246 KATIE LEE AND WILLIE GREY. Katie answered with a laugh, Men are only boys grown tall; Stood again beside the brook, Is it strange that Willie said- Crossed the brownness of his cheek- "I am strong and you are weak; Life is but a slippery steep, Hung with shadows cold and deep. "Will you trust me, Katie dear,- All your burdens up the hill ? In a porch she sits, and lo! THE UNION OF THE STATES. THE UNION OF THE STATES.-DANIEL WEBSTER. THE 247 HE political prosperity which this country has attained, and which it now enjoys, it has acquired mainly through the instrumentality of the present government. While this agent continues, the capacity of attaining to still higher degrees of prosperity exists also. We have, while this lasts, a political life, capable of beneficial exertion, with power to resist or overcome misfortunes, to sustain us against the ordinary accidents of human affairs, and to promote, by active efforts, every public interest. But dismemberment strikes at the very being which preserves these faculties; it would lay its rude and ruthless hand on this great agent itself. It would sweep away, not only what we possess, but all power of regaining lost, or acquiring new, possessions. It would leave the country not only bereft of its prosperity and happiness, but without limbs, or organs, or faculties, by which to exert itself, hereafter, in the pursuit of that prosperity and happi ness. Other misfortunes may be borne, or their effects overcome. If disastrous war sweep our commerce from the ocean, another generation may renew it; if it exhaust our treasury, future industry may replenish it; if it desolate and lay waste our fields, still, under a new cultivation, they will grow green again, and ripen to future harvests. It were but a trifle, even if the walls of yonder Capitol were to crumble, if its lofty pillars should fall, and its gorgeous decorations be all covered by the dust of the valley. All these might be rebuilt. But who shall reconstruct the fabric of demolished government? Who shall rear again the wellproportioned columns of constitutional liberty? Who shall frame together the skillful architecture which unites national sovereignty with state rights, individual security, and public prosperity? If these columns fall, they will be raised not again. Like the Coliseum and the Parthenon, they will be destined to a mournful, a melancholy, immortality. Bitterer tears, however, will flow over them than were ever shed over the monuments of Roman or Grecian art; for they will be the remnants of a more glorious edifice than Greece or Rome ever saw-the edifice of constitutional American liberty. But let us hope for better things. Let us trust in that Gracious Being, who has hitherto held our country as in the hollow of his hand. Let us trust to the virtue and the intelligence of the people, and to the efficacy of religious obligation. Let us trust to the influence of Washington's example. Let us hope that that fear of Heaven, which expels all other fear, and that regard to duty, which transcends all other regard, may influence public men and private citizens, and lead our country still onward in her happy career. Full of these gratifying anticipations and hopes, let us look forward to the end of that century which is now commenced. A hundred years hence, other disciples of Washington will celebrate his birth, with no less of sincere admiration than we now commemorate it. When they shall meet, as we now meet, to do themselves and him that honor, so surely as they shall see the blue summits of his native mountains rise in the horizon; so surely as they shall behold the river on whose banks he lived, and on whose banks he rests, still flowing to the sea; so surely may they see, as we now see, the flag of the Union floating on the top of the Capitol; and then, as now, may the sun in his course visit no land more free, more happy, more lovely, than this, our own country. THE DIVER.-FROM THE GERMAN OF SCHILLER, BY BULWER. 66 "AH, where the H, where is the knight or the squire so bold As to dive to the howling Charybdis below? I cast in the whirlpool a goblet of gold, And o'er it already the dark waters flow; Whoever to me may the goblet bring, Shall have for his guerdon that gift of his king." He spoke, and the cup from the terrible steep, I ask ye again-to the deep below?" THE DIVER. And the knights and the squires that gathered around And the peril chilled back every thought of the prize. And all, as before, heard in silence the king, Till a youth with an aspect unfearing, but gentle, As he strode to the marge of the summit, and gave Casts roaringly up the Charybdis again; And, as with the swell of the far thunder-boom, And flood upon flood hurries on, never ending; Yet, at length, comes a lull o'er the mighty commotion, 249 And dark through the whiteness, and still through the swell, The whirlpool cleaves downward and downward in ocean, A yawning abyss, like the pathway to hell; The stiller and darker the farther it goes, Sucked into that smoothness the breakers repose. The youth gave his trust to his Maker! Before All was still on the height, save the murmur that went Thrilled from lip unto lip,-" Gallant youth, fare thee well!" If thou shouldst in those waters thy diadem fling, And cry,-" Who may find it, shall win it and wear;" What the deeps that howl yonder in terror conceal. Oh, many a bark, to that breast grappled fast, Has gone down to the fearful and fathomless grave, Again, crashed together the keel and the mast, To be seen tossed aloft in the glee of the wave! Like the growth of a storm, ever louder and clearer, Grows the roar of the gulf, rising nearer and nearer. And it bubbles and seethes, and it hisses and roars, And, lo! from the heart of that far-floating gloom, It waves as a trophy the goblet of gold! And he breathed deep, and he breathed long, |