Gather around these summits, as to show How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake With the wide world I've dwelt in is a thing Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring. This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing To waft me from distraction: once I loved Torn ocean's roar; but thy soft murmuring Sounds sweet as if a sister's voice reproved That I with stern delights should e'er have been so moved. 5 It is the hush of night; and all between Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear, Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear 6 He is an evening reveller, who makes His life an infancy, and sings his fill; All silently their tears of love distil, 7 Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven, If, in your bright leaves, we would read the fate That in our aspirations to be great, Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state, A beauty and a mystery, and create In us such love and reverence from afar, That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star 8 The sky is changed! and such a change! Oh, Night From peak to peak, the rattling crags among, 9 And this is in the night: Most glorious night; A portion of the tempest and of thee! Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain mirth, As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth. - the far roll 10 Sky, mountains, river, winds, lake, lightnings! ye, 11 The morn is up again, the dewy morn, With breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom, And glowing into day: we may resume Still on thy shores, fair Leman, may find room, Much that may give us pause, if pondered fittingly. XCVI,— WEBSTER'S GREATEST PARLIAMENTARY EFFORT. EVERETT. [The following extract is from a speech delivered in Boston at a dinner on the 18th of January, 1856, the anniversary of the birthday of Daniel Webster. Condé was a celebrated French general of the seventeenth century. He de. feated the Spaniards at the battle of Rocroi, May, 19, 1643.] It was my happiness, at Mr. Webster's request, to pass a part of the evening. of the 25th January, 1830, with him; and he went over to me, from a very concise brief, the main topics of the speech prepared for the following 5 day, the second speech on Foot's resolution, which he accounted the greatest of his parliamentary efforts. Intense anticipation awaited that effort, both at Washington and throughout the country. A pretty formidable personal attack was to be repelled; New England was to 10 be vindicated against elaborate disparagement; and, more than all, the true theory of the constitution, as heretofore - generally understood, was to be maintained against a new interpretation, devised by perhaps the acutest logician in the country; asserted with equal confidence and fervor; 15 and menacing a revolution in the government. Never had a public speaker a harder task to perform; and except on the last great topic, which undoubtedly was familiar to his 5 10 habitual contemplations, his opportunity for preparation had been most inconsiderable, for the argument of his accomplished opponent had been concluded but the day before the reply was to be made. I sat an hour and a half with Mr. Webster the evening before this great effort. The impassioned parts of his speech, and those in which the personalities of his antagonist were retorted, were hardly indicated in his prepared brief. So calm and tranquil was he, so entirely at ease, and free from that nervous excitement which is almost unavoidable, so near the moment which is to put the whole man to the proof, that I was tempted, absurdly enough, to think him not sufficiently aware of the magnitude of the 15 occasion. I ventured even to intimate to him, that what he was to say the next day would, in a fortnight's time, be read by every grown man in the country. But I soon perceived that his calmness was the repose of conscious power. The battle had been fought and won within, upon 20 the broad field of his own capacious mind; for it was Mr. Webster's habit first to state to himself his opponent's argument in its utmost strength, and having overthrown it in that form, he feared the efforts of no other antagonist. Hence it came to pass that he was never taken by sur25 prise, by any turn of the discussion. Besides, the moment and the occasion were too important for trepidation. A surgeon might as well be nervous, who is going to cut within a hair's-breadth of a great artery. He was not only at ease, but sportive and full of 30 anecdote; and, as he told the senate playfully the next day, he slept soundly that night on the formidable assault of his accomplished adversary. So the great Condé slept on the eve of the battle of Rocroi; so Alexander slept on the eve of the battle of Arbela; and so they awoke 35 to deeds of immortal fame. As I saw him in the evening, (if I may borrow an illus tration from his favorite amusement,) he was as unconcerned and as free of spirit as some here have seen him, while floating in his fishing-boat along a hazy shore, gently rocking on the tranquil tide, dropping his line here and 5 there, with the varying fortune of the sport. The next morning he was like some mighty admiral, dark and terrible, casting the long shadow of his frowning tiers far over the sea, that seemed to sink beneath him; his broad pendant streaming at the main, the stars and 10 stripes at the fore, the mizzen, and the peak; and bearing down like a tempest upon his antagonist, with all his canvas strained to the wind, and all his thunders roaring from his broadsides. XCVII. THE WIDOW OF GLENCOE. AYTOUN. [In the month of February, 1692, a number of persons of the clan of Macdonald, residing in Glencoe, a glen on the western coast of Scotland, were cruelly and treacherously put to death, on the ground that their chief had not taken the oath of allegiance to the government of King William within the time prescribed by his proclamation. A full and interesting account of the massacre may be found in Macaulay's "History of England." The following poem is supposed to be spoken by the widow of one of the victims. The captain of the company of soldiers by whom the massacre was perpetrated, was Campbell of Glenlyon. "The dauntless Græme" was the Marquis of Montrose.] Do not lift him from the bracken, leave him lying where he fell- Leave his broadsword as we found it, rent and broken with the blow |