A sea of flame, it seemed to be

Sea without bound;

For neither mortal nor immortal sight

Could pierce across through that intensest light.

In prose, Southey edited the works of half a dozen poets, wrote biographies of admirals and preachers, tales of Brazilian and Church history, travels, letters, and criticisms. and essays without number for the Reviews. His prose writings are limpid, animated, and free, and are excellent specimens of agreeable, idiomatic English. His best prose work is The Doctor, a kind of "Excursion" or "Task," treating of everything with the pedantic learning of a Johnson and the amiable mirth of a Lamb. It represents a tireless Englishman, whose imagination, shut up in the best private library of England, roves everywhere with a daring spirit.

CHAPTER XL.—MISCELLANEOUS.

I. The Old Continentals.

1. In their ragged regimentals
Stood the old Continentals,

Yielding not,

When the grenadiers were lunging,

And like hail fell the plunging

Cannon-shot;

When the files

Of the Isles

From the smoky night encampment, bore the banner of

the rampant

Unicorn,

And grummer, grummer, GRUMMER rolled the roll of the

drummer,

Through the morn!

2. Then with eyes to the front all,
And with guns horizontal,
Stood our sires;

And the balls whistled deadly,
And in streams flashing redly
Blazed the fires;

As the roar

On the shore,

Swept the strong battle-breakers o'er the green-sodded

acres

Of the plain;

And louder, louder, LOUDER cracked the black gunpowder, Cracking amain!

3. Now like smiths at their forges
Worked the red St. George's
Cannoneers;

And the "villanous saltpetre"
Rung a fierce, discordant metre
Round their ears:

As the swift

Storm-drift,

With hot sweeping anger, came the horse-guards' clangor On our flanks.

Then higher, higher, HIGHER burned the old-fashioned fire Through the ranks!

4. Then the old-fashioned colonel
Galloped through the white infernal
Powder-cloud;

And his broadsword was swinging,
And his brazen throat was ringing

Trumpet-loud.

Then the blue

Bullets flew,

And the trooper-jackets redden at the touch of the leaden

Rifle-breath;

And rounder, ROUNDER, ROUNDER roared the iron six

pounder,

Hurling death!

Guy Humphrey McMaster.

II.-The Patriotic Dead.

1. How sleep the brave, who sink to rest
With all their country's wishes blessed!
When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,
Returns to deck their hallowed mould,
She there shall dress a sweeter sod
Than Fancy's feet have ever trod.

2. By fairy hands their knell is rung,
By forms unseen their dirge is sung;
There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray,
To bless the turf that wraps their clay;
And Freedom shall awhile repair

To dwell, a weeping hermit, there.-Collins.

3. The poet Montgomery thus characterizes the foregoing lyric, which contains some of the most beautiful and striking examples of personification that can anywhere be found. He says, "The imagery is of the most delicate and exquisite character: Spring decking the turfy sod, Fancy's feet treading upon the flowers there, fairy hands ringing the knell, unseen forms singing the dirge of the glorious dead; but, above all, and never to be surpassed in picturesque and imaginative beauty, Honor, as an old broken soldier, coming on a far pilgrimage to visit the shrines where his companions in arms are laid to rest; and Freedom, in whose cause they fought and fell, hastening to the spot, and dwelling (but only for a while'), a weeping hermit, there."

CHAPTER XLI.-DANIEL WEBSTER.-1782-1852.

I.-Biographical.

1. Webster's father, who was a veteran soldier of the French and Indian and the Revolutionary wars, settled as a farmer in Salisbury, New Hampshire, where his son Daniel was born. Daniel was educated at Dartmouth College, and subsequently he practised law in Boston, as well as in his native State. He was a Representative in Congress for four terms, and was three times chosen to represent Massachusetts in the United States Senate. He also filled the office of Secretary of State under Presidents Harrison, Tyler, and Fillmore, and died at his Marshfield residence in Plymouth County, Massachusetts.

2. Mr. Webster was the greatest forensic orator that America has produced. In Congress he at once took rank among the most influential and eloquent members, and won for himself the appellation, "Expounder of the Constitution." His mind was capacious and logical, his memory retentive, and his imagination ardent, rather than brilliant. Such was his insight into the nature of his themes that his treatment of them was both serious and weighty; his diction was simple, sonorous, and majestic; his felicities of style were the spontaneous product of comprehensive reasoning and of an impassioned speaker, but not the sedulous arts of the rhetorician. His voice was rich and deep, his gesture dignified, and his oratory was much assisted by an impressive aspect. "His cavernous eyes," as Miss Martineau called them, looked out beneath an overhanging, broad, and ample forehead; his complexion was dark, his expression grave, and his structure robust.

3. Acting in public life at a time when questions destined to be arbitrated on the field of battle were in the prior agitation of debate, Mr. Webster was always found pleading for those constructions of the Constitution which

promised to strengthen and exalt the Union of the States in peace. His contest with Colonel Hayne, a Senator from South Carolina, in 1830, is one of the greatest incidents in the history of Congressional debate. Colonel Hayne had attacked New England, and had asserted nullification doctrines, in a powerful speech. Webster rose to reply, and held a crowded Senate chamber spell-bound by the breadth and force of his argument, the warmth of his feeling, and the flooding tide of his oratory, closing with a memorable peroration under the influence of which the Senate adjourned, and from the effects of which, it is said, his opponent never recovered. "Of the effectiveness of Mr. Webster's manner in many parts," says Edward Everett, "it would be in vain to give any one not present the faintest idea. It has been my fortune to hear some of the ablest speeches of the greatest living orators on both sides of the water, but I must confess I never heard anything else which so completely realized my conception of what Demosthenes was when he delivered the Oration for the Crown." The following is the peroration of Mr. Webster's second speech, in reply to the second speech of Colonel Hayne :

II.-Webster's Reply to Hayne.-The Peroration.

1. 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 a safe counsellor in the affairs of this government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent. on considering, not how the Union should be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it shall be broken up and destroyed.

2. While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, grati