'Tis fixed; I disdain

Of my fate to complain;

Though the trial I prove is severe,

'Tis better to know

The full measure of woe

Than to live on the rack of despair.

Come, Pride, bring me back my soft hours of rest,
While I blush for the pangs I endure;

Oblivion, erase her false form from my breast,
And scorn and contempt be my cure.

I am a soldier, gentle lady,
And know a soldier's duty;

With heart and hand am always ready
To dry the cheek of weeping beauty.

Then set thy beating heart at rest,

And back recall that starting tear;
For, know, where valor warms the breast,
Soft Pity is an inmate there.

Honor is the poor man's dower,
Peace and sweet content his lot:
Wealth awaits the sons of Power,
Him the lowly russet cot.

Yet, humbly blest, the sons of Toil
From nature's bounty may inherit
As rich a heart, as high a spirit
As the proud owner of the soil.

The cry of battle charms no more,
Where slaughter swells the tepid flood,
And Vict'ry 'midst the cannon's roar
Marks his groaning path with blood.

Farewell to the heart-rousing drum,

And peace to the cannon's rude throat. Let the loud-clanging trumpet be dumb, And the fife cease its shrill piercing note.

For Love shall now with sweeter sounds
His Io Pæan breathe,

And on the laurel's blood-stained bough
Ingraft his myrtle wreath.

Hence with wrinkled care and sorrow!
Gloomy thought may cloud to-morrow;
Here to-night, with festive glee,
Mirth shall keep her jubilee.

Still to bless this happy meeting,
Kindred Love with Friendship vies-
Hearts with honest rapture beating,
Glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes.

III.

CITIES AS UNITS IN OUR POLITY.

Ir has been an accepted truth since the writings of De Tocqueville that the town organization is the unit of American political life. In the preceding number of this Review it was clearly set forth by Governor Seymour. There lies the germ of political wisdom and reform; but it is in the cities that the greatest difficulties are found. The periodical ebb and flow of the great tide of population, the varied interests, the unceasing friction, the banded masses of the unsympathetic foreign-born, with universal suffrage as the basis of power-all these present an organization very different from the simpler unity of a rural town. Yet the cities stand as the great head from which purposes, and the great heart from which pulsations, start for the whole country, and from them good government and reform must arise. Are they too unwieldy for human direction, too discordant to elect their best men, and too debased for universal suffrage? Must they drift without helm through tides. and rocks, by negations through imbecility and corruption? or is an intelligent, manly, and affirmative administration practicable?

Of all cities on this continent, New York presents this question with the widest relations and the greatest complications; and success here would be the most emphatic. Its local relations to the whole continent, its wealth, and its energy force it onward to a manifest destiny. It must go on, in spite of every ill fortune and of antagonistic legislation, to receive the growth which nature gives it. It must become the largest and the most elegant city of the continent, and it must do this on the basis of universal suffrage. Noblesse oblige. If it works this out well (and it must work it out well or ill), it will present a new unit and germ of political life to the honor of the whole country. It is in this aspect that its fortunes are worthy of especial study.

It has the best climate, the unmatched advantage of a central position on a north and south line of coast, the best harbor for ship

ping from the Eastern world, the best waterways to the West; and, as Horace Greeley said, every railroad in the country has one terminus in New York. Its environs surpass in beauty those of any other city in Christendom. Its career was one of uniform success and rapidity of growth until the last decade, when it began to be loaded down with adverse legislation, with a great debt and costly unfinished improvements. To rescue it from these evils and to guide it on a successful course it needs its best men and their wisest efforts, with an affirmative policy of strong measures into which it will never drift.

-owners.

The legislation of the country has greatly reduced its share of its own foreign commerce, and the interests of its ship-builders and The debt it bears for stolen money, for which it received no equivalent in profitable public works, rests on each piece of real estate with a weight as heavy as a permanent mortgage for twenty per cent. of its value, on which the owner must pay the interest and can not pay the principal. Its unfinished public works were planned without forethought and inadequately, and were constructed extravagantly and corruptly. Terminal facilities for the interchanges and transit of its merchandise have been almost wholly neglected. It has been built up on a plan devised in the colonial times and in the earlier years of the present century, with little study of its wants, so that its domestic economy is conducted with great and needless expense. It is as if a great hotel had been built up on a plan which occupied each floor wholly with lodging-rooms, and its need of halls, staircases, and offices was first discovered after it was inhabited, and they then had to be constructed with great waste and expense. Its taxation has been heavy, its public works and its growth have been stopped, its population has been drawn and driven away into the neighboring towns and cities, its business is not prosperous, and its population is not profitably employed.

There is a policy, comprised in a few affirmative measures, by which these evils can be remedied, greater economy induced, and a course of business prosperity again commenced. Many of these measures are within its own direct power. Not one of them would be beneficial to it alone, at the expense of any other community. The present era of resumption is auspicious. Its money will be the money of the world, by which the prices of all its commodities are fixed, and no longer irredeemable credits; the fluctuating price of gold will no longer be a factor in every transaction; and the attempt to make a second standard in silver will be as futile as it