that despiseth his neighbor sinneth; but he that hath mercy on the poor, happy is he. He that oppresseth the poor reproacheth his Maker."

RUSSELL.

CLXXXII.

PASSAGES FROM SHAKSPEARE.

1. MERCY.

PORTIA TO SHYLOCK.

THE quality of Mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed;
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes.
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings:
But Mercy is above this sceptred sway;

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;

It is an attribute to God himself:

And earthly power doth then show likest God's,
When Mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That in the course of justice none of us

Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.

2. A GOOD CONSCIENCE.

What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted?
Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just;
And he but naked, though locked up in steel,
Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.

3. A MOTHER'S BLESSING.

Be thou blest, Bertram! and succeed thy father
In manners, as in shape! thy blood, and virtue,
Contend for empire in thee! and thy goodness
Share with thy birthright! Love all, trust a few,
Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy
Rather in power than use, and keep thy friend
Under thy own life's key: be checked for silence,
But never taxed for speech. What heaven more will
That thee may furnish, and my prayers pluck down,
Fall on thy head! Farewell!

4. EXHORTATION TO COURAGE

But wherefore do you droop? Why look you sad?
Be great in act, as you have been in thought;
Let not the world see fear and sad distrust
Govern the motion of a kingly eye;

Be stirring as the time; be fire with fire;
Threaten the threatener, and outface the brow
Of bragging horror; so shall inferior eyes,
That borrow their behaviors from the great,
Grow great by your example; and put on
The dauntless spirit of resolution;
Show boldness and aspiring confidence.
What shall they seek the lion in his den,

And fright him there, and make him tremble there?-
O, let it not be said! Forage, and run
To meet displeasure further from the doors,
And grapple with him ere he comes so nigh!

5. GRIEF NOT TO BE JUDGED BY EXTERNALS
Seems, madam! nay, it is; I know not seems.
"T is not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, modes, shows of grief,
That can denote me truly. These, indeed, seem,
For they are actions that a man might play;
But I have that within which passeth show,
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

6. THE MIND MAKES THE BODY RICH.
Well, come, my Kate, we will unto your father's
Even in these honest mean habiliments;
Our purses shall be proud, our garments poor;
For, 't is the mind that makes the body rich;
And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds,
So honor peereth in the meanest habit.
What is the jay more precious than the lark,
Because his feathers are more beautiful?
Or is the adder better than the eel,
Because his painted skin contents the eye?
O, no, good Kate; neither art thou the worse

For this poor furniture, and mean array.

7. VALUE OF REPUTATION.

Good name in man, and woman, dear150 my lord,

Is the immediate jewel of their souls;

Who steals my purse, steals trash; 't is something, nothing:

"T was mine, 't is his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name

Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.

8. SUSPICION.

Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights:
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much : such men are dangerous.
'Would he were fatter! But I fear him not;
Yet if my name were liable to fear,

I do not know the man I should avoid

So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much;
He is a great observer, and he looks

Quite through the deeds of men: he loves no plays,
As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music;
Seldom he smiles; and smiles in such a sort,

As if he mocked himself, and scorned his spirit,
That could be moved to smile at anything.
Such men as he be never at heart's ease
While they behold a greater than themselves,
And therefore are they very dangerous.
I rather tell thee what is to be feared,
Than what I fear; for always I am Cæsar.
Come on my right hand, - for this ear is deaf, -
And tell me truly what thou think'st of him.

9. THE CHARACTER OF BRUTUS.

This was the noblest Roman of them all :
All the conspirators, save only he,
Did that they did in envy of great Cæsar;
He only, in a general honest thought,
And common good to all, made one of them.

His life was gentle; and the elements

So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up,
And say to all the world, This was a man!

1. NAPOLEON's reign was nothing but a campaign; his em pire, a field of battle as extensive as all Europe. He concen' trated the rights of people and of kings in his sword; all morality in the number and strength of his armies. Nothing which threatened him was innocent; nothing which placed an obstacle in his way was sacred; nothing which preceded him in date was

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worthy of respect. From himself alone he wished Europe to date its epoch. He swept away the republic with the tread of his soldiers. He trampled on the throne of the Bourbons in exile. Like a murderer, in the darkness of the night, he seized upon the bravest and most confiding of the military princes of this race, the Duke d'Enghien, in a foreign country. He slew him in the ditch of Vincennes, by a singular presentiment of crime, which showed him, in this youth, the only armed competitor of the throne against him, or against his race. He conquered Italy, which had been again lost, Germany, Prussia, Holland (reconquered after Pichegru), Spain, Naples, - kingdoms and republics. He threatened England, and caressed Russia, in order to lull her to sleep. He carved out the continent, made a new distribution of nations, and raised up thrones for all his family. He expended ten generations of France to establish a royal or imperial dynasty for each of the sons or daughters of his mother.

2. His fame, which grew incessantly in noise and splendor, imparted to France and to Europe that ver'tigo of glory which hides the immorality and the abyss of such a reign. He created the attraction, and was followed even to the delirium, of the Russian campaign. He floated in a whirlwind of events so vast and so rapid, that even three years of errors did not occasion his fall. Glory, which had elevated him, sustained him over the vacuity of all the other principles which he had despised. Spain devoured his armies; Russia served as a sepulchre to seven hundred thousand men; Dresden and Leipsic swallowed up the rest. Germany, exasperated, deserted his cause. The whole of Europe hemmed him in, and pursued him from the Rhine to the Pyrenees, with a mighty tide of people. France, exhausted and disaffected, saw him combat and sink without raising an arm in his cause.

3. Yet, when he had nothing against the whole world but a handful of soldiers, he did not fall. Everything was annihilated around his throne, but his glory remained soaring above his head. He at length capitulated, or, rather, France capitulated without him, and he travelled alone, across his conquered country and his ravaged provinces, the route to his first exile, his only cortège the resentments and the murmurs of his country. What remains behind him of his long reign? for this is the criterion by which God and man judge the political genius of founders. All truth is fruitful; all falsehood barren. In policy, whatever does not create has no existence. Life is judged by what sur vives it.

4. He left freedom chained, equality compromised by posthu mous institutions, feudalism" parodied, without power to exist.

human conscience resold, philosophy proscribed, prejudices encouraged, the human mind diminished, instruction materialized and concentrated in the pure sciences alone, schools converted into barracks, literature degraded by censorship or humbled by baseness, national representation perverted, election abolished, the arts enslaved, commerce destroyed, credit annihilated, navigation suppressed, international hatred revived, the people op pressed, or enrolled in the army, paying, in blood or taxes, the ambition of an unequalled soldier, but covering with the great name of France the contradictions of the age, the miseries and degradations of the country.

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a man, instead

5. This is the founder! This is the man! of a revolution !- a man, instead of an epoch!· a man, instead of a country!—a man, instead of a nation! Nothing after him! nothing around him but his shadow, making sterile the eighteenth century, absorbed and concen'trated in himself alone. Personal glory will be always spoken of as characterizing the age of Napoleon; but it will never merit the praise bestowed upon that of Augustus, of Charlemagne, and of Louis the Fourteenth." There is no age; there is only a name; and this name signifies nothing to humanity, but himself. False in institutions, for he retrograded; false in policy, for he debased; false in morals, for he corrupted; false in civilization, for he oppressed, — he was only true in war; for he shed torrents of human blood. But what can we, then, allow him? His individual genius was great, but it was the genius of materialism. His intelligence was vast and clear; but it was the intelligence of calculation. He counted, he weighed, he measured; but he felt not, he loved not, he sympathized with none; he was a statue rather than a man.

6. His metallic nature was felt even in his style. Much superior to Cæsar in the account of his campaigns, his style is not the written expression alone, it is the action. Every sentence in his pages is, so to speak, the counterpart and counter-impression of the fact. There is neither a letter, a sound, nor a color, wasted between the fact and the word, and the word is himself. His phrases, concise, but struck off without ornament, recall those times when Bajazet and Charlemagne, not knowing how to write their names at the bottom of their imperial acts, dipped their hands in ink or blood, and applied them with all their joints impressed upon the parchment. It was not the signature; it was the hand itself of the hero, thus fixed eternally before the eyes; and such were the pages of his campaigns, dictated by Napoleon, - the very soul of movement, of action, and of combat.

7. This fame, which constituted his morality, his conscience, and his principle, he merited, by his nature and his talents, from