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My hopes are with the dead; anon
My place with them will be;
And with them I shall travel on
Through all futurity;

Yet leaving here a name, I trust,
Which will not perish in the dust.

LESSON XXXVI.

Helvellyn.-WALTER SCOTT.

In the spring of 1805, a young gentleman of talents, and of a most amiable disposition, perished by losing his way on the mountain Helvellyn. His remains were not discovered till three months afterwards, when they were found guarded by a faithful dog, his constant attendant during frequent solitary rambles through the wilds of Cumberland and Westmoreland.

I CLIMBED the dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn,

Lakes and mountains beneath me gleam'd misty and wide;

All was still, save by fits, when the eagle was yelling,
And, starting around me, the echoes replied.

On the right, Striden-edge round the Red-tarn was bending,
And Catchédicam its left verge was defending,

One huge nameless rock in the front was ascending,

When I mark'd the sad spot where the wand'rer had died.

Dark

green was that spot 'mid the brown mountain heather, Where the Pilgrim of Nature lay stretch'd in decay, Like the corpse of an outcast, abandon'd to weather, Till the mountain winds wasted the tenantless clay. Nor yot quite deserted, though lonely extended, For faithful in death, his mute favourite attended, The much-loved remains of her master defended, And chased the hill-fox and the raven away.

How long did'st thou think that his silence was slumber? When the wind waved his garment, how oft did'st thou start?

How many long days and long weeks did'st thou number, Ere faded before thee the friend of thy heart?

And oh! was it meet, that,-
-no requiem read o'er him,-
No mother to weep, and no friend to deplore him,—
And thou, little guardian, alone stretch'd before him,--
Unhonour'd the Pilgrim from life should depart ?

When a Prince to the fate of the Peasant has yielded,
The tapestry waves dark round the dim-lighted hall;
With scutcheons of silver the coffin is shielded,

And pages stand mute by the canopied pall:

Through the courts, at deep midnight, the torches are gleaming;

In the proudly arch'd chapel the banners are beaming;
Far down the long aisle sacred music is streaming,
Lamenting a Chief of the People should fall.

But meeter for thee, gentle lover of nature,

To lay down thy head like the meek mountain lamb, When wilder'd he drops from some cliff huge in stature, And draws his last sob by the side of his dam.

And more stately thy couch by this desert lake lying,
Thy obsequies sung by the grey plover flying,
With one faithful friend but to witness thy dying,
In the arms of Helvellyn and Catchédicam.

LESSON XXXVII.

Character of Pitt.—GRATTAN.

THE Secretary stood alone; modern degeneracy had not reached him. Original and unaccommodating, the features of his character had the hardihood of antiquity. His august mind overawed majesty; and one of his sovereigns thought royalty so impaired in his presence, that he conspired to remove him, in order to be relieved from his superiority. No state chicanery, no narrow system of vicious politics, sank him to the vulgar level of the great; but overbearing, persuasive, and impracticable, his object was England, his ambition was fame. Without dividing, he destroyed party; without corrupting, he made a venal age unanimous.

With one hand he smote the

France sank beneath him. house of Bourbon, and wielded with the other the democracy of England. The sight of his mind was infinite; and his schemes were to affect not England, and the present age only, but Europe and posterity. Wonderful were the means by which these schemes were accomplished; always seasonable, always adequate, the suggestions of an understanding animated by ardour and enlightened by prophecy.

The ordinary feelings which render life amiable and indolent, were unknown to him. No domestic difficulty, no domestic weakness reached him, but, aloof from the sordid occurrences of life, and unsullied by its intercourse, he came occasionally into our system to counsel and to decide. A character so exalted, so strenuous, so various, and so authoritative, astonished a corrupt age; and the Treasury trembled at the name of Pitt through all her classes of venality. Corruption imagined, indeed, that she had found defects in this statesman, and talked much of the inconsistency of his glory, and much of the ruin of his victories; but the history of his country and the calamities of the enemy refuted her.

Nor were his political abilities his only talents: his eloquence was an era in the senate; peculiar and spontaneous, familiarly expressing gigantic sentiments and instinctive wisdom; not like the torrent of Demosthenes, or the splendid conflagration of Tully, it resembled sometimes the thunder, and sometimes the music of the spheres. He did not, like Murray, conduct the understanding through the painful subtlety of argumentation, nor was he, like Townshend, forever on the rack of exertion; but rather lightened upon the subject, and reached the point by flashings of the mind, which, like those of his eye, were felt, but could not be followed.

Upon the whole, there was something in this man that could create, subvert, or reform; an understanding, a spirit, and an eloquence, to summon mankind to society, or to break the bonds of slavery asunder, and to rule the wilderness of free minds with unbounded authority-something that could establish or overwhelm empires, and strike a blow in the world which should resound throughout the universe.

LESSON XXXVIII.

Apostrophe to the Queen of France.—Burke.

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; full of life, and splendour, and joy.

Oh! what a revolution! and what a heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall!

Little did I dream that when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, 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 heaped upon her in a nation of gallant men; in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. 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 of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise--is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of hon our, which felt a stain like a wound; which inspired courage, whilst it mitigated ferocity; which ennobled whatever it touched; and under which vice itself lost half its evil. by losing all its grossness.

LESSON XXXIX.

Story of the Siege of Calais.-BROOKE.

EDWARD III. after the battle of Cressy, laid siege to Calais. He had fortified his camp in so impregnable a manner, that all the efforts of France proved ineffectual to raise the siege, or throw succours into the city. The citizens, under Count Vienne, their gallant governor, made an admirable defence. France had now put the sickle into her second harvest, since Edward, with his victorious army, sat down before the town. The eyes of all Europe

were intent on the issue.

At length, famine did more for Edward than arms. After suffering unheard-of calamities, the French resolved to attempt the enemy's camp. They boldly sallied forth; the English joined battle; and after a long and desperate engagement, Count Vienne was taken prisoner, and the citizens who survived the slaughter retired within their gates. The command devolving upon Eustace St. Pierre, a man of mean birth, but of exalted virtue, he offered to capitulate with Edward, provided he permitted them to depart with life and liberty. Edward, to avoid the imputation of cruelty, consented to spare the bulk of the plebeians, provided they delivered up to him six of their principal citizens with halters about their necks, as victims of due atonement for that spirit of rebellion with which they had inflamed the vulgar. When his messenger, Sir Walter Mauny, deliver ed the terms, consternation and pale dismay were impress ed on every countenance.

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To a long and dead silence, deep sighs and groans suc ceeded, till Eustace St. Pierre, getting up to a little emi nence, thus addressed the assembly ::- My friends, we are brought to great straits this day. We must either yield tc the terms of our cruel and ensnaring conqueror, or give up our tender infants, our wives, and daughters, to the bloody and brutal lusts of the violating soldiers. Is there any expedient left, whereby we may avoid the guilt and infany of delivering up those who have suffered every misery with you, on the one hand, or the desolation and horror of a sacked city, on the other? There is, my friends; there is one

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