It spreads where winter piles deep snows
On bleak Canadian plains,
And where, on Essequibo's banks,
Eternal summer reigns:

It glades Acadia's misty coasts,
Jamaica's glowing isle,

And bides where, gay with early flowers,
Green Texan prairies smile.

It tracks the loud swift Oregon

Through sunset valleys rolled, And soars where Californian brooks Wash down their sands of gold.

It sounds in Borneo's camphor groves,
On seas of fierce Malay,
In fields that curb old Ganges' flood,
And towers of proud Bombay:
It wakes up Aden's flashing eyes,
Dusk brows, and swarthy limbs-
The dark Liberian soothes her child
With English cradle hymns.

Tasmania's maids are wooed and won
In gentle Saxon speech;
Australian boys read Crusoe's life
By Sydney's sheltered beach:
It dwells where Afric's southmost capes
Meet oceans broad and blue,
And Nieuveld's rugged mountains gird
The wide and waste Karroo.

It kindles realms so far apart,
That while its praise you sing,
These may be clad with autumn's fruits,
And those with flowers of spring:
It quickens lands whose meteor-lights
Flame in an arctic sky,

And lands for which the Southern Cross
Hangs its orbed fires on high.

It goes with all that prophets told,
And righteous kings desired,
With all that great apostles taught,
And glorious Greeks admired;

RULE BRITANNIA.

With Shakspeare's deep and wondrous verse,
And Milton's loftier mind,

With Alfred's laws, and Newton's lore,

To cheer and bless mankind.

Mark, as it spreads, how deserts bloom,
And error flies away,

As vanishes the mist of night
Before the star of day!

But grand as are the victories

Whose monuments we see,

These are but as the dawn which speaks
Of noontide yet to be.

Take heed, then, heirs of Saxon fame,
Take heed, nor once disgrace
With deadly pen or spoiling sword
Our noble tongue and race.
Go forth prepared in every clime
To love and help each other,
And judge that they who counsel strife
Would bid you smite-a brother.

Go forth, and jointly speed the time,
By good men prayed for long,

When Christian states, grown just and wise,
Will scorn revenge and wrong;

When earth's oppressed and savage tribes
Shall cease to pine or roam,

All taught to prize these English words-
FAITH, FREEDOM, HEAVEN, and HOME.

101

J. G. LYONS.

XVIII.-RULE BRITANNIA.

"WHAT availed it to Spain to possess the key of the Mediterranean or to Egypt to have the means of opening the most direct route to the East Indies? What protection did the iron-bound chain of the Himalaya afford to the degraded Hindoo or the Alps to the doomed denizen of the vale of the Po? Behold, a race of sturdy islanders from the north of the Atlantic, driven from their shores by the very gloom of their own ungenial climate, snatch from the Spaniards the frowning rock of Gibraltar, seize upon Malta, Corfu, and as many harbours as are likely to answer their purposes, proclaim the Mare Internum, a British lake, establish a canal, a railway-a line of aerial steam carriages if needed-athwart the Libyan desert, and ride

gallantly with their steamers to the East and West, encompassing the globe in their gigantic dominion. Talk of bright skies, of elastic paradisaical atmosphere, of fertile soil, of happy alternation of hill and dale!—man, unless braced by the discipline of a stern Spartan education, rots like a rank weed among the luxuries of a southern climate, and the centre of action, and consequently of all social preeminence, is removed to a barren land, under a dense canopy of damp fogs, where spring resembles a rehearsal of the flood, and 'Winter ends in July to recommence in August.' It is thus that mankind improve the bountiful gifts of their Creator."—Foreign and Colonial Quarterly Review.

WHEN Britain first, at Heaven's command,

Arose from out the azure main,

This was the charter of the land,
And guardian angels sung this strain:
"Rule, Britannia, rule the waves,
Britons never will be slaves!"

The nations, not so blessed as thee,
Must in their turn to tyrants fall;
While thou shalt flourish great and free,
The dread and envy of them all.

Still more majestic shalt thou rise,
More dreadful from each foreign stroke;
As the loud blast that tears the skies
Serves but to root thy native oak.

Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame:
All their attempts to bend thee down
Will but arouse thy generous flame,

But work their woe and thy renown.

To thee belongs the rural reign,

Thy cities shall with commerce shine;
All thine shall be the subject main,
And every shore it circles thine.

The Muses, still with freedom found,'
Shall to thy happy coast repair;

Blest isle! with matchless beauty crowned,

And manly hearts to guard the fair: "Rule, Britannia, rule the waves,

Britons never will be slaves!"

THOMSON.

1. "True poets are the objects of my reverence and my love, and the constant sources of my delight. I know that the most of them, from the earliest times to those of Buchanan, have been the strenuous enemies of despotism."-Milton.

BRITAIN.

XIX. THE SECURITY OF BRITAIN.

103

"WHATEVER may be the defects of our constitution we have at least an effective government, and that too composed of men who were born with us and are to die among us. We are at least preserved from the incursions of foreign enemies; the intercommunion of interests precludes a civil war, and the volunteer spirit of the nation equally with its laws, gives to the darkest lanes of our crowded metropolis that quiet and security which the remotest villager at the cataracts of the Nile prays for in vain in his mud hovel !"-Coleridge.

Not yet enslaved, nor wholly vile,
O Albion, O my mother isle!
Thy valleys fair, as Eden's bowers,
Glitter green with sunny showers;
Thy grassy uplands' gentle swells
Echo to the bleat of flocks ;-
Those grassy hills, those glittering dells,
Proudly ramparted with rocks ;-
And ocean, 'mid his uproar wild,
Speaks safety to his island-child.
Hence for many a fearless age
Has social quiet loved thy shore;
Nor ever proud invader's rage

Or sack'd thy towers or stained thy fields with gore.

COLERIDGE.

XX. BRITAIN.

"BRITAIN is great, not merely in the extent, but in the diversity of her population. The land is not all a dock-yard, nor a manufactory, nor a barrack, nor a ploughed field; our national ship does not sweep on by a single sail. With a manufacturing population of three millions, we have a professional population, a naval population, and a most powerful, healthy, and superabundant agricultural population which supplies the drain of all the others. Of this last class the famous commercial republics were wholly destitute, and they therefore fell. England has been an independent and ruling kingdom since the invasion in 1066,-a period already longer than the duration of the Roman empire from Cæsar, and equal to its whole duration from the consulate, the time of its emerging into national importance."Monthly Review for 1826.

BEAUTEOUS isle

And plenteous! what though in thy atmosphere
Float not the taintless luxury of light,
The dazzling azure of the southern skies ;-
Around thee the rich orb of thy renown
Spreads stainless, and unsullied by a cloud.—
Though thy hills blush not with the purple vine,
And softer climes excel thee in the hue

And fragrance of thy summer fruits and flowers,
Nor flow thy rivers over golden beds,

Thou in the soul of man,-thy better wealth,-
Art richest Nature's noblest produce, thou
Bear'st with an opulence prodigal; this thy right,
Thy privilege of climate and of soil.

MILMAN.

XXI. SONNET.

(Composed in the Valley near Dover, in September, 1802.)

"THE Cranmers, Hampdens, and Sidneys,-the counsellors of our Elizabeth, and the friends of our great deliverer, the third William,— is it in vain that these have been our countrymen? Are we not the heirs of their good deeds? And what are noble deeds but noble truths realized?-As Protestants, as Englishmen, as the inheritors of so ample an estate of might and right, an estate so strongly fenced, so richly planted by the sinewy arms and dauntless hearts of our forefathers, we, of all others, have good cause to trust in the truth, yea, to follow its pillar of fire through the darkness and the desert, even though its light should but suffice to make us certain of its own pre* Effects will not, indeed, immediately disappear with their causes; but neither can they long continue without them. If by the reception of truth in the spirit of truth we became what we are, only by the retention of it in the same spirit, can we remain what we are. The narrow seas that form our boundaries,-what were they in times of old? The convenient highway for Danish and Norman pirates. What are they now? Still but a span of waters.' Yet they roll at the base of the inisled Ararat, on which the ark of the hope of Europe and of civilization rested!"-Coleridge.

sence.

* *

INLAND, within a hollow vale, I stood;

And saw, while sea was calm and air was clear,
The coast of France-the coast of France how near!
Drawn almost into frightful neighbourhood.

I shrunk; for verily the barrier flood
Was like a lake, or river bright and fair,
A span of waters; yet what power is there!
What mightiness for evil and for good!