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His bolts, and with his lightnings smitten thee;

They could not quench the life thou hast from Heaven. Merciless power has dug thy dungeon deep,

And his swart armorers, by a thousand fires,

Have forged thy chain; yet while he deems thee bound
The links are shivered, and the prison walls
Fall outward; terribly thou springest forth,
As springs the flame above a burning pile,
And shoutest to the nations, who return
Thy shoutings, while the pale oppressor flies.

Thy birthright was not given by human hands;
Thou wert twin-born with man. In pleasant fields,
While yet our race was few, thou sat'st with him,
To tend the quiet flock, and watch the stars,
And teach the reed to utter simple airs.
Thou by his side, amid the tangled wood,
Didst war upon the panther and the wolf,
His only foes; and thou with him didst draw
The earliest furrows on the mountain side,
Soft with the deluge. Tyranny himself,
Thy enemy, although of reverend look,
Hoary with many years, and far obeyed,
Is later born than thou; and as he meets
The grave defiance of thine elder eye,
The usurper trembles in his fastnesses.

Thou shalt wax stronger with the lapse of years,
But he shall fade into a feebler age;

Feebler, yet subtler. He shall weave his snares,
And spring them on thy careless steps, and clap
His withered hands, and from their ambush call
His hordes to fall upon thee. He shall send
Quaint maskers, forms of fair and gallant mien,
To catch thy gaze, and uttering graceful words
To charm thy ear; while his sly imps by stealth,

'Twine round thee threads of steel, light thread on thread,
That grow to fetters, or bind down thy arms
With chains concealed in chaplets. O, not yet
Mayst thou unbrace thy corselet, nor lay by
Thy sword; nor yet, O Freedom, close thy lids
In slumber; for thine enemy never sleeps,

And thou must watch and combat till the day
Of the new earth and heaven. But wouldst thou rest
A while from tumult and the frauds of men,
These old and friendly solitudes invite
Thy visit. They, while yet the forest trees
Were young upon the unviolated earth,
And yet the moss-stains on the rock were new,
Beheld thy glorious childhood, and rejoiced.

CIL.-WASHINGTON AT MOUNT VERNON.

IRVING.

[This sketch of Washington's manner of life, from the close of the old French war to the beginning of the revolution, is from the first volume of Irving's Life of Washington.]

MOUNT VERNON was his harbor of repose, where he repeatedly furled his sail, and fancied himself anchored for life. No impulse of ambition tempted him thence; nothing but the call of his country, and his devotion to the public good. The place was endeared to him by the remembrance of his brother Lawrence, and of the happy hours he had passed there with that brother in the days of boyhood; but it was a delightful place in itself, and well calculated to inspire the rural feeling.

The mansion was beautifully situated on a swelling height, crowned with wood, and commanding a magnificent view up and down the Potomac. The grounds immediately about it were laid out somewhat in the English taste. The estate was apportioned into separate farms, devoted to different kinds of culture, each having its allotted laborers; much, however, was

still covered with wild woods, seamed with deep dells and runs of water, and indented with inlets-haunts of deer and lurking-places of foxes. The whole woody region along the Potomac from Mount Vernon to Belvoir, and far beyond, with its range of forests, and hills, and picturesque promontories, afforded sport of various kinds, and was a noble hunting ground. Washington had hunted through it with old Lord Fairfax in his stripling days; we do not wonder that his feelings throughout life incessantly reverted to it.

"No estate in United America," observes he in one of his letters, "is more pleasantly situated—in a high and healthy country; in a latitude between the extremes of heat and cold; on one of the finest rivers in the world, a river well stocked with various kinds of fish at all seasons of the year, and in the spring with shad, herring, bass, carp, sturgeon, &c., in great abundance. The borders of the estate are washed by more than ten miles of tide water; several valuable fisheries appertain to it; the whole shore, in fact, is one entire fishery." These were as yet the aristocratical days of Virginia. The estates were large, and continued in the same families by entail. Many of the wealthy planters were connected with old families in England. The young men, especially the elder sons, were often sent to finish their education there, and on their return brought out the tastes and habits of the mother country. The governors of Virginia were from the higher ranks of society, and maintained a corresponding state. The "established" or Episcopal church predominated throughout the "ancient dominion," as it was termed; each county was divided into parishes, as in England-each with its parochial church, its parsonage, and glebe.

A style of living prevailed among the opulent Virginia families in those days that has long since faded away. The houses were spacious, commodious, liberal in all their appointments, and fitted to cope with the free-handed, open-hearted hospitality of the owners. Nothing was more common than to see handsome services of plate, elegant equipages, and superb carriage horses-all imported from England.

At that period, a large Virginia estate was a little empire.. The mansion house was the seat of government, with its numerous dependencies, such as kitchen, smoke house, workshops, and stables. In this mansion the planter ruled supreme; his steward, or overseer, was his prime minister and executive officer; he had his legion of house negroes for domestic service, and his host of field negroes for the culture of tobacco, Indian corn, and other crops, and for other out of door labor. Their quarter formed a kind of hamlet apart, composed of various huts, with little gardens and poultry yards, all well stocked, and with swarms of little negroes gambolling in the sunshine. Then there were large wooden edifices for curing tobacco, the staple and most profitable production, and mills for grinding wheat and Indian corn, of which large fields were cultivated for the supply of the family and the sustenance of the negroes.

The Virginia planters were prone to leave the care of their estates too much to their overseers, and to think personal labor a degradation. Washington carried into his rural affairs the same method, activity, and circumspection that had distinguished him in military life. He kept his own accounts, posted up his books, and balanced them with mercantile exactness. We have examined them, as well as his diaries recording his daily occupations, and his letter books, containing entries of shipments of tobacco, and correspondence with his London agents. They are monuments of his business habits. The products of his estate also became so noted for the faithfulness, as to quantity and quality, with which they were put up, that it is said any barrel of flour that bore the brand of George Washington, Mount Vernon, was exempted from the customary inspection in the West India ports. He rose early, often before daybreak in the winter when the nights were long. On such occasions he lighted his own fire, and wrote or read by candle light. He breakfasted at seven in summer, at eight in winter. Two small cups of tea, and three or four cakes of Indian meal, (called hoe cakes,) formed his frugal repast.

Immediately after breakfast he mounted his horse, and visited those parts of the estate where any work was going on, seeing to every thing with his own eyes, and often aiding with his own hand.

Dinner was served at two o'clock. He ate heartily, but was no epicure; nor was he critical about his food. His beverage was small beer or cider, and two glasses of old Madeira. He took tea, of which he was very fond, early in the evening, and retired for the night about nine o'clock. If confined to the house by bad weather, he took the occasion to arrange his papers, post up his accounts, or write letters, passing part of the time in reading, and occasionally reading aloud to the family.

Washington delighted in the chase. In the hunting season, when he rode out early in the morning to visit distant parts of the estate, he often took some of the dogs with him, for the chance of starting a fox, which he occasionally did, though he was not always successful in killing him. He was a bold rider and an admirable horseman, though he never claimed the merit of being an accomplished fox hunter. In the height of the season, however, he would be out with the fox hounds two or three times a week, accompanied by his guests at Mount Vernon, and the gentlemen of the neighborhood, especially the Fairfaxes of Belvoir, of which estate his friend George William Fairfax was now the proprietor. On such occasions there would be a hunting dinner at one or other of those establishments, at which convivial repasts Washington is said to have enjoyed himself with unwonted hilarity.

Occasionally he and Mrs. Washington would pay a visit to Annapolis, at that time the seat of government of Maryland, and partake of the gayeties which prevailed during the session of the legislature. The society of these seats of provincial governments was always polite and fashionable, and more exclusive than in these republican days, being, in a manner, the outposts of the English aristocracy, where all places of dignity or profit were secured for younger sons and poor but

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