And speak thy praise, as one whose word
A thousand fiery spirits stirred,-

Who crushed his foeman as a worm-
Whose step on human hearts fell firm:
Be mine the better task to find
A tribute for thy lofty mind,
Amidst whose gloomy vengeance shone
Some milder virtues all thine own,
Some gleams of feeling pure and warm,
Like sunshine on a sky of storm,
Proofs that the Negro's heart retains
Some nobleness amidst its chains,

That kindness to the wronged is never

Without its excellent reward, -
Holy to human-kind, and ever
Acceptable to God.

*The reader may, perhaps, call to mind the beautiful sonnet of William Wordsworth, addressed to Toussaint L'Ouverture, during his confinement in France.

"Toussaint! -thou most unhappy man of men!
Whether the whistling rustic tends his plough
Within thy hearing, or thou liest now

Buried in some deep dungeon's earless den;
Oh, miserable chieftain! where and when

Wilt thou find patience?-Yet, die not; do thou

Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow:

Though fallen thyself, never to rise again,

Live and take comfort. Thou hast left behind

Powers that will work for thee; air, earth, and skles,—

There's not a breathing of the common wind

That will forget thee: thou hast great allies.

Thy friends are exultations, agonies,

And love, and man's unconquerable mind."

THE SLAVE SHIPS.

eyes

That fatal, that perfidiou's bark,

Built i' the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark."

Milton's Lycidas.

[THE French ship LE RODEUR, with a crew of twenty-two men, and with one hundred and sixty negro slaves, sailed from Bonny, in Africa, April, 1819. On approaching the line, a terrible malady broke out- —an obstinate disease of the contagious, and altogether beyond the resources of medicine. It was aggravated by the scarcity of water among the slaves (only half a wine glass per day being allowed to an individual), and by the extreme impurity of the air in which they breathed. By the advice of the physician, they were brought upon deck occasionally; but some of the poor wretches, locking themselves in each other's arms, leaped overboard, in the hope, which so universally prevails among them, of being swiftly transported to their own homes in Africa. To check this, the captain ordered several, who were stopped in the attempt, to be shot, or hanged, before their companions. The disease extended to the crew; and one after another were smitten with it, until only one remained unaffected. Yet even this dreadful condition did not preclude calculation: to save the expense of supporting slaves rendered unsaleable, and to obtain grounds for a claim against the underwriters, thirty-six of the negroes, having become blind, were thrown into the sea and drowned!

In the midst of their dreadful fears lest the solitary individual, whose sight remained unaffected, should also be seized with the malady, a sail was discovered. It was the Spanish slaver, LEON. The same disease had been there; and, hor rible to tell, all the crew had become blind! Unable to assist each other, the vessels parted. The Spanish ship has never since been heard of. The RODEUR reached Gaudaloupe on the 21st of June; the only man who had escaped the disease, and had thus been enabled to steer the slaver into port, caught it in three days after its arrival. — Speech of M. Benjamin Constant, in the French Chamber of Deputies, June 17, 1820.]

+

"ALL ready?" cried the captain;

"Ay, ay!" the seamen said; "Heave up the worthless lubbers The dying and the dead."

Up from the slave-ship's prison
Fierce, bearded heads were thrust.
"Now let the sharks look to it-
Toss up the dead ones first!"

Corpse after corpse came up,-
Death had been busy there;
Where every blow is mercy,
Why should the spoiler spare?
Corpse after corpse they cast
Sullenly from the ship,
Yet bloody with the traces
Of fetter-link and whip.

Gloomily stood the captain,

With his arms upon his breast,
With his cold brow sternly knotted,
And his iron lip compressed.
"Are all the dead dogs over?"

Growled through that matted lip"The blind ones are no better, Let's lighten the good ship."

Hark! from the ship's dark bosom,
The very sounds of hell!

The ringing clank of iron

The maniac's short, sharp yell!-
The hoarse, low curse, throat-stifled -
The starving infant's moan
The horror of a breaking heart
Poured through a mother's groan!

Up from that loathsome prison
The stricken blind ones came :
Below, had all been darkness
Above, was still the same.
Yet the holy breath of heaven
Was sweetly breathing there,
And the heated brow of fever
Cooled in the soft sea air.

"Overboard with them, shipmates!"
Cutlass and dirk were plied;
Fettered and blind, one after one,
Plunged down the vessel's side.
The sabre smote above-

Red glowed the western waters
The setting sun was there,
Scattering alike on wave and cloud

His fiery mesh of hair.

Amidst a group in blindness,

A solitary eye

Gazed, from the burdened slaver's deck,

Into that burning sky.

Curse on 't-I'd give my other eye

For one firm rood of land."
And then he laughed - but only
His echoed laugh replied-
For the blinded and the suffering
Alone were at his side.

Night settled on the waters,

And on a stormy heaven,

While fiercely on that lone ship's track

The thunder-gust was driven.

"A sail!-thank God, a sail!"
And, as the helmsman spoke,
Up through the stormy murmur,
A shout of gladness broke.

Down came the stranger vessel
Unheeding on her way,

So near, that on the slaver's deck
Fell off her driven spray.
"Ho! for the love of mercy -

We're perishing and blind!"
A wail of utter agony

Came back upon the wind:

"Help us! for we are stricken
With blindness every one;
Ten days we've floated fearfully,
Unnoting star or sun.

Our ship's the slaver Leon

We've but a score on board Our slaves are all gone over —

Help for the love of God!"

On livid brows of agony

The broad red lightning shoneBut the roar of wind and thunder Stifled the answering groan. Wailed from the broken waters A last despairing cry, As, kindling in the stormy light, The stranger ship went by.

In the sunny Guadaloupe

A dark hulled vessel layWith a crew who noted never

The night-fall or the day. The blossom of the orange

Was white by every stream, And tropic leaf, and flower, and bird Were in the warm sun-beam.