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heap. I might boast that, during all this scene of horror, not a Figh or expression of fear escaped me, had not my support been founded on that miserable though strong consolation, that all mankind were involved in the same calamity, and that I imagined that I was perishing with the world itself.

10. "At last this dreadful darkness was dissipated (after a duration of three days), by degrees, like a cloud or smoke; the real day returned, and even the sun appeared, though very faintly, and as when an eclipse is coming on. Every object that presented itself to our eyes seemed changed, being covered over with white ashes, as with a deep snow. We returned to Mi-se'num, where we refreshed ourselves as well as we could, and passed an anxious night between hope and fear, for the earthquake still continued. However, my mother and I, notwithstanding the danger we had passed and that still threatened us, had no thought of leaving the place till we should receive some account of my uncle."

11. He had already perished on the beach at Stabiæ, ten miles from Vesuvius, the second day of the eruption — this was now the fourth. There appear to have been three days of total darkness, except occasionally relieved by the breaking out of flames or lava. It may be imagined what the scene must have been which presented itself in the neighborhood of Herculaneum and Pompeii, or at Naples, when that which Pliny describes occurred at Mi-se'-num, twenty miles, nearly, from the mountain, with Naples itself, and the high lands intervening between it and the volcano; and what multitudes must have perished, if at ten miles distance Pliny was suffocated by the poisonous gases.

12. I believe no account has come to us how great the destruction of life was on this occasion, nor even of what befell the Neapolitans. The only fact in this relation is the immediate relief which the Emperor Titus, with characteristic humanity, dispatched to the scene, as soon as the news of the disaster had reached Rome. We may readily conjecture, that all the inhabitants in the immediate neighborhood of the hill must have had sufficient warning by the earthquake, and the first bursting out of smoke from the crater, to enable them to escape. And that the most did escape, at least from Pompeii, is proved by the comparatively few skeletons that have been discovered there.

WM. WARE.

CXIX.. THE SWORD AND THE PRESS.

1. WHEN Tamerlane had finished building his pyramid of seventy thousand human skulls, and was seen standing at the gate of Damascus, glittering in his steel, with his battle-axe on his

shoulder, till his fierce hosts filed out to new victories and car nage, the pale looker-on might have fancied that Nature was in her death-throes; for havoc and despair had taken possession of the earth, and the sun of manhood seemed setting in a sea of blood.

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2. Yet it might be on that very gala-day of Tamerlane that a little boy was playing nine-pins in the streets of Mentz, whose history was more important than that of twenty Tamerlanes. The Khan, with his shaggy demons of the wilderness, "passed away like a whirlwind," to be forgotten forever; and that German artisan has wrought a benefit which is yet immeasurably expanding itself, and will continue to expand itself, through all countries and all times.

3. What are the conquests and the expeditions of the whole corporation of captains, from Walter the Penniless to Napoleon Bonaparte, compared with those movable types of Faust? EI Truly it is a mortifying thing for your conqueror to reflect how perishable is the metal with which he hammers with such violence; how the kind earth will soon shroud up his bloody footprints; and all that he achieved and skilfully piled together will be but like his own canvas city of a camp- this evening loud with life, to-morrow all struck and vanished, a few pits and

heaps of straw."

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4. For here, as always, it continues true, that the deepest force is the stillest; that, as in the fable, the mild shining of the sun shall silently accomplish what the fierce blustering of the tempest in vain essayed. Above all, it is ever to be kept in mind that not by material but by moral power are men and their actions to be governed. How noiseless is thought! No rolling of drums, no tramp of squadrons, no tumult of innumerable baggage-wagons, attend its movements.

5. In what obscure and sequestered places may the head be meditating which is one day to be crowned with more than imperial authority! for kings and emperors will be among its ministering servants; it will rule not over124 but in all heads; and with these solitary combinations of ideas, and with magic form'ulas, bend the world to its will. The time may come when Napoleon himself will be better known for his laws than his hattles, and the victory of Waterloo prove less momentous than the opening of the first Mechanics' Institute.

THOMAS CARLYIE.

Beneath the rule of men entirely great
The pen is mightier than the sword. Behold
The arch enchanter's wand!-itself a nothing!
But taking sorcery from the master hand
To paralyze the Caesars, and to strike

The loud earth breathless! Take away the sword
States can be saved without it.

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O THOU great Arbiter of life and death!
Nature's immortal, immaterial sun!
Whose all-prolific beam late called me forth
From darkness, teeming darkness, where I lay
The worm's inferior, and in rank beneath
The dust I tread on ;181- high to bear my brow,
To drink the spirit of the golden day,
And triumph in existence, and couldst know
No motive but my bliss, and hast ordained,
A rise in blessing, with the patriarch's joy
Thy call I follow to the land unknown :152
I trust in Thee, and know in whom I trust:
Or life or death is equal; neither weighs;
All weight in this,-O, let me live to Thee!

2. HE LIVES LONG WHO LIVES WELL.

Randolph.

Wouldst thou live long? The only means are these, 'Bove Galen's diet, or Hippocrates':

Strive to live well; tread in the upright ways,
And rather count thy actions than thy days;
Then thou hast lived enough amongst us here;
For every day well spent I count a year.
Live well, and then, how soon soo'er thou die,
Thou art of age to claim eternity.

But he that outlives Nestor, and appears

To have passed the date of gray Methuselah's years, If he his life to sloth and sin doth give,

I say he only was— he did not LIVE.

3. RETIREMENT. — Goldsmith.

O, blest retirement,162 friend to life's decline!
Retreats from care, that never must be mine!
How blest is he who crowns in shades like these
A youth of labor with an age of ease;

Who quits a world where strong temptations try,
And, since 't is hard to combat,37 learns to fly!
For him no wretches, born to work and weep,
Explore the mine, or tempt the dangerous deep;
No surly porter stands in guilty state,
To spurn imploring famine from the gate;
But on he moves to meet his latter end.
Angels around befriending virtue's friend

Sinks to the grave with unperceived decay,
While resignation gently slopes the way;
And, all his prospects brightening to the last,
His heaven commences ere the world be past!

4. THE OLD MAN BY THE BROOK. Wordsworth.

Down to the vale this water steers, how merrily it goes!
"T will murmur on a thousand years, and flow as now it flows.
And here, on this delightful day, I cannot choose but think
How oft, a vigorous man, I lay beside this fountain's brink.
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 heaven!

6. THE FOLLY OF PROCRASTINATION.

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To-morrow's action! can that hōary wisdom,
Borne 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 gaze with longing eyes upon to-morrow,1
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.

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

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"T is not enough that we with sorrow sigh,
That we the wants of pleading man supply;
That we in sympathy with sufferers feel,
Nor hear a grief without a wish124 to heal:
Not these suffice; to sickness, pain, and woe,
The Christian spirit loves with aid to go;118
Will not be sought, waits not for Want to plead,
But seeks the duty, nay, prevents the need,
Her utmost aid to every ill applies,

And plants relief for coming miseries.

8. THE GUILTY CONSCIENCE. - Byron.

The mind that broods o'er guilty woes
Is like the scorpion girt by fire:
In circle narrowing as it glows,
The flames around their captive close;
Till, inly searched by thousand throes,
And maddening in her ire,

One, and a sole relief she knows :
The sting she nourished for her foes-
Whose venom never yet was vain,
Gives but one pang, and cures all pain -
She darts into her desperate brain.
So do the dark in soul expire,
Or live like scorpion girt by fire;
So writhes the mind remorse hath riven,
Unfit for earth, undoomed for heaven;
Darkness above, despair beneath.
Around it flame, within it death!

9. PRAYER.Alfred Tennyson.

More things are wrought by prayer

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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 80,
the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.

10. CORONACH.EI-Scott.

He is gone on the mountain, he is lost to the forest,
Like a summer-dried fountain, when our need was the sore
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;

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