On heart bleed. It was there, that hunger, and thirst, and disease, and all the contumely which coldhearted cruelty could bestow, sharpened every pang of death. Misery there wrung every fibre that could feel, before she gave the blow of grace which sent the sufferers to eternity. It is said that poison was employed. No, there was no such mercy there— there nothing was employed which could blunt the susceptibility to anguish, or which by hastening death could rob its agonies of a single pang. board one of these prison-ships above eleven thousand of our brave countrymen are said to have perished. She was called the Jersey. Her wreck still remains, and at low ebb presents to the world its accursed and blighted fragments. Twice in twenty-four hours the winds of Heaven sigh through it, and repeat the groans of our expiring countrymen; and twice the ocean hides in her bosom those deadly and polluted ruins, which all her waters cannot purify. Every rain that descends washes from the unconsecrated bank the bones of those intrepid sufferers. They lie naked on the shore accusing the neglect of their countrymen. How long shall gratitude and even piety deny them burial?. They ought to be collected in one vast ossory, which shall stand a monument to future ages of the two extremes of the human character; of that depravity, which, trampling on the rights of misfortune, perpetrated cold and calculating murder on a wretched and defenceless prisoner; and that virtue which animated this prisoner to die a willing martyr for his country. Or rather, were it possible, there ought to be raised a Colossal Column, whose base sinking to Hell, should let the murderers read their infamy inscribed on it; and whose capital of Corinthian laurel ascending to Heaven, should show the sainted Patriots that they have triumphed. Deep and dreadful as the coloring of this picture may appear, it is but a faint and imperfect sketch of the original. You must remember a thousand unutterable calamities, a thousand instances of domestic as well as national anxiety and distress, which mock description. You ought to remember them; you ought to hand them down in tradition to posterity, that they may know the awful price their fathers paid for freedom. * * * * 1800. OUR COUNTRY. BY WILLIAM J. PABODIE. OUR Country!-'tis a glorious land— With broad arms stretched from shore to shore ; The proud Pacific chafes her strand, She hears the dark Atlantic roar; And nurtured on her ample breast, Rich prairies, decked with flowers of gold, Go sweeping onward, dark and deep, Through forests, where the bounding fawn Beneath their sheltering branches leap. And cradled 'mid her clustering hills, And sent to seize her generous stores, There prowls no Tyrant's hireling band. Great God! we thank Thee for this home- Still may her flowers untrampled spring, GERMAN LITERATURE. BY SARAH H. WHITMAN. It has been said that "it is in the German nature duly to honor every thing produced by other nations." Our countrymen, we fear, are in danger of becoming, like the English, too exclusively national. We could wish that they had a little more of the German cosmopolitanism. Perhaps it is natural that whenever any attempt is made by a portion of the community to lead the public mind to new trains of thought or modes of action, to introduce new theories or point out new fields for exertion or enterprise, that an antagonist party should spring up, whose tendency it is to resist all innovation. Perhaps it is a wise provision of nature that has thus furnished every age with its sentinels and warders, as well as with its bold and adventurous pioneers; and provided they conduct themselves fairly and discreetly in their vocation, we have no desire to see their office an nulled, or to interrupt them in its rightful exercise. Let the sentinels give challenge to all new claimants, but let them not refuse admittance to any who can furnish a fair passport, or make out a clear title to be received within their guarded citadel. Since the efforts which have recently been making to introduce the German literature among us, it is not unusual to hear the most unqualified, indiscriminate opposition expressed to the study of a language of unequalled copiousness, flexibility and force, rich in every department of its literature, and entitled, in the opinion of the first European scholars, to an equal estimation with our own noble mother tongue. Yet we are rejoiced to discover, even in the bitterness of its opponents, an indication of the increasing interest with which it is regarded among us; we are in no way disturbed by the fear that its subtleties, refinements and abstractions, should exert an evil influence on our national character, the individuality of which seems in no danger of being neutralized by such antagonist principles, though it may perchance be favorably modified by them. The Germans, it is true, have their faults; but these faults, it has been well said, are as good as virtues to us, since being the exact opposites of our own, they may teach us most important lessons. |