no service that his country demands, perishes untimely, with no other friend than God and the satisfied sense of duty. So George Washington, at once comprehending the scope of the destiny to which his country was devoted, with one hand puts aside the crown,' and with the other sets his slaves free. So, through all history from the beginning, a noble army of martyrs has fought fiercely and fallen bravely for that unseen mistress, their country. So, through all history to the end, as long as men believe in God, that army must still march and fight and fall,recruited only from the flower of mankind,2 cheered only by their own hope of humanity, strong only in their confidence in their cause.

G. W. CURTIS.

73. The Veterans of the Battle of Bunker Hill.

This burst of eloquence is from Daniel Webster's celebrated oration, delivered on the occasion of the laying of the corner stone of Bunker Hill Monument (June 17, 1825), on the fiftieth anniversary of the battle, in the presence of a vast multitude of people, among whom were Lafayette and the survivors of the battle.

Venerable men! you have come down to us from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives, that you may behold this joyous day. You are now where you stood fifty years ago, this very hour,

1 crown. In the year 1782, certain officers of the Continental army wrote to Washington, urging him to assume the place and title of king. Washington replied,

You could not have found a person to whom your schemes are more disagreeable."

2 the flower of mankind; i.e., the best and most heroic of men.

with your brothers and your neighbors, shoulder to shoulder, in the strife for your country. Behold, how altered! The same heavens are indeed over your heads; the same ocean rolls at your feet: but all else how changed! You hear now no roar of hostile cannon, you see no mixed volumes of smoke and flame rising from burning Charlestown. The ground strewed with the dead and the dying; the impetuous charge; the steady and successful repulse; the loud call to repeated assault; the summoning of all that is manly to repeated resistance; a thousand bosoms freely and fearlessly bared in an instant to whatever of terror there may be in war and death, -all these you have witnessed, but you witness them no more. All is peace.

2

The heights of yonder metropolis, its towers and roofs, which you then saw filled with wives and children and countrymen in distress and terror, and looking with unutterable emotions for the issue of the combat, have presented you to-day with the sight of its whole happy population, come out to welcome and greet you with a universal jubilee. Yonder proud ships, by a felicity of position appropriately lying at the foot of this mount, and seeming fondly to cling around it, are not means of annoyance to you, but your country's own means of distinction and defense. All is peace; and God has granted you this sight of your country's happiness, ere you slumber in the grave. He has allowed you to behold and to partake the reward of your patriotic toils; and he has allowed us, your sons and countrymen, to meet you here, and in the

1 See Lesson 77, Fourth Reader. | 2 metropolis; i.e., Boston.

name of the present generation, in the name of your country, in the name of liberty, to thank you.

But, alas! you are not all here! Time and the sword have thinned your ranks. Prescott, Putnam, Stark, Brooks, Read, Pomeroy, Bridge!1 our eyes seek for you in vain amid this broken band. You are gathered to your fathers, and live only to your country in her grateful remembrance and your own bright example. But let us not too much grieve, that you have met the common fate of men. You lived at least long enough to know that your work had been nobly and successfully accomplished. You lived to see your country's independence established, and to sheathe your swords from war. On the light of liberty you saw arise the light of peace, like

"another morn,

Risen on mid-noon;"

3

and the sky on which you closed your eyes was cloudless. But ah! Him!2 the first great martyr in this great cause! Him! the premature victim of his own selfdevoting heart! Him! the head of our civil councils, and the destined leader of our military bands, whom nothing brought hither but the unquenchable fire of his own spirit! Him! cut off by Providence in the hour of overwhelming anxiety and thick gloom; falling ere he saw the

Prescott. . . Bridge. These were all distinguished officers in the battle of Bunker's Hill. This whole passage is an example of the figure of speech called vision. Point out a later passage in which the same figure of speech is used.

2 Him, etc. Notice the fine effect produced by the rhetorical or inverted order of words in this

passage. By "Him" is meant Warren. (See Lesson 77, Fourth Reader.)

8 premature, untimely.

star of his country rise; pouring out his generous blood like water, before he knew whether it would fertilize1 a land of freedom or of bondage!-how shall I struggle with the emotions that stifle the utterance of thy name! Our poor work may perish, but thine shall endure. This monument may molder away; the solid ground it rests upon may sink down to a level with the sea: but thy memory shall not fail. Wheresoever among men a heart shall be found that beats to the transports of patriotism and liberty, its aspirations shall be to claim kindred with thy spirit.

WEBSTER.

74.-A Picture of Dawn.

This vivid and eloquent extract is from Edward Everett's magnificent oration on the "Uses of Astronomy," delivered on the occasion of the opening of the Dudley Observatory at Albany, N.Y., in 1858.

2

The great object of all knowledge is to enlarge and purify the soul, to fill the mind with noble contemplations, and to furnish a refined pleasure. Considering this as the ultimate end of science, no branch of it can surely claim precedence of astronomy. No other science furnishes such a palpable embodiment of the abstractions which lie at the foundation of our intellectual system, the great ideas of time, and space, and extension, and magnitude, and number, and motion, and power.

How grand the conception of the ages on ages required

1 blood... fertilize. What is 2 precedence (pre-se'dens), prithe figure of speech? (See Def. 3.) | ority in place.

1

for several of the secular equations of the solar system; of distances from which the light of a fixed star would not reach us in twenty millions of years; of magnitudes compared with which the earth is but a football; of starry hosts, suns like our own, numberless as the sands on the shore; of worlds and systems shooting through the infinite spaces with a velocity compared with which the cannon ball is a way worn, heavy-paced traveler.2

Much, however, as we are indebted to our observatories for elevating our conceptions of the heavenly bodies, they present, even to the unaided sight, scenes of glory which words are too feeble to describe.

I had occasion, a few weeks since, to take the early train from Providence to Boston, and for this purpose rose at two o'clock in the morning. Everything around was wrapped in darkness and hushed in silence, broken only by what seemed at that hour the unearthly clank and rush of the train. It was a mild, serene midsummer's night; the sky was without a cloud; the winds were whist. The moon, then in the last quarter, had just risen, and the stars shone with a spectral luster but little affected by her presence. Jupiter, two hours high, was the herald of the day; the Pleiades," just above the hori

3

4 herald of the day; i.e., the Bear"), by means of which the morning star.

Polestar is readily found.