1. "Happy are fight their battles. LESSON LIX. APOSTROPHE. thy people, O Fingal; thine arm shall Thou art the first in their dangers, the wisest in the days of their peace: thou speakest, and thy thousands obey; and armies tremble at the sound of thy steel, Happy are thy people, O Fingal." 2. "O times! O customs! The senate understands these things, the consul sees them: yet this man lives. Lives! But truly he enters the senate; he is made partaker of the public deliberations, he designates and points out each one of us for destruction." 3. "O ye judges! It was not by human counsel, nor by any thing less than the immediate care of the immortal gods, that this event has taken place. The very divinities themselves, who beheld that monster fall, seemed to be moved, and to have inflicted their vengeance upon him. I appeal to, and call to witness, you, O ye hills and groves of Alba! You, the demolished Alban altars! ever accounted holy by the Romans, and coeval with your religion, but which Clodius in his mad fury, having first cut down and leveled the most sacred groves, had sunk under heaps of common buildings; I appeal to you, I call you to witness, whether your altars, your divinities, your powers, which he had polluted with all kinds of wickedness, did not avenge themselves, when this wretch was extirpated? And thou, O holy Jupiter, from the height of thy sacred mount, whose lakes, groves, and boundaries he had so often contaminated with his detestable impurities ;--and you, the other deities, whom he had insulted, at length opened your eyes to punish this enormous offender. By you, by you, and in your sight, was the slow, but righteous, and merited vengeance executed upon him." 4. "Ye stars, bright legions, that before all time, Camped on yon plain of sapphire, what shall tell Your burning myriads, but the eye of Him Who bade through heaven your golden chariots wheel? Yet who earth-born can see your hosts, nor feel What wonder if the o'erwrought soul shall reel With its own weight of thought, and the wild eye The gaze of Adam fixed from paradise; Above the mountain surge, and hailed its rise, 5. "From the bright stars, or from the viewless air, Answer me, answer me! "Have we not communed here of life and death? Have we not said that love, such love as ours, Was not to perish as a rose's breath, To melt away like song from festal bowers? "Thine eye's last light was mine-the soul that shone "Thy voice-its low, soft, fervent, farewell tone "In the still noontide, in the sunset's hush, Fearfully beautiful, to strive with sleep- "By the remembrance of our blended prayer; By all our tears, whose mingling made them sweet; Speak! if our souls in deathless yearnings meet; "The grave is silent :--and the far-off sky, What voice has earth ?--Hear, pity, speak, mine own! 6. "I cannot but imagine the virtuous heroes, legislators, and patriots of every age and country are bending from their elevated seats to witness this contest, as if they were incapable, till it be brought to a favorable issue, of enjoying their eternal repose. Enjoy that repose, illustrious mortals! Your mantle fell when you ascended; and thousands, inflamed with your spirit, and impatient to tread in your steps, are ready to swear by Him that sitteth upon the throne, and liveth forever and ever, they will protect freedom in her last asylum, and never desert that cause which you sustained by your labors and cemented with your blood. And thou, sole ruler among the children of men, to whom the shields of the earth belong, gird on thy sword, thou most Mighty: go forth with our hosts in the day of battle! Impart, in addition to their hereditary valor, that confidence of success which springs from thy presence! Pour into their hearts the spirit of departed heroes! Inspire them with thine own; and while led by thy hand, and fighting under thy banners, open thou their eyes to behold in every valley, and in every plain, what the prophet beheld by the same illumination-chariots of fire, and horses of fire! Then shall the strong man be as tow, and the maker of it as a spark; and they shall both burn together, and none shall quench them." LESSON LX. CLIMAX. 1. "The cloud capt towers, the gorgeous palaces, 2. "Can you raise the dead? Pursue and overtake the wings of time? 3. "What language can equal the valor of Pompey? What can be said, either worthy of him, new to you, or which every one has not heard? For those are not only the virtues of a general which are commonly thought so. It is not courage alone which forms a great leader, but industry in business, intrepidity in dangers, vigor in acting, prudence in concerting, promptness in executing. All which qualities appear with greater lustre in him than in all the other generals we ever saw or heard of." 4. "There is no enjoyment of property without a magis. trate, no magistrate without obedience, and no obedience where every one acts as he pleases." 5. "Let me entreat the unhappy men who are the especial objects of legal restraint, to cease from their evil ways, and, by voluntary reformation, supersede the necessity of coercion and punishment. Why will you die? What fearful thing is there in heaven, which makes you flee from that world? What fascinating object in hell, that excites such frenzied exertion to burst every band, and overleap every mound, and force your way downward to the chambers of death? Stop, I beseech you, and repent, and Jesus Christ shall blot out your sins, and remember your transgressions no more. Stop, and the host who follow your steps shall turn, and take hold on the path of life. Stop, and the wide waste of sin shall cease, and the song of angels shall be heard again: 'Glory to God in the highest; on earth peace, good will to men.' Stop, and instead of wailing with the lost, you shall join the multitudes which no man can number, in the ascription of blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, to him that sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb, forever and ever." LESSON LXI. VISION. 1. "I seem to myself to behold this city, the ornament of the earth, and the capital of all nations, suddenly involved in one conflagration. I see before me the slaughtered heaps of citizens, lying unburied in the midst of their ruined country. The furious countenance of Lethegus rises to my view, while, with savage joy, he is triumphing in your misery." 2. "Methought I heard a voice say, sleep no more! Macbeth doth murder sleep." 3. "Methinks I see it now, that one solitary, adventurous vessel, the Mayflower of a forlorn hope, freighted with the prospects of a future state, and bound across the unknown sea. I behold it pursuing, with a thousand misgivings, the uncertain, the tedious voyage. Suns rise and set, and weeks and months pass, and winter surprises them on the deep, but brings them not the sight of the wished-for shore. I see them now, scantily supplied with provisions, crowded almost to suffocation in their ill-stored prison, delayed by calms, pursuing a circuitous route; and now driven in fury before the raging tempest, on the high and giddy waves. The awful voice of the storm howls through the rigging. The laboring masts seem straining from their base;-the dismal sound of the pumps is heard; the ship leaps, as it were, madly, from billow to billow; the ocean breaks, and settles with engulfing floods over the floating deck, and beats with deadening weight against the staggered vessel. I see them, escaped from these perils, pursuing their all but desperate undertaking, and landed at last, after a five months' passage, on the ice-clad rocks of Plymouth, |