A link round the present, that binds like a spell; In the neat cottage-home of the mother presiding, All graces, all gentleness, round them abiding, As nature's true daughters, how sweetly they dwell! 4. (") Man is ever warring, rushing Onward through life's stormy way, 5. But women, to sweet silent praises resigning Such hopes as affection is ever enshrining, 6. Pluck the moment's brief flowers as they wander along, More free in their limited range, richer ever Than man, proudly soaring with fruitless endeavor Through the infinite circles of science and song. Strong, and proud, and self-commending, Man's cold heart doth never move To a gentler spirit bending, To the godlike power of love; Tears, by others' tears confessed; 7. Oh ! wakened like harp, and as gently resembling Ever gem her soft eyes with Heaven's holiest dew. 8. Man, of power despotic lord, Persia, crouching, bites the dust. Combat spoilers, wild and dread, 9. But gently entreating, and sweetly beguiling, Woman reigns while the graces around her are siniling, EXERCISE LIV. THE PEOPLE ALWAYS CONQUER. EDWARD EVERETT. 1. It was one of those great days, one of those elemental occasions in the world's affairs, when the people rise and act for themselves. Some organization and preparation had beer. made, but, from the nature of the case, with scarce any effect on the events of that day, It may be doubted whether there was an efficient order given the whole day to any body of men as large as a regiment. 2. It was the people, in their first capacity, as citizens and as freemen, starting from their beds at midnight, from their firesides and from their fields, to take their own cause into their own hands. Such a spectacle is the hight of the moral sublime, when the want of every thing is fully made up by the spirit of the cause, and the soul within stands in place of discipline, organization, resources. 3. In the prodigious efforts of a veteran army, beneath the dazzling splendor of their array, there is something revolting to the reflective mind. The ranks are filled with the desperate, the mercenary, the depraved; an iron slavery, by the name of subordination, merges the free will of one hundred thousand men in the unqualified despotism of one; the humanity, mercy, and remorse, which scarce ever desert the individual bosom, are sounds without a meaning to that fearful, ravenous, irrational monster of prey, a mercenary army. 4. It is hard to say, who are most to be commiserated, the wretched people, on whom it is let loose, or the still more wretched people, whose substance has been sucked out, to nourish it into strength and fury. But in the efforts of the people of the people struggling for their rights, moving not in organized, disciplined masses, but in their spontaneous action, man for man, and heart for heart-there is something glorious. They can then move forward without orders, act together without combination, and brave the flaming lines of battle, without entrenchments to cover, or walls to shield them. 5. No dissolute camp has worn off from the feelings of the youthful soldier the freshness of that home, where his mother and his sisters sit waiting, with tearful eyes and aching hearts, to hear good news from the wars; no long service in the ranks of a conqueror has turned the veteran's heart into marble; their valor springs not from recklessness, from habit, from indifference to the preservation of a life, knit by no pledges to the life of others, but in the strength and spirit of the cause alone, they act, they contend, they bleed. 6. In this, they conquer. The people always conquer. They always must conquer. Armies may be defeated; kings may be overthrown, and new dynasties imposed by foreign arms on an ignorant and slavish race, that care not in what language the covenant of their subjection runs, nor in whose name the deed of their barter and sale is made out. But the people never invade; and, when they rise against the invader, are never subdued. 7. If they are driven from the plains, they fly to the mountains. Steep rocks and everlasting hills are their castles; the tangled, pathless thicket their palisades, and nature—God, is their ally. Now he overwhelms the hosts of their enemies beneath his drifting mountains of sand; now he buries them beneath a falling atmosphere of polar snows; he lets loose his tempests on their fleets; he puts a folly into their counsels, a madness into the hearts of their leaders; and never gave, and never will give, a full and final triumph over a virtuous, gallant people, resolved to be free. EXERCISE LV. THE END OF FEMALE EDUCATION. HANNAH MORE. 1. To woman, therefore, whatever be her rank, I would recommend a predominance of those more sober studies, which, not having display for their object, may make her wise without vanity, happy without witnesses, and content without panegyrists; the exercise of which may not bring celebrity, but will improve usefulness. She should pursue every kind of study which will teach her to elicit truth; which will lead her to be intent upon realities, will give precision to her ideas, will make an exact mind. 2. She should cultivate every study which, instead of stimulating her sensibility, will chastise it; which will neither create an excessive nor a false refinement; which will give her definite notions; will bring the imagination under dominion; will lead her to think, to compare, to combine, to methodize; which will confer such a power of discrimination, that her judgment shall learn to reject what is dazzling, if it be not solid; and to prefer, not what is striking, or bright, or new, but what is just. That kind of knowledge which is rather fitted for home consumption than foreign exportation, is pecu liarly adapted to woman. 3. There have not been wanting ill-judging females, who have affected to establish an unnatural separation between talents and usefulness, instead of bearing in mind that talents are the great appointed instruments of usefulness; who have acted as if knowledge were to confer on woman a kind of fantastic sovereignty, which should exonerate her from the discharge of female duties; whereas, it is only meant the more eminently to qualify her for the performance of them. 4. A woman of real sense will never forget that, while the greater part of her proper duties are such as the most moderately gifted may fulfill with credit-since Providence never makes that to be very difficult which is generally necessary; yet that the most highly endowed are equally bound to fulfill them; and let her remember that the humblest of these offices, performed on Christian principles, are wholesome for the minds, even of the most enlightened, as they tend to the casting down of those "high imaginations" which women of genius are too much tempted to indulge. 5. For instance, ladies whose natural vanity has been aggravated by a false education, may look down on economy as a vulgar attainment, unworthy of the attention of a highly cultivated intellect; but this is the false estimate of a shallow mind. Economy, such as a woman of fortune is called on to practice, is not merely the petty detail of small daily expenses, the shabby curtailments and stinted parsimony of a little mind, operating on little concerns; but it is the exercise of a sound judgment exerted in the comprehensive outline of order, of arrangement, of distribution; of regulations, by which alone well-governed societies, great and small, subsist. She who has the best-regulated mind, will, other things being equal, have the best-regulated family. 6. As, in the superintendence of the universe, wisdom is seen in its effects; and as, in the visible works of Providence, that which goes on with such beautiful regularity, is the result not of chance, but of design; so that management which seems |