網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

The evening came, yet there the people stood,
As if 'twere noon, and they the marble sea,
Sleeping without a wave. You could have heard

The beating of your pulses while he spoke.

2. SOLILOQUY OF VAN ARTEVELDE.-Henry Taylor. Say that I fall not in this enterprise,

Still must my life be full of hazardous turns,
And they that house 63 with me must ever live
In imminent peril of some evil fate.

Make fast the doors; heap wood upon the fire;
Draw in your stools, and pass the goblet round,
And be the prattling voice of children heard.
Now let us make good cheer

But what is this?

Do I not see, or do I dream I see,
A form that midmost in the circle sits
Half visible, his face deformed with scars,
And foul with blood?
- I know it
Sits Danger with his feet upon the hearth! 82

O! yes,

[blocks in formation]

The dweller in the mountains, on whose ear
The accustomed cataract thunders unobserved,
The seaman, who sleeps sound upon the deck,
Nor hears the loud lamenting of the blast,
Nor heeds the weltering of the plangent wave,
These have not lived more undisturbed than I.
But build not upon this; the swollen stream
May shake the cottage of the mountaineer,
And drive him forth; the seaman, roused at length,
Leaps from his slumber on the wave-washed deck;
And now the time comes fast when here in Ghent
He who would live exempt from injuries
Of armed men must be himself in arms.
This time is near for all,- nearer for me.
I will not wait upon necessity,

And leave myself no choice of vantage-ground,
But rather meet the times where best I may,
And mould and fashion them as best I can.

3. INNOCENCE.

Whence learned she this? O, she was innocent!
And to be innocent is Nature's wisdom!

The fledge-dove knows the prowlers of the air,
Feared soon as seen, and flutters back to shelter.
And the young steed recoils upon his haunches,
The never yet seen adder's hiss first heard.32
O, surer than suspicion's hundred eyes
Is that fine sense which to the pure in heart
By mere oppug'nancy of their own goodness
Reveals the approach of evil.

DRAMATIC EXTRACTS.

4. TITUS BEFORE JERUSALEM. Rev. H. H. Milman.

It must be

[ocr errors]

And yet it moves me, Romans! it confounds

The counsel of my firm philosophy,

That Ruin's merciless ploughshare must pass o'er,

And barren salt EI be sown on yon proud city.

As on this olive-crowned hill we stand,
Where Hebron at our feet its scanty waters
Distils from stōne to stōne with gentle motion,
As through a valley sacred to sweet peace,
How boldly doth it front us! how majestically!
Like a luxurious vineyard, the hill-side
Is hung with marble fabrics, line-o'er line,
Terrace o'er terrace, nearer still and nearer

To the blue heavens! There bright and sumptuous palaces
With cool and verdant gardens interspersed;

There towers of war that frown in massy strength;

While over all hangs the rich purple eve,

As conscious of its being her last farewell

Of light and glory to that fated city.

And, as our clouds of battle, dust, and smoke,
Are melted into air, behold the Temple
In undisturbed and lone serenity,

Finding itself a solemn sanctuary

In the profound of heaven! It stands before us
A mount of snow, fretted with golden pinnacles!
The very sun, as though he worshipped there,
Lingers upon the gilded cedar roofs,
And down the long and branching porticos!
On every flowery-sculptured capital
Glitters the homage of his parting beams!
By Her cu-les! the sight might almost win
The offended majesty of Rome to mercy.

5. THE DUKE ARANZA TO JULIANA. John Tobin.

I'll have no glittering gewgaws stuck about you,
To stretch the gaping eyes of idiot wonder,
And make men stare upon a piece of earth
As on the star-wrought firmament; no feathers
To wave as streamers to your vanity;

Nor cumbrous silk, that, with its rustling sound,
Makes proud the flesh that bears it. She's adorned
Amply that in her husband's eye looks lovely-
The truest mirror that an honest wife

Can see her beauty in!

Thus modestly attired,
A half-blown rose stuck in thy braided hair,
With no more diamonds than those eyes are made of,

385

No deeper rubies than compose thy lips,
Nor pearls more precious than inhabit them, -
With the pure red and white, which that same hand
Which blends the rainbow mingles in thy cheeks,
This well-proportioned form (think not I flatter)
In graceful motion to harmonious sounds,
And thy free tresses dancing in the wind, -
Thou 'lt fix as much observance as chaste dames
Can meet without a blush.

[merged small][ocr errors]

1. WHO is the man that, in addition to the disgraces and mischiefs of our army, has dared to authorize and associate to our arms the tomahawk and scalping-knife of the savage?—to call into civilized alliance the wild and inhuman savage of the woods; to delegate to the merciless Indian the defence of disputed rights; and to wage the horrors of his barbarous war against our brethren? My Lords, these enormities cry aloud for redress and punishment; but, atrocious as they are, they have found a defender in this House. "It is perfectly justifiable," says a noble Lord, to use all the means that God and Nature put into our hands." I am astonished, shocked, to hear such principles confessed, - to hear them avowed in this House, or even in this country; principles equally unconstitutional, inhuman, and unchristian!

66

[ocr errors]

2. My Lords, I did not intend to have trespassed again upon your attention; but I cannot repress my indignation - I feel myself impelled by every duty to proclaim it. As members of this House, as men, as Christians, we are called upon to protest' against the barbarous proposition. "That God and Nature put into our hands!" -What ideas that noble Lord may entertain of God and Nature, I know not; but I know that such abominable principles are equally abhorrent to religion and to humanity. What! attribute the sacred sanction of God and Nature to the massacres of the Indian scalping-knife, -to the cannibal savage, torturing, murdering, devouring, drinking the blood of his mangled victims! Such horrible notions shock every precept of religion, revealed or natural; every sentiment of honor, every generous feeling of humanity!

-

3. These abominable principles, and this more abominable avowal of them, demand most decisive indignation! I call upon that Right Reverend Bench, those holy ministers of the Gospel, and pious pastors of our Church; I con-jure' them to join in

CHATHAM ON THE AMERICAN WAR.

387

the holy work, and to vindicate the religion of their God! I appeal to the wisdom and the law of this learned Bench, to defend and support the justice of their country! I call upon the Bishops to interpose the unsullied sanctity of their lawn, upon the judges to interpose the purity of their ermine, to save us from this pollution! I call upon the honor of your Lordships, to reverence the dignity of your ancestors, and to maintain your own! I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country, to vindicate the national character! I invoke the genius of the Constitution! From the tapestry that adorns these walls, the immortal ancestor of the noble Lord frowns with indignation at the disgrace of his country!

4. Turn forth into our settlements, among our ancient connections, friends and relations, the merciless cannibal, thirsting for the blood of man, woman, and child? Send forth the infidel

savage? Against whom? Against your brethren! To lay waste their country, to desolate their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name, with these horrible hounds of savage war! Spain armed herself with blood-hounds to extir'pate the wretched natives of America; and we improve on the inhuman example of even Spanish cruelty; -we turn loose these savages, these fiendish hounds, against our brethren and countrymen in America, of the same language, laws, liberties, and religion, endeared to us by every tie that should sanctify humanity!

5. My Lords, this awful subject, so important to our honor, our Constitution, and our religion, demands the most solemn and effectual inquiry. And I again call upon your Lordships, and the united powers of the State, to examine it thoroughly and decisively, and to stamp upon it an indelible stigma of the public abhorrence. And I again implore those holy prelates of our religion to do away those iniquities from among us. Let them perform a lustration; let them purify this House and this country from this sin. My Lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more; but my feelings and my indignation were too strong to have said less. I could not have slept this night in my bed, or have reposed my head on my pillow, without giving this vent to my eternal abhorrence of such preposterous and enormous principles.

It

6. This, my Lords, is a perilous and tremendous moment. is no time for adulation. The smoothness of flattery cannot save us, in this rugged and awful crisis. It is now necessary to inWe must, if pos

struct the Throne, in the language of TRUTH. sible, dispel the delusion and darkness which envelop it; and display, in its full danger and genuine colors, the ruin which is

brought to our doors. Can Ministers still presume to expect support in their infatuation? Can Parliament be so dead to its dignity and duty as to be thus deluded into the loss of the one and the violation of the other; as to give an unlimited support to measures which have heaped disgrace and misfortune upon us; measures which have reduced this late flourishing empire to ruin and contempt? But yesterday, and England might have stood against the world: now, none so poor to do her reverence!

7. France, my Lords, has insulted you. She has encouraged and sustained America; and, whether America be wrong or right, the dignity of this country ought to spurn at the officious insult of French interference. Can even our Ministers sustain a more humiliating disgrace? Do they dare to resent it? Do they presume even to hint a vindication of their honor, and the dignity of the State, by requiring the dismissal of the plenipotentiaries of America? The People, whom they affected to call contemptible rebels, but whose growing power has at last obtained the name of enemies, — the People with whom they have engaged this country in war, and against whom they now command our implicit support in every measure of desperate hostility, — this People, despised as rebels, or acknowledged as enemies, are abetted against you, supplied with every military store, their interests consulted, and their Ambassadors entertained, by your invěterate enemy, and our Ministers dare not interpose with dignity or effect!

[ocr errors]

8. My Lords, this ruinous and ignominious situation, where we cannot act with success nor suffer with honor, calls upon us to remonstrate in the strongest and loudest language of truth, to rescue the ear of Majesty from the delusions which surround it. You cannot, I venture to say it, you CANNOT conquer America. What is your present situation there? We do not know the worst; but we know that in three campaigns we have done nothing and suffered much. You may swell every expense, and strain every effort, still more extravagantly; accumulate every assistance you can beg or borrow; traffic and barter with every little pitiful German Prince, that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign country: your efforts are forever vain and im'potent, -doubly so from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates to an incurable resentment the minds of your enemies, to overrun them with the sordid sons of rapine and of plunder, devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty! If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms!- never! never! never!

« 上一頁繼續 »