56 RICHELIEU AND FRANCE. Yes, it is worth talking of! But that's how you always try to put me down. You fly into a rage, and then, if I only try to speak, you won't hear me. That's how you men always will have all the talk to yourselves: a poor woman isn't allowed to get a word in. A nice notion you have of a wife, to suppose she's nothing to think of but her husband's buttons. A pretty notion, indeed, you have of marriage. Ha! if poor women only knew what they had to go through! What with buttons, and one thing and another! They'd never tie themselves up to the best man in the world, I'm sure. What would they do, Mr. Caudle? -Why, do much better without you, I'm certain. And it's my belief, after all, that the button wasn't off the shirt; it's my belief that you pulled it off, that you might have something to talk about. Oh, you're aggravating enough, when you like, for anything! All I know is, it's very odd that the button should be off the shirt; for I'm sure no woman's a greater slave to her husband's buttons than I am. I only say it's very odd. However, there's one comfort; it can't last long. I'm worn to death with your temper, and sha'nt trouble you a great while. Ha, you may laugh! And I dare say you would laugh! I've no doubt of it! That's your love; that's your feeling! I know that I'm sinking every day, though I say nothing about it. And when I'm gone, we shall see how your second wife will look after your buttons! You'll find out the difference, then. Yes, Caudle, you'll think of me, then; for then, I hope, you'll never have a blessed button to your back. RICHELIEU AND FRANCE.-SIR E. BULWER LYTTON. MY Y liege, your anger can recall your trust, BERNARDO DEL CARPIO. And breadless serfs; England fomenting discord; To armed thunderbolts. The Arts lay dead; I am not ;-I am just! I found France rent asunder— I have re-created France; and, from the ashes Soars, phoenix-like, to Jove! What was my art? 57 BERNARDO DEL CARPIO.-MRS. HEMANS. THE warrior bowed his crested head, and tamed his heart of fire, And sued the haughty king to free his long-imprisoned sire; "I bring thee here my fortress-keys, I bring my captive train, I pledge thee faith, my liege, my lord!-0! break my father's chain!" 66 Rise, rise! even now thy father comes, a ransomed man, this day! Mount thy good horse; and thou and I will meet him on his way." Then lightly rose that loyal son, and bounded on his steed, And urged, as if with lance in rest, the charger's foamy speed. 58 BERNARDO DEL CARPIO. And lo! from far, as on they pressed, there came a glittering band, His dark eye flashed, his proud breast heaved, his cheek's hue came and went; He reached that gray-haired chieftain's side, and there, dismounting, bent; A lowly knee to earth he bent, his father's hand he took- That hand was cold,-a frozen thing,--it dropped from his like lead! He looked up to the face above, the face was of the dead! A plume waved o'er the noble brow, the brow was fixed and white. He met, at last, his father's eyes,--but in them was no sight! Up from the ground he sprang and gazed ;-but who could paint that gaze? They hushed their very hearts that saw its horror and amaze :— They might have chained him, as before that stony form he stood; For the power was stricken from his arm, and from his lip the blood. "Father!" at length he murmured low, and wept like childhood then Talk not of grief till thou hast seen the tears of warlike men! Then covering with his steel-gloved hands his darkly mournful brow, "No more, there is no more," he said, "to lift the sword for, now. My king is false,-my hope betrayed! My father--O! the worth, The glory, and the loveliness, are passed away from earth! "I thought to stand where banners waved, my sire, beside thee, yet! I would that there our kindred blood on Spain's free soil had met! AMERICA UNCONQUERABLE. 59 Thou wouldst have known my spirit, then ;-for thee my fields were won; And thou hast perished in thy chains, as though thou hadst no son!" Then, starting from the ground once more, he seized the monarch's rein, Amidst the pale and wildered looks of all the courtier train; "Came I not forth, upon thy pledge, my father's hand to kiss? -Be still, and gaze thou on, false king! and tell me what is this? The voice, the glance, the heart I sought,-give answer, where are they? -If thou wouldst clear thy perjured soul, send life through this cold clay! "Into these glassy eyes put light;-be still! keep down thine ire! Bid these white lips a blessing speak, this earth is not my sire:Give me back him for whom I strove, for whom my blood was shed! Thou canst not?-and, a king!-his dust be mountains on thy head!" He loosed the steed, his slack hand fell;-upon the silent face He cast one long, deep, troubled look, then turned from that sad place: His hope was crushed, his after-fate untold in martial strain :- It AMERICA UNCONQUERABLE.-EARL OF CHATHAM. HIS, my Lords, is a perilous and tremendous moment. TH is no time for adulation. The smoothness of flattery cannot save us in this rugged and awful crisis. It is now necessary to instruct the Throne in the language of TRUTH. We must, if possible, dispel the delusion and darkness which envelop it, and display, in its full danger and genuine colors, the ruin which is 60 AMERICA UNCONQUERABLE. brought to our doors. Can Ministers still presume to expect. support in their infatuation? Can Parliament be so dead to its dignity and duty as to be thus deluded into the loss of the one, and the violation of the other; as to give an unlimited support to measures which have heaped disgrace and misfortune upon us; measures which have reduced this late flourishing empire to ruin and contempt? But yesterday, and England might have stood against the world: now, none so poor to do her reverence! France, my Lords, has insulted you. She has encouraged and sustained America; and, whether America be wrong or right, the dignity of this country ought to spurn at the officious insult of French interference. Can even our Ministers sustain a more humiliating disgrace? Do they dare to resent it? Do they presume even to hint a vindication of their honor, and the dignity of the State, by requiring the dismissal of the plenipotentiaries of America? The People, whom they affected to call contemptible rebels, but whose growing power has at last obtained the name of enemies,— the People, with whom they have engaged this country in war, and against whom they now command our implicit support in every measure of desperate hostility,-this People, despised as rebels, or acknowledged as enemies, are abetted against you, supplied with every military store, their interests consulted and their Ambassadors entertained by your inveterate enemy, and our Ministers dare not interpose with dignity or effect. My Lords, this ruinous and ignominious situation, where we cannot act with success nor suffer with honor, calls upon us to remonstrate in the strongest and loudest language of truth, to rescue the ear of Majesty from the delusions which surround it. You cannot, I venture to say it, you CANNOT conquer America. What is your present situation there? We do not know the worst; but we know that in three campaigns we have done nothing, and suffered much. You may swell every expense, and strain every effort, still more extravagantly; accumulate every assistance you can beg or borrow; traffic and barter with every little pitiful German Prince, that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign country; your efforts are forever vain and impotent,-doubly so from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates to an incurable resentment the minds of your enemies, to overrun them with the sordid sons of rapine and |