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into mutual recognition,' suddenly they pause? This soldier, this officer-who are they? O reader! once before they had stood face to face—the soldier that was struck, the officer that struck him. Once again' they are meeting; and the gaze of armies is upon them. If for a mōmènt a doubt divides them, in a moment the doubt has perished. One glance exchanged between them publishes the forgiveness that is sealed forever.

8. As one who recovers a brother whom he has accounted dead, the officer sprang forward, threw his arms around the neck of the soldier, and kissed him, as if he were some martyr glorified by that shadow of death from which he was returning; whilst, on his part, the soldier, stepping back, and carrying his open hand through the beautiful motions of the military salute to a superior, makes this immortal answer- -that answer which shut up forever the memory of the indignity offered to him, even while for the last time alluding to it: "Sir," he said, “I told you before, that I would make you repent it.'

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THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

THOMAS DE QUINCEY was born at Manchester, England, on the 15th of August, 1785. He passed his childhood in rural retirement. He was matriculated at Oxford, at Christinas, 1803, being then in his nineteenth year, where he remained till 1808. He resided for twenty years, between 1808 and 1829, among the lakes and mountains of Westmoreland, and occupied Wordsworth's cottage seven years of the time. De Quincey's first work, "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater," which appeared in the London Magazine, in 1821, and was printed in book form in 1822, was immediately and immensely popular. It passed through several editions in Europe and this country, and at once placed its author in the front rank of vivid and powerful writers. After this period, his numerous contributions to the periodical press were paid for at a large price. He has written upon a wider and more diversified range of subjects than any other author of his time. He is noted for his original genius, stores of learning, depth of insight, and subtlety of thought. His matter is always abundant and good. He has acquired a style of the rarest brilliancy and richness, but his force is often diminished by his capricious use of words, and the weary length of his digressions.

THE

V.

7. BEAUTY.

HE high and divine beauty which can be loved without effeminacy, is that which is found in combination with the human will, and never separate. Beauty is the mark God sets

1

Recognition, (rêk`og nish' un), acknowledgment; knowledge avow

ed or confessed; act of knowing again.

'Again, (å gèn').

upon virtue. Every natural action is graceful. Every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine.

2. We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it. Every rational creature has all nature for his dowry and estate. It is his, if he will. He may dĭvěst himself of it; he may creep into a corner, and abdicate his kingdom, as most men do; but he is entitled to the world by his constitution. In proportion to the energy of his thought and will, he takes up the world into himself. "All those things for which men plow, build, or sail, obey virtue," said an ancient historian. "The winds and waves," said Gibbon,' are alway on the side of the ablèst navigators." So are the sun and moon and all the stars of heaven.

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3. When a noble act is done,-perchance in a scene of great natural beauty; when Leonidas' and his three hundred martyrs consume one day in dying, and the sun and moon come each and look at them once in the steep defile of Thermopyla; when Arnold Winkelried,' in the high Alps, under the shadow of the avalanche, gathers in his side a sheaf of Austrian spears to break the line for his comrades; are not these heroes entitled to add the beauty of the scene to the beauty of the deed?

4. When the bark of Columbus' nears the shore of America, —before it, the beach lined with savages, fleeing out of all their huts of cane- -the sea behind, and the purple mountains of the

1 Edward Gibbon, one of the most celebrated historians of any age and country, author of the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," was born at Putney, Surrey, England, April 27th, 1737, and died January 16th, 1794.

? Le ŏn'i das, the first of the name, king of Sparta, immortalized by his glorious defense of the pass of Thermopylæ against Xerxes, reigned from 491 to 480 B. C.

'Arnold Winkelried, (wingk ́ elret), a Switzer of the fourteenth century, the glory of whose heroic, voluntary death, is not surpassed in the annals of history. In the battle of Sempach, perceiving that there was

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Indian' Ar'chipěl'ago around,-can we separate the man from the living picture? Does not the New World clothe his form with her palm-groves and savannahs as fit drapery?

5. Ever does natural beauty steal in like air, and envelop great actions. When Sir Harry Vane' was dragged up the Tower-hill, sitting on a sled, to suffer death as the champion of the English laws, one of the multitude cried out to him, "You never sat on so glorious a seat." Charles II., to intimidate the citizens of London, caused the patriot Lord Russell3 to be drawn in an open coach, through the principal streets of the city, on his way to the scaffold. "But," to use the simple narrative of his biographer, "the multitude imagined they saw liberty and virtue sitting by his side."

6. In private places, among sordid objects, an act of truth or heroism seems at once to draw to itself the sky as its temple, the sun as its candle. Nature stretchèth out her arms to embrace man, only let his thoughts be of equal greatness. Willingly does she follow his steps with the rose and the violet, and bend her lines of grandeur and grace to the decoration of her darling child. Only let his thoughts be of equal scope, and the frame will suit the picture. A virtuous man is in unison with her works, and makes the central figure of the visible sphere.

EMERSON.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON, a son of the Rev. William Emerson, was born in Boston, about the year 1803, took his degree of bachelor of arts at Harvard College in 1821, studied theology, and, in 1829, was ordained the colleague of the late Rev. Henry Ware, jr., over the second Unitarian church of his native city; but subsequently, becoming independent of the control of set regulations of religious worship, retired to Concord, where, in 1835, he purchased the house in which he has since resided, except while absent on two excursions in Europe, during the latter of which, in 1847, he delivered a course of lectures in London, and other parts of England. He has been a contributor to "The North American Review" and "The Christian Examiner," and was two years editor of "The Dial,"

1 Indian, (Ind' yan).

9 Sir Henry Vane, a republican and religionist, was born at Hadlow, in Kent, England, in 1612. He was among the earliest of those whom religious opinion induced to seek a home in America. He was appointed governor of Massachusetts in 1635, returned to England the following year, married there, entered parlia.

ment, opposed the king, became one of the council of state on the establishment of the commonwealth, and, after the restoration, was condemned for treason, and beheaded June 14, 1662. He wrote several works, chiefly religious.

'Lord William Russell, born on the 29th of September, 1639, and be headed on the 21st of July, 1683.

established in Boston, by Mr. Ripley, in 1840. He published several orations and addresses in 1837-38-39-40, and in 1841 the first series of his "Essays," in 1844 the second series of his "Essays," in 1846 a collection of his "Poems," in 1851 "Representative Men," in 1852, in connection with W. H. Channing and James Freeman Clarke, "Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli," and in 1856 "English Traits." Mr. Emerson is an able lecturer, a most distinguished essayist, and an eminent poet. He perceives the evils in society, the falsehoods of popular opinions, and the unhappy tendencies of common feelings. He is an original and independent thinker, and commands attention both by the novelty of his views and the graces and peculiarities of his style.

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SECTION III.

I.

8. SABBATH MORNING.

TOW still the morning of the hallowed day!
Mute is the voice of rural labor, hushed
The plowboy's whistle, and the milkmaid's song.
The scythe lies glittering in the dewy wreath
Of tedded' grass, mingled with fading flowers,
That yester-morn bloomed, waving in the breeze.
Sounds, the most faint, attract the ear, the hum
Of early bee, the trickling of the dew,
The distant bleating, midway up the hill.
Calmness sits throned on yon unmoving cloud.

2. To him who wanders o'er the upland leas,
The blackbird's note comes mellower from the dale;
And sweeter from the sky the gladsome lark
Warbles with heaven-tuned song; the lulling brook
Murmurs more gently down the deep-worn glen;
While from yon lowly roof, whose curling smoke
O'ermounts the mist, is heard, at intervals,

The voice of psalms,-the simple song of praise.
3. With dove-like wings, Peace o'er yon village broods:
The dizzying mill-wheel rests; and the anvil's din
Hath ceased; all, all around is quietness.

Less fearful, on this day, the limping hare

1 Těd'ded, spread out, or turned and scattered for drying.

Stops, and looks back, and stops, and looks on man,
Her deadliest foe. The toil-worn horse, set free,
Unheedful of the pasture, roams at large;
And as his stiff, unwieldy bulk he rolls,

His iron-armed hoofs gleam in the morning ray.
4. But chiefly man the day of rest enjoys.
Hail, Sabbath! thee I hail, the poor man's day.
On other days, the man of toil is doomed
To eat his joyless bread lonely,—the ground
Both seat and board, screened from the winter's cold
And summer's heat by neighboring hedge or tree;
But on this day, embosomed in his home,

He shares the frugal meal with those he loves;
With those he loves, he shares the heart-felt joy
Of giving thanks to God,-not thanks of form,
A word and a grimace', but reverently,

With covered face, and upward, earnèst eye.

5. Hail, Sabbath! thee I hail, the poor man's day:
The pale mechanic now has leave to breathe
The morning air, pure from the city's smoke;
While, wandering slowly up the river's side,
He meditates on Him, whose power he marks
In each green tree that proudly spreads the bough,
As in the tiny dew-bent flowers that bloom
Around its roots; and while he thus surveys,
With elevated joy, each rural charm,

He hopes, yet fears presumption in the hope,-
That heaven may be one Sabbath without end.
6. But now his steps a welcome sound recalls:
Solemn the knell, from yonder ancient pile,
Fills all the air, inspiring joyful awe :

Slowly the throng moves o'er the tomb-paved ground;
The aged man, the bowed down, the blind

Led by the thoughtless boy, and he who breathes
With pain, and eyes the new-made grave, well-pleased ;
These, mingled with the young, the gay, approach
The house of God-these, spite of all their ills,
A glow of glădnèss feel: with silent praise
They enter in; a placid stillness reigns,

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