The deer across their greensward bound 2
Through shade and sunny gleam,

And the swan glides past them with the sound
Of some rejoicing stream.

The merry homes of England!
Around their hearths by night,

What gladsome looks of household love
Meet in the ruddy light!

There woman's voice flows forth in song,
Or childhood's tale is told;
Or lips move tunefully along
Some glorious page of old. 3

The cottage homes of England!
By thousands on her plains,
They are smiling o'er the silvery brook,
And round the hamlet-fanes.
Through glowing orchards forth they peep,
from its nook of leaves;

Each

"IF nature has denied to Britain the fruitful vine, the fragrant myrtle, the spontaneous soil, and the beautiful climate, she has also exempted her from the parching drought, the deadly siroc, and the frightful tornado. If our soil is poor and churlish, and our skies cold and frowning, the serpent never lurks within the one, nor the plague within the other. If our mountains are bleak and barren, they have

LOVE OF ENGLAND.

81

at least nursed within their bosoms a race of men whose industry and intelligence have performed greater wonders, and supply a more inexlaustible fund of wealth, than all the mines of Mexico and Hindostan. If other nations furnish us with the materials of our manufactures, ours are the skill and industry that have enhanced their value a thousandfold; ours are the capital and onterprise that have applied the great inventions of Watt and Arkwright, and made the ascendency of this little island be felt in the remotest corners of the world; ours, in a word, are those institutions, civil, political, and religious, that have made us the envy of surrounding nations, and raised us to a pinnacle of greatness from which nothing but intestine foes can ever thrust us down.-M'Diarmid.

ENGLAND, with all thy faults, I love thee still-
My country! And, while yet a nook is left,
Where English minds and manners may be found,
Shall be constrained to love thee.1
Though thy clime
Be fickle, and thy year most part 2 deformed
With dripping rains, or withered by a frost,
I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies,
And fields without a flower, for warmer France
With all her vines; nor for Ausonia's3 groves
Of golden fruitage, and her myrtle bowers.
To shake thy senate, and from heights sublime
Of patriot eloquence to flash down fire
Upon thy foes, was never meant my task:
But I can feel thy fortunes, and partake
Thy joys and sorrows, with as true a heart
As any thunderer there. And I can feel
Thy follies too; and with a just disdain
Frown at effeminates," whose very looks
Reflect dishonour on the land I love.

1. The ellipsis in this line?
2. What case is part in?

3. What is Ausonia?

4. Where?

COWPER.

5. Is this use of an adjective to be recommended in prose?

III. THE NAME OF ENGLAND.

"WHO shall say what work and works this England has yet to do? For what purpose this land of Britain was created, set like a jewel in the encircling blue of ocean; and this tribe of Saxons, fashioned in the depths of time, 'on the shores of the Black Sea,' or elsewhere, 'out of Harzgebirge rock,' or whatever other material, was sent travelling hitherward? No man can say; it was for a work, and for works, incapable of announcement in words. Thou seest them there; part of them stand done, and visible to the eye; even these thou" can'st not name; how much less the others still matter of prophecy only!"-Carlyle.

THE trumpet of the battle

Hath a high and thrilling tone;

And the first deep gun of an ocean fight

Dread music all its own.

But a mightier power, my England!

Is in that name of thine,

To strike the fire from every heart
Along the banner'd line.1

Proudly it woke the spirits
Of yore, the brave and true,

When the bow was bent on Cressy's field,"

And the yeoman's arrow flew.

And proudly hath it floated

Through the battles of the sea,

When the red-cross flag o'er smoke-wreaths play'd,
Like the lightning in its glee.

On rock, on wave, on bastion,

Its echoes have been known;

By a thousand streams the hearts lie low,
That have answered to its tone.

A thousand ancient mountains
Its pealing note hath stirr'd;
Sound on, and on, for evermore,
O thou victorious word!

1. Why bannered line?

2. The son of Edward the Third, called the Black Prince, because he wore black armour, made himself famous by gaining the battle of Cressy in France; a battle wherein the English army, of thirty thousand men, was opposed by a force of

MRS. HEMANS.

a hundred and twenty thousand of the enemy. The English obtained a complete victory, which some say was partly owing to the havoc made by a few pieces of cannon, which were first used in this battle.

ENGLAND'S DEAD.

IV. ENGLAND'S DEAD.

83

"Or a truth, whosoever had, with the bodily eye, seen Hengist and Horsa mooring on the mud-beach of Thanet, on that spring morning of the year 449, and then, with the spiritual eye, looked forward to New York, Calcutta, Sydney Cove, across the ages and the oceans, and thought what Wellingtons, Washingtons, Shaksperes, Miltons, Watts, Arkwrights, William Pitts, and Davie Crocketts had to issue from that business, and do their several taskworks so, he would have said these leather boots of Hengist's had a kind of cargo in them-a genealogic mythus, superior to any in the old Greek, * and not a mythus either, but every fibre of it fact."-Carlyle.

*

Point out the position of the following places on the Map:

Where sleep your mighty dead?
Show me that high and stately pile
Is rear'd o'er Glory's bed.

Egypt.
Ganges.
Columbia.

Pyrenees.

Go, stranger, track the deep,
Free, free the white sail spread!
Wave may not foam, nor wild winds sleep,
Where rest not England's dead.

On Egypt's burning plains,

By the pyramid o'ersway'd,

With fearful power the noonday reigns,

And the palm-trees yield no shade.

But let the angry sun

From heaven look fiercely red,

Unfelt by those whose task is done !-
There sleep England's dead.3

The hurricane hath might
Along the Indian shore,

And far by Ganges' banks at night

Is heard the tiger's roar.

But let the sound roll on,

It hath no tone of dread

For those that from their toils are gone ;

There slumber England's dead.

*

Loud rush the torrent-floods
The western wilds* among;

And free, in green Columbia's woods,
The hunter's bow is strung.

But let the floods rush on!
Let the arrow's flight be sped!
Why should they reck whose task is done?
There slumber England's dead.

The mountain-storms rise high
In the snowy Pyrenees,

And toss the pine-boughs through the sky,
Like rose-leaves on the breeze,

But let the storm rage on!

Let the fresh wreaths be shed!
For the Roncesvalles' field is won,-
There slumber England's dead."

On the frozen deep's repose
"Tis a dark and dreadful hour,
When round the ship the ice-fields close,
And the northern night-clouds lower.

But let the ice drift on!

Let the cold blue desert spread!
Their course with mast and flag is done,--
Even there sleep England's dead.

The warlike of the isles,

The men of field and wave,

Are not the rocks their funeral piles,
The seas and shores their grave?

Go, stranger, track the deep,

Free, free the white sail spread!

Wave may not foam, nor wild wind sweep

Where rest not England's dead.

1. Who is addressed under this title?

2. Ellipsis?

3. Historical allusions?

MRS. HEMANS.

4. What wilds?

5. Detail the particular allusions,