residence of one of the officers of Parliament, and was so far restored as to be able to bear a journey to Hayes. At Hayes, after lingering a few weeks, he expired in his seventieth year. His bed was watched to the last, with anxious tenderness, by his wife and children; and he well deserved their care. Too often haughty and wayward to others, to them he had been almost effeminately kind. He had through life been dreaded by his political opponents, and regarded with more awe than love even by his political associates. But no fear seems to have mingled with the affection which his fondness, constantly overflowing in a thousand endearing forms, had inspired in the little circle at Hayes. 5. Chatham, at the time of his decease, had not, in both Houses of Parliament, ten personal adherents. Half the public men of the age had been estranged from him by his errors, and the other half by the exertions which he had made to repair his errors. His last speech had been an attack at once on the policy pursued by the government, and on the policy recommended by the opposition. But death at once restored him to his old place in the affection of his country. Who could hear unmoved of the fall of that which had been so great, and which had stood so long? The circumstances, too, seemed rather to belong to the tragic stage than to real life. A great statesman, full of years and honors, led forth to the senate-house by a son of rare hopes, and stricken down in full council while straining his feeble voice to rouse the drooping spirit of his country, could not but be remembered with peculiar veneration and tenderness. 6. Detraction was overawed. The voice even of just and temperate censure was mute. Nothing was remembered but the lofty genius, the unsullied probity, the undisputed services, of him who was no more. For once, all parties were agreed. A public funeral, a public monument, were eagerly voted. The debts of the deceased were paid. A provision was made for his family. The city of London requested that the remains of the great man whom she had so long loved and honored might rest under the dome of her magnificent. cathedral. But the petition came too late. Every thing was already prepared for the interment in Westminster Abbey. 7. Though men of all parties had concurred in decreeing posthumous honors to Chatham, his corpse was attended to the grave almost exclusively by opponents of the government. The banner of the lordship of Chatham was borne by Colonel Barré, attended by the Duke of Richmond and Lord Rockingham. Burke, Savile, and Dunning upheld the pall. Lord Camden was conspicuous in the procession. The chief mourner was young William Pitt. After the lapse of more than twenty-seven years, in a season as dark and perilous, his own shattered frame and broken heart were laid, with the same pomp, in the same consecrated mold. 8. Chatham sleeps near the northern door of the church, in a spot which has ever since been appropriated to statesmen, as the other end of the same transept has long been to poets. Mansfield rests there, and the second William Pitt, and Fox, and Grattan, and Canning, and Wilberforce. In no other cemetery do so many great citizens lie within so narrow a space. High over those venerable graves towers the stately monument of Chatham, and from above, his own effigy, graven by a cunning hand, seems still, with eagle face and outstretched arm, to bid England be of good cheer, and to hurl defiance at her foes. The generation which reared that memorial of him has disappeared. The time has come when the rash and indiscriminate judgments which his contemporaries passed on his character may be calmly revised by history. And history, while-for the warning of vehement, high, and daring natures—she notes his many errors, will yet deliberately pronounce, that, among the eminent men whose bones lie near his, scarcely one has left a more stainless, and none a more splendid, name. LXXVI.—PAUL REVERE'S RIDE. H. W. LONGFELLOW. 1. Listen, my children, and you shall hear Who remembers that famous day and year. 2. He said to his friend,-" If the British march Through every Middlesex village and farm, 3. Then he said Good night, and with muffled oar A phantom ship, with each mast and spar And a huge, black hulk, that was magnified 4. Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street 5. Then he climbed to the tower of the church, And startled the pigeons from their perch 6. Beneath, in the church-yard, lay the dead Of the place and the hour, the secret dread 7. Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride, Now gazed on the landscape far and near, 8. And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height, 9. A hurry of hoofs in a village street, A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark, That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light, The fate of a nation was riding that night; And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight, 10. It was twelve by the village clock, When he crossed the bridge into Medford town. 11. It was one by the village-clock, And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare, As if they already stood aghast At the bloody work they would look upon. 12. It was two by the village clock, When he came to the bridge in Concord town. And the twitter of birds among the trees, 13. You know the rest. In the books you have read |