But if, as all Christian men believe, and as it is the constant trust of my countrymen, from memory of the times of our fathers,-if the Lord of Hosts should cast the balance in behalf of the fewer numbers and worse armed party, I leave it with your Highness to judge, what would, in that event, be the diminution of worship and fame.

Is it extent of vassalage and dominion your Highness desires, by warring with your mountain neighbours? Know that you may, if it be God's will, gain our barren and rugged mountains; but, like our ancestors of old, we will seek refuge in wilder and more distant solitudes, and when we have resisted to the last, we will starve in the icy wastes of the glaciers. Ay, men, women, and children, we will be frozen into annihilation together, ere one free Switzer will acknowledge a foreign master.

CASABIANCA.-Mrs Hemans.

[Young Casabianca, a boy about thirteen years old, son to the admiral of the Orient, remained at his post (in the battle of the Nile,) after the ship had taken fire, and all the guns had been abandoned; and perished in the explosion of the vessel, when the flames had reached the powder.]

THE boy stood on the burning deck,
Whence all but him had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck,
Shone round him over the dead.

Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
As born to rule the storm;

A creature of heroic blood,

A proud, though child-like form.

The flames rolled on-he would not go,
Without his father's word;
That father, faint in death below,
His voice no longer heard.

He called aloud-'Say, father, say
If yet my task is done?'

He knew not that the chieftain lay
Unconscious of his son.

'Speak, Father!' once again he cried,
If I may yet be gone!'-

And but the booming shots replied,
And fast the flames rolled on.

Upon his brow he felt their breath,
And in his waving hair;

And looked from that lone post of death,
In still yet brave despair-

And shouted but once more aloud,

My father! must I stay?'

While o'er him fast, through sail and shroud,
The wreathing fires made way.

They wrapt the ship in splendour wild,
They caught the flag on high,

And streamed above the gallant child,

Like banners in the sky.

There came a burst of thunder sound-
The boy-oh! where is he?
-Ask of the winds that far around
With fragments strow the sea!

THE unhappy people of India, feeble and effeminate as they are from the softness of their climate, and subdued and broken as they have been by the knavery and strength of civilization, still occasionally start up in all the vigour and intelligence of insulted nature. To be governed at all, they must be governed with a rod of iron; and our empire in the east would long since have been lost to Great Britain, if civil skill and military powers had not united their efforts to support an authority which Heaven never gave, by means which it never can sanction.

I know what they feel, and how such feelings can alone be repressed. I have heard them in my youth from a naked savage, in the indignant character of a prince, surrounded by his subjects, addressing the government of a British colony, holding a bundle of sticks in his hand as the notes of his unlettered eloquence. Who is it?' said the jealous ruler over the desert, encroached upon by the restless foot of the English adventurer,' Who is it that causes that river to rise in the high mountains, and to empty itself in the ocean? Who is it that causes to blow the loud winds of winter, that calms them again in the summer? Who is it that rears up the shades of those lofty forests, and blasts them with the quick lightning at his pleasure? The same Being, who gave to you a country on the other side of the waters, and gave ours to us; and by this title we will defend it,' said the warriour, throwing down his tomahawk upon the ground, and raising the war-sound of his nation.

These are the feelings of subjugated man all round the globe; and depend upon it, nothing but fear will control, where it is vain to look for affection.

PITT ON AMERICAN AFFAIRS IN 1775.

WHEN your lordships have perused the papers transmitted us from America; when you consider the dignity, the firmness, and the wisdom with which the Americans have acted, you cannot but respect their cause. History, my lords, has been my favourite study; and in the celebrated writings of antiquity have I often admired the patriotism of Greece and Rome; but, my lords, I must declare and avow, that, in the master states of the world I know not the people, nor the senate, who, in such a complication of difficult circumstances, can stand in preference to the delegates of America, assembled in General Congress at Philadelphia.

I trust it is obvious to your lordships, that all attempts to impose servitude upon such men, to establish despotism over such a mighty continental nation, must be vain, must be futile. Can such a national principled union be resisted by the tricks of office or ministerial manœuvres? Heaping papers on your table, or counting your majorities on a division, will not avert or postpone the hour of danger. It must arrive, my lords, unless these fatal acts are

done away it must arrive in all its horrours; and then these boastful ministers, in spite of all their confidence and all their manœuvres, shall be compelled to hide their heads.

But it is not repealing this or that act of parliament; it is not repealing a piece of parchment, that can restore America to your bosom: you must repeal her fears and resentments, and then you may hope for her love and gratitude. But now, insulted with an armed force, irritated with an hostile array before her eyes, her concessions, if you could force them, would be suspicious, and insecure. But it is more than evident that you cannot force them to your unworthy terms of submission: it is impossible; we ourselves shall be forced ultimately to retract; let us retract while we can, not when we must.

I repeat it, my lords, we shall one day be forced to undo these violent acts of oppression: they must be repealed; you will repeal them. I pledge myself for it, that you will in the end repeal them: I stake my reputation on it: I will consent to be taken for an idiot if they are not repealed. Avoid then this humiliating, disgraceful necessity. With a dignity becoming your exalted situation, make the first advances to concord, to peace, and to happiness. Concession comes with better grace and more salutary ef fect from superior power: it reconciles superiority of power with the feelings of man, and establishes solid confidence on the foundations of affection and gratitude.

On the other hand, every danger and every hazard impend, to deter you from perseverance in the present ruinous measures: foreign war hanging over your heads by a slight and brittle thread-France and Spain watching your conduct, and waiting for the maturity of your errours, with a vigilant eye to America and the temper of your colonies, more than to their own concerns, be they what they may. To conclude, my lords, if the ministers thus persevere in misadvising and misleading the king, I will not say, that they can alienate the affections of his subjects from the crown; but I affirm, they will make the crown not worth his wearing. I will not say that the king is betrayed, but I will pronounce, that the kingdom is undone.

TO THE EAGLE.-Percival.

BIRD of the broad and sweeping wing!
Thy home is high in heaven,

Where wide the storms their banners fling,
And the tempest clouds are driven.
Thy throne is on the mountain top;
Thy fields-the boundless air;
And hoary peaks, that proudly prop
The skies-thy dwellings are.

Thou sittest like a thing of light,
Amid the noontide blaze:
The midway sun is clear and bright-
It cannot dim thy gaze.

Thy pinions, to the rushing blast,
O'er the bursting billow spread,
Where the vessel plunges, hurry past,

Like an angel of the dead.

Thou art perched aloft on the beetling crag,
And the waves are white below,

And on, with a haste that cannot lag,
They rush in an endless flow.

Again thou hast plumed thy wing for flight
To lands beyond the sea;

And away, like a spirit wreathed in light,
Thou hurriest wild and free.

Thou hurriest over the myriad waves,
And thou leavest them all behind;

Thou sweepest that place of unknown graves,
Fleet as the tempest wind.

When the night storm gathers dim and dark,
With a shrill and boding scream,
Thou rushest by the foundering bark,
Quick as a passing dream.

Lord of the boundless realm of air!

In thy imperial name,

The hearts of the bold and ardent dare

The dangerous path of fame.

Beneath the shade of thy golden wings,

The Roman legions bore,

From the river of Egypt's cloudy springs,

Their pride, to the polar shore.