Bru. You have done that you should be sorry for. There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats; For I am armed so strong in honesty, That they pass me by as the idle wind, For certain sums of gold, which you denied me ;- By Heaven, I had rather coin my heart, And drop my blood for drachmas, than to wring Το you for gold to pay my legions, Which you denied me. Was that done like Cassius? When Marcus Brutus grows so covetous, Cas. I denied you not. Bru. You did. Cas. I did not :-he was but a fool That brought my answer back. Brutus hath rived Bru. I do not like your faults. my heart Cas. A friendly eye could never see such faults. Cas. Come, Antony, and young Octavius, come! For Cassius is aweary of the world, Hated by one he loves; braved by his brother, I, that denied thee gold, will give my heart. When thou didst hate him worst, thou lovedst him better Bru. Sheathe your dagger: Be angry when you will, it shall have scope: Do what you will, dishonor shall be hun Who much enforcéd shows a hasty spark, Cas. Hath Cassius lived To be but mirth and laughter to his Brutus, Cas. O Brutus ! Bru. What's the matter? Cas. Have you not love enough to bear with me, Bru. Yes, Cassius; and from henceforth, 51.-TRIBUTE TO WASHINGTON. W. H. HARRISON. Hard, hard indeed, was the contest for freedom, and the struggle for independence. The golden sun of liberty had well-nigh set in the gloom of an eternal night, ere its radiant beams illumined our western horizon. Had not the tutelar saint of Columbia hovered around the American camp, and presided over her destinies, freedom must have met with an untimely grave. Never can we sufficiently admire the wisdom of those statesmen, and the skill and bravery of those unconquerable veterans, who, by their unwearied exertions in the cabinet and in the field, achieved for us the glorious revolution. Never can we duly appreciate the merits of a Washington, who, with but a handful of undisciplined yeomanry, triumphed over a royal army, and prostrated the Lion of England at the feet of the American Eagle. His name,‚—so terrible to his foes, so welcome to his friends,-shall live forever upon the brightest page of the historian, and be remembered with the warmest emotions of gratitude and pleasure by those whom he has contributed to make happy, and by all mankind, when kings, and princes, and nobles, for ages, shall have sunk into their merited oblivion. Unlike them, he needs not the assistance of the sculptor or the architect to perpetuate his memory: he needs no princely dome, no monumental pile, no stately pyramid, whose towering height shall pierce the stormy clouds, and rear its lofty head to heaven, to tell posterity his fame. His deeds, his worthy deeds alone, have rendered him immortal! When oblivion shall have swept away thrones, kingdoms, and principalities when every vestige of human greatness, and grandeur, and glory, shall have moldered into dust, and the last period of time become extinct-eternity itself shall catch the glowing theme, and dwell with increasing rapture on his name! 52.-LIBERTY AND UNION. DANIEL WEBSTER. I 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 we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. 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. 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, personal happiness. 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 should be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it shall be broken up and destroyed. While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and for our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. 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, severed, discordant, belligerent: on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! 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 lustre, 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 heartLiberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable! 53. WE SHALL MEET AND REST. HORATIUS BONAR. We shall meet and rest: Where the faded flower shall freshen, Where the shaded sky shall brighten, Where no tempest stirs the echoes Where the morn shall wake in gladness, And the dreamer dreams no more; That were scattered on the wild; Where the hidden wound is healed; On the withering leaves of time, 54.-ART THOU LIVING YET? And dry the tears from weeping eyes; And June stands near with deathless flowers, I ask, and lo! my cheeks are wet I feel thy kisses o'er me thrill, Thou unseen angel of my life; Oh, mother, art thou living yet, And dost thou still remember me? The Spring-times bloom, the Summers fade, But over every light and shade Thy memory lives by night and day. It soothes to sleep my wildest pain, Like some sweet song that cannot die; And like the murmur of the main, Grows deeper when the storm is nigh. |