what is she? The Eternal City yet remains, proud even in her desolation, noble in her decline, venerable in the majesty of religion, and calm as in the composure of death. 4. The malaria has but travelled in the parts won by the destroyers. More than eighteen centuries have mourned over the loss of the empire. A mortal disease was upon her before Cesar had crossed the Rubicon; and Brutus did not restore her health by the deep probings of the senate-chamber. The Goths, and Vandals, and Huns, the swarms of the North, completed only what was begun at home. Romans betrayed The legions were bought and sold, but the people offered the tribute-money. Rome. 5. And where are the republics of modern times, which cluster around immortal Italy? Venice and Genoa exis. but in name. The Alps, indeed, look down upon the brave and peaceful Swiss, in their native fastnesses; but the guarantee of their freedom is in their weakness, and not in their strength. The mountains are not easily crossed, and the valleys are not easily retained. 6. When the invader comes, he moves like an avalanche, carrying destruction in his path. The peasantry sink before him. The country, too, is too poor for plunder, and too rough for a valuable conquest. Nature presents her eternal barrier on every side, to check the wantonness of ambition. And Switzerland remains with her simple institutions, a military road to climates scarcely worth a permanent possession, and protected by the jealousy of her neighbors. 7. We stand the latest, and if we fall, probably the last experiment of self-government by the people. We have be gun it under circumstances of the most auspicious nature. We are in the vigor of youth. Our growth has never been checked by the oppression of tyranny. Our Constitutions never have been enfeebled by the vice or the luxuries of the world. Such as we are, we have been from the beginning : simple, hardy, intelligent, accustomed to self-government and self-respect. 8. The Atlantic rolls between us and a formidable foe. Within our own territory, stretching through many degrees of latitude, we have the choice of many products, and many means of independence. The government is mild. The press is free. Religion is free. Knowledge reaches, or may reach, every home. What fairer prospects of success could be presented? What means more adequate to accomplish the sub lime end? What more is necessary than for the people to preserve what they themselves have created? 9. Already has the age caught the spirit of our institutions. It has already ascended the Andes, and snuffed the breezes of both oceans. It has infused itself into the life-blood of Europe, and warmed the sunny plains of France and the lowlands of Holland. It has touched the philosophy of Germany and the North, and, moving onward to the South, has opened to Greece the lesson of her better days. 10. Can it be that America, under such circumstances, should betray herself? That she is to be added to the catalogue of republics, the inscription upon whose ruin is, "They were, but they are not !" Forbid it, my countrymen forbid it, Heaven! I call upon you, fathers, by the shades of your ancestors, by the dear ashes which repose in this precious soil, by all you are, and all you hope to be, resist every project of disunion; resist every attempt to fetter your consciences, or smother your public schools, or extinguish your system of public instruction. 11. I call upon you, mothers, by that which never fails in woman, the love of your offspring, to teach them, as they climb your knees, or lean on your bosoms, the blessings of liberty. Swear them at the altar, as with their baptismal vows, to be true to their country, and never forsake her. I call upon you, young men, to remember whose sons you are— whose inheritance you possess. Life can never be too short, which brings nothing but disgrace and oppression. Death never comes too soon, if necessary, in defence of the liberties of our country, JUDGE STORY. 58. DON'T FORGET. LD LETTERS! Don't you love, sometimes, to look over OLD old letters? Some of them are dim with years, and some are dim with tears. Here is one now, the burden of which is, "Don't forget ;" the device on the seal is "Don't forget;" and the writer thereof went, winters ago, to "the narrow beds of peace." But surely she needn't have written it, for we can't forget if we would. 2. "Don't forget!" They are common words; we hear them, perhaps use them every day; and yet how needless, we may almost say, how meaningless they are! What is it we forget? That which was forgotten and set down in the tablets of memory long ago; set down, we may not remember where, we may not remember when, but it is there still. Remove with the palm of Time the inscriptions upon marble-eat out with its "corroding tooth" the lettering upon brass, but that thing forgotten remains unobliterated. 3. Some breath may whirl back the leaves of memory to its page-in some hour an epitome of its contents may be unrolled before us. Every thought consigned to memory is immortal; its existence runs parallel with the mind that conceives and the heart that cradled it. "Don't forget!" We cannot forget. Earth is full of strains Lethean of man's invention, but the past is with him still. 4. New days, new hopes, new loves arise; but "pleasant, yet mournful to the soul is the memory of joys that are past.” Our eyes are dazzled with the clear of the present, but dimmed with the clouds of the past. Ride as we will on the swiftest billow of to-morrow, we are never out of sight of yesterday. There it stands still, with a tearful, gentle light, like some pale Pleiad through the rack of the storm. 5. Don't forget!" Ah! the science that could teach men to forget would be more welcome than all the trickery of . Mnemonics. When the heart beats sadder, and the tide of life runs slower, how the Yesterdays come drifting down to waiting Age-waiting for Him who enters hall and hovel, unbidden and unstayed. 6 "Don't forget!" Alas! who does not remember? Even Ocean itself, busy as it is in laving from its shores all records of the past, is the great memory of the natural world. Clarence's dream was no fiction, and its treasures glitter, and whiten, and sway åmid the groves of red coral. But even the Sea is not oblivious, for "the sea shall give up its dead." B. F. TAYLOR. 59. THE PENITENT'S PRAYER. ["There has seldom been any thing written more exquisitely tender or containing more of the true poetry of nature and religion than the simple nrayer of Margaret by the great poet of Germany, Goëthe."-Dublin Review.] OTHER benign, MOTHE Look down on me! No grief like thine; Thou who dost see, In his death-agony, In faith unto the Father Dost thou lift up thine eyes: In faith unto the Father Dost pray with many sighs. The sword is piercing thine own soul, and thou in pain dost pray That the pangs which torture Him, and are thy pangs, may pass away. And who my wound can heal, And who the pain can feel, That rends asunder brain and bone? How my poor heart, within me aching, Where can I go? where can I go? Nothing that does not my own grief betoken ! And, when I am alone, I moan, and moan, and moan, And am heart-broken! The flowers upon my window-sill, Wet with my tears since dawn they be; Into my chamber brightly Came the early sun's good-morrow! On my mother's bed, unsightly, I sate up in my sorrow. Oh, in this hour of death, and the near grave, Look on me with that countenance benign. Never was grief like thine Look down, look down on mine! GOETHE. 60. THE CHURCH-BELL. F all musical instruments, it is by far the grandest, solemn or deep, or shrill and clear; or, still better, with both combined in a choral peal, it is the only instrument whose music can travel on the winds, can heave in noble swells upon the breeze, and can out-bellow the storm. It alone speaks to heaven as to earth, and scatters abroad its |