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LESSON 155..

LIBERTY AND UNION.

PROFESS, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the preservation of our Federal Union. It is to that Union we owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that Union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country.

2. That Union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign influences these great interests immediately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth with newness of life.

3. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh. proofs of its utility and its blessings; and, although our territory has stretched out wider and wider, and our population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, social, and personal happi

ness.

4. I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the Union to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counselor in the affairs of this government whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering not how the Union may be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it should be broken up and destroyed.

5. While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting,

gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the vail. God grant that in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise! God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind! When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood!

6. Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full-high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured; bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as What is all this worth? nor those other words of delusion and folly - Liberty first and Union afterwards; but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart - Liberty AND Union, now and forever, one and inseparable! - Daniel Webster.

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LESSON 156.

MARGARET OF VALOIS.

HERE were few cities of the Netherlands more picturesque in situation, more trimly built, and more opulent of aspect than the little city of Namur. Seated at the confluence of the Sombre with the Meuse, and throwing over each river a bridge of solid but graceful structure, it lay in the lap of a most fruitful valley. A

broad, crescent-shaped plain, fringed by the rapid Meuse, and inclosed by gently rolling hills, cultivated to their crests, or by abrupt precipices of limestone, crowned with verdure, was divided by numerous hedgerows, and dotted all over with cornfields, vineyards, and flower-gardens.

2. Many eyes have gazed with delight upon that wellknown and most lovely valley, and many torrents of blood have mingled with those glancing waters since that long-buried and most sanguinary age; and still placid as ever is the valley, brightly as ever flows the stream. Even now, as in that vanished but neverforgotten time, nestles the little city in the angle of the two rivers; still directly over its head seems to hang, in mid-air, the massive and frowning fortress, like the gigantic helmet in the fiction, as if ready to crush the pigmy town below.

3. It was this famous citadel, crowning an abrupt precipice five hundred feet above the river's bed, and placed near the frontier of France, which made the city so important, and which had now attracted Don John's attention in this hour of his perplexity. The unexpected visit of a celebrated personage furnished him with the pretext which he desired.

4. The beautiful Margaret of Valois, Queen of Navarre, who was proceeding to the baths of Spa to drink the waters, came to mingle the golden thread of her feminine intrigues with the dark woof of the Netherland destinies. Few spirits have been more subtle, few faces so fatal as hers.

5. True child of the Medicean mother, worthy sister of Charles, Henry, and Francis, princes forever infamous in the annals of France, she possessed more beauty and wit than Mary of Scotland, more learning and accomplishments than Elizabeth of England. In the blaze of her beauty, according to the inflated language of her most determined worshiper, the wings of all rivals were

melted. Heaven required to be raised higher and earth made wider, before a full sweep could be given to her own majestic flight.

6. We are further informed that she was a Minerva for eloquence; that she composed matchless poems, which she sang most exquisitely to the sound of her lute; and that her familiar letters were so full of genius, that "poor Cicero" was but a fool to her in the same branch of composition. The world has shuddered for ages at the dark tragedy of her nuptials. Was it strange that hatred and murder should follow in the train of a wedding thus hideously solemnized? -J. Lothrop Motley.

LESSON 157.

ANTONY'S ORATION OVER THE DEAD BODY OF CÆSAR.

FRIENDS, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;

come to bury Cæsar, not to praise him.

The evil that men do, lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Cæsar! The noble Brutus
Hath told you, Cæsar was ambitious:
If it were so, it were a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Cæsar answered it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest,
(For Brutus is an honorable man;

So are they all, all honorable men ;)
Come I to speak in Cæsar's funeral.

He was my friend, faithful and just to me;
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honorable man.

He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill :
Did this in Cæsar seem ambitious?

When that the poor have cried, Cæsar hath wept;
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff;

Yet Brutus says, he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honorable man.
You all did see, that, on the Lupercal,
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,

Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition?

Yet Brutus says, he was ambitious,
And sure, he is an honorable man.

I speak not to disprove what Brutus spake,
But here I am to speak what I do know.

You all did love him once, not without cause;
What cause withholds you, then, to mourn for him?
O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason! Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin, there, with Cæsar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

But yesterday, the word of Cæsar might
Have stood against the world; now lies he there,
And none so poor to do him reverence.

O masters! if I were disposed to stir
Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage,
I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong,
Who, you all know, are honorable men:

I will not do them wrong; I rather choose
To wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you,
Than I will wrong such honorable men.

But here's a parchment, with the seal of Cæsar; I found it in his closet, 't is his will;

Let but the commons hear this testament,
(Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read,)
And they would go and kiss dead Cæsar's wounds
And dip their napkins in his sacred blood;
Yea, beg a hair of him for memory,

And, dying, mention it within their wills,