every hand clinched, and every eye distended, you have caught the peal of your leader's clarion, and sprung through the iron storm to the embrace of victory! But all that has passed away. The mangled forests are putting on an unwonted verdure, the fields once blackened by the fiery breath of war are now covered with their softest bloom, and the vessels of commerce are riding on all the national waters. 3. The carnage, the groans, the cries for succor, the fierce onset and sullen recoil, the thunders of the artillery, and the missiles screaming like demons in the air, have given way to pæans, civic processions, and songs of thanksgiving. The flag of your country, so often rent and torn in your grasp, and which you have borne in triumph again and again, over the quaking earth, or through the hurricane of death, on river and bay, rolls out its peaceful folds above you, every star blazing with the glory of your deeds, in token of a Nation's gratitude. We come forth to meet you-sires and matrons, young men and maidens, children and those bowed with age- -to own the vast debt which we can never pay, and to say, from full hearts, we thank you; God bless you! 4. But while we thus address you, you are thinking of the fallen. With a soldier's generosity, you wish they could be here to share in this welcome. But they peacefully rest in the humble grave in which you laid them, and their names are enshrined in the grateful remembrance of the Nation. You may tarnish your laurels, or an envious hand may pluck them from your brows. But your fallen comrades are exposed to no such accident. They are doubly fortunate; for the same event which crowned them with honor, has placed them beyond the possibility of losing their crown. 5. Many of them died in the darkest hours of the republic; others in the early dawn of peace, while the morning-stars were singing together. But victory and defeat make no differences among them now. They have all conquered in the final triumph. Their names will thrill the coming ages, as they are spoken by the tongues of the eloquent; and their deeds will forever be chanted by immortal minstrels. 6. "By fairy hands their knell is rung, By forms unseen their dirge is sung ; LESSON CXXVIII. THE HONORED DEAD. HENRY WARD BEECHER. HOW bright are the honors which await those who, their native land They that die for dured all things that they might save from division! THE HONORED DEAD! a good cause are redeemed from death. gathered and garnered. Their memory is precious. Each place grows proud for them who were born there. 2. There is to be, ere long, in every village, and in every neighborhood, a glowing pride in its martyred heroes. Tablets shall preserve their names. Pious love shall renew their inscriptions as time and the unfeeling elements efface them. And the national festivals shall give multitudes of precious names to the orator's lips. Children shall grow up under more sacred inspirations, whose elder brothers, dying nobly for their country, left a name that honored and inspired all who bore it. Orphan children shall find thousands of fathers and mothers to love and help those whom dying heroes left as a legacy to the gratitude of the public. - that generous They hover as 3. Oh, tell me not that they are DEAD, host, that airy army of invisible heroes! a cloud of witnesses above this nation. Are they dead that yet speak louder than we can speak, and a more universal language'? Are they dead that yet act'? Are they dead that yet move upon society, and inspire the people with nobler motives and more heroic patriotism'? 4. Ye that mourn, let gladness mingle with your tears. He was your son; but now he is the nation's. He made your household bright; now his example inspires a thousand households. Dear to his brothers and sisters, he is now brother to every generous youth in the land. Before, he was narrowed, appropriated, shut up to you. Now he is augmented, set free, and given to all. He has died from the family that he might live to the nation. Not one name shall be forgotten or neglected; and it shall, by and by, be confessed of our modern heroes, as it is of an ancient hero, that he did more for his country by his death than by his whole life. 5. Neither are they less honored who shall bear through life the marks of wounds and sufferings. Neither epaulet nor badge is so honorable as wounds received in a good cause. Many a man shall envy him who henceforth limps. So strange is the transforming power of patriotic ardor, that men shall almost covet disfigurement. Crowds will give way to hobbling cripples, and uncover in the presence of feebleness and helplessness. And buoyant children shall pause in their noisy games, and with loving reverence honor those whose hands can work no more, and whose feet are no longer able to march except upon that journey which brings good men to honor and immortality. 6. O mother of lost children! set not in darkness nor sorrow those whom a nation honors. O mourners of the early dead! they shall live again, and live forever. Your sorrows are our gladness. The nation lives because you gave it men that loved it better than their own lives. And when a few more days shall have cleared the perils from around the Nation's brow, and she shall sit in unsullied garments of liberty, with justice upon her forehead, love in her eyes, and truth upon her lips, she shall not forget those whose blood gave vital currents to her heart, and whose life, given to her, shall live with her life till time shall be no more. 7. Every mountain and hill shall have its treasured name, every river shall keep some solemn title, every valley and every lake shall cherish its honored register; and till the mountains are worn out, and the rivers forget to flow, till the clouds are weary of replenishing springs, and the springs forget to gush, and the rills to sing, shall their names be kept fresh with reverent honors which are inscribed upon the book of National Remembrance. LESSON CXXIX. 1TAT TOO', a beat of drum at night, giving notice to soldiers to retreat, or to repair to their quarters in garrison, or to their tents in camp. 'BIVOUAC, (biv ́wăk,) the guard or watch of a whole army, as in cases of great danger of surprise or attack; an encampment without tents or covering. The following poem was written on the occasion of the removal to the cemetery at Frankfort of the remains of Kentucky soldiers who fell at Buena Vista, Mexico. THE SOLDIER'S DIRGE. COL. O'HARA. 1. THE muffled drum's sad roll has beat THE The soldier's last tattoo1; No more on life's parade shall meet 2. No rumor of the foe's advance No troubled thoughts, at midnight haunts, No vision of the morrow's strife The warrior's dream alarms; No braying horn, nor screaming fife, 3. Rest on, embalmed and sainted dead, No impious footstep here shall tread While Fame her record keeps, 4. Yon faithful herald's blazoned stone When many a vanished age hath flown, |