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!
Whose land from plain to mountain cave
Was Freedom's home or Glory's grave!
Shrine of the mighty! can it be
That this is all remains of thee?
Approach, thou craven, crouching slave;
Say, is not this Thermopyla?

These waters blue that round you lave,
O servile offspring of the free,
Pronounce what sea, what shore is this?
The gulf, the rock of Salamis !

These scenes, their story not unknown,
Arise, and make again your own;
Snatch from the ashes of your sires
The embers of their former fires;
And he who in the strife expires
Will add to theirs a name of fear
That Tyranny shall quake to hear,
And leave his sons a hope, a fame,
They too will rather die than shame;
For Freedom's battle once begun,
Bequeathed by bleeding sire to son,
Though baffled oft is ever won.
Bear witness, Greece, thy living page,
Attest it, many a deathless age:
While kings in dusty darkness hid,

Have left a nameless pyramid,
Thy heroes, though the general doom
Have swept the column from their tomb,
A mightier monument command,
The mountains of their native land!
There points thy muse to stranger's eye
The graves of those that cannot die!
'Twere long to tell, and sad to trace,
Each step from splendor to disgrace:
Enough,-no foreign foe could quell
Thy soul, till from itself it fell;
Yes! self-abasement paved the way
To villain-bonds and despot sway.
What can he tell who treads thy shore?
No legend of thine olden time,

No theme on which the muse might soar,
High as thy own in days of yore,

When man was worthy of thy clime.
The hearts within thy valleys bred,
The fiery souls that might have led
Thy sons to deeds sublime,

Now crawl from cradle to the grave,
Slaves-nay, the bondsmen of a slave,
And callous save to crime.

Giaour

214. THE "LOST CHORD."

A. A. PROCTER.

Seated one day at the organ,
I was weary and ill at ease,
And my fingers wandered idly
Over the noisy keys.

I do not know what I was playing,
Or what I was dreaming then;
But I struck one chord of music,
Like the sound of a great Amen!
It flooded the crimson twilight
Like the close of an angel's psalm,
And it lay on my fevered spirit,
With a touch of infinite calm.

It quieted pain and sorrow,
Like love overcoming strife;
It seemed the harmonious echo
From our discordant life.

It linked all perplexéd meanings
Into one perfect peace,

And trembled away into silence,
As if it were loth to cease.

I have sought, but I seek it vainly,
That one lost chord divine,

That came from the soul of the organ,
And entered into mine.

It may be that Death's bright angel
Will speak in that chord again;
It may be that only in heaven
I shall hear that grand Amen.

215. THE MAIN-TRUCK.
G. P. MORRIS.

Old Ironsides at anchor lay,
In the harbor of Mahon;
A dead calm rested on the bay-
The waves to sleep had gone;
When litttle Hal, the captain's son,
A lad both brave and good,
In sport, up shroud and rigging ran,
And on the main-truck stood!

A shudder shot through every vein,
All eyes were turned on high!
There stood the boy, with dizzy brain,
Between the sea and sky;

No hold had he above, below;

Alone he stood in air:

To that far height none dared to go:
No aid could reach him there.

We gazed;-but not a man could speak!
With horror all aghast,

In groups with pallid brow and cheek,
We watched the quivering mast.

The atmosphere grew thick and hot,
And of a lurid hue;-

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,
And for the ship struck out;

On board we hailed the lad beloved,

With many a manly shout.
His father drew, in silent joy,

Those wet arms round his neck-
Then folded to his heart his boy,
And fainted on the deck.

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

herself, after making that ferocious joke about his teeth. She was my first love. I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding-Hood I should have known perfect bliss. But it was not to be, and there was nothing for it but to look out the wolf in the Noah's Ark there, and put him late in the procession on the table, as a monster who was to be degraded.

Oh, the wonderful Noah's Ark! It was not found seaworthy when put in a washing-tub, and the animals were crammed in at the roof, and needed to have their legs well shaken down before they could be got in even there; and then ten to one but they began to tumble out at the door, which was but imperfectly fastened with a wire latch; but what was that against it? Consider the noble fly, a size or two smaller than the elephant; the lady-bird, the butterfly, all triumphs of art! consider the goose, whose feet were so small and whose bal. ance was so indifferent that he usually tumbled forward and knocked down all the animal creation! consider Noah and his family, like idiotic tobacco-stoppers; and how the leopard stuck to warm little fingers; and how the tails of the larger animals used gradually to resolve themselves into frayed bits of string.

Hush! Again a forest, and somebody up in a tree,-not Robin Hood, not Valentine, not the Yellow Dwarf,—I have passed him and all Mother Bunch's wonders without mention,

but an Eastern King with a glittering scymetar and turban. It is the setting-in of the bright Arabian Nights. Oh, now all common things become uncommon and enchanted to me! All lamps are wonderful! all rings are talismans! Common flower-pots are full of treasure, with a little earth scattered on the top; trees are for Ali Baba to hide in; beefsteaks are to throw down into the Valley of Diamonds, that the precious stones may stick to them, and be carried by the eagles to their nests, whence the traders, with loud cries, will scare them. All the dates imported come from the same tree as that unlucky one with whose shell the merchant knocked out the eye of the genii's invisible son. All olives are of the same stock of that fresh fruit concerning which the Commander of the Faithful overheard the boy conduct the fictitious trial of the fraudulent olive-merchant. Yes, on every object that I recognize among those upper branches of my Christmas tree I see this fairy light!

But hark! the Waits are playing, and they break my childish sleep! What images do I associate with the Christmas music as I see them set forth on the Christmas tree! Known before all the others, keeping far apart from all the others,