out the whole of the civilized world. Can you lightly contemplate these consequences? Can you yield yourself to the tyranny of passion, amid dangers which I have depicted in colors far too tame, of what the result would be if that direful event to which I have referred should ever occur?

I implore gentlemen, I adjure them, whether from the South or the North, by all they hold dear in this world; by all their love of liberty; by all their veneration for their ancestors; by all their regard for posterity; by all their gratitude to Him who has bestowed on them such unnumbered and countless blessings; by all the duties which they owe to mankind; and by all the duties which they owe to themselves, to pause, at the edge of the precipice, before the fearful and dangerous leap is taken into the yawning abyss below, from which none, who ever take it, shall return in safety.

Finally, I implore, as the best blessing which Heaven can bestow upon me upon earth, that, if the direful and sad event of the dissolution of this Union is to happen, I shall not survive to behold the sad and heart-rending spectacle. FROM HENRY CLAY.

LXXXIII.-SCENE AFTER A BATTLE.

ALP wandered on, along the beach,
Till within the range of a carbine's reach
Of the leagured wall; but they saw him not,
Or how could he 'scape from the hostile shot?

Did traitors lurk in the Christians' hold?

Were their hands grown stiff, or their hearts waxed cold?

I know not, in sooth; but from yonder wall
There flashed no fire, and there hissed no ball,
Though he stood beneath the bastion's frown,
That flanked the seaward gate of the town;
Though he heard the sound and could almost tell
The sullen words of the sentinel,

As his measured step on the stone below
Clanked, as he paced it to and fro:

And he saw the lean dogs beneath the wall
Hold o'er the dead their carnival,

Gorging and growling o'er carcass and limb;
They were too busy to bark at him!

From a Tartar's skull they had stripped the flesh,

As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh;

And their white tusks craunched o'er the whiter skull,
As it slipped through their jaws when their edge grew dull,
As they lazily mumbled the bones of the dead,

When they scarce could rise from the spot where they fed;
So well had they broken a lingering fast

With those who had fallen for that night's repast.

And Alp knew, by the turbans that rolled on the sand, The foremost of these were the best of his band.

The scalps were in the wild dog's maw,

The hair was tangled round his jaw.

But close by the shore, on the edge of the gulf,
There sat a vulture flapping a wolf,

Who had stolen from the hills, but kept away,
Scared by the dogs, from the human prey;
But he seized on his share of a steed that lay,
Picked by the birds on the sands of the bay.

Alp turned him from the sickening sight:

Never had shaken his nerves in fight;

But he better could brook to behold the dying,
Deep in the tide of their warm blood lying,
Scorched with the death-thirst, and writhing in vain,
Than the perishing dead who are past all pain.

There is something of pride in the perilous hour,
Whate'er be the shape in which death may lower;
For Fame is there to say who bleeds,

And Honor's eye on daring deeds!

But when all is past, it is humbling to tread
O'er the weltering field of the tombless dead,
And see worms of the earth, and fowls of the air,
Beasts of the forest, all gathering there;

All regarding man as their prey,

All rejoicing in his decay!

FROM BYRON.

LXXXIV. NOT ON THE BATTLEFIELD.

O, No, no! Let me lie

Not on a field of battle when I die!

Let not the iron tread

Of the mad war-horse crush my helm-ed head;
Nor let the reeking knife

That I have drawn against a brother's life,
Be in my hand, when death

Thunders along and tramples me beneath
His heavy squadron's heels,

Or gory fellies of his cannon's wheels.

From such a dying bed,

Though o'er it float the stripes of white and red, And the bald eagle brings

The clustered stars upon his wide-spread wings, To sparkle in my sight,

O, never let my spirit take her flight.

I know that beauty's eye

Is all the brighter when gay pennants fly,
And brazen helmets dance,

And sunshine flashes on the lifted lance.
I know that bards have sung,

And people shouted till the welkin rung,
In honor of the brave,

Who on the battlefield have found a grave.
I know that o'er their bones,

Have grateful hands piled monumental stones.

Such honors grace the bed,

I know, whereon the warrior lays his head,
And hears, as life ebbs out,

The conquered flying, and the conqueror's shout.
But as his eyes grow dim,

What is a column or a mound, to him?
What, to the parting soul,

The mellow notes of bugles? What the roll
Of drums?

No! Let me die

Where the blue heaven bends o'er me lovingly, And the soft summer air,

As it goes by me, stirs my thin, white hair,

And, from my forehead, dries

The death-damp, as it gathers, and the skies

Seem waiting to receive

My soul to their clear depths!

Or, let me leave

The world, when, round my bed,

Wife, children, weeping friends are gathered,
And the calm voice of prayer

And holy hymning shall my soul prepare
To go and be at rest,

With kindred spirits who have blessed
The human brotherhood,

By labors, cares, and counsels for their good
And in my dying hour,

When riches, fame, and honor have no power
To bear the spirit up,

Or from my lips to turn aside the cup
That all must drink at last,

O, let me draw refreshment from the past!
Then, let my soul run back,

With peace and joy, along my earthly track,
And see that all the seeds

That I have scattered there, in virtuous deeds,
Have sprung up and have given,
Already, fruits of which to taste in Heaven!

FROM PIERPONT.

LXXXV.-NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.-No. I.

CORTEGE; pro. cor-tazhe; a train of attendants.

NAPOLEON's reign was nothing but a campaign; his empire, a field of battle as extensive as all Europe. He concentrated the rights of people and of kings in his sword; all morality, in the number and strength of his armies. Nothing which threatened him, was innocent. Nothing which placed an obstacle in his way, was sacred. Nothing which preceded him in date, was worthy of respect. From himself alone he wished Europe to date its epoch.

He swept away the republic, with the tread of his

soldiers. He trampled on the throne of the Bourbons in exile. Like a murderer, in the darkness of the night, he seized upon the bravest and the most confiding of the military princes of this race, in a foreign country. He slew him in the ditch of Vincennes, by a singular presentiment of crime, which showed him, in this youth, the only armed competitor of the throne against him, or against his race.

He conquered Italy, Germany, Prussia, Holland, Spain, Naples,-kingdoms and republics. He carved out the continent, made a new distribution of nations, and raised up thrones for all his family. He expended ten generations of France, to establish a royal dynasty for each of the sons or daughters of his mother.

His fame, which grew incessantly in noise and splendor, imparted to France and to Europe that vertigo of glory, which hides the immorality and the abyss of such a reign. He created the attraction, and was followed even to the delirium, of the Russian campaign. He floated in a whirlwind of events so vast and so rapid, that even three years of errors did not occasion his fall. Spain devoured his armies. Russia served as a sepulcher to seven hundred thousand men. Dresden and Leipsic swallowed up the rest. Germany, exasperated, deserted his cause.

The whole of Europe hemmed him in, and pursued him from the Rhine to the Pyrenees, with a mighty tide of people. France, exhausted and disaffected, saw him combat and sink, without raising an arm in his cause. Every thing was annihilated around his throne, but his glory remained soaring above his head. He at length capitulated, or, rather, France capitulated without him, and he traveled alone, across his conquered country, and his ravaged provinces, the rout to his first exile; his only cortège the resentments and the murmurs of his country. FROM LAMARTINE.