Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

2. But a son's occupations and pleasures carry him more abroad; and he lives more among temptations, which hardly permit the affection that is following him, perhaps over half the globe, to be wholly unmingled with anxiety, till the time when he comes to relinquish the shelter of his father's roof for one of his own; while a good daughter is the steady light of her parent's house.

3

3. Her idea is indissolubly connected with that of his happy fireside. She is his morning sunlight, and his evening-star. The grace, and vivacity, and tenderness of her sex, have their place in the mighty sway which she holds over his spirit. The lessons of recorded wisdom, which he reads with her eyes, come to his mind with a new charm, as they blend with the beloved melody of her voice. He scarcely knows weariness which her song does not make him forget, or gloom which is proof against the young brightness of her smile. She is the pride and ornament of his hospitality, and the gentle nurse of his sickness, and the constant agent in those nameless, numberless acts of kindness, which one chiefly cares to have rendered, because they are unpretending but all-expressive proofs of love.

4. And then what a cheerful sharer is she, and what an able lightener, of a mother's cares! What an ever-present delight and triumph to a mother's affection! O, how little do those daughters know of the power which God has committed to them, and the happiness God would have them enjoy, who do not, every time that a parent's eye rests on them, bring rapture to a parent's heart!

5

5. A true love will, almost certainly, always greet their approaching steps. That they will hardly alienate. But their ambition should be, not to have it a love merely which feelings implanted by nature excite, but one made intense and overflowing by approbation of worthy con duct; and she is strangely blind to her own happiness,

as well as undutiful to them to whom she owes the most, in whom the perpetual appeals of parental disinterestedness do not call forth the prompt and full echo of filial devotion.

1 MIN'IS-TRIES. offices.

Acts; services; | HŎS-PI-TĂL'I-TY. Attention or kind

[blocks in formation]

ness to strangers; generous entertainment of guests.

5 RAPT'URE. Excessive joy.

CX.-ARMY HYMN.

O. W. HOLMES.

1. O LORD of Hosts! Almighty King!
Behold the sacrifice we bring!
To every arm thy strength impart,
Thy Spirit shed through every heart.

2. Wake in our breasts the living fires,

The holy faith, that warmed our sires;
Thy hand hath made our nation free;
To die for her is serving thee.

3. Be thou a pillared flame to show

The midnight snare, the silent foe;
And when the battle thunders loud,
Still guide us in its moving cloud.

4. God of all Nations! Sovereign Lord!
In thy dread name we draw the sword;
We lift the starry flag on high,

That fills with light our stormy sky.

5. From treason's rent, from murder's stain,
Guard thou its folds till Peace shall reign;
Till fort and field, till shore and sea,
Join our loud anthem, - Praise to Thee!

CXI. THE MINSTREL BOY.

THOMAS MOORE.

1. THE minstrel boy to the war is gone;
In the ranks of Death you'll find him.
His father's sword he has girded on,

And his wild harp slung behind him.
"Land of song," said the warrior-bard,
"Though all the world betrays thee,
One sword, at least, thy rights shall guard,
One faithful harp shall praise thee."

2. The minstrel fell: but the foeman's chain
Could not bring his proud soul under.
The harp he loved ne'er spoke again,
For he tore its chords asunder,
And said, "No chains shall sully thee,
Thou soul of love and bravery;

Thy songs were made for the pure and the free ;
They never shall sound in slavery,"

CXII. — THE GREEKS AT THERMOPYLÆ.

BYRON.

[George Gordon Noel Byron, Lord Byron, was born in London in 1788, and died in Greece in 1824. Lord Byron has written much poetry of singular power and fascination, and much which is unworthy of his great genius.]

THEY fell devoted, but undying;

The very gale their names seemed sighing;
The waters murmured of their name;

The woods were peopled with their fame;
The silent pillar, lone and gray,

Claimed kindred with their sacred clay:

Their spirits wrapped the dusky mountain;
Their memory sparkled o'er the fountain;
The meanest rill, the mightiest river,
Rolled mingling with their fame forever.
Despite of every yoke she bears,
The land is glory's still and theirs.
"Tis still a watchword to the earth:
When man would do a deed of worth,
He points to Greece, and turns to tread,
So sanctioned, on the tyrant's head;
He looks to her, and rushes on
Where life is lost, or freedom won.

[blocks in formation]

[Sydney Smith, a clergyman of the Church of England, was born in 1771, and died in 1845. His miscellaneous writings, comprising essays, reviews, and occasional pieces, are characterized by a happy combination of strong sense and brilliant wit. He also wrote two volumes of sermons, and, since his death, a volume of "Lectures on Moral Philosophy " has been published by his family.]

1. THE prevailing idea with young people has been, the incompatibility' of labor and genius; and, therefore, from the fear of being thought dull, they have thought it necessary to remain ignorant. I have seen, at school and at college, a great many young men completely destroyed by having been so unfortunate as to produce an excellent copy of verses. Their genius being now established, all that remained for them to do, was to act up to the dignity of the character; and as this dignity consisted in reading nothing new, in forgetting what they had already read, and in pretending to be acquainted with all subjects by a sort of off-hand exertion of talents, they soon collapsed into the most frivolous and insignificant of men.

2. It would be an extremely profitable thing to draw up a short and well-authenticated account of the habits of study of the most celebrated writers with whose style of literary industry we happen to be most acquainted. It would go very far to destroy the absurd and pernicious3 association of genius and idleness, by showing that the greatest poets, orators, statesmen, and historians- men of the most brilliant and imposing talents- have actually labored as hard as the makers of dictionaries and the arrangers of indexes; and that the most obvious reason why they have been superior to other men is, that they have taken more pains than other men.

3. Gibbon was in his study every morning, winter and summer, at six o'clock: Burke was the most laborious and indefatigable of human beings: Leibnitz* was never out of his library: Pascal killed himself by study: Cicero narrowly escaped death from the same cause: Milton was at his books with as much regularity as a merchant or an attorney; he had mastered all the knowledge of his time: so had Homer. Raphael lived but thirty-seven years; and in that short space carried the art of painting so far beyond what it had before reached, that he appears to stand alone as a model to his successors.

[ocr errors]

4. There are instances to the contrary; but, generally speaking, the life of all truly great men has been a life of intense and incessant labor. They have commonly passed the first half of life in the gross darkness of indigent humility overlooked, mistaken, contemned by weaker men, -thinking while others slept, reading while others rioted, feeling something within them that told them they should not always be kept down among the dregs of the world; and then, when their time has come, and some little accident has given them their first occasion, they have burst out into the light and glory of public life, rich

*Pronounced Lib'nitz.

« AnteriorContinuar »