fundamental principles of the English Constitution for which Hampden bled.

2. I assert that it is a murderous war, because it is an effort to deprive men of their lives for standing up in the defense of their property and their clear rights. Such a war, I fear, will draw down the vengeance of Heaven on this devoted kingdom. Sir, is any minister weak enough to flatter himself with the conquest of America? You cannot, with all your allies, with all the mercenary ruffians of the North you cannot affect so wicked a purpose. The Americans will dispute every inch of territory with you, every narrow pass, every strong defile, every Thermopyla, every Bunker's Hill! More than half the empire is already lost, and almost all the rest is in confusion and anarchy. We have appealed to the sword, and what have we gained? Bunker's Hill only, and that with a loss of twelve hundred men! Are we to pay as dear for the rest of America? The idea of the conquest of that immense country is as romantic as it is unjust.

3. The honorable gentleman who moved this address says, "The Americans have been treated with lenity." Will facts justify the assertion? Was your Boston Port Bill a measure of lenity? Was your Fishery Bill a measure of lenity? Was your bill for taking away the charter of Massachusetts Bay a measure of lenity? I omit your many other gross provocations and insults by which the brave Americans have been driven to their present state.

4. Whether that state is one of rebellion, or of fit and just resistance to unlawful acts of power, I shall not declare. This I know a successful resistance is a revolution, not a rebellion. Rebellion, indeed, appears on the back of a flying enemy, but

revolution flames on the breastplate of the victorious warrior. Who can tell whether, in consequence of this day's action, the scabbard may not be thrown away by them as well as by us, and, should success attend them, whether in a few years the independent Americans may not celebrate the glorious era of the revolution of 1775, as we do that of 1688?

JOHN WILKES.

CIV. TO A SKYLARK.

1. HAIL to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

2. Higher still and higher

From the earth thou springest

Like a cloud of fire;

The blue deep thou wingest,

And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

3. In the golden lightning

Of the sunken sun,

O'er which clouds are brightening,

Thou dost float and run,

Like an embodied joy whose race is just begun.

4. The pale purple even

Melts around thy flight;

Like a star of heaven

In the broad daylight

Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.

5. What thou art we know not;

What is most like thee?

From rainbow clouds there flow not

Drops so bright to see,

As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

6. Like a poet hidden

In the light of thought,

Singing hymns unbidden,

Till the world is wrought

To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.

7. Sound of vernal showers

On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,

All that ever was

Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

8. Chorus hymeneal,

Or triumphal chant,

Matched with thine would be all

But an empty vaunt

A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

9. What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain?

What fields, or waves, or mountains?

What shapes of sky or plain?

What love of thine own kind? What ignorance of pain?

10. We look before and after,

And pine for what is not;

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

11. Yet if we could scorn

Hate, and pride, and fear;

If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,

I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

12. Better than all measures

Of delightful sound;

Better than all treasures

That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground.

13. Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,

Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow,

The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

CV. IO VICTIS.

WILLIAM WETMORE STORY (1819-1895) was an American sculptor and author. He was born in Salem, Massachusetts, and died at Vallombrosa, Italy. Mr. Story graduated in arts at nineteen, and in law at twenty-one, from Harvard University. His great genius for sculpture and literature declared itself very early. His reputation as a sculptor and a poet is worldwide. He formed the habit of writing a poem representing the idea he wished to realize in stone. The following was written as a preparation for one of his greatest productions in sculpture, his figure of The Christ.

1. I SING the hymn of the conquered, who fell in the Battle of Life

The hymn of the wounded, the beaten, who died overwhelmed in the strife

Not the jubilant song of the victors, for whom the resounding acclaim

Of nations was lifted in chorus, whose brows wore the chaplet

of fame,

But the hymn of the low and the humble, the weary, the broken in heart,

Who strove and who failed, acting bravely, a silent and desperate part;

Whose youth bore no flower on its branches, whose hopes. burned in ashes away,

From whose hands slipped the prize they had grasped at, who stood at the dying of day,

With the wreck of their life all around them, unpitied, un

heeded, alone,

With death swooping down o'er their failure, and all but their faith overthrown.