soil of England, I seem to return, like a descendant, to the old family seat; to come back to the abode of an aged and venerable parent. I acknowledge this great consanguinity of nations. The sound of my native lan5 guage, beyond the sea, is as music to my ear, beyond the richest strains of Tuscan softness or Castilian majesty. I am not yet in a land of strangers, while surrounded by the manners, the habits, and the institutions, under which I have been brought up. I wander, delighted, 10 through a thousand scenes which the historians and the poets have made familiar to us, of which the names are interwoven with our earliest associations. I tread with reverence the spots where I can retrace the footsteps of our suffering fathers; the pleasant land of their birth. 15 has a claim on my heart. It seems to me a classic, yea, a holy land, rich in the memory of the great and good, the champions and the martyrs of liberty, the exiled heralds of truth; and richer, as the parent of this land of promise in the west. 20 I am not I need not say I am not. the panegyrist of England. I am not dazzled by her riches, nor awed by her power. The sceptre, the mitre, and the coronet, stars, garters, and blue ribbons, seem to me poor things for great men to contend for. Nor is my admira25 tion awakened by her armies mustered for the battles of Europe, her navies overshadowing the ocean, nor her empire, grasping the farthest east. It is these, and the price of guilt and blood by which they are too often maintained, which are the cause why no friend of liberty can 30 salute her with undivided affections. But it is the cradle and the refuge of free principles, though often persecuted; the school of religious liberty, the more precious for the struggles through which it has passed; the tombs of those who have reflected honor on 35 all who speak the English tongue; it is the birthplace of our fathers, the home of the pilgrim. It is these which I love and venerate in England. I should feel ashamed of an enthusiasm for Italy and Greece, did I not also feel it for a land like this. In an American, it would seem to me degenerate and ungrateful to hang with passion upon 5 the traces of Homer and Virgil, and follow without emo tion the nearer and plainer footsteps of Shakspeare and Milton. I should think him cold in his love for his native land, who felt no melting in his heart for that other native country which holds the ashes of his forefathers. XIII. "GIVE ME THREE GRAINS MOTHER." MISS EDWARDS. OF CORN, [This powerful and pathetic piece was suggested by one of the many painful incidents of the memorable Irish famine of 1846. The title was the last request of an Irish lad to his mother, as he was dying of starvation. She found three grains in a corner of his ragged jacket, and gave them to him. It was all she had. The whole family were perishing from famine.] 1 GIVE me three grains of corn, mother, It will keep the little life I have, I am dying of hunger and cold, mother, And half the agony of such a death 2 It has gnawed like a wolf, at my heart, mother, All the livelong day, and the night beside, I dreamed of bread in my sleep, mother, And the sight was heaven to see, I awoke with an eager, famishing lip, 3 How could I look to you, mother, How could I look to you, For bread to give to your starving boy, When you were starving too? For I read the famine in your cheek, And in your eye so wild, 4 The queen has lands and gold, mother, The queen has lands and gold, 5 While you are forced to your empty breast A babe that is dying of want, mother, As I am dying now, With a ghastly look in its sunken eye, What has poor Ireland done, mother, That the world looks on, and sees us starve, Perishing, one by one? Do the men of England care not, mother, The great men and the high, For the suffering sons of Erin's isle, 6 There is many a brave heart here, mother, Dying of want and cold, While only across the channel, mother, Are many that roll in gold; There are rich and proud men there, mother, With wondrous wealth to view, And the bread they fling to their dogs to-night, 7 Come nearer to my side, mother, And hold me fondly, as you held Quick, for I cannot see you, mother, XIV.- -THE BLIND PREACHER. WIRT. [WILLIAM WIRT was born in Bladensburg, Maryland, November 8, 1772, and died February 18, 1834. He was early admitted to the bar and became one of the most eminent lawyers in the United States, combining earnest and persuasive eloquence as an advocate with thorough professional learning. He was attorney-general of the United States in 1817, which position he held till 1829, and never were the duties of this office more ably discharged than by him. He had a love of literature, and frequently wrote for the press in his youth and early manhood. His style is rich and flowing, but marked by an excess of ornament, which was in unison with the taste of the times. His Letters of a British Spy" first appeared in 1803, in the "Richmond Argus." This has proved a popular book, having passed through several editions. He was the principal author of the "Old Bachelor," a series of papers, which originally appeared in a Richmond newspaper. In 1817 he published a memoir of Patrick Henry, a spirited and interesting biography, though somewhat exaggerated in tone. In 1827 he pronounced a eulogy on Adams and Jefferson. Mr. Wirt was a man of warm affections, amiable character, and engaging manners. A life of him, by J. P. Kennedy, in two volumes octavo, was published in 1849. The following passage is from the "Letters of a British Spy."] RICHMOND, October 10, 1803. I HAVE been, my dear S―, on an excursion through the counties which lie along the eastern side of the Blue Ridge. A general description of that country and its in-. habitants may form the subject of a future letter. For 5 the present, I must entertain you with an account of a most singular and interesting adventure, which I met with in the course of the tour. It was one Sunday, as I travelled through the county of Orange, that my eye was caught by a cluster of horses tied near a ruinous, old wooden house, in the forest, not far from the roadside. Having frequently seen such objects before, in travelling through these States, I had no difficulty in understanding that this was a place of religious 5 worship. Devotion alone should have stopped me, to join in the duties of the congregation; but I must confess, that curiosity to hear the preacher of such a wilderness, was not the least of my motives. On entering, I was struck with his *10 preternatural appearance. He was a tall and very spare old man; his head, which was covered with a white linen cap, his shrivelled hands, and his voice, were all shaking under the influence of a palsy; and a few moments ascertained to me that he was perfectly blind. 15 The first emotions, which touched my breast, were those of mingled pity and veneration. But how soon were all my feelings changed! The lips of Plato were never more worthy of a prognostic swarm of bees than were the lips of this holy man! It was a day of the administration of 20 the sacrament; and his subject, of course, was the passion of our Saviour. I had heard the subject handled a thousand times; I had thought it exhausted long ago. Little did I suppose, that in the wild woods of America, I was to meet with a man whose eloquence would give to this topic 25 a new and more sublime pathos than I had ever before witnessed. As he descended from the pulpit to distribute the mystic symbols, there was a peculiar, a more than human solemnity in his air and manner, which made my blood run 30 cold, and my whole frame shiver. He then drew a picture of the sufferings of our Saviour; his trial before Pilate; his ascent up Calvary; his crucifixion; and his death. I knew the whole history; but never until then had I heard the circumstances so selected, 35 so arranged, so colored! It was all new; and I seemed to have heard it for the first time in my life. His enun |