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can not be surveyed, without lifting the soul on hign. Our metropolis and our inland cities, our canals and railroads, our colleges and schools, and our twelve thousand libraries, evince emulation and a desire to promote the welfare of our country, the progress of civilization, and the happiness of mankind.

While we acknowledge that it was your Warren who offered up his life at Charlestown, your Adams and your Hancock, who were the proscribed leaders in the revolution, and your Franklin, whose wisdom swayed its counsels; we can not forget that Ticonderoga and Saratoga are within our borders; that it was a son of New York who first fell in scaling the heights of Abraham; that another of her sons shaped every pillar of the constitution, and twined the evergreen around its capital; that our Fulton sent forth the mighty agent that is revolutionizing the world; and that, but for our Clinton, his lofty genius and undaunted perseverance, the events of this day, and all its joyous anticipations, had slept together in the womb of futurity.

It is not, as

The grandeur of this occasion oppresses me. some have supposed, the first time that states have met. On many occasions, in all ages, states, nations, and empires, have come together; but the trumpet heralded their approach; they met in the shock of war; one or the other sunk to rise no more; and desolation marked, for the warning of mankind, the scene of the fearful encounter. And if sometimes chivalry asked an armistice, it was but to light up with evanescent smiles the stern visage of war.

How different is this scene! Here are no contending hosts, no destructive engines, nor the terrors, nor even the pomp of war. Not a helmet, sword, or plume, is seen in all this vast assemblage. Nor is this a hollow truce between contending states. We are not met upon a cloth of gold, and under a silken canopy, to practice deceitful courtesies, nor in an amphitheater, with jousts and tournaments, to make trial of our skill in arms, preparatory to a fatal conflict. We have come here, enlightened and fraternal states, without pageantry, or even insignia of power, to renew pledges of fidelity, and to cultivate affection and all the arts of peace. Well may our sister states look upon the scene with favor, and the nations of the earth draw from it good auguries of universal and perpetual peace.

Ex. CCVI.-BURNING OF THE LEXINGTON.

E. H. CHAPIN.

A VESSEL plying upon the route between two of the most important cities of our country, filled with a multitude of human beings, in sight of a populous shore, in an early hour of the evening, is suddenly enwrapped in flames,-surrounded by the darkness of the night, the inclement winter air, and a waste of cold and icy waters; leaving to its wretched inmates, in almost every instance, nothing but the dreadful alternative of death by the consuming flame, or by the freezing flood. The alarm-cry bursts from lip to lip of that startled throng, smiting awfully and solemnly upon each heart, like the tone of its own deep death-knell. Imagination can not picture, or conceive, the dread reality. In what various moods of thought, in what different occupations, were they engaged! They had left, but a little while ago, the thronged and busy city, through whose streets, filled with light and life, and presenting all the diversities of a mimic world, they had so lately passed; and they were now, calmly as if under the roof of their own dwellings, borne on with all the speed of mighty engines towards other thoroughfares of life, and action, and joy, where they might mingle among men. Some had grasped warm hands and pressed warm hearts at parting, and bidden a gay or sad, but, as they thought, a brief farewell. Some had left the couch of the sick friend, hurried forth by the urgency of business, with the promise and the thought speedily to return. Some had parted with the traveler's haste, who had already passed over a long and wearisome route, and were looking forward with eager expectation to the welcome of their near and waiting homes, Some had come forth with the gladness and buoyancy of hope, with the strong purpose of gain, with the joyful anticipation of meeting dear and familiar faces. Some had decided to come upon a halting resolution,-O! why did they thus decide? Some were far from their homes, and were numbering the days that should bear them back. Somebut we will not pause to enumerate the various circumstances under which the members of that group had set out, and that preceded their solemn end. Suffice it to say, that life and hope, and memories of loved ones, and innumerable thoughts and sympathies and feelings were stirring in the hearts of the mass of beings that were so soon to go down, amid the chilliness of winter, and the flaming shroud of the

conflagration, to the cold and unknown chambers of the deep!

What a hurried rush for safety and for life was there! What piercing shrieks, bursting from ashy and quivering lips, rose above the hoarse gurgling of the waters, the roar and crackling of the flames, and rent the flushed and heated brow of night! What frantic cries of the husband for the wife, the wife for the husband,-the mother clutching wildly for her child, the child sobbing for its mother! What strivings of agony with the hot breath of the flame and the suffocating smoke; what moanings of the helpless, the trampled, and the crushed! What invocations for aid, shrieked into the ears of mortals as impotent! What fervent prayers rising through the tumult and storm of the elements to the eternal throne! But still the fierce flame swept relentlessly on, and the waters chafed and shouted for their prey!

The strong, brave man, perchance, was there, who had toiled in sun and storm, and faced the billows and the wind, and traveled by land and by sea. And with a desperate struggle did he meet his death, grappling and striving with the overwhelming and terrific powers around him, as though they were living and conquerable things. As he saw behind him, in the fiery jaws of one element, certain destruction, with giant energy did he put by the dense and muffling smoke, and plunged with nerved limbs and dauntless heart into the cold arms of the other. And long did he battle with the waves, and shout, and gurgle, and shriek, and madly toss the icy waters to and fro; and then, benumbed and dead, he went down, down, and all was still,-save a hoarse moaning of the deep, above his burial-place!

Beauty, perhaps, was there, in the bloom of youth and health. But when the alarm-cry came, white was the cheek with a paleness that was the seal of death, and horror glared wildly in those beaming eyes, and around her frail and delicate form swept the blast of the breathing flame. That white hand was lifted for a moment above the ridgy billows, one stifled cry was heard-and she was gone! And now the gentle sunlight lingers, and the sorrowful winds lament above her bed; but no flowers shall bloom, and no tear be shed upon that spot beneath which, with calm brow, she sleeps, in some rocky and garnished chamber,

"Deep in the silent waters,
A thousand fathoms low."

The esteemed and talented one was there. He who had studied, with the love of the scholar, the sober reason of philosophy, and the earnest faith of religion,-whose lips had poured forth the words of instruction and of genius, and whose voice had been heard in the blessed ministrations of the gospel, was called upon thus to die,-to die suddenly and amid a scene of horror,—to die while on his way to fulfill a duty of his sacred station,-to die far away from the graves of his fathers and from his native land, and even from the tombs of those dear to him in the home of his adoption,and, O! to die away from the arms of that devoted wife, who sorrowed for his absence, and waited with yearning fondness for his return. But he died leaving fresh, green memories in the hearts of those who knew him, and a good name in the world; and better than all, he died with his armor on, as a soldier of the cross. He passed away amid the strife of the physical elements and the sufferings of keenest bodily anguish; but we may believe that soul that had imbibed the principles of Jesus was calm and triumphant amid it all, and supported and brightened with the undying hope of the Christian.

Maternal affection was there, deep, firm and true to the last. Doubtless she struggled long for the boon of life; not only for herself,-O! not only for herself!--but for that dear babe. But when death came to relieve the little suffering child, and she gazed upon its pale brow, and saw that it was dead,--when she felt the coldness gathering closer about her own yearning heart, and her eyes growing dim,-still, still was she true to the unconquerable impulse of a mother's love; and she tore her vail from off her, and cast it about the face of that sleeping one, that the winds and the waves and the ice might not treat it roughly, and that, when they should find its little corse, it might be all as unmarred and natural as if it had been borne in its mother's arms, and laid in the calmness and beauty of its stony slumber at their feet! And then life fluttered and went out in that true heart, and she sunk to her unknown grave!

And so, in various modes, and under circumstances marked by various degrees of horror, the young, the old, the rich, the poor, the talented, the weak, the strong,-tender woman and haughty manhood, the budding youth and the helpless child, so they were swept away, upon that night, and devoured by the elements; with wild struggle and terrible agonies of death, with the flames hissing behind them, and the

waters yawning before, they passed from existence, a fearful mass of human life,

"Unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown."

Ex. CCVII.-SOLILOQUY OF THE DYING ALCHEMIST.

N. P. WILLIS.

THE night wind with a desolate moan swept by;
And the old shutters of the turret swung,
Creaking upon their hinges; and the moon,
As the torn edges of the clouds flew past,
Struggled aslant the stained and broken panes
So dimly, that the watchful eye of death
Scarcely was conscious when it went and came.

The fire beneath his crucible was low;
Yet still it burned; and ever as his thoughts
Grew insupportable, he raised himself
Upon his wasted arm, and stirred the coals
With difficult energy, and when the rod
Fell from his nerveless fingers, and his eye
Felt faint within its socket, he shrunk back
Upon his pallet, and with unclosed lips

Muttered a curse on death!

The silent room,

From its dim corners, mockingly gave back
His rattling breath; the humming in the fire
Had the distinctness of a knell; and when
Duly the antique horologe beat one,
He drew a phial from beneath his head,
And drank. And instantly his lips compressed,
And, with a shudder in his skeleton frame,
He rose with supernatural strength, and sat
Upright, and communed with himself:-

I did not think to die

Till I had finished what I had to do;

I thought to pierce th' eternal secret through
With this my mortal eye;

I feit, O God! it seemeth even now

This can not be the death-dew on my brow!

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