And sleep in dull cold marble, where no mention Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace, To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not. Thy God's, and truth's; then, if thou fall'st, O Cromwell, And Prithee, lead me in: There take an inventory of all I have, To the last penny; 't is the king's; my robe, I dare now call mine own. O Cromwell, Cromwell, CROM. Good sir, have patience. So I have. Farewell The hopes of court! my hopes in heaven do dwell LXXIX. — DANGERS TO OUR REPUBLIC. HORACE MANN. THE following is an extract from an oration delivered July 4, 1842, before the authorities of Boston. EHOLD, on this side, crowding to the polls, and even candidates for the highest offices in the gift of the people, are men whose hands are red with a brother's blood, slain in private quarrel! Close pressing upon these urges onward a haughty band glittering in wealth; but, for every flash that gleams from jewel and diamond, a father, a mother, and helpless children have been stolen, and sold into ransomless bondage. Invading their ranks, struggles forward a troop of riotous incendiaries, who have hitherto escaped the retributions of law, and would now annihilate the law whose judgments they fear. Behind these pours on, tumultuous, the chaotic rout of atheism; and yonder dashes forward a sea of remorseless life, thousands and ten thousands, condemned by the laws of God and man. In all the dread catalogue of mortal sins, there is not one but, in that host, there are hearts which have willed and hands which have perpetrated it. The gallows has spared its victim, the prison has released its tenants; from dark cells, where malice had brooded, where revenge and robbery had held their nightly rehearsals, the leprous multitude is disgorged, and comes up to the ballot-box to foredoom the destinies of this nation. But look again, on the other side, at that deep and dense array of ignorance, whose limits the eye cannot discover. Its van leans against us here, its rear is beyond the distant hills. They, too, in this hour of their coun try's peril, have come up to turn the folly of which they are unconscious into measures which they cannot understand, by votes which they cannot read. Nay more, and worse! for, from the ranks of crime, emissaries are sallying forth towards the ranks of ignorance, and hying to and fro amongst them, shouting the war-cries of faction, and flaunting banners with lying symbols, such as cheat the eye of a mindless brain; and thus the hosts of crime are to lead on the hosts of ignorance in their assault upon Liberty and Law! What now shall be done to save the citadel of freedom, where are treasured all the hopes of posterity? Or, if we can survive the peril of such a day, what shall be done to prevent the next generation from sending forth still more numerous hordes, afflicted with deeper blindness and incited by darker depravity? Are there any here who would counsel us to save the people from themselves, by wresting from their hands this formidable right of ballot? Better for the man who would propose this remedy to an infuriated multitude, that he should stand in the lightning's path as it descends from heaven to earth. And answer me this question, you who would reconquer for the few the power which has been won by the many, you who would disfranchise the common mass of mankind, and recondemn them to become Helots and bondmen and feudal serfs, — tell me were they again in the power of your castes, would you not again neglect them, again oppress them, again make them slaves? Tell me, you royalists and hierarchs, or advocates of royalty and hierarchy, were the poor and the ignorant again in your power, to be tasked and tithed at your pleasure, would you not turn another Ireland into paupers, and colonize another Botany Bay with criminals? O, better, far better, that the atheist and the blasphemer, and he who, since the last setting sun, has dyed his hands in parricide, or his soul in sacrilege, should challenge equal political power with the wisest and the best! Better that these blind Samsons, in the wantonness of their gigantic strength, should tear down the pillars of the Republic, than that the great lesson which Heaven, for six thousand years, has been teaching to the world, should be lost upon it, the lesson that the intellectual and moral nature of man is the one thing precious in the sight of God, and therefore that, until this nature is cultivated and enlightened and purified, neither opulence nor power, nor learning nor genius, nor domestic sanctity nor the holiness of God's altars, can ever be safe. Until the immortal and godlike capacities of every being that comes into the world are deemed more worthy, are watched more tenderly, than any other thing, no dynasty of men, or form of government, can stand or shall stand upon the face of the earth; and the force or the fraud which would seek to uphold them shall be but "as fetters of flax to bind the flame." LXXX. HALLOWED GROUND. CAMPBELL. HAT's hallowed ground? Has earth a clod WH Its Maker meant not should be trod By man, the image of his God, Erect and free, Unscourged by Superstition's rod To bow the knee? Is 't death to fall for Freedom's right? What can alone ennoble fight? Give that! and welcome War to brace The charging cheer, Though Death's pale horse lead on the chase, Shall still be dear. And place our trophies where men kneel The cause of Truth and human weal, Peace, Love! the cherubim that join The heart alone can make divine Religion's spot. To incantations dost thou trust, That men can bless one pile of dust |