"And no great wonder,” Death replies;
"However, you still keep your eyes;
And surely, sir, to see one's friends,
For legs and arms would make amends."
"Perhaps," says Dodson, "so it might,
But latterly I've lost my sight."
"This is a shocking story, faith;

But there's some comfort still," says Death;
"Each strives your sadness to amuse;

I warrant you hear all the news."
"There's none," cries he, "and if there were,
I've grown so deaf, I could not hear."

8. "Nay, then," the specter stern rejoined,
"These are unpardonable *yearnings;
If you are lame, and deaf, and blind,

You've had your three sufficient warnings,
So, come along; no more we'll part:
He said, and touched him with his dart:
And now old Dodson, turning pale,
Yields to his fate-so ends my tale.

CI. THE MEMORY OF OUR FATHERS.

FROM DR. Beecher.

1. WE are called upon to cherish with high veneration and grateful recollections, the memory of our fathers. Both the ties of nature and the dictates of policy, demand this. And surely no nation had ever less occasion to be ashamed of its ancestry, or more occasion for gratulation in that respect; for while most nations trace their origin to *barbarians, the foundations of our nation were laid by civilized men, by Christians. Many of them were men of distinguished families, of powerful talents, of great learning and of pre-eminent wisdom, of decision of character, and of most inflexible integrity. And yet not unfrequently, they have been treated as if they had no virtues; while their sins and follies have been *sedulously immortalized in satirical anecdote.

2. The influence of such treatment of our fathers is too +manifest. It creates, and lets loose upon their institutions,

the vandal spirit of innovation and overthrow; for after the memory of our fathers shall have been rendered contemptible, who will appreciate and sustain their institutions? The memory of our fathers, should be the watch-word of liberty throughout the land; for, imperfect as they were, the world before had not seen their like, nor will it soon, we fear, behold their like again. Such models of moral excellence, such apostles of civil and religious liberty, such shades of the illustrious dead looking down upon their descendants with approbation or reproof, according as they follow or depart from the good way, constitute a censorship inferior only to the eye of God; and to ridicule them is national †suicide.

3. The doctrines of our fathers have been represented as gloomy, superstitious, severe, irrational, and of a licentious tendency. But when other systems shall have produced a piety as devoted, a morality as pure, a patriotism as disinterested, and a state of society as happy, as have prevailed where their doctrines have been most prevalent, it may be in season to seek an answer to this objection.

4. The persecutions instituted by our fathers, have been the occasion of ceaseless tobloquy upon their fair fame. And truly, it was a fault of no ordinary magnitude, that sometimes they did persecute. But let him whose ancestors were not ten times more guilty, cast the first stone, and the ashes of our fathers will no more be disturbed. Theirs was the fault of the age, and it will be easy to show, that no class of men had, at that time, approximated so nearly to just *apprehensions of religious liberty; and that it is to them that the world is now indebted, for the more just and definite views which now prevail.

5. The superstition and +bigotry of our fathers, are themes on which some of their descendants, themselves far enough from superstition, if not from bigotry, have delighted to dwell. But when we look abroad, and behold the condition of the world, compared with the condition of New England, we may justly exclaim, "Would to God that the ancestors of all the nations had been not only almost, but altogether such bigots as our fathers were."

CII.-LANDING OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS.

FROM MRS. HEMANS.

1. THE breaking waves dashed high

On a stern and rock-bound coast,
And the woods against a stormy sky,
Their giant branches tossed;

2. And the heavy night hung dark,
The hills and waters o'er,

When a band of texiles +moored their bark
On the wild New England shore.

3. Not as the conqueror comes,

They, the truc-hearted, came;
Not with the roll of the stirring drums,
And the trumpet that sings of fame;

4. Not as the flying come,

In silence, and in fear;

They shook the depths of the desert gloom

With their hymns of lofty cheer.

5. Amid the storm they sang,

And the stars heard, and the sea,

And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang To the anthem of the free.

6. The ocean eagle soared

From his nest by the white wave's foam; And the rocking pines of the forest roared; This was their welcome home.

7. There were men with hoary hair,
Amid that pilgrim band:

Why had they come to wither there,
Away from their childhood's land?

8. There was woman's fearless eye,
Lit by her deep love's truth;
There was manhood's brow, serenely high,
And the fiery heart of youth.

9. What sought they thus afar?
Bright jewels of the mine?

The wealth of seas, the spoils of war?
They sought a faith's pure shrine!

10. Ay, call it holy ground,

The soil where first they trod:

They have left unstained what there they found!
Freedom to worship God.

CIII.--THE FOURTEENTH CONGRESS.

FROM R. H. WILDE.

1. I had the honor to be a member of the fourteenth Congress. It was an honor then. What it is now, I shall not say. It is what the twenty-second Congress have been pleased to make it. I have neither time, nor strength, nor ability, to speak of the legislators of that day, as they deserve; nor is this a fit occasion. Yet the coldest or most

such associates, without

careless nature can not recur to some touch of generous feeling, which, in quicker spirits, would kindle into high and almost holy enthusiasm.

*

2. Pre-eminent among them was a gentleman of South Carolina, now no more, the purest, the calmest, the most philosophical of our country's modern statesmen: one, no less remarkable for gentleness of manners and kindness of heart, than for that passionless, unclouded intellect, which rendered him deserving of the praise, if ever man deserved it, of merely standing by, and letting reason argue for him: the true patriot, incapable of all selfish ambition, who shunned office and distinction, yet served his country faithfully, because he loved her: he, I mean, who consecrated, by his example, the noble precept, so entirely his own, that the first station in a republic was neither to be sought after nor declined; a sentiment so just and so happily expressed, that it continues to be repeated, because it can not be improved.

3. There was, also, a gentleman from Maryland, † whose ashes now slumber in your *cemetery. It is not long since I stood by his tomb, and recalled him, as he was then, in all the pride and power of his genius. Among the first of his countrymen and cotemporaries, as a jurist and statesman, first as an orator, he was, if not truly eloquent, the prince of

trhetoricians. Nor did the soundness of his logic suffer any thing, by a comparison with the richness and classical purity of the language, in which he copiously poured forth those figurative illustrations of his argument, which enforced while they adorned it. But let others pronounce his eulogy. I must not. I feel as if his mighty spirit still haunted the scenes of its triumphs, and when I dared to wrong them, indignantly rebuked me.

There were

4. These names have become thistorical. others, of whom it is more difficult to speak, because yet within the reach of praise or envy. For one who was, or aspired to be, a politician, it would be prudent, perhaps wise, to avoid all mention of these men. Their acts, their words, their thoughts, their very looks, have become subjects of party controversy. But he whose ambition is of a higher or lower order, has no such need of reserve. Talent is of no party exclusively; nor is justice.

5. Among them, but not of them, in the fearful and solitary sublimity of genius, stood a gentleman from Virginia-whom it were superfluous to designate; whose speeches were universally read; whose satire was universally feared. Upon whose accents, did this habitually listless and unlistening House, hang so frequently, with rapt attention? Whose fame was identified with that body for so long a period? Who was a more dexterous debater? a riper scholar? better versed in the politics of our own country? or deeper read in the history of others? Above all, who was more thoroughly timbued with the idiom of the English language? more completely master of its strength, and beauty, and delicacy? or more capable of breathing thoughts of flame, in words of magic and tones of silver?

6. There was, also, a son of South Carolina,† still in the service of the republic, then, undoubtedly, the most influential member of this house. With a genius eminently *metaphysical, he applied to politics his habits of analysis, *abstraction, and condensation, and thus gave to the *problems of government, something of that grandeur, which the higher mathematics have borrowed from astronomy.

The