolt the instinct of submission in the rural population. The tenantry, for the most part without permanent leases, holding lands at a moderate rent, transmitting the occupation of them from father to son through many generations, clung to the lord of the manor as ivy to massive old walls

They loved to live in his light, to lean on his support, to gather round him with affectionate deference rather than base cowering; and, by their faithful attachment, to win his sympathy and care; happy when he was such a one as merited their love. They caught refinement of their superiors, so that their cottages were carefully neat, with roses and honeysuckles clambering to their roofs. They cultivated the soil in sight of the towers of the church, near which reposed the ashes of their ancestors for almost a thousand years.

8. The whole island was mapped out into territorial parishes, as well as into counties, and the affairs of local interest, the assessment of rates, the care of the poor and of the roads, were settled by elected vestries or magistrates, with little interference from the central government. The resident magistrates were unpaid, being taken from among the landed gentry; and the local affairs of the county, and all criminal affairs of no uncommon importance, were settled by them in a body at their quarterly sessions, where a kind-hearted landlord often presided, to appall the convicted offender by the solemn carnestness of his rebuke, and then to show him mercy by a lenient sentence. Thus the local institutions of England shared the common character; they were at once the evidence of aristocracy and the badges of liberty.

GEORGE BANCROFT.

Mr. BANCROFT was born in 1800, in Worcester, Massachusetts, where his father was long distinguished as a learned and pious clergyman, and was graduated Bachelor of Arts, at Harvard College, at the early age of seventeen. The next year he went to Europe, and studied for four years at Gottingen and Berlin, and traveled in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and England. On his return, in 1823, he published a volume of poems, which were principally written while he was abroad. He soon after established the academy of Round Hill, at Northampton. He was appointed collector of Boston in 1838; was made secretary of the navy in 1845; was sent as minister plenipotentiary to England in 1846; and on his return, in 1849, became a resident of New York, where he has since devoted himself principally to the composition of his "History of the United States," the fifth volume of which appeared in 1854. He has also lately published a volume of "Literary and Historical Miscellanies." His "History of the United States" has been published in its original language in London and Paris, and has been translated into several foreign languages. It is a work of great labor, originality, and ability, and eminently American, in the best sense of that word as used in regard to literature. It is the most accurate and philosophical account that has been given of the United States; elaborately and strongly, yet elegantly written; and, though the style is not altogether free from affectation, contains parts that may be reckoned among the most splendid in all historical literature.

58. PANEGYRIC ON ENGLAND.

O character is perfect among nations, more than among men; but it must needs be conceded, that, of all the States of Europe, England has been, from an early period, the most favored abode of liberty; the only part of Europe, where, for any length of time, constitutional liberty can be said to have a stable existence. We can scarcely contem'plate with patience the idea, that we might have been a Spanish colony, a Portuguese colony, or a Dutch colony. What hope can there be for the colonies of nations which possess themselves no spring of improvement, and tolerate none in the regions over which they rule; whose administration sets fo bright examples of parliamentary independence; whose languages send out no reviving lessons of sound and practical science, of manly literature, of sound philosophy; but repeat, with every ship that crosses the Atlantic, the same debasing voice of despotism, bigotry, and antiquated superstition?

2. What citizen of our Republic is not grateful, in the cor trast which our history presents? Who does not feel, what reflecting American does not acknowledge, the incalculable advantages derived to this land out of the deep fountains of civil, intellectual, and moral truth, from which we have drawn in England? What American does not feel proud that his fathers were the countrymen of Bacon,' of Newton, and of Locke?

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'FRANCIS BACON, Lord Chancellor of England under James I., author of the Instauratio Magna," was born in London on 22d of January, 1561, and died in 1626. The immortal Englishman possessed a mind so vast, with powers so varied, that it can not be said that any one department of labor, or species of activity, belonged to him peculiarly. From early manhood Bacon was immersed in public affairs, intrusted with very onerous functions: in the first rank of jurisconsult, he moved in the work of reforming and arranging the laws of England; as a states. man, he labored effectively in promotion of the British treaty of Union; as a historian, he produced the first meritorious history in English literature, viz., the "Reign of Henry VII. ;" as orator and writer, he had no equal in his age; and, besides, he renovated Philosophy.-2 ISAAC NEWTON, the celebrated mathematician and natural philosopher, author of the " Principia," was born at Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England, on the 25th December, 1642, o. s., and died the 20th March, 1727.JOHN LOCKE, a name than which there is none higher in English phil

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