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159

events of the world exhibit to our view? Pride, obstinacy, and insult must end in concessions, and those concessions must be bumble in proportion to our unbecoming pride. We shall escape every danger by restoring to the country its outraged rights, and re-establishing its strength upon the basis of free representation.

THE

75. THE LION'S RIDE.

HE lion is the desert's king; through his domain so wide,

Right swiftly and right royally this night he means to

ride.

By the sedgy brink, where the wild herds drink, close couches the grim chief;

The trembling sycamore above whispers with every

leaf.

At evening on the Table Mount, when ye can see no

more

The changeful play of signals gay; when the gloom is speckled o'er

With kraal fires; when the Caffre wends home through the lone karroo ;

When the boshbok in the thicket sleeps, and by the stream the gnu;

Then bend your gaze across the waste

ye? The giraffe,

what see

Majestic, stalks towards the lagoon, the turbid lymph

to quaff;

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THE LION'S RIDE.

With outstretched neck and tongue adust, he kneels him down to cool

His hot thirst with a welcome draught from the foul and brackish pool.

Upon his giant courser's back. Did ever king so ride?

Had ever king such steed? so rare caparisons of state To match the dappled skin whereon that rider sits

elate?

In the muscles of the neck his teeth are plunged with ravenous greed;

His tawny mane is tossing round the withers of the

steed.

Upleaping with a hollow yell of anguish and sur

prise,

Away, away, in wild dismay, the camelopard flies.

His feet have wings; see how he springs across the moonlit plain;

As from their sockets they would burst, his glaring eyeballs strain ;

In thick black streams of purling blood, full fast his life is fleeting;

The stillness of the desert hears his heart's tumultuous beating.

Like the cloud that through the wilderness the path of Israel traced,

Like an airy phantom, dull and wan, a spirit of the

waste,

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161

From the sandy sea uprising, as the water-spout from

ocean,

A whirling crowd of dust keeps pace with the courser's fiery motion.

Croaking companion of their flight, the vulture whirrs on high;

Below, the terror of the fold, the panther, fierce and

sly,

And hyenas foul, round graves that prowl, join in the horrid race;

By the footprints wet with gore and sweat, their monarch's course they trace.

They see him on his living throne, and quake with fear, the while

With claws of steel he tears piecemeal his cushion's painted pile;

On! on! no pause, no rest, giraffe, while life and strength remain !

The steed by such a rider backed may madly plunge in vain.

Reeling upon the desert's verge, he falls and breathes

his last;

The courser, stained with dust and foam, is the rider's fell repast.

O'er Madagascar, eastward far, a faint flush is de

scried;

Thus nightly, o'er his broad domain, the king of beasts doth ride.

11

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SPIRIT OF CONQUEST.

A

76. DANGER OF THE SPIRIT OF CONQUEST.

N uneasy desire to augment our territory has depraved the moral sense and blighted the otherwise keen sagacity of our people. It is said we must advance. Our young orators cherish this notion with a fervid but fatally mistaken zeal. They call it by the mysterious name of "destiny"! "Our destiny," they tell us, "is onward;" and hence it is right for us to seize upon any territory which may lie in the way of our fated advance. But what has been the fate of all nations that have acted on this idea?

Since I have heard so much about the dismemberment of Mexico, I have looked back to see how, in the course of events which some call " Providence," it has fared with other nations who engaged in this work of dismemberment. I see that, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, three powerful nations, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, united in the dismemberment of Poland. They said, too, as you say, 'It is our destiny." They "wanted room." Doubtless each of these thought, with his share of Poland, his power was too strong ever to fear invasion, or even insult. One had his California, another his New Mexico, and a third his Vera Cruz. Did they remain untouched and incapable of harm? Alas! no; far, very far from it. Retributive justice must fulfil its destiny, too.

A very few years pass away, and we hear of a new man, a Corsican lieutenant, the self-named "armed

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soldier of democracy," Napoleon. He ravages Austria, covers her land with blood, drives the northern Cæsar from his capital, and sleeps in his palace. Austria may now remember how her power trampled upon Poland. Did she not pay dear, very dear, for her California?

But has Prussia no atonement to make? You see this same Napoleon, the blind instrument of Providence, at work there. The thunders of his cannon at Jena proclaim the work of retribution for Poland's wrongs; and the successors of the Great Frederick, the drill-sergeant of Europe, are seen flying across the sandy plains that surround their capital, right glad if they may escape captivity and death.

But how fares it with the Autocrat of Russia? Is he secure in his share of the spoils of Poland! No; suddenly we see six hundred thousand men marching to Moscow. Does his Vera Cruz protect him now? Far from it. Blood, slaughter, desolation, spread abroad over the land, and, finally, the conflagration of the old commercial metropolis of Russia closes the retribution she must pay for her share in the dismemberment of her weak and impotent neighbor.

A mind more prone to look for the judgments of Heaven in the doings of men than mine cannot fail in this to see the providence of God. When Moscow burned, it seemed as if the earth was lighted up, that nations might behold the scene. As that mighty sea of fire gathered and heaved, and rolled upward, and yet higher, till its flames licked the stars and fired the whole heavens, it did seem as though the God of the nations was writing in characters of flame, on the front of his throne, that doom that shall fall