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They knelt them on the desert sand,
By waters cold and rude,

Alone upon the dreary strand
Of oceaned solitude!

They looked upon the high blue air,

And felt their spirits glow,

Resolved to live or perish there,-
Two hundred years ago!

The warrior's red right arm was bared,
His eyes flashed deep and wild :

Was there a foreign footstep dared

To seek his home and child?

The dark chiefs yelled alarm, and swore
The white man's blood should flow,

And his hewn bones should bleach their shore,—-
Two hundred years ago!

But lo! the warrior's eye grew dim,

His arm was left alone,—

The still, black wilds which sheltered him,

No longer were his own!

Time fled, and on the hallowed ground

His highest pine lies low,

And cities swell where forests frowned,

Two hundred years ago!

Oh! stay not to recount the tale,—
'T was bloody, and 't is past;

The firmest cheek might well grow pale,

To hear it to the last.

The God of heaven, who prospers us,

Could bid a nation grow,

And shield us from the red man's curse,

Two hundred years ago!

Come then,--great shades of glorious men,
From your still glorious grave;

Look on your own proud land again,

O bravest of the brave!

We call you from each mouldering tomb,
And each blue wave below,

To bless the world ye snatched from doom,
Two hundred years ago!

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Then to your harps,-yet louder,-higher,
And pour your strains along,-

And smite again each quivering wire,
In all the pride of song!

Shout for those godlike men of old,
Who, daring storm and foe,

On this blest soil their anthem rolled,
Two hundred years ago!

LESSON CXI.-THE STAGE.-CHARLES Sprague.

Lo, where the Stage, the poor, degraded Stage,
Holds its warped mirror to a gaping age;
There, where, to raise the drama's moral tone,
Fool Harlequin usurps Apollo's throne;

5 There, where grown children gather round to praise
The new-vamped legends of their nursery days;
Where one loose scene shall turn more souls to shame,
Than ten of Channing's lectures can reclaim;
There, where in idiot rapture we adore

10 The herded vagabonds of every shore;

Women, unsexed, who, lost to woman's pride,
The drunkard's stagger ape, the bully's stride;
Pert, lisping girls, who, still in childhood's fetters,
Babble of love, yet barely know their letters;
15 Neat-jointed mummers, mocking nature's shape,
To prove how nearly man can match an ape;
Vaulters, who, rightly served at home, perchance
Had dangled from the rope on which they dance;
Dwarfs, mimics, jugglers, all that yield content,
20 Where Sin holds carnival, and Wit keeps lent;
Where, shoals on shoals, the modest million rush,
One sex to laugh, and one to try to blush,
When mincing Ravenot sports tight pantalettes,
And turns fops' heads while turning pirouettes;
25 There, at each ribald sally, where we hear
The knowing giggle and the scurrile jeer,
While from the intellectual gallery first
Rolls the base plaudit, loudest at the worst.

Gods! who can grace yon desecrated dome,
30 When he may turn his Shakspeare o'er at home?
Who there can group the pure ones of his race,
To see and hear what bids him veil his face?

Ask ye who can? why, I, and you, and you:
No matter what the nonsense, if 't is new.
To Dr. Logic's wit our sons give ear;

They have no time for Hamlet, or for Lear; 5 Our daughters turn from gentle Juliet's woe, To count the twirls of Almaviva's toe.

Not theirs the blame who furnish forth the treat,
But ours, who throng the board, and grossly eat.
We laud, indeed, the virtue-kindling Stage,
10 And prate of Shakspeare and his deathless page;
But go, announce his best, on Cooper call,
Cooper," the noblest Roman of them all;"

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Where are the crowds so wont to choke the door?
'Tis an old thing, they 've seen it all before.

Pray Heaven, if yet indeed the Stage must stand,
With guiltless mirth it may delight the land;
Far better else each scenic temple fall,

And one approving silence curtain all.

Despots to shame may yield their rising youth,
20 But Freedom dwells with purity and truth.
Then make the effort, ye who rule the Stage,-
With novel decency surprise the age;

Even Wit, so long forgot, may play its part,
And Nature yet have power to melt the heart;

25 Perchance the listeners, to their instinct true,

May fancy common sense, 't were surely Something New

LESSON CXII. THE BURIAL-PLACE AT LAUREL HILL.

W. G. CLARK.

Here the lamented dead in dust shall lie,

Life's lingering languors o'er, its labors done;
Where waving boughs, betwixt the earth and sky,
Admit the farewell radiance of the sun.

5 Here the long concourse from the murmuring town,
With funeral face and slow, shall enter in;

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To lay the loved in tranquil silence down,
No more to suffer, and no more to sin.

And in this hallowed spot, where Nature showers
Her summer smiles from fair and stainless skies,
Affection's hand may strew her dewy flowers,

Whose fragrant incense from the grave shall rise.

And here the impressive stone, engraved with words
Which grief sententious gives to marble pale,
Shall teach the heart; while waters, leaves, and birds,
Make cheerful music in the passing gale.

5 Say, wherefore should we weep, and wherefore pour
On scented airs the unavailing sigh,-

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While sun-bright waves are quivering to the shore,
And landscapes blooming,-that the loved must die?

There is an emblem in this peaceful scene:

Soon rainbow colors on the woods will fall;
And autumn gusts bereave the hills of green,
As sinks the year to meet its cloudy pall.

Then, cold and pale, in distant vistas round,

Disrobed and tuneless, all the woods will stand;
15 While the chained streams are silent as the ground,
As Death had numbed them with his icy hand.
Yet when the warm soft winds shall rise in spring,
Like struggling day-beams o'er a blasted heath,
The bird returned shall poise her golden wing,
And liberal Nature break the spell of Death.
So, when the tomb's dull silence finds an end,
The blessed dead to endless youth shall rise;
And hear th' archangel's thrilling summons blend
Its tone with anthems from the upper skies.
25 There shall the good of earth be found at last,

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Where dazzling streams and vernal fields expand,
Where Love her crown attains,-her trials past,--
And, filled with rapture, hails "the better land!”

LESSON CXIII.-THE GOOD WIFE.-GEORGE W. BURNAP.

"The good wife!" How much of this world's happiness and prosperity, is contained in the compass of these two short words! Her influence is immense. The power of a wife, for good, or for evil, is altogether irresistible. 5 Home must be the seat of happiness, or it must be forever unknown. A good wife is, to a man, wisdom, and courage, and strength, and hope, and endurance. A bad one is confusion, weakness, discomfiture, despair. No condition is hopeless, when the wife possesses firmness, decision, 10 energy, economy. There is no outward prosperity which

can counteract indolence, folly, and extravagance at home. No spirit can long resist bad domestic influences.

Man is strong; but his heart is not adamant. He de lights in enterprise and action; but, to sustain him, he 5 needs a tranquil mind, and a whole heart. He expends his whole moral force, in the conflicts of the world. His feelings are daily lacerated, to the utmost point of enduranae, by perpetual collision, irritation, and disappointment.. To recover his equanimity and composure, home must be 10 to him a place of repose, of peace, of cheerfulness, of comfort; and his soul renews its strength, and again goes forth, with fresh vigor, to encounter the labors and troubles of the world. But if at home he find no rest, and there is met by a bad temper, sullenness, or gloom; or is assailed 15 by discontent, complaint, and reproaches, the heart breaks, the spirits are crushed, hope vanishes, and the man sinks. into total despair.

Let woman know, then, that she ministers at the very fountain of life and happiness. It is her hand that lades 20 out, with overflowing cup, its soul-refreshing waters, or casts in the branch of bitterness, which makes them poison and death. Her ardent spirit breathes the breath of life into all enterprise. Her patience and constancy are mainly instrumental, in carrying forward, to completion, the best 25 human designs. Her more delicate moral sensibility is the unseen power which is ever at work to purify and refine society. And the nearest glimpse of heaven that mortals ever get on earth, is that domestic circle, which her hands have trained to intelligence, virtue and love, 30 which her gentle influence pervades, and of which her radiant presence is the centre and the sun.

LESSON CXIV. A GOOD DAUGHTER.-J. G. PALFREY.

A good daughter!-there are other ministries of love, more conspicuous than hers, but none, in which a gentler, lovelier spirit dwells, and none, to which the heart's warm requitals more joyfully respond.-There is no such thing, 5 as a comparative estimate of a parent's affection, for one or another child. There is little which he needs to covet, to whom the treasure of a good child has been given. But a son's occupations and pleasures carry him more abroad; and he lives more among temptations, which hardly per10 mit the affection that is following him perhaps over half

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