Page images
PDF
EPUB

A PRACTICE

ON

PART I. OF THE SECOND DIVISION.

"PRESS ON."

THIS is a speech, brief, but full of inspiration and opening the way to all victory. The mystery of Napoleon's career was this,-under all difficulties and discouragements, "PRESS ON!" It solves the problem of all heroes, it is the rule by which to weigh, rightly, all wonderful successes and triumphal marches to fortune and genius. It should be the motto of all, old and young, high and low, fortunate and unfortunate, so called.

"PRESS ON!" Never despair; never be discouraged, however stormy the heavens, however dark the way; however great the difficulties, and repeated the failures, "PRESS ON!"

If fortune has played false with thee to-day, do thou play true for thyself to-morrow. If thy riches have taken wings and left thee, do not weep thy life away; but be up and doing, and retrieve the loss by new energies and action. If an unfortunate bargain has deranged thy business, do not fold thy arms, and

give up all as lost; but stir thyself and work the more vigorously.

[ocr errors]

If those whom thou hast trusted have betrayed thee, do not be discouraged, do not idly weep, but PRESS ON!" find others; or, what is better, learn to live within thyself. Let the foolishness of yesterday make thee wise to-day. If thy affections have been poured out like water in the desert, do not sit down. and perish of thirst, but press on; a beautiful oasis is before thee, and thou mayst reach it if thou wilt. If another has been false to thee, do not thou increase the evil by being false to thyself. Do not say the world hath lost its poetry and beauty; 'tis not so; and even if it be so, make thine own poetry and beauty by a brave, a true, and, above all, a religious life.

STORM AT SEA.

THE storm increased with the night. The sea was lashed into tremendous confusion. There was a fearful, sullen sound of rushing waves and broken surges. Deep called unto deep. At times, the black volume of clouds over-head seemed rent asunder by flashes of lightning that quivered along the foaming billows, and made the succeeding darkness doubly terrible. The thunders bellowed over the wide waste of waters, and were echoed and prolonged by the mountain waves. As I saw the ship staggering and plunging among these roaring caverns, it seemed miraculous that she regained her balance, or preserved her buoy

ancy. Her yards would dip in the water; her bow was almost buried beneath the waves. Sometimes, an impending surge appeared ready to overwhelm her, and nothing but a dexterous movement of the helm preserved her from the shock.

When I retired to my cabin, the awful scene still followed me. The whistling of the wind through the rigging sounded like funeral wailings. The creaking of the masts, the straining and groaning of bulk-heads, as the ship labored in the weltering sea, were frightful. As I heard the waves rushing along the side of the ship, and roaring in my very ear, it seemed as if Death were raging round this floating prison, seeking for his prey; the mere starting of a nail, the yawning of a seam, might give him entrance.

W. Irving.

DANTE-MILTON.

THE character of Milton was peculiarly distinguished by loftiness of thought; that of Dante by intensity of feeling. In every line of the Divine Comedy we discern the asperity which is produced by pride struggling with misery. There is perhaps no work in the world so deeply and uniformly sorrowful. The melancholy of Dante was no fantastic caprice. It was not, as far as at this distance of time can be judged, the effect of external circumstances. It was from within. Neither love nor glory, neither the conflicts of the earth, nor the hope of heaven, could dispel it. It twined every consolation and every pleasure

into its own nature.

It resembled that noxious Sardinian soil of which the intense bitterness is said to have been perceptible even in its honey. His mind was, in the noble language of the Hebrew poet, "a land of darkness, as darkness itself, and where the light was as darkness!" The gloom of his character discolors all the passions of men, and all the face of nature, and tinges with its own livid hue the flowers of paradise and the Glories of the Eternal Throne. All the portraits of him are singularly characteristic. No person can look on the features, noble even to ruggedness, the dark furrows of the cheek, the haggard and woeful stare of the eye, the sullen and contemptuous curve of the lip, and doubt that they belonged to a man too proud and too sensitive to be happy.

Milton was, like Dante, a statesman and a lover; and, like Dante, he had been unfortunate in ambition and in love. He had survived his health and his sight, the comforts of his home and the prosperity of his party. Of the great men by whom he had been distinguished on his entrance into life, some had been taken away from the evil to come; some had carried into foreign climates their unconquerable hatred of oppression; some were pining in dungeons; and some had poured forth their blood on scaffolds. That hateful proscription-facetiously termed the act of indemnity and oblivion-had set a mark on the poor, blind, deserted poet, and held him up by name to the hatred of a profligate Court and an inconstant people. Venal and licentious scribblers, with just sufficient talent to clothe the thoughts of a pander in the style of a

E

bellman, were now the favorite writers of the sovereign and the public. It was a loathsome herdwhich could be compared to nothing, so fitly, as to the rabble of Comus-grotesque monsters, half bestial, half human,-dropping with wine, bloated with gluttony, and reeling in obscene dances. Amidst these his Muse was placed, like the chaste lady of the Masque, lofty, spotless and serene-to be chatted at, and pointed at, and grinned at, by the whole tribe of Satyrs and Goblins.

If ever despondency could be excused in any man, it might have been excused in Milton. But the strength of his mind overcame every calamity. Neither blindness, nor gout, nor penury, nor age, nor domestic afflictions, nor political disappointments, nor abuse, nor proscription, nor neglect, had power to disturb his sedate and majestic patience. His spirits do not seem to have been high, but they were singularly equable. His temper was serious, perhaps stern; but it was a temper which no sufferings could render sullen or fretful. Such as it was, when on the eve of great events he returned from his travels, in the prime of health and manly beauty, loaded with literary distinctions and glowing with patriotic hopes, such it continued to be-when, after having experienced every calamity which is incident to our nature, old, poor, sightless, and disgraced, he retired to his hovel to die!

Macauley.

END OF PART I. OF SECOND DIVISION.

« PreviousContinue »