EXERCISE XLI.

THE VICTOR'S CROWN. Mrs. Hale.

"This piece forms an example in change of "expression;”

part of each stanza being in the bold, joyous, and swelling tones of triumph; the second, in the grave tone of aversion, regret, and disappointment, with "low notes," "aspirated quality," "suppressed force,” and “slow movement.” The close of the last stanza forms an exception, and is read with the tone of triumph.]

a crown of light!

From the land where the flowers ne'er feel a blight
Was gathered the wreath that around it blows;
And he, who o'ercometh his treacherous foes,
That fadeless crown shall gain.

A king went forth on the rebel array,
Intrenched where a lovely hamlet lay;

He frowned, and there's nought save ashes and blood,
And blackened bones, where that hamlet stood,

Yet his treacherous foes he hath not slain.

A crown for the victor,

a crown of light!

Encircled with jewels so pure and bright,

Night never hath gloomed where its lustre flows;
And he, who can conquer his proudest foes,
That glorious crown shall gain. -

A hero came from the gory field,

And low at his feet the pale captives kneeled;
In his might he hath trodden a nation down,
But he may not challenge that glorious crown,
For his proudest foes he hath not slain.

A crown for the victor,

a crown of light!
Like the morning sun, to the dazzled sight,
From the night of a dungeon raised, it glows
And he, who can slay his deadliest foes,

That shining crown shall gain.

With searching eye, and stealthy tread,
The man of wrath sought his enemy's bed:

Like festering wounds are the wrongs he hath borne,
And he takes the revenge his soul had sworn,

But his deadliest foe he hath not slain.

A crown for the victor,

a crown of light!
To be worn with a robe whose spotless white
Makes darkness seem resting on Alpine snows;
And he, who o'ercometh his mightiest foes,
That robe and crown shall gain.
With eye upraised, and forehead bare,
A pilgrim knelt down in holy prayer:

He hath wrestled with self, and with passion striven;
And to him hath the Sword of the Spirit been given;
Oh! crown him, for his foes,

his sins,

are slain.

end

EXERCISE XLII.

FORTITUDE OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS OF NEW
ENGLAND. Choate.

[The full tone of public address, belongs properly to the following passage. The style of utterance is "declamatory orotund,” but varies to "pathos" and "subdued expression," in the description of suffering and death.]

IN a late undesigned visit to Plymouth, I sought the spot where the earlier dead of the Pilgrims were buried. It was on a bank, you remember, somewhat elevated, below the town and between it and the water, near and looking forth upon the waves, symbol of what life had been to them; ascending inland behind and above the rock, a symbol of that "rock of ages," on which the dying had rested in the final hour. As the pilgrim found these localities, you might stand on that bank and hear the restless waters chafe and melt against its steadfast base: the unquiet of the world composed itself at the portals of the grave. On that spot were laid to rest together, the earth carefully smoothed down, that the Indians might not count the number, the true, the pious, the beautiful, and the brave, - till the heavens be no more. There certainly was buried the first governor; and there was buried Rose, the wife of Miles Standish. "You will go to them," wrote Robinson, "but they shall not return to you."

When this sharp calamity had abated, came famine.

- have seen," said Edward Winslow, quoted by Mr. Bancroft, strong men staggering through faintness for want of food;"

and after this, and during all this, and for years, there brooded in every mind not a weak fear, but an intelligent apprehension that at any instant, at midnight, at noonday, at the marriage, the baptism, or the burial of the dead, a foe more cruel than the grave, might blast, in an hour, that which disease and want had so hardly spared.

How they endured all this you have also heard. Let one fact suffice. When, in April, the May Flower sailed for England, not one pilgrim returned in her!

The peculiarity which has seemed to me to distinguish these trials of the pilgrim age, from the chief of those which the general voice of literature has concurred to glorify, as the trials of heroism; the peculiarity which gives to these and such as these, the attributes of a truer heroism, is this; that they had to meet them on what was then an humble, obscure, and distant stage; with no numerous audience to look on and applaud, and cast its wreaths on the fainting brow of him, whose life was rushing with his blood; and unsustained by one of those stormier, and more stimulating, impulses, and aims, and sentiments, which carry a soldier to his grave of honour, as joyfully as to the bridal bed.

Where were the pilgrims, while in this furnace of affliction? And who saw and took thought for them? They were alone on the earth! Directly and solely "in their great Taskmaster's eye." If every one of them had died, the first winter, of lung fever, or been starved to death, or crushed by the tomahawk, who was there to mourn for them? A few hearts in Leyden would have broken; and that had been all. Unlike the martyr, even, around whose ascended chariot wheels and horses of fire, a congregation might come to sympathize and be exalted, blasphemers to be defied, and struck with unwonted admiration, they were alone on the earth. Primeval forests, a winter's sea, a winter's sky, circled them about, and excluded every sympathizing human eye.

To play the part of heroism on its high places, and its theatre, is not, perhaps, so very difficult. To do it alone, as seeing Him who is invisible, was the stupendous trial of the pilgrim heroism.

I have said too, that a peculiarity in their trials, was, that they were unsustained altogether by every one of the passions, aims, stimulants, and excitations: the anger, the revenge, the hate, the pride, the awakened, the dreadful thirst of blood, the consuming love of glory, the feverish rapture of battle, that burn, as on volcanic isles, in the heart of mere secular

ized heroism. - Not one of all these aids did or could come in use for them. Their character and their situation both excluded them. Their enemies were disease walking in darkness, and destroying at noonday; famine which, more than all other calamities, bows the spirit of a man, presses his radiant form to the dust, and teaches him what he is; the wilderness; spiritual foes on the high places of the unseen world. Even when the first Indian was killed, the exclamation of Robinson was, "Oh! that you had converted some, before you had slain any."

Now, I say, the heroism which can look, in a great cause, all the more terrible ills that flesh is heir to, calmly in the face, and can tread them under its feet, as sparks, without these aids, is at least as lofty a quality as that which canTo my eye, as I look back, it looms on the shores of the past with a more towering and attractive grandeur. It seems to me to speak from our far ancestral life, a higher lesson to a nobler nature.

not.

EXERCISE XLIII.

CHORUS IN THE "FALL OF JERUSALEM."

Milman.

[An example of sublimity and grandeur of "expression," demanding full "orotund quality," through the greater part of it, but commencing in the "pure tone" of "pathos," with deep utterance and "pectoral quality." In the description of the fate of the Egyptians, the "movement” becomes " rapid," from intensity of emotion, and again sinks to the low note and slow utterance of awe. The concluding stanza returns to the bold style of exultation.]

KING of kings! and Lord of lords!
Thus we move, our sad steps timing
To our cymbal's feeblest chiming,
Where thy house its rest accords.
Chased and wounded birds are we,
Through the dark air fled to Thee;
To the shadow of Thy wings,
Lord of lords! and King of kings!

Behold, O Lord! the Heathen treads

The branches of thy fruitful vine,

That its luxurious tendrils spreads

O'er all the hills of Palestine.

And now the wild boar comes to waste
Even us, the greenest boughs and last,
That drinking of thy choicest dew,
On Zion's hill in beauty grew.

No! by the marvels of thine hand,
Thou still wilt save thy chosen land!
By all thine ancient mercies shown,
By all our fathers' foes o'erthrown;
By the Egyptian's car-borne host,
Scattered on the Red Sea coast,
By that wide and bloodless slaughter
Underneath the drowning water!

Like us in utter helplessness,
In their last and worst distress,
On the sand and seaweed lying,
Israel poured her doleful sighing;
While, before, the deep sea flowed,
And behind, fierce Egypt rode :
To their fathers' God they prayed,
To the Lord of Hosts, for aid.

On the margin of the flood,
With lifted rod, the Prophet stood;

And the summoned east wind blew :

And aside it sternly threw

The gathered waves, that took their stand,
Like crystal rocks, on either hand,

Or walls of sea-green marble piled
Round some irregular city wild.

Then the light of morning lay
On the wonder-paved way,
Where the treasures of the deep
In their caves of coral sleep.
The profound abysses, where
Was never sound from upper air,
Rang with Israel's chanted words,
King of kings! and Lord of lords!

Then with bow and banner glancing,
On exulting Egypt came,