or the fiercest hearts. Come Raikes, from thy labors with the ignorant and the poor, and show us with what an eye this faith regards the lowest and least of our race, and how diligently it labors, not for the body, not for rank, but for the plastic soul that is to course the ages of immortality.

And ye, who are a great number, ye nameless ones, who have done good in your narrower spheres, content to forego renown on earth, and seeking your reward in the record on High, come and tell us how kindly a spirit, how lofty a purpose, or how strong a courage, the religion ye professed can breathe into the poor, the humble, and the weak.

Go forth, then, Spirit of Christianity, to thy great work of REFORM! The past bears witness to thee in the blood of thy martyrs, and the ashes of thy saints and heroes. The present is hopeful because of thee. The future shall acknowledge thy omnipotence. FROM CHAPIN.

CLXXI.-NEVER DESPAIR.

O NEVER despair! for our hopes, oftentime,
Spring swiftly, as flowers in some tropical clime,
Where the spot that was barren and scentless at night,
Is blooming and fragrant at morning's first light!
The mariner marks, when the tempest rings loud,
That the rainbow is brighter, the darker the cloud.
Then, up! up! never despair!

The leaves which the sibyl presented of old,

Though lessened in number, were not worth less gold;

And though Fate steal our joys, do not think they're the best, The few she has spared may be worth all the rest.

Good fortune oft comes in adversity's form,

And the rainbow is brightest when darkest the storm.
Then, up! up! never despair!

And when all creation was sunk in the flood,
Sublime o'er the deluge the patriarch stood!

Though destruction around him in thunder was hurled,
Undaunted, he looked on the wreck of the world!

For, high o'er the ruin, hung Hope's bless-ed form,
The rainbow beamed bright through the gloom of the storm.
Then, up! up! never despair!

CLXXII.-MOTHERS OF THE WEST.

THE mothers of our forest land!
Stout-hearted dames were they;
With nerve to wield the battle-brand,
And join the border-fray.

Our rough land had no braver,

In its days of blood and strife;

Ay ready for severest toil.

Ay free to peril life.

The mothers of our forest land!
Their bosoms pillow'd men!
And proud were they by such to stand,
In hammock, fort, or glen.

To load the sure, old rifle;

To run the leaden ball;

To watch a battling husband's place,
And fill it should he fall.

The mothers of our forest land!
Such were their daily deeds,
Their monument! where does it stand?
Their epitaph! who reads?
No braver dames had Sparta,
No nobler matrons Rome;

Yet who or lauds or honors them,
E'en in their own green home?

The mothers of our forest land!

They sleep in unknown graves;

And had they borne and nursed a band
Of ingrates, or of slaves,

They had not more neglected been!

But their graves shall yet be found,
And their monuments dot, here and there,
"The Dark and Bloody Ground."

FROM GALLAGHER.

CLXXIII.-VALUE OF REPUTATION.

O DIVINE, O delightful legacy of a spotless reputation! Rich is the inheritance it leaves; the example it testifies ! Pure, precious, and imperishable, the hope which it inspires! Can there be conceived a more atrocious injury than to filch from its possessor this inestimable benefit; to rob society of its charm, and solitude of its solace; not only to out-law life, but to attaint death, converting the very grave, the refuge of the sufferer, into the gate of infamy and of shame! I can conceive of but few crimes beyond it.

He who plunders my property takes from me that which can be repaired by time. But what period can repair a ruined reputation? He who maims my person, effects that which medicine may remedy. But what herb has sovereignty over the wounds of slander? He who ridicules my poverty, or reproaches my profession, upbraids me with that which industry may retrieve, and integrity may purify. But what riches shall redeem a bankrupt fame? What power shall blanch the sullied snow of character? There can be no injury more deadly. There can be no crime more cruel. It is without remedy; without antidote; without evasion.

The reptile, calumny, is ever on the watch. From the fascination of its eye, no activity can escape. From the venom of its fang, no sanity can recover. It has no enjoyment but crime; no prey but virtue; no interval from the restlessness of its malice, save when, bloated with its victims, it grovels, to disgorge them at the withered shrine where envy idolizes her own infirmities.

FROM PHILLIPS.

CLXXIV. THE INFORMER.

THERE is, gentlemen, another small fact, that you are to deny at the hazard of your souls, and on the solemnity of your oaths. You are, upon your oaths, to say to the sister kingdom, that the government of Ireland uses no such abominable instruments of destruction as informers. Let me ask you honestly, what do you feel, when in my hearing, when in the face of this audience, you are called upon to give a verdict that every man of us, and every man of you, knows by the testimony of his own eyes, to be utterly and absolutely false?

I speak not now of the public proclamations of informers, with a promise of secrecy and of extravagant reward. I speak not of the fate of those horrid wretches who have been so often transferred from the table to the dock, and from the dock to the pillory. I speak of what your own eyes have seen, day after day, during the course of this commission. I speak of the horrid miscreants who avowed, upon their oaths, that they had come from the very seat of government; where they had been worked upon by the fears of death and the hopes of compensation, to give evidence against their fellows. I speak of the wretch, that, having been buried a man, lies till his heart has time to fester and dissolve, and is then dug up a witness.

Is this fancy, or is it fact? Have you not seen him, after his resurrection from that tomb after having been dug out of the region of death and corruption, make his appearance upon the table, the living image of life and of death, and the supreme arbiter of both? Have you not marked, when he entered, how the stirring wave of the multitude retired at his approach? Have you not marked how the human heart bowed to the supremacy of his power, in the undissembled homage of deferential horror? How his glance, like the lightning of heaven, seemed to sear the body of the accused, and mark it for the grave, while his voice warned the devoted wretch of woe and

death? a death which no innocence can escape, no art elude, no force resist, no antidote prevent.

There was an antidote, a juror's oath. But even that adamantine chain, that bound the integrity of man to the throne of eternal justice, is solved and melted in the breath that issues from the informer's mouth. Conscience swings from her moorings, and the appalled and affrighted juror consults his own safety in the surrender of the victim! FROM CURRAN.

CLXXV.-PHILOSOPHY OF VIRTUE.

My honorable and learned friend began by telling us that, after all, hatred is no bad thing in itself. "I hate a tory," says my honorable friend; "and another man hates a cat; but it does not follow that he would hunt down the cat or I, the tory." Nay, so far from it, hatred, if it be properly managed, is, according to my honorable friend's theory, no bad preface to a rational esteem and affection. It prepares its votaries for a reconciliation of differences; for lying down with their most inveterate enemies, like the leopard and the kid in the vision of the prophet.

This dogma is a little startling, but it is not altogether without precedent. It is borrowed from a character in a play, which is, I dare say, as great a favorite with my learned friend as it is with me; I mean the comedy of the Rivals. Mrs. Malaprop, giving a lecture on the subject of marriage to her niece, (who is unreasonable enough to talk of liking, as a necessary preliminary to such a union,) says, "What have you to do with your likings and your preferences, child? Depend upon it, it is safest to begin with a little aversion. I am sure I hated your poor dear uncle like a blackmoor before we were married; and yet, you know, my dear, what a good wife I made him."

Such is my learned friend's argument, to a hair. But, finding that this doctrine did not appear to go down with the House so glibly as he had expected, my honorable and learned friend presently changed his tack, and put forward a theory, which, whether for novelty or for beauty, I pro