Thou, first and chief, sole sovereign of the vale!
Oh! struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,

Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink -
Companion of the morning star at dawn,
Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald, wake! oh, wake! and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?

-

And you, ye five wild torrents, fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jaggèd rocks,
Forever shattered, and the same forever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,

Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder, and eternal foam?

And who commanded and the silence came-
"Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?"
Ye ice-falls! ye, that from the mountain's brow,
Adown enormous ravines slope amain

Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who with living flowers
Of loveliest blue spread garlands at your feet?
"God!" let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer: and let the ice-plains echo, "God!"
"God!" sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice,
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And, in their perilous fall, shall thunder, "God!"
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the elements!

Utter forth "God!" and fill the hills with praise.

Thou, too, hoar mount, with thy sky-pointing peaks,
Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene
Into the depth of clouds, that veil thy breast-
Thou, too, again, stupendous mountain! thou
as I raise my head, a while bowed low

That

In adoration, upward from thy base

Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears-
Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud,

To rise before me-rise, oh, ever rise!

Rise, like a cloud of incense, from the earth!
Thou, kingly spirit, throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven,
Great hierarch, tell thou the silent sky,

And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,

66

Earth with her thousand voices, praises God."

T

WEBSTER'S PLEA FOR DARTMOUTH COLLEGE.

HE Supreme Court of the United States held its session that winter in a mean apartment of moderate size — the Capitol not having been built after its destruction in 1814. The audience, when the case came on, was therefore small, consisting chiefly of legal men, the élite of the profession throughout the country. Mr. Webster entered upon his argument in the calm tone of easy and dignified conversation. His matter was so completely at his command that he scarcely looked at his brief, but went on for more than four hours with a statement so luminous, and a chain of reasoning so easy to be understood, and yet approaching so nearly to absolute demonstration, that he seemed to carry with him every man of his audience without the slightest effort or weariness on either side. It was hardly eloquence, in the strict sense of the term; it was pure reason. Now and then, for a sentence or two, his eye flashed and his voice swelled into a bolder note, as he uttered some emphatic thought; but he instantly fell back into the tone of earnest conversation, which ran throughout the great body of his speech.

The argument ended. Mr. Webster stood for some moments

silent before the court, while every eye was fixed intently upon him. At length, addressing the Chief Justice, Marshall, he proceeded thus:

"This, sir, is my case! It is the case, not merely of that humble institution, it is the case of every collège in our land. It is more. It is the case of every eleemosynary institution throughout the country-of all those great charities founded by the piety of our ancestors to alleviate human misery, and scatter blessings along the pathway of life. It is more! It is, in some sense, the case of every man among us who has property of which he may be stripped; for the question is simply this: Shall our State legislatures be allowed to take that which is not their own, to turn it from its original use, and apply it to such ends or purposes as they, in their discretion, shall see fit?

"Sir, you may destroy this little institution; it is weak; it is in your hands! I know it is one of the lesser lights in the literary horizon of our country. You may put it out. But if you do so, you must carry through your work! You must extinguish, one after another, all those great lights of science which, for more than a century, have thrown their radiance over our land!

"It is, sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet, there are those who love it

Here the feelings which he had thus far succeeded in keeping down, broke forth. His lips quivered; his firm cheeks trembled with emotion; his eyes were filled with tears, his voice choked, and he seemed struggling to the utmost simply to gain that mastery over himself which might save him from an unmanly burst of feeling. I will not attempt to give you the few broken words of tenderness in which he went on to speak of his attachment to the college. The whole seemed to be mingled throughout with the recollections of father, mother, brother, and all the trials and privations through which he had made his way into life. Every one saw that it was wholly unpremeditated, a pressure on his heart, which sought relief in words and tears.

The court-room during these two or three minutes presented an extraordinary spectacle. Chief-Justice Marshall, with his tall and gaunt figure, bent over as if to catch the slightest whisper, the deep furrows of his cheek expanded with emotion, and eyes suffused with tears. Mr. Justice Washington at his side - with

his small and emaciated frame, and countenance more like marble than I ever saw on any other human being-leaning forward with an eager, troubled look; and the remainder of the court, at the two extremities, pressing, as it were, toward a single point, while the audience below were wrapping themselves round in closer folds beneath the bench to catch each look and every movement of the speaker's face. If a painter could give us the scene on canvas those forms and countenances, and Daniel Webster as he then stood in the midst - it would be one of the most touching pictures in the history of eloquence. One thing it taught me, that the pathetic depends not merely on the words uttered, but still more on the estimate we put upon him who utters them. There was not one among the strong-minded men of that assembly who could think it unmanly to weep, when he saw standing before him the man who had made such an argument, melted into the tenderness of a child.

Mr. Webster had now recovered his composure, and fixing his keen eye on the Chief Justice, said in that deep tone with which he sometimes thrilled the heart of an audience:

"Sir, I know not how others feel, (glancing at the opponents of the college before him,) but, for myself, when I see my Alma Mater surrounded, like Cæsar in the senate-house, by those who are reiterating stab upon stab, I would not, for my right hand, have her turn to me, and say, Et tu quoque, mi fili! And thou, too, my son!"

He sat down. There was a deathlike stillness throughout the room for some moments; every one seemed to be slowly recovering himself, and coming gradually back to his ordinary range of thought and feeling.

THE

TRIBUTE TO WEBSTER.

HEY say he was ambitious! Yes, as Ames said of Hamilton, "There is no doubt that he desired glory; and that, feeling his own force, he longed to deck his brow with the wreath of immortality." But I believe he would have yielded his arm, his frame to be burned, before he would have sought to grasp the highest prize of earth by any means, by any organization, by any

tactics, by any speech, which in the least degree endangered the harmony of the system.

They say, too, he loved New England! He did love New Hampshire that old granite world- the crystal hills, gray and cloud-topped; the river, whose murmur lulled his cradle; the old hearthstone; the grave of father and mother. He loved Massachusetts, which adopted and honored him—that sounding seashore, that charmed elm-tree seat, that reclaimed farm, that choice herd, that smell of earth, that dear library, those dearer friends; but the "sphere of his duties was his true country." Dearly he loved you, for he was grateful for the open arms with which you welcomed the stranger, and sent him onward and upward.

But when the crisis came, and the winds were let loose, and that sea of March "wrought and was tempestuous," then you saw that he knew even you only as you were, American citizens; then you saw him rise to the true nature and stature of American citizenship; then you read on his brow only what he thought of the whole republic; then you saw him fold the robes of his habitual patriotism around him, and counsel for all -- for all.

So, then, he served you—“to be pleased with his service was your affair, not his."

And now what would he do, what would he be, if he were here to-day? I do not presume to know. But what a loss we have in him!

I have read that in some hard battle, when the tide was running against him, and his ranks were breaking, some one in the agony of a need of generalship exclaimed, "Oh, for an hour of Dundee!" So say I, Oh, for an hour of Webster now! Oh, for one more roll of that thunder inimitable! One more peal of that clarion! One more grave and bold counsel of moderation! One more throb of American feeling! One more Farewell Address! And then might he ascend unhindered to the bosom of his Father and his God.

IT

WASHINGTON.

T matters very little what immediate spot may have been the birthplace of such a man as Washington. No people can claim, no country appropriate him. The boon of Providence to