I wore no plume, it is true; but I have reason to plume myself on my behavior.

On another occasion, the house in which I found myself was rocking in an earthquake. While all ran in alarm, I sat unmoved, not even stretching out my hand to save the table that held my dinner. And is it to be supposed possible that such a man would run from a few particles of condensed vapor, or from a little air in motion?

Before closing, I must say a word or two in regard to the general principles of our order. To drive us from our state of repose, we are told that all nature is active, and that we should imitate nature. Look, gentlemen, at some of the most active objects in nature, and see what they do for us.

The lightning is active, and in its activity blasts and destroys. The wind is active, and in its course scatters havoc and desolation. The mountain flood is full of energy, and devastated fields and plains mourn its progress. The volcano is active, and the effects of its activity are shown in buried cities and countries ruined.

The world, gentlemen, has ever been opposed to our principles. Restless poets and pretended philosophers have urged us to "rise before or with the sun." Now let me say, I for one am willing to follow the examples of the sun. Gentlemen, the sun never rises Planets and comets, the small affairs that go whirling and whizzing around him--these, indeed, rise; but the great sun rests forever in the quiet dignity of repose. The little orbs, which, like bustling mortals, go whirling about, making themselves dizzy with their own motion, can never induce the sun to join them in their mad capers. Heathen poets have told us wonderful stories about the sun's getting out of his warm bed early in the morning, and industriously driving a carriage all day! Is any one in our day silly enough to believe these stories! And yet the fictions of these benighted poets are employed to furnish examples for us to imitate! Gentlemen, I say no more.

RICHELIEU AND FRANCE.

BULWER.

My liege, your anger can recall your trust,
Annul my office, spoil me of my lands,
Rifle my coffers; but my name-my deeds-
Are royal in a land beyond your sceptre.
Pass sentence on me if you will; from kings,
Lo, I appeal to time! Be just, my liege.
I found your kingdom rent with heresies
And bristling with rebellion; lawless nobles
And breadless serfs; England fomenting discord;
Austria, her clutch on your dominion; Spain
Forging the prodigal gold of either Ind

To armed thunderbolts.

The arts lay dead;

Trade rotted in your marts; your armies mutinous;
Your treasury bankrupt. Would you now revoke
Your trust? So be it! and I leave you sole,
Supremest monarch of the mightiest realm
From Ganges to the Icebergs. Look without-
No foe not humbled. Look within-the arts
Quit for our schools their old Hesperides,
The golden Italy; while throughout the veins
Of your vast empire flows in strengthening tides
Trade, the calm health of nations. Sire, I know
That men have called me cruel.

I am not; I am just! I found France rent asunder;
The rich men despots, and the poor banditti ;
Sloth in the mart and schism within the temple
Brawls festering to rebellion, and weak laws
Rotting away with rust in antique sheaths.
I have re-created France; and from the ashes
Of the old feudal and decrepit carcass

Civilization, on her luminous wings,

Soars, phoenix-like, to Jove!

What was my art?

Genius, some day; some, fortune; witchcraft, some. Not so; my art was JUSTICE!

THE GRAVE OF THE BELOVED.

WASHINGTON IRVING.

Sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal; every other affliction to forget; but this wound we consider our duty to keep open; this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude. Where is the mother that would willingly forget the infant that perished like a blossom from her arms, though every recollection is a pang? Where is the child that would willingly forget the most tender of parents, though to remember be but to lament? Who, even in the hour of agony, would forget the friend over whom he mourns? Who, even when the tomb is closing upon the remains of her he most loved and he feels his heart, as it were, crushed in the closing of its portal, would accept consolation that was to be bought by forgetfulness? No, the love which survives the tomb is one of the noblest attributes of the soul. If it has its woes, it has likewise its delights; and when the overwhelming burst of grief is calmed into the gentle tear of recollection, when the sudden anguish and the convulsive agony over the present ruins of all that we most loved, is softened away into pensive meditation on all that it was in the days of its loveliness, who would root out such a sorrow from the heart? Though it may sometimes throw a passing cloud even over the bright hour of gayety, or spread a deeper sadness over the hour of gloom, yet who would exchange it even for the song of pleasure, or the burst of revelry? No; there is a voice from the tomb sweeter than song; there is a recollection of the dead to which we turn even from the charms of the living. Oh, the grave !—the grave! It buries every error; covers every defect; extinguishes every resentment. From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections. Who can look down upon the grave even of an enemy, and not feel a compunctious throb, that ever he should have warred with the poor handful of earth that lies mouldering before him!

The grave of those we loved--what a place for meditation! There it is that we call up in long review the whole history of

virtue and gentleness, and the thousand endearments lavished upon us almost unheeded in the daily intercourse of intimacy; there it is that we dwell upon the tenderness, the solemn, awful tenderness of the parting scene; the bed of death with all its stifled griefs; its noiseless attendants; its mute, watchful assiduities; the last testimonies of expiring love; the feeble, faltering, thrilling (oh! how thrilling !) pressure of the hand; the last fond look of the glazing eye, turning upon us even from the threshold of existence; the faint, faltering accents struggling in death to give one more assurance of affection! Aye, go to the grave of buried love, and meditate! There settle the account with thy conscience for every past benefit unrequited, every past endearment unregarded, of that being who can never, never, never return to be soothed by thy contrition !

If thou art a child, and hast ever added sorrow to the soul, or a furrow to the silvered brow of an affectionate parent; if thou art a husband, and hast ever caused the fond bosom that ventured its whole happiness in thy arms to doubt one moment of thy kindness or thy truth; if thou art a friend, and hast ever wronged in thought, word or deed, the spirit that generously confided in thee; if thou art a lover, and hast ever given one unmerited pang to that true heart that now lies cold and still beneath thy feet; then be sure that every unkind look, every ungracious word, every ungentle action, will come thronging back upon thy memory, and knocking dolefully at thy soul; then be sure that thou wilt lie down sorrowing and repentant on the grave, and utter the unheard groan, and pour the unavailing tear; more deep, more bitter, because unheard and unavailing.

Then weave thy chaplet of flowers, and strew the beauties of nature about the grave; console thy broken spirit, if thou canst, with these tender, yet futile tributes of regret; but take warning by the bitterness of this thy contrite affliction over the dead, and be more faithful and affectionate in the discharge of thy duties to the living.

HIGHER VIEWS OF THE UNION.

WENDELL PHILLIPS,

I confess the pictures of the mere industrial value of the Union, make me profoundly sad. I look, as beneath the skillful pencil, trait after trait leaps to glowing life, and ask at last, Is this all? Where are the nobler elements of national purpose and life? Is this the whole fruit of ages of toil, sacrifice and thought, those cunning fingers, the overflowing lap, labor vocal on every hillside, and commerce whitening every sea? All the dower of one haughty, overbearing race, the zeal of the Puritan, the faith of the Quaker, a century of colonial health, and then this large civilization, does it result only in a workshop-fops melted in baths and perfumed, and men grimed with toil? Raze out, then, the Eagle from our banner, and paint instead Niagara used as a cotton-mill !

O no! not such the picture my glad heart sees when I look forward. Once plant deep in the national heart the love of right, let there grow out of it the firm purpose of duty, and then from the higher plane of Christian manhood we can put aside on the right hand and the left these narrow, childish, and mercenary considerations.

"Leave to the soft Campanian

His baths and his perfumes;
Leave to the sordid race of Tyre
Their dyeing vats and looms;
Leave to the sons of Carthage

The rudder and the oar;

Leave to the Greek his marble nymph

And scrolls of wordy lore;

but for us, the children of a purer civilization, the pioneers of a Christian future, it is for us to found a Capitol whose cornerstone is Justice, and whose top-stone is Liberty; within the sacred precinct of whose Holy of Holies dwelleth One who is no respecter of persons, but hath made of one blood all nations of the earth to serve him.

Crowding to the shelter of its stately arches, I see old and young, learned and ignorant, rich and poor, native and foreign,