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stant gain, every day that the weather will permit my going out, and sometimes six pistoles.'

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6. If there is an individual in the morning of life who has not yet made his choice between the flowery path of indulgence and the rough ascent of honest industry, if there is one who is ashamed to get his living by any branch of honest labor, let him reflect that the youth who was carrying the theodolite and surveyor's chain through the mountain passes of the Alleghanies, in the month of March, sleeping on a bundle of hay before the fire, in a settler's log-cabin, and not ashamed to boast that he did it for his doubloon a day, is George Washington; that the life he led trained him up to command the armies of United America; that the money he earned was the basis of that fortune which enabled him afterwards to bestow his services, without reward, on a bleeding and impoverished country.

7. For three years was the young Washington employed, the greater part of the time, and whenever the season would permit, in this laborious and healthful occupation; and I know not if it would be deemed unbecoming, were a thoughtful student of our history to say that he could almost hear the voice of Providence, in the language of Milton, announce its high purpose,

"To exercise him in the wilderness;

There shall he first lay down the rudiments
Of his great warfare, ere I send him forth
To conquer !"

EVERETT.

CXVIII.

VESUVIUS.

1. My first sight of Vesuvius I was from the upper end of the street To-le'do, in Naples. From that point the prospect is uninterrupted. Your eye passes directly to the mountain, over the tops of the streets, houses, churches, palaces, of the intervening villages, to the summit of the crater. The clear, transparent air, and the inky blackness of the whole hill, — its only tint, bring it so near to you that you almost start as it is first revealed. It seems to hang over and threaten the city. It is eight miles distant, yet you would think it scarce three.

2. Every roughness, the deep ravines' and fissures with which the face of the mountain is everywhere seamed, the rude piles of extinct lavas, the ragged angular masses of fallen and shattered rocks, are all visible at that distance; and the effect is as of some vast natural ruin a wide scene of fearful desolation. The soft, green turf, the richly-variegated shrubbery, the almost tropical vegetation, the gentle elevations and depressions of the

soil, which must once have clothed the hill with an unequalled loveliness-and such is the testimony of antiquity to its appearance before the eruption of 79-of all this, now, not a leaf, not a tint remains. Neither man, nor beast, nor insect, can inhabit there and the solitary bird could not light in hope of a single berry or worm.

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3. But it must be. not described -but by your own imaginations represented, in one other aspect, as it appeared, after a long repose of centuries, when, in the year 79 of our era, in the reign of Titus, it suddenly was converted to a mountain of fire; burying the surrounding territories, in first the thickest darkness for several days, then from beneath the canopy of cloud pouring out from its sides rivers of lava and other melted substances, which with more than the light of the sun illuminated the earth and the overhanging clouds, and, making their way down the mountain, overwhelmed the city of Hercula něum, burying it to a depth of from sixty to a hundred feet below the molten mass; and at the same time destroying Pompeii and Stabiæ by successive showers of stifling ashes.

4. The younger Pliny, living at that time, describes the terrific scene in a letter to the historian Tăc'itus.46 His uncle, Pliny the naturalist, stationed at Mi-se'-num, twenty miles from the mountain, as commander of the Roman fleet at that place, drawn first by a scientific curiosity to witness nearer the dreadful scene, then by a sentiment of compassion for the multitudes whom he saw perishing in the most miserable manner, and venturing too near the scene of danger, was himself overtaken by blasts of the suffocating smokes and găs'es that raged everywhere around the hill, and perished among those whom he went

to save.

5. Pliny addresses two letters to Tac'itus; in the first confining himself chiefly to the circumstances attending the death of his uncle, in the second relating his own experiences and observations during the eruption of the mountain. From this I make an extract: "There had been," he says, "many days before, shocks of an earthquake, which the less surprised us as they are extremely frequent in Campania; but they were so particularly violent this night, that they not only shook everything about us, but seemed indeed to threaten universal destruction. My mother flew to my chamber, where she found me rising, in order to awaken me. We went out into a small court belonging to the house, which separated the sea from the buildings.

6. "Though it was now morning, the light was extremely faint and languid; the buildings all around tottered, and though

Sinks to the grave with unpthe leaves that are serest,
While resignation gently slopen blighting was nearest.
And, all his prospects brightenrl in cumber,

His heaven commences ere the withy slumber;
foam on the river,

gone, and forever!

4. THE OLD MAN BY THE BROOK. -h

Down to the vale this water steers, how merrily
'T will murmur on a thousand years, and flow as no
And here, on this delightful day, I cannot choose but
How oft, a vigorous man, I lay beside this fountain's brin
My eyes are filled with childish tears, my heart is idly stirred,
For the same sound is in my ears that in those days I heard

5. FREEDOM. — Bryant.

O Freedom! thou art not, as poets dream,
A fair young girl, with light and delicate limbs,
And wavy tresses gushing from the cap

With which the Roman master crowned his slave,
When he took off the gyves.50 A bearded man,
Armed to the teeth, art thou: one mailed hand
Grasps the broad shield, and one the sword; thy brow,
Glorious in beauty though it be, is scarred

With tokens of old wars; thy massive limbs

Are strong and struggling. Power at thee has launched
His bolts, and with his lightnings smitten thee;
They could not quench the life thou hast from heav!

6. THE FOLLY OF PROCRASTINATION.

To-morrow's action! can that hōary wisdom,
Bōrne down with years, still,dote upon to-morrow
That fatal mistress of the young, the lazy,
The coward, and the fool, condemned to lose
An useless life in waiting for to-morrow,

To

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gaze with longing eyes upon to-morrow,
Till interposing death destroys the prospect!
Strange! that this general fraud from day to day
Should fill the world with wretches undetected.
The soldier, laboring through a winter's march,
Still sees to-morrow drest in robes of triumph;
Still to the lover's long-expecting arms
To-morrow brings the visionary bride.
But thou, too old to bear another cheat,
Learn that the present hour alone is man's.

7. PRACTICAL CHARITY. Crabbe.

An ardent spirit dwells with Christian love,
The eagle's vigor in the pitying dove:

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soil, which must once have cle we with sorrow sigh,
loveliness-and such is the tof pleading121 man supply;
ance before the eruption echy with sufferers feel,
not a tint remains. Ne without a wish124 to heal:
inhabit there and the
e; to sickness, pain, and woe,
spirit loves with aid to go;1
a single berry or work sought, waits not for Want to plead
3. But it musts the duty, - nay, prevents the need,
aginations reprutmost aid to every ill applies,

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9. PRAYER.Alfred Tennyson.

More things are wrought by prayer

Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.

For what are men better than sheep or goats,

That nourish a blind life within the brain,

If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer,

Both for themselves and those who call them friend

For the whole round earth is every way

So,

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He is gone on the mountain, he is lost to the forest,

Like a summer-dried fountain, when our need was the sorest
The fount, reappearing, from the rain-drops shall borrow,
But to us comes no cheering, to Duncan no morrow!
The hand of the reaper takes the ears that are hōary,
But the voice of the weeper wails manhood in glory;

The autumn winds rushing waft the leaves that are serest,
But our flower was in flushing when blighting was nearest.
Fleet foot on the correi, sage counsel in cumber,

ΕΙ

Red hand in the foray, how sound is thy slumber;
Like the dew on the mountain, like the foam on the river,
Like the bubble on the fountain, thou art gone, and forever!

CXXI. - JOAN OF ARC.

1. WHAT is to be thought of her? What is to be thought of the poor shepherd girl from the hills and forests of Lorraine, who rose suddenly out of the quiet, out of the safety, out of the religious inspiration of deep pastoral solitudes, to a station in the van of armies, and to the more perilous station at the right hand of kings? The poor maiden drank not herself from that cup of rest which she had secured for France. No! for her voice was then silent. No! for her feet were dust.

2. Pure, innocent, noble-hearted girl! When the thunders of universal France, as even yet may happen, shall proclaim the grandeur of her who gave up all for her country, thy ear will have been deaf for five centuries. To suffer and to do, that was thy portion in this life: to do, never for thyself, always for others; to suffer, never in the persons of generous champions, always in thy own, that was thy destiny; and not for a moment was it hidden from thyself. Life, thou saidst, is short; let me use that life, so transitory, for glorious ends.

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3. This pure creature· pure from every suspicion of even a visionary self-interest, even as she was pure in senses more obvious never once relaxed in her belief in the darkness that was travelling to meet her. She might not prefigure the very manner of her death; she saw not in vision, perhaps, the aerial altitude of the fiery scaffold, the spectators on every road pouring into Rouen as to a coronation, the surging smoke, the volleying flames; but the voice that called her to death, - that she heard forever. 4. Great was the throne of France even in those days, and great was he that sat upon it; but well Joän knew that not the throne, nor he that sat upon it, was for her; but, on the contrary, that she was for them. Not she by them, but they by her, should rise from the dust. Gorgeous were the lilies of France, and for centuries had they the privilege to spread their beauty over land and sea, until, in another century, the wrath of God and man combined to wither them; but well Joan knew early at Domre'my she had read that bitter truth that the lilies of France

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