Are stretched in our aid?-Be the combat our own! Or that dying, our deaths shall be glorious. 3. A breath of submission we breathe not: The sword that we've drawn we will sheathe not; Earth may hide-waves ingulph-fire consume us, 4. This day-shall ye blush for its story? Or brighten your lives with its glory? Our women-Oh, say, shall they shriek in despair, If a coward there be that would slacken, Till we've trampled the turban, and shown ourselves worth Being sprung from, and named for, the godlike of earth. Strike home!-and the world shall revere us As heroes descended from heroes. 5. Old Greece lightens up with emotion Fanes* rebuilt, and fair towns, shall with jubilee ring, That were cold and extinguished in sadness; Whilst our maidens shall dance with their white waving arms, * Fane, a temple + The Nine Muses. LESSON CXXXVII. Warren's* Address to the American Soldiers, before the Battle of Bunker's Hill.-PIERPONT. 1. STAND! the ground's your own, my braves! Will ye look for greener graves? What's the mercy despots feel! 2. Fear ye foes who kill for hire? Who have done it!-From the vale Let their welcome be! 3. In the God of battles trust! As where heaven its dews shall shed LESSON CXXXVIII. Address to the Patriots of the Revolution.-From D. Webster's Speech, delivered at the laying of the Corner Stone of the Bunker Hill Monument, June 17th, 1825. 1. VENERABLE MEN! you have come down to us, from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives, that you might behold this joyous day. You are now where you stood fifty years ago, this very hour, with your rothers, and your neighbors, shoulder to shoulder, in the strife for your country. *Jseph Warren, a Major-General in the American army, killed at the cattle of Bunker's Hill, June 17th, 1775. 2. Behold how altered! The same heavens are indeed over your heads; the same ocean rolls at your feet; but all else, how changed! You hear now no roar of hostile cannon, you see no mixed volumes of smoke and flame rising from burning Charlestown ;* 3. The ground strewed with the dead and the dying; the impetuous charge; the steady and successful repulse; the loud call to repeated assault; the summoning of all that is manly to repeated resistance; a thousand bosoms freely and fearlessly bared in an instant to whatever of terror there may be in war and death;—all these you have witnessed, but you witness them no more. All is peace. you 4. The heights of yonder metropolis, its towers and roofs, which filled with wives and children and countrythen saw men in distress and terror, and looking with unutterable emotions for the issue of the combat, have presented you to-day with the sight of its whole happy population, come out to welcome and greet you with an universal jubilee. 5. Yonder proud ships, by a felicity of position appropriately lying at the foot of this mount, and seeming fondly to cling around it, are not means of annoyance to you, but your country's own means of distinction and defence. All is peace; and God has granted you this sight of your country's happiness, ere you slumber in the grave for ever. 6. He has allowed you to behold and to partake the reward of your patriotic toils; and he has allowed us, your sons and countrymen, to meet you here, and, in the name of the present generation, in the name of your country, in the name of liberty, to thank you! 7. But, alas! you are not all here! Time and the sword have thinned your ranks. Prescott, Putnam, Stark, Brooks, Read, Pomeroy, Bridge! our eyes seek for you in vain amidst this broken band. You are gathered to your fathers, and live only to your country in her grateful remembrance, and your own bright example. 8. But let us not too much grieve, that you have met the coinmon fate of men. You lived, at least long enough to know that your work had been nobly and successfully accomplished. You lived to see your country's independence established, and to sheathe your swords from war. On the light of Liberty you saw arise the light of Peace, and the sky, on which you closed your eyes, was cloudless. *The British burnt Charlestown, on their way to the battle of Bunker's Hill, June 17th, 1775. LESSON CXXXIX. Specimen of the Eloquence of James Otis:* extracted from "the Rebels."-MISS FRANCIS. 1. ENGLAND may as well dam up the waters of the Nile, with bulrushes, as to fetter the step of freedom, more proud and firm in this youthful land, than where she treads the sequestered glens of Scotland, or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of Switzerland. Arbitrary principles, like those, against which we now contend, have cost one king† of England his life, another his crown-and they may yet cost a third|| his most flourishing colonies. We are 2. We are two millions-one fifth fighting men. bold and vigorous, and we call no man master. To the nation from whom we are proud to derive our origin, we ever were, and we ever will be, ready to yield unforced assistance; but it must not, and it never can be extorted. 3. Some have sneeringly asked, "Are the Americans too poor to pay a few pounds on stamped paper?" No! America, thanks to God and herself, is rich. But the right to take ten pounds implies the right to take a thousand; and what must be the wealth that avarice, aided by power, cannot exhaust? True, the spectre is now small; but the shadow he casts before him, is huge enough to darken all this fair land. 4. Others, in sentimental style, talk of the immense debt of gratitude, which we owe to England. And what is the amount of this debt? Why, truly, it is the same that the young lion owes to the dam, which has brought it forth on the solitude of the mountain, or left it amid the winds and storms of the desert. 5. We plunged into the wave, with the great charter of freedom in our teeth, because the faggot and torch were behind us. We have waked this new world from its savage lethargy; forests have been prostrated in our path; towns and cities have grown up suddenly as the flowers of the tropics, and the fires in our autumnal woods are scarcely more rapid, than the increase of our wealth and population. 6. And do we owe all this to the kind succor of the mother country? No! we owe it to the tyranny, that drove us from her -to the pelting storms, which invigorated our helpless infancy. James Otis, a lawyer of Massachusetts,―a zealous defender of the rights of the American colonies. + Charles I. He was beheaded in 1649. ✦ James II. He abdicated the throne, and fled to France in 1698 where he died in 1701. George III. He died in 1820, having reigned 60 years. 7. But perhaps others will say, "We ask no money froin your gratitude, we only demand that you should pay your own expenses." And who, I pray, is to judge of their necessity? Why, the King-(and with all due reverence to his sacred majesty, he understands the real wants of his distant subjects, as little as he does the language of the Choctaws.)* Who is to judge concerning the frequency of these demands? The ministry. Who is to judge whether the money is properly expended? The cabinet behind the throne. 8. In every instance, those who take, are to judge for those who pay; if this system is suffered to go into operation, we shall have reason to esteem it a great privilege, that rain and dew do not depend upon parliament; otherwise they would soon be taxed and dried. 9. But thanks to God, there is freedom enough left upon earth to resist such monstrous injustice. The flame of liberty is extinguished in Greece and Rome, but the light of its glowing embers is still bright and strong on the shores of America. Actuated by its sacred influence, we will resist unto death. 10. But we will not countenance anarchy and misrule. The wrongs, that a desperate community have heaped upon their enemies, shall be amply and speedily repaired. Still, it may be well for some proud men to remember, that a fire is lighted in these colonies, which one breath of their king may kindle into such fury that the blood of all England cannot extinguish it LESSON CXL. On Conciliation with America.-EDMUND BURKE.† 1. For that service, for all service, whether of revenue, trade, or empire, my trust is in her interest in the British Constitution My hold of the colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties, which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. 2. Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government; they will cling and grapple to you; and no force under heaven will be of power to tear * Choctaws, a tribe of Indians inhabiting the southern part of the United States. + Edmund Burke, a celebrated orator and statesman, born in the county of Cork, Ireland, in 1730. He became a ner of the British Parliament in 1765, and died in 1797. |