Ible mediocrity of intellect; what wretched corruption of taste!

6. But in the Catholic literature, which, after a long sleep revives under Napoleon, and afterwards under the Bourbons, what fulness of life, what energy do we not discover! What brilliancy of fancy and fervor of feeling in Chateau? riand! What depth of thought and majesty of diction in the philos opher, De Bonald! What profound intuitions-what force and plausibility of style in the great Count de Maistre ! What vigorous ratiocination—what burning eloquence, in De Lamn nais before his fall! What elevation of feeling and harmony of numbers in the lyric poet, Lamartine! Except in the semiPantheistic school, represented by Victor Cousin and his friends, French infidelity in the present age, whether in literature or in philosophy, has no first-rate talent to display. Yet of this school, Jouffroy died repenting his errors, and Victor Cousin himself has lately returned to the bosom of the Church.

76. THE DYING GIRL.

WILLIAMS.

RICHARD DALTON WILLIAMS is by birth an Irishman. At present, he in Professor of Belles Lettres in the Catholic College, Mobile. "He writes with equal ability on all subjects, whether they be grave or gy, pathetic or humorous."-Hayes's Ballads of Ireland.

1. FROM a Munster vale they brought her,
From the pure and balmy air,
An Ormond peasant's daughter,
With blue eyes and golden hair.
They brought her to the city,

And she faded slowly there;
Consumption has no pity

For blue eyes and golden hair.

2. When I saw her first reclining,

Her lips were moved in prayer,
And the setting sun was shining
On her loosen'd golden hair.

When our kindly glances met her,
Deadly brilliant was her eye;

And she said that she was better,

While we knew that she must die

3. She speaks of Munster valleys,
The patron, dance, and fair,
And her thin hand feebly dallies
With her scattered golden hair.
When silently we listen'd

To her breath, with quiet care,
Her eyes with wonder glisten'd,

And she ask'd us what was ther

4. The poor thing smiled to ask it, And her pretty mouth laid bare, Like gems within a casket,

A string of pearlets rare.
We said that we were trying

By the gushing of her blood,
And the time she took in sighing,
To know if she were good.

5. Well, she smiled and chatted gayly, Though we saw, in mute despair, The hectic brighter daily,

And the death-dew on her hair.
And oft, her wasted fingers
Beating time upon the bed,

O'er some old tune she lingers,
And she bows her golden head.

6. At length the harp is broken,
And the spirit in its strings,
As the last decree is spoken,
To its source, exulting, springs.
Descending swiftly from the skies,
Her guardian angel came,

He struck God's lightning from her eyes,
And bore him back the flame.

. Before the sun had risen

Through the lark-loved morning air,
Her young soul left its prison,

Undefiled by sin or care.

I stood beside the couch in tears,
Where, pale and calm, she slept,

And though I've gazed on death for years,
I blush not that I wept.

I check'd with effort pity's sighs,
And left the matron there,
To close the curtains of her eyes,
And bind her golden hair.

77. MARIE ANTOINETTE.

BURKE.

EDMUND BURKE, born in Dublin, 1728; died, 1797. As a statesman and an orator, the world has, perhaps, never seen a greater than Edmund Burke. A great orator of our own day, says of him: "No one can doubt that enlightened men in all ages will hang over the works of Mr. Burke. He was a writer of the first class, and excelled in almost every kind of prose composition."-Lord Brougham.

"In the three principal questions which excited his interest, and called forth the most splendid displays of his eloquence-The contest with the American Colonies, the impeachment of Warren Hastings, and the French Revolution-we see displayed a philanthropy the most pure, illustrated by a genius the most resplendent... He was ever the bold and uncompromis ing champion of justice, mercy, and truth.”—Allibone's “Dictionary o̟ Authors."

As a writer, Burke has bequeathed to our times, some of the most perfect models of literary composition. His "Treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful," has never been exceeded in any language. He was, in every sense, a truly great and good man, and hence the deep reverence with which his character is regarded in the present day." Indeed, the empire of Britain has no name more prized, than that of Edmund Burke, the son of a Dublin attorney.

1. HISTORY, who keeps a durable record of all our acts, and exercises her awful censure over the proceedings of all sorts of sovereigns, will not forget either those events or the era of this liberal refinement in the intercourse of mankind

History will record, that on the morning of the 6th of Octo ber, 1789, the King and Queen of France, after a day of onfusion, alarm, dismay, and slaughter, lay down, under the pledged security of public faith, to indulge nature in a few hours of respite, and troubled, melancholy repose.

2. From this sleep the queen was first startled by the voice of the sentinel at her door, who cried out to her, to save herself by flight-that this was the last proof of fidelity he could give that they were upon him, and he was dead. Instantly he was cut down. A band of cruel ruffians and assassins, reeking with blood, rushed into the chamber of the queen, and pierced with a hundred strokes of bayonets and poniards the bed, from whence this persecuted woman had but just time to fly almost naked, and, through ways unknown to the murderers, had escaped to seek refuge at the feet of a king and hus. band, not secure of his own life for a moment.

3. This king, to say no more of him, and this queen, and their infant children (who once would have been the pride and hope of a great and generous people), were then forced to abandon the sanctuary of the most splendid palace in the world, which they left swimming in blood, polluted by massacre, and strewed with scattered limbs and mutilated carcasses. Thence they were conducted into the capital of their kingdom. Two had been selected from the unprovoked, unresisted, promiscuous slaughter, which was made of the gentlemen of birth and family, who composed the king's body-guard. These two. gentlemen, with all the parade of an execution of justice, were cruelly and publicly dragged to the block, and beheaded in the great court of the palace.

4. Their heads were stuck upon spears, and led the proces sion; while the royal captives, who followed in the train, were slowly moved along, amidst the horrid yells, and thrilling screams, and frantic dances, and infamous contumelies, and all the unutterable abominations of the furies of hell, in the abused shapes of the vilest of women. After they had been made to taste, drop by drop, more than the bitterness of death, in the slow torture of a journey of twelve miles, protracted to six hours, they were, under a guard, composed of those very

soldiers who had thus conducted them through this famous triumph, lodged in one of the old palaces of Paris, now converted into a Bastile for kings.

5. It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in,-glittering like the morning star, fuil of life, and splendor, and joy. what a heart I must have, to that elevation and that fall! added titles of veneration, to respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace, concealed in that bosom ; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor, and of cavaliers.

Oh! what a revolution! and contemplate without emotion Little did I dream, when she those of enthusiastic, distant

6. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded: and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse af manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage, while it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its vil, by losing all its grossness.