more carefully studied and cultivated; but I deem it no disparagement to any one, among the living or the dead, to express the opinion, that, for immediate power over a deliberative or a popular audience, no man in our republic has ever surpassed the great statesman of the West,* over whom the grave is just closing. Owing nothing to the schools, nothing to art or education, he has furnished a noble illustration of what may be accomplished by the fire of real genius, by the force of an indomitable will, by the energy of a constant and courageous soul, uttering itself through the medium of a voice, whose trumpet tones will be among the cherished memories, of all who ever heard it.

Where can be found a more striking and impressive example of the pervading and almost miraculous power of the spoken word at the present day, than that which has been witnessed in our own land during the last few months? A wandering exile from the banks of the Danube, fresh from a long and cruel imprisonment, comes to thank our government, and our people, for the sympathy and succor to which, in part, he had owed his liberation. A Shakspeare and a Johnson's Dictionary, carefully studied in prison, suffice to furnish him with a better stock of English than is possessed by the great majority of those to whom it is native, and he comes to pour forth in our own tongue the bitter sorrows and the stern resolves, which had been so long pent up in his own aching breast. He comes to pray a great and powerful people to aid and avenge his down-trodden country. He lands upon our shores. He puts forth his plea. He speaks, and, within one week from his first uttered word, the whole mind, and heart, and soul of this vast nation is impressed and agitated. Domestic interests are forgotten; domestic strifes are hushed, and questions of local ambition postponed. A new mission is seriously opened to our country, and even the great principle of non-interference in European affairs called in question, though sanctioned by the words and example of Washington.

For a moment, the ship of state seems reeling before the blast, and trembling, as for a fatal plunge, upon the verge of an unfathomed and unfathomable vortex, involv

* Henry Clay, of Kentucky.

ing and implicating the New World in the falling ruins and floating wrecks of the Old, in the more than doubtful experiment of setting up republics in Europe for emperors or would-be emperors to overthrow. Kossuth will be remembered by many of us, as he has been received by us all, with the kindness, the respect, and even the admiration, which a man of real genius, of marvellous eloquence, of unsubdued energy, hoping against hope, refusing to despair under circumstances of desperation, and struggling against fate in a holy cause, can never fail to inspire. But the great moral of his visit, the great lesson which he has left behind him, and one never to be forgotten, is that of the power of a single individual, of one earnest and heroic man, in a foreign language, by the simple enginery of the tongue, to shake the solid mind of a whole nation, to agitate the mighty heart of a vast continent, and even to affect and modify the public opinion and the public affairs of the world.

PLYMOUTH ROCK.

WILLIAM B. FOWLE.

WHO hath not heard of Plymouth Rock?
Who hath not seen the thousands flock

To

pour their vows out on the shore
Touched by the Puritans of yore?
And what the charm? Has exiled band
Ne'er touched before a foreign strand?
Have want, oppression and distress
Sent none before to the wilderness?
Have waves engulfed, or tempests driven
No other frail bark from its haven?
Why is the Mayflower's landing held
A mighty fact unparalleled?

Poor human vision saw not then

That those few, free, God-guided men
Were planting in this distant field
A seed, predestined once to yield
A tree, that, in far distant years,

Nurtured by prayers, and blood, and tears,

Should tower to heaven, and bid the oppressed
Beneath its branches safely rest;

A tree, whose balsam, flowing free,
The healing of the lands should be ;
The tower of refuge evermore
For truth, and liberty, and law.

God help the tree! may no rude brute
E'er lay the axe unto its root;
May no corruption e'er reduce
To poison its balsamic juice;
May it be evergreen, and send
Offshoots to earth's remotest end;
And may the sacrilegious arm,
That seeks the noble tree to harm,
Fall blasted from its shoulder-blade ;
For, when the Pilgrim tree shall fade,
The sun of Freedom, glorious light,
Will set in baleful, hopeless night.

THE OLD CHURCH.

Anonymous. Altered.

A TRAIN passed through the old church door,
And stood within its nave;

The morning sun upon the floor
Its light through shadows gave.
A mother brought her babe, new-born,
For the holy man to bless ;

To give it, in its young, fresh morn,
God's hallowed, high impress.

The babe looked up in the good priest's face,
And smiled as it took the sign of grace.

The train passed out through the arch of stone,

And the old gray church was left alone.

The mid-day sun beams on a crowd,
That throng this holy spot;

With merry shouts and laughter loud,
Their cares are all forgot.

A trusting maid and loving youth
Kneel at that good man's feet;
And, after him, their vows of truth,
Of faith, of love, repeat.

The lovers look in each other's eyes,

Will they live a life of smiles or sighs?

The crowd passed out through the arch of stone,
And the old gray church was left alone.

At eve, within that old church door,
A silent group appears;
The sun is set, their mirth is o'er,
And laughter quenched in tears.
The coffin, and the gloomy pall,
And breaking hearts are there;
The holy man, at sorrow's call,

Breathes out the mourner's prayer.

Morn, mid-day, eve, complete life's day,
Youth, manhood, age, all pass away.

The groups pass out through the arch of stone,
And the old gray church is left alone.

ST. PATRICK'S DAY.

WILLIAM B. FOWLE.

ST. PATRICK'S DAY! St. Patrick's Day!
Of that I have a word to say,

But will not spake one word or two,
Till I've described the Saint to you.
You know in England he was caught
A doing what he did n't ought,
And so they cut his head off short,
And as this accident might be
Quite inconvaneyent to him, you see,
He swore, without an oath, he'd quit
The cursed isle; but all his wit
Could never find a ship or boat,
Except the waves, on which to float
Across the Irish Sea. The Saint,
With loss of blood a little faint,

Prepared to swim, but how the deuce
To manage with his head so loose,
Not aisy was, for 'neath a limb
Superior, it might bother him,
And under wahther divil a bit
Of the way to Ireland see could it.
At last, flat lying, no, lying flat,
It is the truth I would be at,
He swam across, the legend vow'th,
And held his own head in his mouth.
The infidels, to a man, allow
They could n't do this any how;
But when a Saint like him is dead,
'Tis jist as aisy to carry his head
In his mouth, as his mouth in his head;
So howld your prate, and don't belave
A Catholic saint would e'er desave.

Well, when St. Patrick reached the shore,
His head in his mouth, as I said before,
The snakes, and toads, and other bastes,
And varmin, that no Christian tastes,
Though they taste Christians, on my word,
All left the isle and went abroad,

And divil a bit did you ever see

Of a snake on the isle, except a flea.

Now when St. Patrick died indade (For he did n't die when he lost his head), His Irish converts met, did they,

To celebrate his natal day,

That manes the day when first he came
To verdant Ireland, yes, that same.
But when the blessed advent fell,

St. Patrick was not there to tell,
And so one party swore that he,

March ninth, in the morning, crossed the sea.
Whilst others just as stoutly swore
He crossed the sea the night before,

The blessed eighth. That both were right
They settled by a friendly fight;

And when they'd beaten out their eyes,

They fell into a compromise,

And so, to fix the glorious day,

They split the difference, did they,