I submit to your judgment, Romans, on which side the advantage lies, when a comparison is made between patrician haughtiness and plebeian experience. The very actions, which they have only read, I have partly seen, and partly myself achieved. What they know by reading I know by action. They are pleased to slight my mean birth; I despise their mean characters. Want of birth and fortune is the objection against me; want of personal worth against them. But are not all men of the same species? What can make a difference between one man and another but the endowments of the mind? For my part, I shall always look upon the bravest man as the noblest man. Suppose it were inquired of the fathers of such patricians as Albinus and Bestia, whether, if they had their choice, they would desire sons of their character, or of mine, what would they answer, but that they should wish the worthiest to be their sons? If the patricians have reason to despise me, let them likewise despise their ancestors, whose nobility was the fruit of their virtue. Do they envy the honours bestowed upon me? Let them envy, likewise, my labours, my abstinence, and the dangers I have undergone for my country, by which I have acquired them. But those worthless men lead such a life of inactivity, as if they despised any honours you can bestow, whilst they aspire to honours as if they had deserved them by the most industrious virtue. They lay claim to the rewards of activity, for their having enjoyed the pleasures of luxury; yet none can be more lavish than they are in praise of their ancestors; and they imagine they honour themselves by celebrating their forefathers; whereas they do the very contrary, for, as much as their ancestors were distinguished for their virtues, so much are they disgraced by their vices. The glory of ancestors casts a light, indeed, upon their posterity; but it only serves to show what the descendants are. It alike exhibits to public view their degeneracy and their worth. I own I cannot boast of the deeds of my forefathers; but I hope I may answer the cavils of the patricians by standing up in defence of what I have myself done. Observe, now, my countrymen, the injustice of the patricians. They arrogate to themselves honours on account of the exploits done by their forefathers; whilst . they will not allow me the due praise for performing the very same sort of actions in my own person. He has no statues, they cry, of his family; he can trace no venerable line of ancestors. What, then? Is it matter of more praise to disgrace one's illustrious ancestors than to become illustrious by one's own good behaviour? What if I can show no statues of my family? I can show the standards, the armour, and the trappings, which I have myself taken from the vanquished. I can show the scars of those wounds which I have received by facing the enemies of my country. These are my statues. These are the honours I boast of. Not left me by inheritance, as theirs, but earned by toil, by abstinence, by valour; amidst clouds of dust, and seas of blood-scenes of action where those effeminate patricians, who endeavour by indirect means to depreciate me in your esteem, have never dared to show their faces. Sallust. EXCELSIOR. THE shades of night were falling fast, His brow was sad; his eye beneath, The accents of that unknown tongue- In happy homes he saw the light Of household fires gleam warm and bright; And from his lips escaped a groan— "Try not the Pass!" the old man said; "O stay," the maiden said, "and rest "Beware the pine tree's withered branch! This was the peasant's last good-night. At break of day, as heavenward A voice cried through the startled air- A traveller, by the faithful hound, There in the twilight, cold and gray, And from the sky, serene and far, THE CROOKED STICK. JULIA was lovely and winning; And Julia had lovers in plenty, They outnumber'd her years More than twice it appears— She killed fifty before she was twenty. Young Harry Had asked her to marry; Longfellow. And though she liked Hal, thought it better to wait, For though Harry was every way worthy" to get her, Hal, discarded by Venus, went over to Mars, Made wretched to him by the want of a wife ; By "Death and the Lady"-till Time's precious ointment Cured the wound Julia made, And the soldier's bold blade Soon won him a colonel's appointment; And then he went home, by hard service made sager, 66 For the sake of old times, Harry called on the lady, sun, On life's path is not pleasant, when summer's all done. Harry went on this mission, to rifle the riches To her who, "lang syne," had his burning heart broken. The wood was passed through, and no switch yet selected, And took out his watch ;-but ten minutes to spare! As to sharpen her knife for the very first stick ; But, for one good enough, it were best not o'erlook it, Lest, in seeking too straight ones, you get but the crooked. Samuel Lover. IVRY.* (By permission of Messrs. Longman, Green, & Co.) Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories are! And glory to our sovereign liege, King Henry of Navarre! Now let there be the merry sound of music and of dance Through thy corn-fields green, and sunny vines, oh pleasant land of France. And thou Rochelle, our own Rochelle, proud city of the waters, Again let rapture light the eyes of all thy mourning daughters. As thou wert constant in our ills, be joyous in our joy, For cold, and stiff, and still are they who wrought thy walls annoy. *The Battle of Ivry was won by Henry IV., King of France and Navarre, over the leaders of the League, in 1599, |