6. Yet not to earth's contracted span When thousand worlds are round. 7. Let not this weak, unknowing hand 8. If I am right, thy grace impart, To find that better way! heart Through this day's life or death. 12. This day, be bread and peace my lot All else beneath the sun, Thou know'st if best bestowed or not, And let thy will be done. 13. To thee, whose temple is all space, One chorus let all beings raise- LESSON CVIII. CHARACTER OF BONAPARTE. PHILLIPS. 1. HE is fallen! We may now pause before that splendid prod igy, which towered amongst us like some ancient ruin, whose frown terrified the glance its magnificence attracted. Grand, gloomy, and peculiar, he sat upon the throne a sceptered hermit, wrapt in the solitude of his own originality. A mind, bold, independent, and decisive a will, despotic in its dictates-an energy that distanced expedition, and a conscience pliable to every touch of interest, marked the outline of this extraordinary character-the most extraordinary, perhaps, that in the annals of this world, ever rose, or reigned, or fell. 2. Flung into life, in the midst of a revolution that quickened every energy of a people who acknowledge no superior, he commenced his course, a stranger by birth, and a scholar by charity! With no friend but his sword, and no fortune but his talents, he rushed in the list where rank, and wealth, and genius had arrayed themselves, and competition fled from him as from the glance of destiny. He knew no motive but interest-he acknowledged no criterion but success-he worshiped no God but ambition, and with an eastern devotion he knelt at the shrine of his idolatry. 3. Subsidiary to this, there was no creed that he did not profess, there was no opinion that he did not promulgate; in the hope of a dynasty. he upheld the crescent; for the sake of a divorce, he bowed before the cross: the orphan of St. Louis, he became the adopted child of the republic: and with a parricidal ingratitude, on the ruins both of the throne and the tribune, he reared the throne of his despotism. A professed Catholic, he imprisoned the pope; a pretended patriot, he im poverished the country; and, in the name of Brutus, he grasped without remorse, and wore without shame, the diadem of the Cæsars! LESSON CIX. GOD GIVETH TO ALL ARIGHT, MRS. LLOYD. 1. YOUNG NORAH sat at her cottage door, Her baby crept on the soft greensward, 2. The sun had placed on the children's cheeks 3. The golden faded-a purple tinge The creeping baby was hushed to sleep 4. Still the mother, wrapt in gloomy thoughts, When the father came through the little gate, 5. The young wife over his weary form A troubled, quick glance sent, Then she laid her hand on her husband's arm, And murmured her discontent. 6. "I was thinking just now of your life of toil, The days that bring only ease to him, 7. "And I thought, if we only live to work, For their daily bread, it were well for all 8. "Why, Norah, your thoughts are strange and wild, And your heart is wrong to-night; There's a righteous Giver above," he said, 9. "I have worked to-day in the rich man's field, His lands are broad, and his gold is bright 10. "His lands are broad-they were freely given, If again on the pallid cheek Of his beautiful, cherished, invalid wife, 11. "His gold is bright-it would be to him Could it buy a single germ of thought For the mind of his idiot boy. 12. "Nay, Norah, the little sleeper there- 13. "For our hopeful future, our present good, And Norah said, as she kissed her babe, LESSON CX. THE MISERIES OF WAR. UNALMEKS. 1. Он, tell me, if there be any relentings of pity in your bosom, how could you endure it, to behold the agonies of the dying man, as goaded by pain, he grasps the cold ground in convulsive energy; or, faint with the loss of blood, his pulse ebbs low, and the gathering paleness spreads itself over his countenance; or, wrapping himself round in despair, he can only mark, by a few feeble quiverings, that life still lurks and lingers in his lacerated body, or, lifting up a faded eye, he casts on you a look of imploring helplessness for that succor which no sympathy can yield him? 2. It may be painful to dwell thus, in imagination, on the distressing picture of one individual; but, multiply it ten thousand times; say how much of all this distress has been heaped together on a single field; give us the arithmetic of this accumulated wretchedness, and lay it before us with all the accuracy of an official computation, and, strange to tell, not one sigh is lifted up among the crowd of eager listeners, as they stand on tiptoe, and catch every syllable of utterance which is read to them out of the registers of death. 3. Oh, say what mystic spell is that which so blinds us to the suffering of our brethren; which deafens to our ear the voice of bleeding humanity, when it is aggravated by the shriek of dying thousands; which makes the very magnitude of the slaughter throw a softening disguise over its cruelties and its horrors; which causes us to eye, with indifference, the field that is crowded with the most revolting abominations, and arrests that sigh which each individual would, singly, have drawn from us, by the report of the many that have fallen and breathed their last in agony along with him. K* |