5. WILLIAM TELL AMONG THE MOUNTAINS.-J. S. Knowles.

Ye crags and peaks, I'm with you once again!

I hold to you the hands you first beheld,

To show they still are free. Methinks I hear
A spirit ín your echoes answer me,

-

And bid your tenant welcome to his home
Again! O sacred forms, how proud you look!
How high you lift your heads into the sky!

How huge you are! how mighty, and how free!
Ye are the things that tower, that shine,-whose smile
Makes glad, whose frown is terrible, whose forms,
Robed or unrobed, do all the impress wear

Of awe divine. Ye guards of liberty,

With all my voice! I hold my hands to you.
To show they still are free. I rush to you
As though I could embrace you!

Scaling yonder peak,

I saw an eagle wheeling near its brow

O'er the abyss: his broad-expanded wings
Lay calm and motionless upon the air,
As if he floated there without their aid,
By the sole act of his unlorded will,
That buoyed him proudly up. Instinctively
I bent my bow; yet kept he rounding stili
His airy circle, as in the delight

Of measuring the ample range beneath

And round about; absorbed, he heeded not

The death that threatened him. I could not shoot-
'Twas liberty!-I turned my bow aside,

And let him soar away!

46. DANGEROUS LEGISLATION, 1849.-J. McDowell.

MR. CHAIRMAN: When I pass by the collective | parties in this case, and recall the partícular ones; when I see that my own state is as deeply implicated in the trouble and the danger of it as any other, and shares, to the full, with all of her southern | colleagues, in the most painful apprehensions of its issue; when I see this, I turn involuntárily, and with unaffected | deference of spírit, and ask,

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Whát, in this exigent moment to Virgínia, will Massachusetts dò?

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Will you, too, (I speak to her as present in her represéntatives)—

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will you, too, forgetting all the past, put forth a hand | to smite

her | ignominiously | upon the cheek? In your own early day of deepest extremity and distréss - the day of the Boston | Port Billwhen your beautiful | capital was threatened with extinction, and England was collecting her gigantic | power to sweep your liberties |

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awáy, Virgínia, caring for no | ódds and counting no | cóst, bravely, |

generously, instantly, | stepped forth for your deliverance. Addressing her through the justice | of your cause | and the agonies |

of your condition, | you asked for her heart. She gave it; with

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You called upon her for her blood; - she took her children from her

(p) But in all thís | she felt and knew that she was more than your political | ally-more than your political friend. She felt and knew that she was your near, natural born | relation-such in virtue

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of your common | descént, but such | far more still in virtue of the

higher attributes of a congenial and kindred nature. Do not be startled at the idea of common | qualities between the American

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Cavalier and the American Roundhead. A heroic and unconquerW to m BC

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able will, differently dirécted, is the pervasive and màster cement in

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the character of both. (f) Nourished by the same | spírit, sharing as twin-sisters in the struggle of the heritage of the same | revolútion, what is there in any demand of national | faith, or of constitu

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tional | duty, or of public | morals, | which should separate them now?

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(f) Give us but a pârt of that devotion which glowed in the heart

of the younger | Pîtt, and of our own elder | Adams, who, in the

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midst of their âgonies, forgot not the countries they had lived for,

but mingled with the spasms of their dying hour a last and implor

ing appeal to the parent of all | mercies, that he would remember,

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in eternal blessings, the land of their bìrth; give us their devotion

- give us that of the young enthusiast of Pâris, who, listening to m SLC Mirabeau in one of his surpassing vindications of human rights, and

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seeing him tall from his stand, dying, as a physician proclaimed, for

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the want of blood, (ƒƒ) rushed to the spot, and as he bent over the ex

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piring man, bàred his àrm for the lancet, and cried again and again,

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with impassioned voice: "Hère, take it oh! take it from mê! let

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mê die, so that Mirabeau and the liberties of my country may not BO wide

pèrish! Give us something only of such a love of country, and we f BO m S BO turn to h are safe, forever safe: the troubles which shadow over and oppress and to hs B C f

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us now will pass away like a summer cloud. The fatal element of

all our discord will be removed from among us. (f) Let gentlemen be adjured by the weal of this and coming ages, by our own and our children's good, by all that we love or that we look for in the progress and the glories of our land, to leave this entire subject, with every accountability it may impose, every remedy it may require, every accumulation of difficulty or degree of pressure it may reach to leave it all to the interest, to the wisdom, and to the conscience, of those upon whom the providence of God and the constitution of their country have cast it.)

(pp) It is said, sir, that at some dark hour of our revolutionary cóntest, when army after army had been lost; when, dispirited, béaten, wretched, the heart of the boldest and faithfulest died within them, and áll, for an instant, seemed cónquered, except the unconquerable soul of our father-chiéf,-(p) it is said that at that móment,

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rising above all the auguries around him, and buoyed up by the

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inspiration of his immortal wórk for all the trials it could bring, he

aroused anew the sunken spirit of his associates by this confident

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and daring declaration: (f) "Strip me (said he) of the dejected and

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suffering remnant of my army - take from me all that I have lèft — W tr R C

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leave me but a bànner, give me but the means to plant it upon the

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mountains of West Augusta, and I will yet draw around me the

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men who shall lift ùp their bleeding country from the dust, and set

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her frêe!” (ff) Give to mê, who am a son and representative here of

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the same | West | Augusta, give to me as a banner the propitious

measure I have endeavored to suppórt, help me to plant it upon this

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mountain-top of our national pówer, and the land | of Wáshington,

ùndivided and unbroken, will be ôur land, and the land of our chil

dren's children forever! (So help me to do this at this hour, and, generations hence, some future son of the South, standing where l stand, in the midst of our legitimate successors, will bless, and praise, and thank God that he, too, can say of them, as I of you, and of all around me- these, these are my brethren, and Oh! this, this, too, is my country!)

47. PUBLIC OPINION AND THE SWORD.-Thomas B. Macaulay.

I know only two ways in which societies can permanently be governed by Public Opinion, and by the Sword. A government having at its command the armies, the fleets, and the revenues of Great Britain, might possibly hold Ireland by the sword. So Oliver Cromwell held Ireland; so William the Third held it; so Mr. Pitt held it; so the Duke of Wellington might, perhaps, have held it. But, to govern Great Britain by the sword- so wild a thought has never, I will venture to say, occurred to any public man of any party; and, if any man were frantic enough to make the attempt, he would find, before three days had expired, that there is no better sword than that which is fashioned out of a ploughshare! But, if not by the sword, how is the people to be governed? I understand how the peace is kept at

New York. It is by the assent and support of the people. I understand, also, how the peace is kept at Milan. It is by the bayonets of the Austrian soldiers. But how the peace is to be kept when you have neither the popular assent nor the military force, how the peace is to be kept in England by a government acting on the principles of the present Opposition, I do not understand.

Sir, we read that, in old times, when the villeins were driven to revolt by oppression,-when the castles of the nobility were burned to the ground,-when the warehouses of London were pillaged, -- when a hundred thousand insurgents appeared in arms on Blackheath, — when a foul murder, perpetrated in their presence, had raised their passions to madness, when they were looking round for some Captain to succeed and avenge him whom they had lost,—just then, before Hob Miller, or Tom Carter, or Jack Straw, could place himself at their head, the King rode up to them, and exclaimed, "I will be your leader!"— And, at once, the infuriated multitude laid down their arms, submitted to his guidance, dispersed at his command. Herein let us imitate him. Let us say to the people, "We are your leaders, - we, your own House of Commons.” This tone it is our interest and our duty to take. The circumstances admit of no delay. Even while I speak, the moments are passing away, the irrevocable moments, pregnant with the destiny of a great people. The country is in danger; it may be saved: we can save it. This is the way—this is the time. In our hands are the issues of great good and great evil the issues of the life and death of the State!

48. A REMINISCENCE OF LEXINGTON.-Theodore Parker.

One raw morning in spring-it will be eighty years the 19th day of this month - Hancock and Adams, the Moses and Aaron of that Great Deliverance, were both at Lexington; they also had "obstructed an officer" with brave words. British