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Look forth once more, Ximena! "Like a cloud before the wind Rolls the battle down the mountains, leaving blood and death behind; Ah! they plead in vain for mercy; in the dust the wounded strive; Hide your faces, holy angels! O, thou Christ of God, forgive!"

Sink, O Night, among thy mountains! let the cool, gray shadows fall; Dying brothers, fighting demons, drop thy curtain over all! Through the thickening winter twilight, wide apart the battle rolled, In its sheath the sabre rested, and the cannon's lips grew cold.

But the noble Mexic women still their holy task pursued,

Through that long, dark night of sorrow, worn and faint and lacking food;

Over weak and suffering brothers, with a tender care they hung, And the dying foeman blessed them in a strange and Northern tongue.

Not wholly lost, O Father! is this evil world of ours;
Upward, through its blood and ashes, spring afresh the Eden flowers;
From its smoking hell of battle, Love and Pity send their prayer,
And still thy white-winged angels hover dimly in our air

CIII. - AMERICAN NATIONALITY.

CHOATE.

[RUFUS CHOATE was born in Essex, Massachusetts, October 1, 1799, and died July 13, 1859. He was graduated at Dartmouth College in 1819, and admitted to the bar in 1824. He practised his profession first at Danvers, then at Salem, and for the last twenty-five years of his life at Boston. He was chosen to the house of representatives in 1832, and served there a single term. He was a member of the senate from February, 1841, to March, 1845. He was a brilliant and eloquent advocate, with unrivalled power over a jury, a thoroughly instructed lawyer, and a scholar of wide range and various cultivation. His writings, consisting of lectures, addresses, and speeches, are distinguished by a combination of logical power and imaginative splendor.

The following extract is from an oration delivered in Boston on the eightysecond anniversary of American Independence, July 5, 1858.]

But now, by the side of this and all antagonisms, higher than they, stronger than they, there rises colossal the fine, sweet spirit of nationality, the nationality of America. See there the pillar of fire which God has kindled, and

Gaze on Between

lifted, and moved, for our hosts and our ages. that, worship that, worship the highest in that. that light and our eyes a cloud for a time may seem to gather; chariots, armed men on foot, the troops of kings, 5 may march on us, and our fears may make us for a moment turn from it; a sea may spread before us, and waves seem to hedge us up; dark idolatries may alienate some hearts for a season from that worship; revolt, rebellion, may break out in the camp, and the waters of our springs O may run bitter to the taste, and mock it; between us and

that Canaan a great river may seem to be rolling; but beneath that high guidance our way is onward, ever onward. Those waters shall part, and stand on either hand in heaps; that idolatry shall repent; that rebellion shall 5 be crushed; that stream shall be sweetened; that overflowing river shall be passed on foot, dry-shod, in harvesttime; and from that promised land of flocks, fields, tents, mountains, coasts, and ships, from north and south, and east and west, there shall swell one cry yet, of victory, peace, and thanksgiving!

But we were seeking the nature of the spirit of nationality, and we pass in this inquiry from contrast to analysis. You may call it, in one aspect, a mode of contemplating the nation in its essence, and so far it is an intel2 lectual conception, and you may call it a feeling towards the nation thus contemplated, and so far it is an emotion. In the intellectual exercise it contemplates the nation as it is one, and as it is distinguished from all other nations, and in the emotional exercise it loves it, and is proud of 30 it as thus it is contemplated.

This you may call its ultimate analysis. But how much more is included in it! How much flows from it! How cold and inadequate is such a description, if we leave it there! Think of it first as a state of consciousness, as a 35 spring of feeling, as a motive to exertion, as blessing your

country, and as reacting on you. Think of it as it fills

your mind and quickens your heart, and as it fills the mind and quickens the heart of millions around you.

Instantly, under such an influence, you ascend above the smoke and stir of this small local strife; you tread 5 upon the high places of the earth and of history; you think and feel as an American for America; her power, her eminence, her consideration, her honor, are yours; your competitors, like hers, are kings; your home, like hers, is the world; your path, like hers, is on the highway 10 of empires; your charge, her charge, is of generations and ages; your record, her record, is of treaties, battles, voyages, beneath all the constellations; her image, one, immortal, golden, rises on your eye as our western star at evening rises on the traveller from his home; no lowering 15 cloud, no angry river, no lingering spring, no broken crevasse, no inundated city or plantation, no tracts of sand, arid and burning on that surface, but all blended and softened into one beam of kindred rays, the image, harbinger, and promise of love, hope, and a brighter day!

20

But if you would contemplate nationality as an active virtue, look around you. Is not our own history one witness and one record of what it can do? This day and all which it stands for, - did it not give us these? This glory of the fields of that war, this eloquence of that revo25 lution, this one wide sheet of flame, which wrapped tyrant

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and tyranny, and swept all that escaped from it away, forever and forever; the courage to fight, to retreat, to rally, to advance, to guard the young flag by the young arm and the young heart's blood, to hold up and hold on till the 30 magnificent consummation crowned the work, all these imparted or inspired by this imperial sentiment? Has it not here begun the master-work of man, the creation of a national life? Did it not call out that prodigious development of wisdom, the wisdom of constructive35 ness which illustrated the years after the war, and the framing and adopting of the constitution? Has it not, in

general, contributed to the ad nistering of that government wisely and well since?

Look at it! It has kindled us to no aims of conquest. It has involved us in no entangling alliances. It has kept 5 our neutrality dignified and just. The victories of peace have been our prized victories. But the larger and truer grandeur of the nations, for which they are created, and for which they must one day, before some tribunal, give account, what a measure of these it has enabled us already 10 to fulfil! It has lifted us to the throne, and has set on our brow the name, of the Great Republic. It has taught us to demand nothing wrong, and to submit to nothing wrong; it has made our diplomacy sagacious, wary, and accomplished; it has opened the iron gate of the moun15 tain, and planted our ensign on the great tranquil sea.

It has made the desert to bud and blossom as the rose ; it has quickened to life the giant brood of useful arts; it has whitened lake and ocean with the sails of a daring, new, and lawful trade; it has extended to exiles, flying as 20 clouds, the asylum of our better liberty.

It has kept us at rest within all our borders; it has repressed without blood the intemperance of local insubordination; it has scattered the seeds of liberty, under law and under order, broadcast; it has seen and helped Amer25 ican feeling to swell into a fuller flood; from many a field

and many a deck, though it seeks not war, makes not war, and fears not war, it has borne the radiant flag, all unstained; it has opened our age of lettered glory; it has opened and honored the age of the industry of the people!

CIV.-LINES ON THE ENTRY OF THE AUSTRIANS INTO NAPLES.

MOORE.

[In 1820, a popular revolution broke out in Naples and Sicily, which was soon suppressed by the Austrians, who entered Naples in March, 1821, with very little resistance on the part of the Neapolitans. Lord Castlereagh was at that time secretary of state for the foreign department in Great Britain, and a statesman of strong Tory principles. Filicaia and Petrarch were Italian poets and patriots, the former of the seventeenth, and the latter of the fourteenth century.] 1 Ar, down to the dust with them, slaves as they are!

From this hour let the blood in their dastardly veins,
That shrunk from the first touch of Liberty's war,
Be wasted for tyrants, or stagnate in chains!

2 On

on, like a cloud, through their beautiful vales, Ye locusts of tyranny! — blasting them o'er:

Fill-fill up their wide, sunny waters, ye sails,

From each slave-mart in Europe, and shadow their shore.

3 Let their fate be a mock-word- let men of all lands

Laugh out with a scorn that shall ring to the poles, When each sword, that the cowards let fall from their hands, Shall be forged into fetters to enter their souls!

4 And deep, and more deep, as the iron is driven,
Base slaves! may the whet of their agony be,
To think as the doomed haply think of that heaven

They had once within reach—that they might have been free

5 Shame! shame! when there was not a bosom, whose heat Ever rose o'er the zero of Castlereagh's heart,

That did not, like Echo, your war-hymn repeat,

And send back its prayers with your Liberty's start!

6 When the world stood in hope- when a spirit that breathed
Full fresh of the olden time whispered about,

And the swords of all Italy, half-way unsheathed,
But waited one conquering cry to flash out!

7 When around you the shades of your mighty in fame,

Filicaias and Petrarchs seemed bursting to view,

And their words and their warnings-like tongues of bright flame Over Freedom's apostles-fell kindling on you!

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