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Oh! rouse ye, ere the storm comes forthThe gather'd wrath of God and manLike that which wasted Egypt's earth,

When hail and fire above it ran. Hear ye no warnings in the air?

Feel ye no earthquake underneath? Up-up-why will ye slumber where The sleeper only wakes in death?

Up now for Freedom!-not in strife
Like that your sterner fathers saw-
The awful waste of human life-

The glory and the guilt of war:
But break the chain-the yoke remove,
And smite to earth Oppression's rod,
With those mild arms of Truth and Love,
Made mighty through the living God!

Down let the shrine of Moloch sink,
And leave no traces where it stood;

Nor longer let its idol drink

His daily cup of human blood: But rear another altar there,

To Truth and Love and Mercy given, And Freedom's gift, and Freedom's prayer, Shall call an answer down from Heaven!

THE CONTRAST.

BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

Thy love thou sentest oft to me,
And still, as oft, I thrust it back;
Thy messenger I could not see

In those who every thing did lack,
The poor, the outcast, and the black.

Pride held his hand before mine eyes,

The world with flattery stuffed mine ears; I looked to see a monarch's guise,

Nor dreamed thy love would knock for years, Poor, naked, fettered, full of tears.

Yet, when I sent my love to thee,

Thou with a smile didst take it in,

And entertained it royally

Though grimed with earth, with hunger thin, And leprous with the taint of sin.

Now, every day thy love I meet
As o'er the earth it wanders wide,

With weary step and bleeding feet,

Still knocking at the heart of pride,
And offering grace, though still denied.

THE ARSENAL AT SPRINGFIELD.

BY HENRY W. LONG FELLOW.

This is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling,
Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms;
But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing
Startles the villages with strange alarms.

Ah! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary,
When the death-angel touches those swift keys!
What loud lament and dismal Miserere

Will mingle with their awful symphonies!

I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus,
The cries of agony, the endless groan,
Which, through the ages that have gone before us,
In long reverberations reach our own.

On helm and harness rings the Saxon hammer,
Through Cimbric forest roars the Norseman's song,
And loud, amid the universal clamor,

O'er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong.

I hear the Florentine, who from his palace
Wheels out his battle-bell with dreadful din,
And Aztec priests upon their teocallis

Beat the wild war-drums made of serpent's skin;
The tumult of each sacked and burning village;
The shout that every prayer for mercy drowns;
The soldiers' revels in the midst of pillage;
The wail of famine in beleaguered towns;

The bursting shell, the gateway wrenched asunder,
The rattling musketry, the clashing blade;
And ever and anon, in tones of thunder,
The diapason of the cannonade.

Is it, O man, with such discordant noises,
With such accursed instruments as these,
Thou drownest Nature's sweet and kindly voices,
And jarrest the celestial harmonies ?

Were half the power, that fills the world with terror,
Were half the wealth, bestowed on camps and

courts,

Given to redeem the human mind from error,
There were no need of arsenals nor forts :

The warrior's name would be a name abhorred !
And every nation, that should lift again
Its hand against a brother, on its forehead
Would wear forevermore the curse of Cain!
Down the dark future, through long generations,
The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease;
And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations,

I hear once more the voice of Christ say, "Peace!"

Peace and no longer from its brazen portals
The blast of War's great organ shakes the skies!
But beautiful as songs of the immortals,
The holy melodies of love arise.

THE ECONOMY OF SLAVERY.

BY LYDIA MARIA CHILD.

pected soon to see the slaves of Virginia advertising for runaway masters." Washington, in a letter to Sir John Sinclair, describes the land in the neigh

On the Battery, the other day, I met an acquaint-bourhood of Mount Vernon as exhausted and miseraance from New England. He was on his way from Virginia, where he had been making contracts for wood at a dollar an acre. In the true spirit of Yankee enterprise, he buys up the produce of waste lands, fells the trees, ships them to New York and Boston, and finds the trade profitable.

ble. He alludes to the fact, that the price of land in Pennsylvania and the free States, then averaged more than twice as much as land in Virginia: «because," says he, "there are in Pennsylvania laws for the gradual abolition of slavery and because foreign emigrants are more inclined to settle in free States." Mr. Custis says, "Of the multitude of foreigners who daily seek an asylum and home in the empire of liberty, how many turn their steps to the region of the slave? None. There is a malaria in the atmosphere of those regions, which the new comer shuns, as being deleterious to his views and habits. See the wide-spreading ruin, which the avarice of our ancestral government has produced in

A large emigration of substantial farmers from Orange, Duchess, and Columbia counties, in this State, have, within a few years, emigrated to the counties of Loudon, Culpepper and Fairfax, in Virginia. They bought up the worn-out plantations for a mere song, and, by judicious application of free labour, they are "redeeming the waste places, and making the wilderness blossom as the rose." A traveller recently told me that the farms culti-the South, as witnessed in a sparse population of vated by Quakers, who employ no slaves, formed freemen, deserted habitations and fields without such a striking contrast to other portions of VirStrange to tell, even the wolf, driven ginia, that they seemed almost like oases in the back long since by the approach of man, now returns, after the lapse of a hundred years, to howl over the desolations of slavery."

desert.

What a lesson this teaches concerning the compa. rative effect of slave labour and free labour, on the prosperity of a State! It seems strange, indeed, that enlightened self-interest does not banish the accursed system from the world; for political economists ought to see that "it is worse than a crime, it is a blunder," as Napoleon once said of some error in state policy. But the fact is, self-interest never can be very much enlightened. All true

vision derives its clearness from the heart.

If ever this truth were legibly written on the face of the earth, it is inscribed on Virginia. No State in the Union has superior natural advantages. Look at its spacious bays, its broad and beautiful rivers, traversing the country in every direction; its majestic forests, its grand and picturesque mountains, its lovely and fertile valleys, and the abundance of its mineral wealth. Words could hardly be found enthusiastic enough to express the admiration of Europeans, who first visited this magnificent region. Some say her name was given. «because the country seemed to retain the virgin plenty and purity of the first creation, and the people their primitive innocency of life and manners." Waller describes it thus:

"So sweet the air, so moderate the clime,
None sickly lives, or dies before his time.
Heaven sure has kept this spot of earth uncurst,
To show how all things were created first."

culture.

The allusion to the wolf, is no figure of speech. Wild beasts have returned to extensive districts of Virginia, once inhabited and cultivated.

Some eighteen years ago, when I lived in the dream-land of romantic youth, and thought nothing of slavery, or any other evils that infest the social system, an intelligent young lady from the South told me an adventure, which made a strong impres sion on my imagination. She was travelling with her brother in the interior of eastern Virginia. Marks of diminishing prosperity everywhere met their view. One day, they entered upon a region which seemed entirely deserted. Here and there some elegant villa indicated the former presence of wealth; but piazzas had fallen, and front doors had either dropped, or hung suspended upon one hinge. Here and there a stray garden-flower peeped forth, amid the choking wilderness of weeds; and vines once carefully trained on lattices, spread over the silence, save the twittering of some startled bird, or ground in tangled confusion. Nothing disturbed the the hoot and scream of gloomy wood creatures. scared by the unusual noise of travellers.

At last, they came to a church, through the roof of which a tree, rooted in the central aisle beneath, sent up its verdant branches into the sunlight above. Leaving their horse to browse on the grass-grown road, they passed into the building, to examine the interior. Their entrance startled innumerable birds Alas, that the shores of that beautiful State should and bats which flew circling round their heads, and become the Guinea coast of the New World!-our through the broken windows. The pews had coatscentral station of slavery and the slave trade! Of of-arms blazoned on the door-pannels, but birds had the effects produced, we need not question abolition- built their nests in the corners, and grass had grown ists, for we learn them from the lips of her own up through the chinks of the floor. The handsome sons. John Randolph said, years ago, that he "ex-trimmings of the pulpit were so covered with dust,

as to leave the original colour extremely doubtful. I tradition, like most others, is born of truth. It is On the cushion lay a gilt-edged Bible, still open not, as some suppose, a special vengeance on the probably at the place where religious lessons had wicked system; it is a simple result of the universal last been read. and intimate relation between spirit and matter. Freedom writes itself on the earth in growth and beauty; oppression, in dreariness and decay. If we attempt to trace this effect analytically, we shall find that it originates in landholders too proud to work,

I have before my mind's eye a vivid picture of that lonely church, standing in the silence of the forest. In some moods of mind, how pleasant it would be to spend the Sabbath there alone, listening to the insects singing their prayers, or to the plain-in labourers deprived of healthful motive, in the intive voice of the ring-dove, coming up from the in

most heart of the shaded forest,

"Whose deep, low note, is like a gentle wife,
A poor, a pensive, yet a happy one,
Stealing, when daylight's common tasks are done,
An hour for mother's work; and singing low,

While her tired husband and her children sleep."
In the stillness of Nature there is ever something
sacred; for she pleadeth tenderly with man that he
will live no more at discord with her; and, like the
eloquent dumb boy, she ever carryeth "great names
for God in her heart."

"Neath cloistered boughs, each floral bell that swingeth,
And tolls its perfume on the passing air,
Makes Sabbath in the fields, and ever ringeth

A call to prayer."

I can never forget that adventure in the wilderness. There is something sadly impressive in such complete desolation, where life has once been busy and gay-and where human pride has inscribed its transient history with the mouldering insignia of rank and wealth.

evitable intermediate class of overseers, who have

no interest in the soil or the labourers; but whose pay depends on the forced product they can extort from both. Mr. Faulkner, of Virginia, has stated the case impressively: "Compare the condition of the slaveholding portion of this commonwealth, barren, desolate, and seared as it were by the avenging hand of Heaven, with the description which we have of this same country from those who first broke its soil. To what is this change ascribable? Alone to the blasting and withering effects of slavery. To that vice in the organization of society, by which one-half its inhabitants are arrayed in interest and feeling against the other half; to that condition of things, in which half a million of your population can feel no sympathy with society, in the prosperity of which they are forbidden to participate, and no attachment to a government at whose hands they receive nothing but injustice."

Dr. Meade, of Virginia, in the records of an official tour through the State, speaks of great numbers of churches fallen absolutely into ruin, from the gradual impoverishment of surrounding estates, and the consequent dispersion of the population.

Pope's Creek Church, where General Washington was baptized, fell into such complete decay, that it was a resort for beasts and birds. It was set on fire

a few years ago, lest the falling in of the roof should kill the cattle, accustomed to seek shade and shelter

there.

The rapid ruin and the unbroken stillness seemed so much like a work of enchantment, that the travellers named the place The Hamlet of the Seven Sleepers. At the next inhabited village, they obtained a brief outline of its history. It had been originally settled by wealthy families, with large plantations and numerous slaves. They were VirYet in view of these facts, statesmen, for tempoginian gentlemen of the olden school, and would have felt themselves disgraced by the modern busi-rary purposes, are willing to spread over the rich ness of breeding slaves for market. In fact, strong prairies of Texas this devastating system, to devour, family pride made them extremely averse to sell like the locusts of Egypt, every green thing in its any slave that had belonged to their ancestors. So path. the slaves multiplied on their hands, and it soon And while we are thus wilfully perpetuating and took all their corn to feed their hogs, and all their extending this terrible evil, priests and politicians hogs to feed their negroes." Matters grew worse are not ashamed to say that it must be so, because and worse with these old families. The strong soil the system was entailed upon us by the avarice of was at last exhausted by the miserable system of our ancestral government." Would any other evil, slavery, and would no longer yield its increase. any evil which we ourselves did not choose, be toWhat could these aristocratic gentlemen do for their lerated among us, because it was a legacy from sons, under such circumstances? Plantations must | Great Britain, I never hear this weak apology be bought for them in the far Southwest, and they offered, without thinking of the answer made to must disperse, with their trains of human cattle, to it by the eloquent George Thompson: "Yes, blight other new and fertile regions. There is an charge the guilt upon England; but, as you have old superstition, that no grass grows where the devil copied England in her sin, copy her in her repenthas danced; and the effects of slavery show that this | ance."

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Heart-Leap Well is a small spring of water, about five miles, from Richmond in Yorkshire, and near the side of the road that leads from Richmond to Askrigg. Its name is derived from a remarkable Chase, the memory of which is preserved by the monuments spoken of in the second Part of the follow. ing Poem, which monuments do now exist as I have there described them.

The Knight had ridden down from Wensley Moor
With the slow motion of a summer's cloud;

And now as he approached a vassal's door,

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Bring forth another horse!" he cried aloud.

"Another horse!"-That shout the vassal heard,
And saddled his best Steed, a comely grey;
Sir Walter mounted him; he was the third
Which he had mounted on that glorious day.

Joy sparkled in the prancing courser's eyes;
The horse and horseman are a happy pair;
But, though Sir Walter like a falcon flies,
There is a doleful silence in the air.

A rout this morning left Sir Walter's Hall,
That as they galloped made the echoes roar;
But horse and man are vanished, one and all;
Such race, I think, was never seen before.

Sir Walter, restless as a veering wind,
Calls to the few tired dogs that yet remain:
Blanch, Swift, and Music, noblest of their kind,
Follow, and up the weary mountain strain.

The knight hallooed, he cheered and chid them on
With suppliant gestures and upbraidings stern;
But breath and eyesight fail; and, one by one,
The dogs are scattered among the mountain fern.
Where is the throng, the tumult of the race?
The bugles that so joyfully were blown?

This chase it looks not like an earthly chase;
Sir Walter and the Hart are left alone.

The poor Hart toils along the mountain sile;
I will not stop to tell how far he fled,
Nor will I mention by what death he died;
But now the Knight beholds him lying dead.
Dismounting, then, he leaned against a thorn;
He had no follower, dog, nor man, nor boy :
He neither cracked his whip, nor blew his horn,
But gazed upon the spoil with silent joy.

Close to the thorn on which Sir Walter leaned,
Stood his dumb partner in this glorious feat;
Weak as a lamb the hour that it is yeaned;
And white with foam as if with cleaving sleet.

Upon his side the Hart was lying stretched:
His nostril touched a spring beneath a hill,
And with the last deep groan his breath had fetched
The waters of the spring were trembling still.

And now, too happy for repose or rest,
(Never had living man such joyful lot!)
Sir Walter walked all round, north, south, and west,
And gazed and gazed upon that darling spot.
And climbing up that hill—(it was at least
Nine roods of sheer ascent) Sir Walter found
Three several hoof-marks which the hunted Beast
Had left imprinted on the grassy ground.

Sir Walter wiped his face, and cried, «Till now
Such sight was never seen by human eyes:
Three leaps have borne him from this lofty brow,
Down to the weary fountain where he lies.
I'll build a pleasure-house upon this spot,
And a small arbour, made for rural joy ;
"Twill be the traveller's shed, the pilgrim's cot,
A place of love for damsels that are coy.

A cunning artist will I have to frame

A basin for that fountain in the dell!

And they who do take mention of the same,
From this day forth, shall call it HEART-LEAP WELL.

And, gallant Stag! to make thy praises known,
Another monument shall here be raised;
Three several pillars, each a rough-hewn stone,
And planted where thy hoofs the tuft have grazed.
And, in the summer-time when days are long,
I will come hither with my Paramour;
And with the dancers and the minstrel's song
We will make merry in that pleasant bower.
Till the foundations of the mountain fail
My mansion with its arbour shall endure ;-
The joy of them who till the fields of Swale,
And them who dwell among the woods of Ure!"

Then home he went, and left the Hart stone-dead,
With breathless nostrils stretched above the spring.
-Soon did the Knight perform what he had said;
And far and wide the fame thereof did ring.

Ere thrice the Moon into her port had steered,
A cup of stone received the living well;
Three pillars of rude stone Sir Walter reared,
And built a house of pleasure in the dell.
And near the fountain, flowers of stature tall
With trailing plants and trees were intertwined,--
Which soon composed a little sylvan hall,
A leafy shelter from the sun and wind.

And thither, when the summer days were long,
Sir Walter led his wondering Paramour;
And with the dancers and the minstrel's song
Made merriment within that pleasant bower.
The Knight, Sir Walter, died in course of time,
And his bones lie in his paternal vale,-
But there is matter for a second rhyme,
And I to this would add another tale.

PART SECOND.

The moving accident is not my trade;
To freeze the blood I have no ready arts;
'Tis my delight, alone in summer shade,
To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts.
As I from Hawes to Richmond did repair,
It chanced that I saw standing in a dell
Three aspens at three corners of a square;
And one, not far distant, near a well.

What this imported I could ill divine:
And, pulling now the rein my horse to stop,
I saw three pillars standing in a line,-
The last stone-pillar on a dark hill-top.

The trees were grey, with neither arms nor head;
Half wasted the square mound of tawny green;
So that you just might say, as then I said,
"Here in old time the hand of man hath been."

I looked upon the hill both far and near,
More doleful place did never eye survey;
It seemed as if the spring-time came not here,
And Nature here were willing to decay..

I stood in various thoughts and fancies lost,
When one, who was in shepherd's garb attired,
Came up the hollow :-him did I accost,
And what his place might be I then inquired.

The Shepherd stopped, and that same story told
Which in my former rhyme I have rehearsed.
"A jolly place," said he, " in times of old!
But something ails it now: the spot is curst.

You see these lifeless stumps of aspen wood-
Some say that they are beeches, others elms-
These were the bower; and here a mansion stood,
The finest palace of a hundred realms!

The arbour does its own condition tell;

You see the stones, the fountain, and the stream;
But as to the great Lodge! you might as well
Hunt half a day for a forgotten dream.

There's neither dog nor heifer, horse nor sheep,
Will wet his lips within that cup of stone;
And oftentimes, when all are fast asleep,
This water doth send forth a dolorous groan.

Some say that here a murder has been done,
And blood cries out for blood: but, for my part,
I've guessed, when I've been sitting in the sun,
That it was all for that unhappy Hart.

What thoughts must through the creature's brain have
past!

Even from the topmost stone, upon the steep,
Are but three bounds-and look, Sir, at this last-
O Master! it has been a cruel leap.

For thirteen hours he ran a desperate race;
And in my simple mind we cannot tell
What cause the Hart might have to love this place,
And come and make his death bed near the well.

Here on the grass perhaps asleep he sank,
Lulled by the fountain in the summer-tide;
This water was perhaps the first he drank
When he had wandered from his mother's side.
In April here beneath the flowering thorn
He heard the birds their morning carols sing;
And he, perhaps, for aught we know, was born
Not half a furlong from that self-same spring.
Now, here is neither grass nor pleasant shade;
The sun on drearer hollow never shone,
So will it be, as I have often said,

Till trees, and stones, and fountain, all are gone."

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Grey-headed Shepherd, thou hast spoken well;
Small difference lies between thy creed and tnine:
This Beast not unobserved by Nature fell;
His death was mourned by sympathy divine.
The Being, that is in the clouds and air,
That is in the green leaves among the groves,
Maintains a deep and reverential care,
For the unoffending creatures whom he loves.
The pleasure-house is dust :--behind, before,
This is no common waste, no common gloom;
But Nature, in due course of time, once more
Shall here put on her beauty and her bloom.

She leaves these objects to a slow decay,
That what we are, and have been, may be known;
But, at the coming of the milder day,
These monuments shall all be overgrown.

One lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide,
Taught both by what she shows, and what conceals;
Never to blend our pleasures or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels."

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"MAY I COME UP?"

May I come up?" the waking germ inquires? "All winter long; the fearful frost has bound Above my head a mass of icy ground.

I've slept in silence, till the solar fires

Have driven away the frost; the softened earth
Invites me now to claim the right of birth.
Oh may I come, and see day's sunny smile?"
"Not yet, not yet. "Tis past the time of snow,
But frosts come, and the nipping winds may blow.
'Tis safe for thee to hide a little while

Within thy cell: ere long shalt tho arise
And God thy life wilt keep." The April hours,

Soon weepingcome, with warm and genial skies, The germ springs up, and bears a crown of buds and flowers.

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