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Thy birth-right the tall cliff and sky beyond:
Thy feet were fetterless; thy fearless brow,
Ne'er quailing, tyrant man's dominion owned.
But nature's general law

+

The slave and freeman must alike obey:
Pride reels; and Power, that kept a world in awe,

The dreadful summons hears; and where are they?
Vanished, like night-dreams, from the sleeper's mind,
Dust, 'mid dissolving day, or clouds before the wind!

LIT. SOUVENIR.

LESSON CXLVII.

THE MONK.

1. A POOR monk of the order of St. Francis, came into the room to beg something for his convent. The moment I cast my eyes upon him, I was predetermined not to give him a single sous,* and, accordingly, I put my purse into my pocket, buttoned it up, set myself a little more upon my center, and advanced up gravely to him. There was something, I fear, forbidding in my look; I have his figure this moment before my eyes, and think there was that in it which deserved better.

2. The monk, as I judged from the break in his tonsure, a few scattered white hairs being all that remained of it, might be about seventy; but from his eyes, and that sort of fire that was in them, which seemed more tempered by courtesy than years, could be no more than sixty; truth might lie between; he was certainly sixty-five; and the general air of his countenance, notwithstanding something seemed to have been planting wrinkles in it before their time, agreed to the account. It was one of those heads which Guido has often painted; mild, pale, penetrating, free from all commonplace ideas of fat, contented ignorance looking downward upon the earth, it looked forward; but looked as if it looked at something beyond this world. How one of his order came by it, Heaven above, who let it fall upon a monk's shoulders, best knows; but it would have suited a +Bramin, and had I met it upon the plains of Hindostan, I should have reverenced it.

3. The rest of his outline may be given in a few strokes; one might put it into the hands of any one to design, for it was neither elegant nor otherwise, but as character and expression made it so: it was a thin, spare form, something above the common size, if it

* Pronounced soo.

lost not the distinction by a bend forward in the figure, but it was the attitude of entreaty; and, as it now stands present to my imagination, it gained more than it lost by it.

4. When he had entered the room three paces, he stood still; and laying his left hand upon his breast, (a slender, white staff, with which he journeyed, being in his right,) when I had got close up to him, he introduced himself with the little story of the wants of his convent, and the poverty of his order; and did it with so simple a grace, and such an air of deprecation was there in the whole cast of his look and figure, I was bewitched not to have been struck with it. A better reason was, I had predetermined not to give him a single sous.

5. ""Tis very true," said I, replying to a cast upward with his eyes, with which he had concluded his address, "'t is very true, and Heaven be their resource who have no other but the charity of the world, the stock of which, I fear, is no way sufficient for the many great claims which are hourly made upon it." As I pronounced the words great claims, he gave a slight glance with his eye downward upon the sleeve of his tunic. I felt the full force of the appeal. 66 "I acknowledge it," said I, a coarse habit and that but once in three years, and meager diet, are no great matters; the true point of pity is, as they can be earned in the world with so little industry, that your order should wish to procure them by pressing upon a fund which is the property of the lame, the blind, the aged, and the infirm: the captive, who lies down, counting over and over again the days of his afflictions, languishes, also, for his share of it; and had you been of the order of Mercy, instead of the order of St. Francis, poor as I am," continued I, pointing at my portmanteau, "full cheerfully should it have been opened to you for the ransom of the unfortunate." monk made me a bow.

The

6. "But of all others," resumed I, "the unfortunate of our own country have the first rights; I have left thousands in distress upon our own shore." The monk gave a cordial wave of the head, as much as to say; No doubt there is misery enough in every corner of the world, as well as within our convent. "But we distinguish," said I, laying my hand upon the sleeve of his tunic, in return for his appeal, "we distinguish, my good father, betwixt those who wish to eat only the bread of their own labor, and those who eat the bread of other people's, and have no other plan in life but to get through it in sloth and ignorance, for the love of God." The poor Franciscan made no reply: a hectic, for a moment, passed across his cheek, but could not tarry. Nature seemed to have done with her resentments in him; he showed none, but letting his staff fall within his arm, he pressed both his hands with resignation upon his breast, and retired.

7. My heart smote me, the moment he shut the door. "Pshaw!" said I, with an air of carelessness, three several times: but it would not do: every ungracious syllable I had uttered, crowded back into my imagination; I reflected I had no right over the poor + Franciscan, but to deny him; and that the punishment of that was enough to the disappointed, without the addition of unkind language. I considered his gray hairs; his courteous figure seemed to re-enter, and gently ask me what injury he had done me? and why I could use him thus? I would have given twenty livres for an advocate. I have behaved very ill, said I, within myself; but I have only just set out upon my travels; and shall learn better manners as I get along.

STERNE.

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LESSON CXLVIII.

THE PHILOSOPHER'S SCALES.

1. A MONK, when his rites sacerdotal were o'er,
In the depth of his cell with his stone-covered floor,
Resigning to thought his chimerical brain,
Once formed the contrivance we now shall explain;
But whether by magic's or alchemy's powers,
We know not; indeed, 't is no business of ours.

+

2. Perhaps, it was only by patience and care,

At last, that he brought his invention to bear;
In youth 't was projected, but years stole away,
And ere 't was complete, he was wrinkled and gray;
But success is secure, unless energy fails;

And, at length, he produced the philosopher's scales.

3. "What were they?" you ask; you shall presently see; These scales were not made to weigh sugar and tea;

O no; for such properties wondrous had they,

That qualities, feelings, and thoughts, they could weigh:
Together with articles small or immense,

From mountains or planets, to atoms of sense.

4. Naught was there so bulky, but there it would lay,
And naught so ethereal, but there it would stay,
And naught so reluctant, but in it must go:
All which some examples more clearly will show.

5. The first thing he weighed was the head of Voltaire,
Which retained all the wit that had ever been there;
As a weight he threw in a torn scrap of a leaf,
Containing the prayer of the penitent thief;
When the skull rose aloft with so sudden a spell,
That it bounced like a ball on the roof of the cell.

6. One time, he put in Alexander the Great,

With a garment that Dorcas had made, for a weight,
And, though clad in armor from sandals to crown,
The hero rose up, and the garment went down.
7. A long row of alms-houses, amply endowed
By a well esteemed Pharisee, busy and proud,
Next loaded one scale; while the other was prest
By those mites the poor widow dropt into the chest ;
Up flew the endowment, not weighing an ounce,
And down, down the farthing-worth came with a bounce.
8. By further experiments, (no matter how,)

He found that ten chariots weighed less than one plow;
A sword with gilt trapping rose up in the scale,
Though balanced by only a ten-penny nail;
A shield and a helmet, a buckler and spear,
Weighed less than a widow's uncrystallized tear.
9. A lord and a lady went up at full sail,

When a bee chanced to light on the opposite scale;
Ten doctors, ten lawyers, two courtiers, one earl,
Ten counselors' wigs, full of powder and curl,
All heaped in one balance and swinging from thence,
Weighed less than a few grains of candor and sense;
10. A first water diamond, with brilliants begirt,
Than one good potato, just washed from the dirt:
Yet not mountains of silver and gold could suffice,
One pearl to outweigh, 't was the pearl of great price.
11. Last of all, the whole world was bowled in at the grate,
With the soul of a beggar to serve for a weight,

When the former sprang up with so strong a rebuff,
That it made a vast rent and escaped at the roof;
When, balanced in air, it ascended on high,
And sailed up aloft, a balloon in the sky;

While the scale with the soul in 't so mightily fell,
That it jerked the philosopher out of his cell.

JANE TAYLOR.

LESSON CXLIX.

THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM.

1. Ir was on a summer evening,
Old Kaspar's work was done,
And he, before his cottage door,
Was sitting in the sun,

And by him sported on the green,
His little grandchild Wilhelmine.
2. She saw her brother Peterkin

Roll something large and round,

Which he beside the rivulet,

In playing there, had found;

He came to ask what he had found,
That was so large, and smooth, and round.

3. Old Kaspar took it from the boy,
Who stood expectant by;

And then the old man shook his head,
And with a natural sigh,

"T is some poor fellow's skull," said he,
"Who fell in the great victory.

4. "I find them in the garden,

For there's many here about;
And often when I go to plow,

The plowshare turns them out!
For many thousand men," said he,
"Were slain in that great victory."

5. "Now tell us what 't was all about,"
Young Peterkin, he cries;
While little Wilhelmine looks up,
With wonder-waiting eyes;
"Now tell us all about the war,
And what they killed each other for."

6. "It was the English," Kaspar cried,
"Who put the French to rout,
But what they killed each other for,
I could not well make out.
But every body said," quoth he,
"That 't was a famous victory.

7. "My father lived at +Blenheim then,
Yon little stream, hard by;

They burnt his dwelling to the ground,
And he was forced to fly;

So, with his wife and child, he fled,
Nor had he where to rest his head.

8. "With fire and sword, the country round Was wasted, far and wide;

And many a nursing mother then,
And new-born baby died;

But things like that, you know, must be
At every famous victory.

9. "They say it was a shocking sight
After the field was won;

For many thousand bodies here

Lay rotting in the sun;

But things like that, you know, must be
After a famous victory.

10. "Great praise the Duke of Marlbro' won, And our young prince, Eugene."

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