sailor, who, a few months since, in yonder city, braved the fire, and at the risk of his own life saved a mother's only child, gained a truer glory than ever shone around the victories of the distinguished admiral. How false, how unjust the estimate which the world places upon the actions of men. He who dies upon the battle-field -who rushes to carnage and strife—whose hands are dripping with human gore-is a man of honor. Parliaments and senates return him thanks, and whole nations unite in erecting a monument over the spot where sleeps his corpse. But he whose task it is to dry up the stream of blood-to mitigate the anguish of earth-to lift man up, and make him what God designed him to be-dies without a tongue to speak his eulogy, or a monument to mark his fall. If you would show yourself a man, in the truest and noblest sense, go not to yonder tented field, where death hovers, and the vulture feeds himself on human victims; go not where men are carving monuments of marble to perpetuate names which will not live in our own grateful memory; go not to the dwellings of the rich; go not to the palaces of kings; go not to the halls of merriment and pleasure; go, rather, to the widow, and relieve her woe; go to the orphan and speak words of comfort; go to the lost, and save him; go to the fallen, and raise him up; go to the wanderer, and bring him back to virtue; go to the sinner, and whisper in his ear words of eternal life! 212.-NATURE OF TRUE ELOQUENCE. DANIEL WEBSTER. When public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great interests are at stake, and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable in speech further than it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness, are the qualities which produce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshaled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire after it: they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the out-breaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men when their own lives, and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country, hang on the decision of the hour. Then, words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then, patriotism is eloquent; then, self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception, out-running the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward, to his object-this, this is eloquence; or, rather it is something greater and higher than all eloquence-it is action, noble, sublime, godlike action. 213.—GREECE. LORD BYRON. Clime of the unforgotten brave! These waters blue that round you lave, These scenes, their story not unknown, Have left a nameless pyramid, No theme on which the muse might soar, When man was worthy of thy clime. Now crawl from cradle to the grave, Giaour 214.-THE "LOST CHORD." A. A. PROCTER. Seated one day at the organ, I do not know what I was playing, It quieted pain and sorrow, It linked all perplexéd meanings And trembled away into silence, I have sought, but I seek it vainly, That came from the soul of the organ, It may be that Death's bright angel 215. THE MAIN-TRUCK. Old Ironsides at anchor lay, In sport, up shroud and rigging ran, A shudder shot through every vein, No hold had he above, below; Alone he stood in air: To that far height none dared to go: We gazed; but not a man could speak! In groups with pallid brow and cheek, As riveted unto the spot, Stood officers and crew. The father came on deck;- he gasped, "O God! thy will be done!" Then suddenly a rifle grasped, And aimed it at his son: "Jump, far out, boy, into the wave! Jump, or I fire!" he said; "That only chance your life can save! Jump, jump, boy!"-He obeyed. He sunk,-he rose,--he lived, he moved, On board we hailed the lad beloved, With many a manly shout. Those wet arms round his neck- 216.-RECOLLECTIONS OF MY CHRISTMAS TREE. CHARLES DICKENS. I have been looking on, this evening, at a merry company of children assembled round that pretty German toy, a Christmas tree. Being now at home again, and alone, the only person in the house awake, my thoughts are drawn back, by a fascination which I do not care to resist, to my own childhood. Straight in the middle of the room, cramped in the freedom of its growth by no encircling walls or soon-reached ceiling, a shadowy tree arises; and, looking up into the dreamy brightness of its top,-for I observe in this tree the singular property that it appears to grow downward towards the earth,—I look into my youngest Christmas recollections. All toys at first, I find. But upon the branches of the tree, lower down, how thick the books begin to hang! Thin books, in themselves, at first, but many of them with deliciously smooth covers of bright red or green. What fat black letters to begin with! "A was an archer, and shot at a frog." Of course he was. He was an apple-pie also, and there he is! He was a good many things in his time, was A, and so were most of his friends, except X, who had so little versatility that I never knew him to get beyond Xerxes or Xanthippe : like Y, who was always confined to a yacht or a yew-tree; and Z, condemned forever to be a zebra or a zany. But now the very tree itself changes, and becomes a bean-stalk,-the marvelous bean-stalk by which Jack climbed up to the giant's house. Jack, how noble, with his sword of sharpness and his shoes of swiftness! Good for Christmas-time is the ruddy color of the cloak in which, the tree making a forest of itself for her to trip through with her basket, Little Red Riding Hood comes to me one Christmas eve, to give me information of the cruelty and treachery of that dissembling wolf who ate her grandmother, without making any impression on his appetite, and then ate |