And down the pleasant river, and up the slanting hill,

The echoing chorus sounded, through the evening calm and still; And her glad blue eyes were on me, as we passed with friendly talk, Down many a path beloved of yore, and well-remembered walk! And her little hand lay lightly, confidingly in mine,

But we'll meet no more at Bingen, — loved Bingen on the Rhine."

7.

His trembling voice grew faint and hoarse,

weak,

His eyes put on a dying look, he sighed and ceased to speak;
His comrade bent to lift him, but the spark of life had fled, -
The soldier of the Legion in a foreign land was dead!

And the soft moon rose up slowly, and calmly she looked down
On the red sand of the battle-field, with bloody corses strewn ;
Yes, calmly on that dreadful scene her pale light seemed to shine,
As it shone on distant Bingen, fair Bingen on the Rhine.

1 VINEYARD. An enclosure for grape- | 4 CO-QUET'RY (here pronounced co'. vines.

2 STILL. Always; ever.

• HŎARD. A store laid up; a treasure.

quet-ry). The character and prac tice of a coquette; deceit or trifling in love; flirtation.

LXI. -THE VOICE OF THE WAVES.*

MRS. HEMANS.

1. " ANSWER, ye chiming' waves,
That now in sunshine sweep;
Speak to me from thy hidden caves,
Voice of the solemn deep!

2. "Hath man's lone spirit here

With storms in battle striven?
Where all is now so calmly clear,
Hath anguish cried to Heaven?"

3. Then the sea's voice arose,

Like an earthquake's under-tone,—

* Written near the scene of a recent shipwreck.

"Mortal, the strife of human woes
Where hath not nature known?

4. "Here to the quivering mast
Despair hath wildly clung;
The shriek upon the wind hath past,
The midnight sky hath rung.

5. "And the youthful and the brave
With their beauty and renown,
To the hollow chambers of the wave
In darkness have gone down.

6. "They are vanished from their place,—

Let their homes and hearths make moan;
But the rolling waters keep no trace
Of pang or conflict gone."

7. "Alas! thou haughty deep!
The strong, the sounding-far!
My heart before thee dies, I weep

To think on what we are!

8. "To think that so we pass,

High hope, and thought, and mind,
E'en as the breath-stain from the glass,
Leaving no sign behind!

9. "Saw'st thou nought else, thou main,
Thou and the midnight sky,-

Nought, save the struggle, brief and vain,
The parting agony?"

10. And the sea's voice replied,

"Here nobler things have been!

2

Power with the valiant when they died,
To sanctify the scene:

Prayer, breathing heavenward through the storm,—
But all alike have passed."

12. "Sound on, thou haughty sea!
These have not passed in vain;

My soul awakes, my hope springs free
On victor wings again.

13. "Thou from thine empire driven,
May'st vanish with thy powers;

But, by the hearts that here have striven,
A loftier doom is ours!"

[William Henry Seward was born in Florida, New York, May 13, 1801. He was graduated at Union College, in 1819, and admitted to the bar in 1822. He was chosen governor of New York by the whigs, and reëlected in 1846. In February, 1849, he was chosen to the Senate of the United States, and continued a member of that body till the election of President Lincoln, when he became a member of his cabinet as Secretary of State. He is a man of patient and persevering industry, and his speeches, which are always carefully prepared, are marked by great literary merit.

The following extract is from a eulogy on John Quincy Adams, delivered before the legislature of New York, February 23, 1848.]

1. ONLY two years after the birth of John Quincy Adams, there appeared on an island in the Mediterranean Sea, a human spirit, newly born, endowed with equal genius, without the regulating qualities of justice and benevolence

which Adams possessed in so eminent a degree. A like career opened to both. Born like Adams, a subject of a king, the child of more genial skies, like him, became, in early life, a patriot, and a citizen of a new and great Republic. Like Adams, he lent his service to the state in precocious youth, and in its hour of need, and won its confidence. But, unlike Adams, he could not wait the dull delays of slow and laborious, but sure advancement. He sought power by the hasty road that leads through fields of carnage; and he became, like Adams, a supreme magistrate, a consul?.

3

2. But there were other consuls. He was not content. He thrust them aside, and was consul alone. Consular power was too short. He fought new battles, and was consul for life. But power, confessedly derived from the people, must be exercised in obedience to their will, and must be resigned to them again, at least in death. He was not content. He desolated Europe afresh, subverted the Republic; imprisoned the patriarch who presided over Rome's comprehensive see1, and obliged him to pour on his head the sacred oil that made the persons of kings divine, and their right to reign indefeasible. He was an Emperor. 3. But he saw around him a mother, brothers, and sisters, not ennobled, whose humble state reminded him and the world that he was born a plebeian; and he had no heir to wait impatient for the imperial crown. He scourged the earth again; and again Fortune smiled on him, even in his wild extravagance. He bestowed kingdoms and principalities on his kindred; put away the devoted wife of his youthful days, and another, a daughter of Hapsburg's imperial house, joyfully accepted his proud alliance. Off spring gladdened his anxious sight; a diadem was placed on its infant brow, and it received the homage of princes, even in its cradle. Now he was indeed a monarch,legitimate monarch—a monarch by divine appointment.

a

the first of an endless succession of monarchs. But there were other monarchs who held sway on the earth. He was not content. He would reign with his kindred alone.

4. He gathered new and greater armies from his own land, - from subjugated lands. He called forth the young and brave, one from every household,—from the Pyrenees * to the Zuyder Zee†, from Jura ‡ to the ocean. He marshalled them into long and majestic columns, and went forth to seize that universal dominion which seemed almost within his grasp.

5. But Ambition had tempted Fortune too far. The nations of the earth resisted, repelled, pursued, surrounded him. The pageant was ended. The crown fell from his presumptuous head. The wife who had wedded him in his pride, forsook him in the hour when fear came upon him. His child was ravished' from his sight. His kinsmen were degraded to their first estate"; and he was no longer emperor, nor consul, nor general, nor even a citizen, but an exile and a prisoner, on a lonely island, in the midst of the wild Atlantic.

6. Discontent attended him there. The wayward man fretted out a few long years of his yet unbroken manhood, looking off at the earliest dawn, and in evening's latest twilight, towards that distant world that had only just eluded his grasp. His heart became corroded.' Death came, not unlooked for; though it came even then unwelcome. He was stretched on his bed within the fort which constituted his prison. A few fast and faithful friends stood around, with the guards who rejoiced that the hour of relief from long and wearisome watching was at hand.

7. As his strength wasted away, delirium stirred up the

* PYR'Ẹ-NĒĒŞ. A range of mountains between France and Spain.

↑ ZUY'DER ZEE. A large body of water in Holland.

↑ JŪRA.

A range of mountains between France and Switzerland.