anything but impossibilities; and I know that the conquest of British America is an impossibility.

4. You cannot, my lords, you cannot conquer America. What is your present situation there? We do not know the worst; but we know that in three campaigns we have done nothing, and suffered much. You may swell every expense, accumulate every assistance, and extend your traffic to the shambles of every German despot: your attempts will be forever vain and im'potent - doubly so, indeed, from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates, to an incurable resentment, the minds of your adversaries, to overrun them with the mercenary sons of rapine and plunder, devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty. If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country I never would lay down my armsnever, never, never!

5. But, my lords, who is the man that, in addition to the disgraces and mischiefs of the war, has dared to authorize and associate to our arms the tomahawk and scalping-knife of the savage? - to call into civilized alliance the wild and inhuman inhabitant of the woods?- to delegate to the merciless Indian the defence of disputed rights, and to wage the horrors of this barbarous war against our brethren? My lords, these enormities cry aloud for redress and punishment. But, my lords, this barbarous measure has been defended, not only on the princes of policy and necessity, but also on those of morality; for it is perfectly allowable," says Lord Suffolk, "to use all the means which God and nature have put into our hands."

6. I am astonished, I am shocked, to hear such principles confessed; to hear them avowed in this house, or in this country. My lords, I did not intend to encroach so much on your attention, but I cannot repress my indignation-I feel myself impelled to speak. My lords, we are called upon, as members of this house, as men, as Christians, to protest against such horrible barbarity! "That God and nature have put into our hands!" What ideas of God and nature that noble lord may

entertain, I know not; but I know that such detestable principles are equally abhorrent to religion and humanity.

7. What! to attribute the sacred sanction of God and nature to the massacres of the Indian scalping-knife! to the cannibal savage, torturing, murdering, devouring, drinking the blood of his mangled victims! Such notions shock every precept of morality, every feeling of humanity, every sentiment of honor. These abominable principles, and this more abominablc avowal of them, demand the most decisive indignation.

LORD CHATHAM.

CIX.

SHORT POETICAL EXTRACTS.

1. IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. Beattie.
SHALL I be left forgotten in the dust,

When Fate, relenting, lets the flower revive?
Shall Nature's voice, to Man alone unjust,
Bid him, though doomed to perish, hope to live?
Is it for this fair Virtue oft must strive
With disappointment, penury, and pain?

No! Heaven's immortal spring shall yet arrive;
And Man's majestic beauty bloom again,

Bright through the eternal year of Love's triumphant reign.. 2. SONNET. EI Anon.

THE honey-bee that wanders all day long
The field, the woodland, and the garden o'er,
To gather in his fragrant winter store,
Huraming in calm content his quiet song,
Sucks not alone the rose's glowing breast,
The lily's dainty cup, the violet's lips,
But from all rank and noisome weeds he sips
The single drop of sweetness ever pressed
Within the poison chalice. Thus, if we

Seek only to draw forth the hidden sweet
In all the varied human flowers we meet,
In the wide garden of Humanity,
And, like the bee, if home the spoil we bear,
Hived in our hearts it turns to nectar there.

3. DESCRIPTION OF LORD CHATHAM. ·

Cowper.

IN him Demosthenes was heard again;
Liberty taught him her Athenian strain;
She clothed him with authority and awe,
Spoke from his lips, and in his looks gave law.
His speecn, his form, his action, full of grace,
And all his country beaming in his face,
He stood, as some inimitable hand

Would strive to make a Paul or Tully stand.
No sycophant or slave, that dared oppose
Her sacred cause, but trembled when he rose ;
And every venal stickler for the yoke
Felt himself crushed at the first word he spoke.

4. THE SOUL. Montgomery.

THERE is a calm for those who weep,

A rest for weary pilgrims found.
And, while the mouldering ashes sleep
Low in the ground,

The soul, of origin divine,

God's glorious image, freed from clay,
In heaven's eternal sphere shall shine,
A star of day!

The sun is but a mark of fire,

A transient me-teor in the sky;
The soul, immortal as its sire,

Shall never die!

5. CHAMOUNIE AND MONT BLANC. - Coleridge.

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 băde 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!”

6. HALLOWED GROUND. - Campbell.

WHAT's hallowed ground?—T is what gives birth
To sacred thoughts in souls of worth!--
Peace! Independence! Truth! Go forth,
Earth's compass round;

And your high priesthood shall make earth.
All184 hallowed ground!

CX.

THE DYING CHRISTIAN TO HIS SOUL.

1. VITAL spark of heavenly flame!
Quit, O, quit, this mortal frame!
Trembling, hoping, lingering, flying,
O, the pain, the bliss, of dying!
Cease, fond Nature, ecase thy strife,
And let me languish into life!

2. Hark! they whisper; angels say,
Sister Spirit, come away!

What is this absorbs me quite,

Polycarp, one of the fathers of the Christian church, suffered martyrdom at Smyrna, in the year of our Lord 167, during a general persecution of the Christians.

1. "

Go, Lictor,EI lead the prisoner forth, let all the assembly stay,
For he must openly abjure his Christian faith to-day."
The Prætore spake; the Lictor went, and Polycarp appeared;
And tottered, leaning on his staff, to where the pile was reared.
His silver hair, his look benign, which spake his heavenly lot,
Moved into tears both youth and age, but moved the Prætor not.

2. The heathen spake: "Renounce aloud thy Christian heresy!”—
66 Hope all things else," the old man cried, " yet hope not this from

me.

"But if thy stubborn heart refuse thy Saviour to deny,

Thy age shall not avert my wrath; thy doom shall be to die!""Think not, O judge! with menaces, to shake my faith in God;

If in His righteous cause I die, I gladly kiss the rod."-

3. "Blind wretch ! doth not the funeral pile thy vaunting faith appall?""No funeral pile my heart alarms, if God and duty call." "Then expiate thy insolence; ay, perish in the fire! Go, Lictor, drag him instantly forth to the funeral pyre!"EI The Lictor dragged him instantly forth to the pyre; with bands He bound him to the martyr's stake, he smote him with his hands.

4. "Abjure thy God," the Prætor said, " and thou shalt yet be free." "No," cried the hero, "rather let death be my destiny!" The Prætor bowed: the Lictor laid with haste the torches nigh: Forth from the fagots burst the flames, and glanced athwart the sky; The patient champion at the stake with flames engirdled stood, Looked up with rapture-kindling eye, and sealed his faith in blood.

Anon

CXII. DUFAVEL'S ADVENTURE IN THE WELL.

PART FIRST.

1. ONE morning, early in September, 1836, as Dūfavel', one of the laborers employed in sinking a well at a place near Lyons, in France, was about to descend, in order to begin his work, one of his companions called out to him not to go down, as the ground was giving way, and threatened to fall in.. Dufavel, however did not profit by the warning, but, exclaiming, "I shall have