membrance which it will leave behind. Renew the youth of the state. Save property, divided against itself. Save the multitude, endangered by its own ungovernable passions. Save the aristocracy, endangered by its own unpopular power. Save the greatest, and fairest, and most highly civilized community that ever existed, from calamities which may in a few days sweep away all the rich heritage of so many ages of wisdom and glory. The danger is terrible. The time is short. If this bill should be rejected, I pray to God that none of those who concur in rejecting it may ever remember their votes with unavailing remorse, amidst the wreck of laws, the confusion of ranks, the spoliation of property, and the dissolution of social order.

Lord Macaulay.

THE MARTYRDOM OF JOAN OF ARC.

At the time of Joan of Arc's appearance in history, France had become a province of England, the great city of Orleans had been for a year in a state of siege, the people were suffering incredible hardships, and the Dauphin, who had not yet been crowned, was about to give up the struggle in despair. The young peasant girl from Domrémy, who seemed the very embodiment of patriotic fervor, made her way to the court, rekindled the national pride, and proceeding to Orleans at the head of the French troops, raised the siege and entered in triumph. After other victories, she con ducted the king to Rheims, where he was solemnly crowned. Then, feeling that her mission was ended, she begged to be allowed to return to her native village. But in vain. Her services were still demanded, and she was obliged to enter upon more than one military plan which she did not approve. Many misfortunes followed, till at last she was captured by the Burgundians, who basely surrendered her to the English.

Her trial was conducted by the Bishop of Beauvais, a Frenchman who was sold to English interests, and who hoped, by favor of the English leaders, to reach the highest preferment. From beginning to end the proceedings were barbarously cruel and unjust. Finally, the innocent young Maid of Orleans was condemned . as a witch, and sentenced to be burned at the stake.

On the Wednesday after Trinity Sunday in 1431, being then about nineteen years of age, the Maid of Arc underwent her martyrdom. She was conducted before midday, guarded by eight hundred spearmen, to a platform of prodigious height, constructed of wooden billets supported by

occasional walls of lath and plaster, and traversed by hollow spaces in every direction for the creation of air-currents. "Ten thousand men," says M. Michelet himself, "ten thousand men wept;" and of these ten thousand, the majority were political enemies knitted together by cords of superstition. What else was it but her constancy, united with her angelic gentleness, that drove the fanatic English soldierwho had sworn to throw a faggot on her scaffold-suddenly to turn away, a penitent for life, saying everywhere that he had seen a dove rising upon wings to heaven from the ashes where she had stood? What else drove the executioner to kneel at every shrine for pardon to his share in the tragedy? And if all this were insufficient, then I cite the closing act of her life, as valid on her behalf, were all other testimonies against her. The executioner had been directed to apply his torch from below. He did so. The fiery smoke rose upwards in billowing volumes. A Dominican monk was then standing almost at her side. Wrapped up in his sublime office, he saw not the danger, but still persisted in his prayers. Even then, when the last enemy was racing up the fiery stairs to seize her, even at that moment did this noblest of girls think only for him, the one friend that would not forsake her, and not for herself; bidding him with her last breath to care for his own preservation, but to leave her to God. That girl, whose latest breath ascended in this sublime expression of self-oblivion, did not utter the word recant either with her lips or in her heart. No; she did not, though one should rise from the dead to swear it.

*

Bishop of Beauvais! thy victim died in fire upon a scaffold, -thou upon a down bed. But for the departing minutes of life, both are oftentimes alike. At the farewell crisis, when the gates of death are opening and flesh is resting from its struggles, oftentimes the tortured and torturer have the same truce from carnal torment; both sink together into sleep; together both, sometimes, kindle into dreams. When the mortal mists were gathering fast upon you two, bishop and shepherd girl--when the pavilions of life were closing up their shadowy curtains about you-let us try, through the gigantic glooms, to decipher the flying features of your separate

visions.

The shepherd girl that had delivered France-she, from

her dungeon, she, from her baiting at the stake, she, from her duel with fire, as she entered her last dream-saw Domrémy, saw the fountain of Domrémy, saw the pomp of forests in which her childhood had wandered. The Easter festival, which man had denied to her languishing heart—that resurrection of springtime, which the darkness of dungeons had intercepted from her, hungering after the glorious liberty of forests were by God given back into her hands, as jewels that had been stolen from her by robbers. With those, perhaps (for the minutes of dreams can stretch into ages), was given back to her by God the bliss of childhood. By special privilege, for her might be created, in this farewell dream, a second childhood, innocent as the first; but not, like that, sad with the gloom of a fearful mission in the rear. The mission had now been fulfilled. The storm was weathered, the skirts even of that mighty storm were drawing off. The blood that she was to reckon for had been exacted; the tears that she was to shed in secret had been paid to the last. The hatred to herself in all eyes had been faced steadily, had been suffered, had been survived. And in her last fight upon the scaffold she had triumphed gloriously; victoriously she had tasted the stings of death. For all, except this comfort from her farewell dream, she had died-died, amidst the tears of ten thousand enemies-died, amidst the drums and trumpets of armies died, amidst peals redoubling upon peals, volleys upon volleys, from the saluting clarions of martyrs.

Bishop of Beauvais! you also, entering your final dream, saw Domrémy. That fountain, of which the witnesses spoke so much, showed itself to your eyes in pure morning dews; but neither dews, nor the holy dawn could cleanse away the bright spots of innocent blood upon its surface. By the fountain, Bishop, you saw a woman seated, that hid her face. But as you draw near, the woman raises her wasted features. Would Domrémy know them again for the features of her child? Ah, but you know them, bishop, well! Oh, mercy! what a groan was that which the servants, waiting outside the bishop's dream at his bedside, heard from his laboring heart, as at this moment he turned away from the fountain and the woman, seeking rest in the forests afar off. Yet not so to escape the woman, whom once again he must behold before he dies. In the forests to which he prays for pity, will he find a respite? What a tumult, what a gathering of feet is there! In glades, where only wild deer should run, armies

and nations are assembling; towering in the fluctuating crowd are phantoms that belong to departed hours. There is the Bishop of Beauvais, clinging to the shelter of thickets. What building is that which hands so rapid are raising? Is it a martyr's scaffold? Will they burn the child of Domrémy a second time? No: it is a tribunal that rises to the clouds; and two nations stand around it, waiting for a trial. Shall my Lord of Beauvais sit again upon the judgment seat, and again number the hours for the innocent? Ah! no: he is the prisoner at the bar. Already all is waiting: the mighty audience is gathered, the Court is hurrying to their seats, the witnesses are arrayed, the trumpets are sounding, the judge is taking his place. Oh! but this is sudden. My lord, have you no counsel? "Counsel I have none: in heaven above, or on earth beneath, counselor there is none now that would take a brief from me: all are silent." Is it, indeed, come to this? Alas, the time is short, the tumult is wondrous, the crowd stretches away into infinity, but yet I will search in it for somebody to take your brief: I know of somebody that will be your counsel. Who is this that cometh from Domrémy? Who is she in bloody coronation robes from Rheims? Who is she that cometh with blackened flesh from walking the furnaces of Rouen? This is she, the shepherd girl, counselor that had none for herself, whom I choose, bishop, for yours. She it is, I engage, that shall take my lord's brief. She it is, bishop, that would plead for you; yes, bishop, SHE-when heaven and earth are silent.

Thomas De Quincey.

THE APOSTROPHE TO THE VOLUNTEERS.

This oration was delivered at the time of the threatened invasion of England by France, under Napoleon. E. Paxton Hood, Robert Hall's biographer, writes as follows:

"At the time these words were pronounced, the entire country might be said to be waiting breathless with anxiety. About this time it was that Napoleon struck the famous medal, "London taken, 1804." His armies were spread all along the heights of Boulogne, waiting for the fleet which was to land them on our shores. * * * Ours was the only unconquered piece of territory worth conquering in Europe. It was, perhaps, the last great gasp of patriotism our country ever felt. Another such occasion has never occurred we pray that it never may!"

From the most fixed principles of human nature, as well as from the examples of all history, we may be certain the conquest of this country, should it be permitted to take place, will not terminate in any ordinary catastrophe, in any much less calamitous than utter extermination. Our present elevation will be the exact measure of our future depression, as it will measure the fears and jealousies of those who subdue us. While the smallest vestige remains of our former greatness, while any trace or memorial exists of our having been once a flourishing and independent empire, while the nation. breathes, they will be afraid of its recovering its strength, and never think themselves secure of their conquest till our navy is consumed, our wealth dissipated, our commerce extinguished, every liberal institution abolished, our nobles extirpated; whatever in rank, character, and talents gives distinction in society, called out and destroyed, and the refuse which remains swept together into a putrefying heap by the besom of destruction. The enemy will not need to proclaim his triumph; it will be felt in the most expressive silence of extended desolation.

To form an adequate idea of the duties of this crisis, it will be necessary to raise your minds to a level with your station, to extend your views to a distant futurity, and to consequences the most certain, though most remote. By a series of criminal enterprises, by the successes of guilty ambition, the liberties of Europe have been gradually extinguished: the subjugation of Holland, Switzerland, and the free towns of Germany, has completed that catastrophe; and we are the only people in the Eastern hemisphere, who are in the possession of equal laws and a free constitution. Freedom, driven from every spot on the Continent, has sought an asylum in a country which she always chose for her favorite abode; but she is pursued even here, and threatened with destruction. The inundation of lawless power, after covering the whole earth, threatens to follow us here; and we are most exactly, most critically placed, in the only aperture where it can be successfully repelled, in the Thermopylae of the uniAs far as the interests of freedom are concerned, the most important by far of sublunary interests, you, my countrymen, stand in the capacity of the federal representatives of the human race; for with you it is to determine (under God) in what condition the latest posterity shall be born: their fortunes are entrusted to your care, and on your con

verse.