own life and his own honor? Are not you, sir, who sit in that chair, is not he, our venerable colleague, near you are you not both already the proscribed and predestined objects of punishment and of vengeance? Cut off from all hope of royal clemency, what are you, what can you be, while the power of England remains, but outlaws?

If we postpone independence, do we mean to carry on or to give up the war? Do we mean to submit, and consent that we ourselves shall be ground to powder, and our country and its rights trodden down in the dust? I know we do not mean to submit. We never shall submit! Do we intend to violate that most solemn obligation ever entered into by man, that plighting, before God, of our sacred honor to Washington, when, putting him forth to incur the dangers of war, as well as the political hazards of the times, we promised to adhere to him in every extremity, with our fortunes and our lives? I know there is not a man here, who would not rather see a general conflagration sweep over the land, or an earthquake sink it, than one jot or tittle of that plighted faith fall to the ground. For myself, having twelve months ago, in this place, moved you that George Washington be appointed commander of the forces raised or to be raised, for the defense of American liberty; may my right hand forget its cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I hesitate or waver in the support I give him.

The war, then, must go on. We must fight it through. And if the war must go on, why put off longer the declaration of Independence? That measure will strengthen us. It will give us character abroad. Nations will then treat with us, which they never can do while we acknowledge ourselves subjects in arms against our sovereign. Nay, I maintain that England herself will sooner treat for peace with us on the footing of independence, than consent, by repealing her acts, to acknowledge that her whole conduct towards us has been a course of injustice and oppression. Her pride will be less wounded by submitting to that course of things which now predestinates our independence, than by yielding the points in controversy to her rebellious subjects. The former she would regard as the result of fortune; the latter, she would feel as her own deep disgrace. Why, then, do we not, as soon as possible, change this from a civil to a national war? And since we must fight it through, why not put ourselves in a state to enjoy all the benefits of victory, if we gain the victory? If we fail, it can be no worse for us. But we shall not fail. The cause will

raise up armies; the cause will create navies. The people, the people, if we are true to them, will carry us, and will carry themselves, gloriously through this struggle. I care not how fickle other people have been found. I know the people of these colonies; and I know that resistance to British aggression is deep and settled in their hearts, and cannot be eradicated.

The declaration of Independence will inspire the people with increased courage. Instead of a long and bloody war for the restoration of privileges, for redress of grievances, for chartered immunities, held under a British king, set before them the glorious object of entire independence, and it will breathe into them anew the spirit of life. Read this declaration at the head of the army; every sword will be drawn from its scabbard, and the solemn vow uttered to maintain it, or perish on the bed of honor. Publish it from the pulpit; religion will approve it, and the love of religious liberty will cling around it, resolved to stand with it, or fall with it. Send it to the public halls; proclaim it there; let them hear it who heard the first roar of the enemy's cannon,―let them see it, who saw their brothers and their sons fall on the field of Bunker Hill, and in the streets of Lexington and Concord, -and the very walls will cry out in its support.

Sir, I know the uncertainty of human affairs, but I see, I see clearly, through this day's business. You and I, indeed, may rue it. We may not live to see the time when this declaration shall be made good. We may die; die colonists; die slaves; die, it may be, ignominiously and on the scaffold. Be it so. Be it so. If it be the pleasure of Heaven that my country shall require the poor offering of my life, the victim shall be ready at the appointed hour of sacrifice, come when that hour may. But while I do live, let me have a country, or at least the hope of a country, and that a free country.

But whatever may be our fate, be assured, be assured that this Declaration will stand. It may cost treasure, and it may cost blood; but it will stand, and it will richly compensate for both. Through the thick gloom of the present, I see the brightness of the future, as the sun in heaven. We shall make this a glorious, an immortal day. When we are in our graves, our children will honor it. They will celebrate it with thanksgiving, with festivity, with bonfires and illuminations. On its annual return, they will shed tears, copious, gushing tears ; not of subjection and slavery, not of agony and distress, but of exultation, of gratitude, and of joy.

Sir, before God, I believe the hour is come. My judgment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I hope in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it; and I leave off as I began, that, live or die, survive or perish, I am for the Declaration. It is my living sentiment, and, by the blessing of God, it shall be my dying sentiment,-Independence now, and Independence forever!

75.-HYMN TO THE FLOWERS.

HORACE SMITH.

Day-stars! that ope your eyes with morn, to twinkle
From rainbow galaxies of earth's creation,
And dew-drops on her holy altars sprinkle
As a libation.

Ye matin worshipers! who, bending lowly
Before the uprisen sun, God's lidless eye,
Throw from your chalices a sweet and holy
Incense on high.

Ye bright mosaics! that with storied beauty
The floor of nature's temple tessellate,
What numerous emblems of instructive duty
Your forms create!

'Neath cloistered boughs, each floral bell that swingeth,
And tolls its perfume on the passing air,
Makes Sabbath in the fields, and ever ringeth

A call to prayer.

Not to the domes where crumbling arch and column
Attest the feebleness of mortal hand,
But to that fane, most catholic and solemn,
Which God hath planned;

To that cathedral, boundless as our wonder,

Whose quenchless lamps the sun and moon supply;
Its choir the winds and waves, its organ thunder,
Its dome the sky.

There, as in solitude and shade I wander

Through the green aisles, or stretched upon the sol,
Awed by the silence, reverently I ponder

The ways of God.

Your voiceless lips, O flowers! are living preachers,
Each cup a pulpit, and each leaf a book,
Supplying to my fancy numerous teachers

From loneliest nook.

Floral apostles! that in dewy splendor

"Weep without woe, and blush without a crime," Oh, may I deeply learn, and ne'er surrender, Your lore sublime!

"Thou wert not, Solomon, in all thy glory,
Arrayed," the lilies cry, "in robes like ours;
'How vain your grandeur! ah, how transitory
Are human flowers!"

In the sweet-scented pictures, heavenly Artist,
With which thou paintest Nature's wide-spread hall
What a delightful lesson thou impartest

Of love to all!

Not useless are ye, flowers! though made for pleasure
Blooming o'er field and wave by day and night,
From every source your sanction bids me treasure
Harmless delight.

Ephemeral sages! what instructors hoary

For such a world of thought could furnish scope?
Each fading calyx a memento mori,
Yet fount of hope.

Posthumous glories! angel-like collection!
Upraised from seed or bulb interred in earth,
Ye are to me a type of resurrection,

And second birth.

Were I, oh God! in churchless lands remaining,
Far from all voice of teachers or divines,
My soul would find, in flowers of thy ordaining,
Priests, sermons, shrines!

76.-DREAM OF CLARENCE.

SHAKSPEARE.

Brakenbury. Why looks your Grace so heavily to-day?
Clarence. Oh, I have passed a miserable night,

So full of fearful dreams, of ugly sights,

That, as I am a Christian, faithful man,

I would not spend another such a night,

Though 'twere to buy a world of happy days,

So full of dismal terror was the time.

Br. What was your dream, my lord? I pray you, tell me. Clar. Methought that I had broken from the Tower,

And was embarked, to cross to Burgundy;

And, in my company, my brother Gloster;

Who, from my cabin, tempted me to walk

Upon the hatches; whence we looked toward England,

And cited up a thousand heavy times,
During the wars of York and Lancaster,
That had befallen us. As we paced along
Upon the giddy footing of the hatches,

Methought that Gloster stumbled; and, in falling,
Struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard
Into the tumbling billows of the main.

Oh, then, methought, what pain it was to drown!
What dreadful noise of water in mine ears!
What sights of ugly death within mine eyes!
Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks;
A thousand men, that fishes gnawed upon;
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearls,
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,

All scattered in the bottom of the sea.

Some lay in dead men's skulls; and, in those holes
Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept
(As 'twere in scorn of eyes) reflecting gems,
That wooed the slimy bottom of the deep,

And mocked the dead bones that lay scattered by.
Brak. Had you such leisure, in the time of death,
To gaze upon these secrets of the deep?

Clar. Methought I had; and often did I strive
To yield the ghost: but still the envious flood
Kept in my soul, and would not let it forth
To seek the empty, vast, and wandering air;
But smothered it within my panting bulk,
Which almost burst to belch it in the sea.

Brak. Awaked you not with this sore agony?

Clar. Oh, no; my dream was lengthened after life;

Oh, then began the tempest to my soul!

I passed, methought, the melancholy flood,

With that grim ferryman which poets write of,
Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.

The first that there did greet my stranger soul,
Was my great father-in-law, renownéd Warwick:
Who cried aloud, "What scourge for perjury
Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?"
And so he vanished. Then came wandering by
A shadow like an angel, with bright hair
Dabbled in blood; and he shrieked out aloud:
"Clarence is come! false, fleeting, perjured Clarence!
That stabbed me in the field by Tewksbury:
Seize on him, furies, take him to your torments!"
With that, methought, a legion of foul fiends
Environed me, and howléd in mine ears
Such hideous cries, that, with the very noise,
I trembling waked, and, for a season after,
Could not believe but that I was in hell,—
Such terrible impression made my dream.