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war. The honour belongs to those who are immediately engaged in it. Let me ask, then, What is the chief business of war? It is to destroy human life, to mangle the limbs, to gash and hew the body, to plunge the sword into the heart of a fellow-creature, to strew the earth with bleeding frames, and to trample them under foot with horses' hoofs. It is to batter down and burn cities, to turn fruitful fields into deserts, to level the cottage of the peasant, and the magnificent abode of the opulent, to scourge nations with famine, to multiply widows and orphans. Are these honourable deeds? Were you called to name exploits worthy of demons, would you not naturally select such as these? Grant that a necessity for them may exist: it is a dreadful necessity, such as a good man must recoil from, with instinctive horror; and though it may exempt them from guilt, it cannot turn them into glory. We have thought that it was honourable to heal, to save, to mitigate pain, to snatch the sick and sinking from the jaws of death. We have placed among the reverend benefactors of the human race, the discoverers of arts which alleviate human sufferings, which prolong, comfort, adorn, and cheer human life; and if these arts are honourable, where is the glory of multiplying and aggravating tortures and death?

XIII. TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF GRAFTON.-Junius.

My lord, if Nature had given you an understanding to keep pace with the wishes and principles of your heart, she would have made you, perhaps, the most formidable minister that ever was employed under a limited monarch, to accomplish the ruin of a free people. When neither the feelings of shame, the reproaches of conscience, nor the dread of punishment, form any bar to the designs of a minister, the people would have too much reason to lament their condition, if they did not find some resource in the weakness of his understanding. We owe it to the bounty of Providence, that the completest depravity of the heart is sometimes strangely united with a confusion of the mind, which counteracts the most favourite principles, and makes the same man treacherous without art, and a hypocrite without deceiving. The measures, for instance, in which your Grace's activity has been chiefly exerted, as they were adopted without skill, should have been conducted with more than common dexterity. But truly, my lord, the execution has been as gross as the design. By one decisive step, you have confounded the intrigues of opposition, and silenced the clamours of faction. You have now brought

the merits of your administration to an issue, on which every man, of the narrowest capacity, may determine for himself. With such a cause as yours, it is not sufficient that you have the Court at your devotion, unless you can find means to corrupt or intimidate the Jury. The collective body of the people form that jury, and from their decision there is but one appeal.

Whether you have talents to support you, at a crisis of such difficulty and danger, should long since have been considered. Judging truly of your disposition, you have, perhaps, mistaken the extent of your capacity. Good faith and folly have so long been received as synonymous terms, that the reverse of the proposition has grown into credit, and every villain fancies himself a man of abilities. It is the apprehension of your friends, my lord, that you have drawn some hasty conclusion of this sort; and that a partial reliance upon your moral character has betrayed you beyond the depth of your understanding. We have seen a system of government which may well be called a reign of experiments. Parties of all denominations have been employed and dismissed. But there were certain services to be performed, which your predecessors in office had the wisdom or the virtue not to undertake. moment this refractory spirit was discovered, their disgrace was determined. A submissive administration was at length gradually collected from the deserters of all parties, interests, and connexions: and nothing remained but to find a leader for these gallant, well-disciplined troops. Stand forth, my lord, for thou art the man!

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What is the merit of all the sacrifices you have made to your own unfortunate ambition? Was it for this you abandoned your earliest friendships, the warmest connexions of your youth, and all those honourable engagements by which you once solicited, and might have acquired, the esteem of your country? Have you secured no recompense for such a waste of honour? Unhappy man! what party will receive the common deserter of all parties? Without a client to

flatter, without a friend to console you, you must now retire into a dreadful solitude. At the most active period of life, you must quit the busy scene, and conceal yourself from the world, if you would hope to save the wretched remains of a ruined reputation. The vices operate like age-bring on disease before its time, and, in the prime of youth, leave the character broken and exhausted.

If I were personally your enemy, I might pity and forgive

you. You have every claim to compassion that can arise from misery and distress. The condition you are reduced to, would disarm a private enemy of his resentment, and leave no consolation to the most vindictive spirit, but that such an object as you are would disgrace the dignity of revenge. But in the relation you have borne to this country, you have no title to indulgence; and if I had followed the dictates of my own opinion, I never should have allowed you the respite of a moment. I should scorn to keep terms with a man who preserves no measures with the public. Neither the abject submission of deserting his post in the hour of danger, nor even the sacred shield of cowardice, should protect him. I would pursue him through life, and try the last exertion of my abilities to preserve the perishable infamy of his name, and make it immortal!

XIV. REYNO AND ALPIN.-Ossian.

Reyno. The wind and rain are over; calm is the noon of day. The clouds are divided in heaven; over the green hill, flies the inconstant sun; red, through the stony vale, comes down the stream of the hill. Sweet are thy murmurs, O stream! but more sweet is the voice I hear. It is the voice of Alpin, the son of song, mourning for the dead. Bent is his head of age, and red his tearful eye.-Alpin, thou son of song, why alone on the silent hill? Why complainest thou as a blast in the wood—as a wave on the lonely shore?

Alpin. My tears, O Reyno! are for the dead-my voice for the inhabitants of the grave. Tall thou art on the hill, fair among the sons of the plain; but thou shalt fall like Morar, and the mourner shall sit on thy tomb. The hills shall know thee no more; thy bow shall lie in the hall unstrung. Thou wert swift, O Morar! as a roe on the hill-terrible as a meteor of fire. Thy wrath was as the storm-thy sword, in battle, as lightning in the field. Thy voice was like a stream after rain-like thunder on distant hills. Many fell by thy arm-they were consumed in the flames of thy wrath. But when thou didst return from war, how peaceful was thy brow! Thy face was like the sun after rain; like the moon in the silence of night; calm as the breast of the lake, when the loud wind is hushed into repose. Narrow is thy dwelling now— dark the place of thine abode. With three steps I compass thy grave, O thou who wast so great before! Four stones with their heads of moss are the only memorial of thee. A tree

with scarce a leaf-long grass whistling in the wind-mark to the hunter's eye, the grave of the mighty Morar.—Morar! thou art low indeed: thou hast no mother to mourn thee; no maid with her tears of love: dead is she that brought thee forth; fallen is the daughter of Morglan.-Who, on his staff, is this? Who this, whose head is white with age, whose eyes are galled with tears, who quakes at every step? It is thy father, O Morar! the father of no son, but thee.-Weep, thou father of Morar! weep! but thy son heareth thee not. Deep is the sleep of the dead-low their pillow of dust. No more shall he hear thy voice-no more awake at thy call.-When shall it be morn in the grave, to bid the slumberer awake? Farewell, thou bravest of men, thou conqueror in the field: but the field shall see thee no more, nor the gloomy wood be lightened with the splendour of thy steel. Thou hast left no son, but the song shall preserve thy name.

XV.-DEATH AND FUNERAL OF A PAUPER.-Charles Dickens.

THERE was neither knocker nor bell-handle at the open door, where Oliver and his master stopped; so, groping his way cautiously through the dark passage, and bidding Oliver keep close to him, and not be afraid, the undertaker mounted to the top of the first flight of stairs, and, stumbling against a door on the landing, rapped at it with his knuckles.

It was opened by a young girl of thirteen or fourteen. The undertaker at once saw enough of what the room contained, to know it was the apartment to which he had been directed. He stepped in, and Oliver followed him.

There was no fire in the room; but a man was crouching mechanically over the empty stove. An old woman, too, had drawn a low stool to the cold hearth, and was sitting beside him. There were some ragged children in another corner; and, in a small recess, opposite the door, there lay upon the ground something covered with an old blanket. he cast his eyes towards the place, and closer to his master; for, though it was felt that it was a corpse.

Oliver shuddered as crept involuntarily covered up, the boy

The man's face was thin and very pale; his hair and beard were grizzly, and his eyes were bloodshot. The old woman's face was wrinkled, her two remaining teeth protruded over her under-lip, and her eyes were bright and piercing. Oliver was afraid to look at either her or the man; they seemed so like the rats he had seen outside.

"Nobody shall go near her," said the man, starting fiercely up, as the undertaker approached the recess. "Keep back' keep back, if you've a life to lose."

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Nonsense, my good man," said the undertaker, who was pretty well used to misery in all its shapes;-"nonsense!"

"I tell you," said the man, clenching his hands, and stamping furiously on the floor-"I tell you, I won't have her put into the ground! She couldn't rest there. The worms would worry-not eat her, she is so worn away."

The undertaker offered no reply to this raving; but, producing a tape from his pocket, knelt down for a moment by the side of the body.

"Ah!" said the man, bursting into tears, and sinking on his knees at the feet of the dead woman; "kneel down, kneel down; kneel round her, every one of you, and mark my words. I say, she starved to death. I never knew how bad she was, till the fever came upon her, and then her bones were starting through the skin. There was neither fire nor candle; she died in the dark-in the dark! She couldn't even see her children's faces, though we heard her gasping out their names. I begged for her in the streets-and they sent me to prison! When I came back, she was dying; and all the blood in my heart has dried up, for they starved her to death! I swear it, before Heaven that saw it-they starved her!" He twined his hands in his hair, and, with a loud scream, rolled grovelling upon the floor; his eyes fixed, and the foam gushing from his lips.

The terrified children cried bitterly; but the old woman, who had hitherto remained as quiet as if she had been wholly deaf to all that passed, menaced them into silence; and, having unloosened the man's cravat, as he still remained extended on the ground, tottered towards the undertaker.

"She was my daughter," said the old woman, nodding her head in the direction of the corpse, and speaking with an idiotic leer, more ghastly than even the presence of death itself. "Ah! ah! Well, it is strange that I, who gave birth to her, and was a woman then, should be alive and merry now, and she lying there so cold and stiff! Ah, to think of it; it's as good as a play, as good as a play!"

As the wretched creature mumbled and chuckled in her hideous merriment, the undertaker turned to go away. "Stop, stop!" said the old woman in a loud whisper; " will she be buried to-morrow, or next day, or to-night? I laid her out, and I must walk, you know. Send me a large cloak; a

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