that my soul, by a secret, subtile process, invests the mouldering ruin with her own powers-imagines it a fellowbeing a venerable old man, a Nestor, or an Ossian, who has witnessed and survived the ravages of successive generations, the companions of his youth and of his maturity, and now mourns his own solitary and desolate condition, and hails their spirits in every passing cloud? Whatever may be the cause, as I look at it I feel my soul drawn forward, as by the cords of gentlest sympathy, and involuntarily open my lips to offer consolation to the drooping pile.

4. Where is the busy, bustling crowd which landed here two hundred years ago? Where is Smith, that pink of gallantry, that flower of chivalry? I fancy that I can see their first slow and cautious approach to the shore; their keen and vigilant eyes, piercing the forest in every direction, to detect the lurking Indian, with his tomahawk, bow, and arrow.

5. What an enterprise! how full of the most fearful perils! and yet how entirely profitless to the daring men who personally undertook and achieved it! Through what a series of the most spirit-chilling hardships had they to toil! how often did they cast their eyes to England in vain! and with what delusive hopes, day after day, did the little famished crew strain their sight to catch the white sail of comfort and relief! But, day after day, the sun set, and darkness covered the earth; yet no sail of comfort or relief came.

6. How often, in the pangs of hunger, sickness, solitude, and disconsolation, did they think of London; her shops, her markets groaning under the weight of plenty; her streets swarming with gilded coaches, bustling hacks, with crowds of lords, dukes, and commons, with healthy, busy, contented faces of every description; and among them none more healthy or more contented than those of their ungrateful and improvident directors!

7. But now-where are they all? the little famished colony which landed here, and the many-colored crowd of

London-where are they? Gone where there is no distinction-consigned to the common earth. Another generation succeeded them; which, just as busy and as bustling as that which fell before it, has sunk down into the same nothingness. Another and yet another billow has rolled on, each emulating its predecessor in height; towering for its moment, and curling its foaming honors to the clouds; then roaring, breaking, and perishing on the same shore. WILLIAM WIRT.

XLVII.—THE QUAKER MARTYRS.

GILES COREY, a Quaker accused of witchcraft, sentenced, with his wife, to be crushed to death by means of heavy weights; RICHARD GARDNER, a sea-captain; Jailer; Sheriff.

Scene-Salem Jail, 1692.

Corey. Now I have done with earth and all its cares;

I give my worldly goods to my dear children;
My body I bequeath to my tormentors,
And my immortal soul to Him who made it.
O God! who in thy wisdom dost afflict me
With an affliction greater than most men
Have ever yet endured or shall endure,
Suffer me not in this last bitter hour
For any pains of death to fall from thee!

Enter the Jailer, followed by Richard Gardner.

Jailer. Here's a seafaring man, one Richard Gardner,
A friend of yours, who asks to speak with you.

Corey. I'm glad to see you, ay, right glad to see you.
Gardner. And I most sorely grieved to see you thus.
Corey. Of all the friends I had in happier days,
You are the first, ay, and the only one,
That comes to seek me out in my disgrace!
And you but come in time to say farewell.
They've dug my grave already in the field.

I thank you. There is something in your presence,
I know not what it is, that gives me strength.

Perhaps it is the bearing of a man

Familiar with all the dangers of the deep,

Familiar with the cries of drowning men,

With fire, and wreck, and foundering ships at sea!

Gardner. Ah, I have never known a wreck like yours! Would I could save you!

Corey.

Do not speak of that.

It is too late. I am resolved to die.

Gardner. Why would you die who have so much to live for? Your daughters, and

Corey.

You cannot say the word.

My daughters have gone from me. They are married;
They have their homes, their thoughts, apart from me;
I will not say their hearts,—that were too cruel.

What would you have me do?

Gardner.

Confess and live.

Corey. That's what they said who came here yesterday To lay a heavy weight upon my conscience,

By telling me that I was driven forth

As an unworthy member of the church.
Gardner. It is an awful death.

Corey.

'Tis but to drown,

And have the weight of all the seas upon you.

Gardner. Say something; say enough to fend off death

Till this tornado of fanaticism

Blows itself out. Let me come in between you

And your severer self, with my plain sense;

If I deny, I am condemned already

In courts where ghosts appear as witnesses,
And swear men's lives away. If I confess,
Then I confess a lie, to buy a life

Which is not life, but only death in life.

I will not bear false witness against any,

Not even against myself, whom I count least.

Gardner (aside). Ah, what a noble character is this!
Corey. I pray you do not urge me to do that

You would not do yourself. I have already
The bitter taste of death upon my lips;

I feel the pressure of the heavy weight

That will crush out my life within this hour;

But if a word could save me, and that word

Were not the truth; nay, if it did but swerve

A hair's breadth from the truth, I would not say it!

Gardner (aside). How mean I seem beside a man like this!
Corey. As for my wife, my Martha and my martyr,—
Whose virtues, like the stars, unseen by day,
Though numberless, do but await the dark
To manifest themselves unto all eyes,—
She who first won me from my evil ways,
And taught me how to live by her example,
By her example teaches me how to die,
And leads me onward to the better life!

Sheriff (without). Giles Corey! Come! The hour has struck!
Corey.

Here is my body; ye may torture it,

I come!

But the immortal soul ye cannot crush!

H. W. LONGFELLOW.

XLVIII-LEARNING BY HEART.

ILL he has fairly tried it, I suspect a reader does not know how much he would gain from committing to memory passages of real excellence; precisely because he does not know how much he overlooks in merely reading. Learn one true poem by heart, and see if you do not find it so. Beauty after beauty will reveal itself, in chosen phrase, or happy music, or noble suggestion otherwise undreamed of. It is like looking at one of Nature's wonders through a microscope.

2. Again, how much in such a poem that you really did feel admirable and lovely on a first reading, passes away, if you do not give it a further and much better reading!passes away utterly, like a sweet sound, or an image on the lake, which the first breath of wind dispels. If you could only fix that image, as the photographers do theirs, so beautifully, so perfectly! And you can do so! Learn it by heart, and it is yours forever!

3. Poems and noble extracts, whether of verse or prose, once so reduced into possession and rendered truly our

own, may be to us a daily pleasure;-better far than a whole library unused. They may come to us in our dull moments, to refresh us as with spring flowers; in our selfish musings, to win us by pure delight from the tyranny of foolish castle-building, self-congratulations, and mean anxieties. They may be with us in the workshop, in the crowded streets, by the fireside; sometimes, perhaps, on pleasant hill-sides, or by sounding shores ;-noble friends and companions-our own! never intrusive, ever at hand, coming at our call!

4. Shakspeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Tennyson,-the words of such men do not stale upon us, they do not grow old or cold. Further, though you are young now. some day you will be old. Some day you may reach that time when a man lives in greater part for memory and by memory. I can imagine a chance renewal, chance visitation of the words long remembered, long garnered in the heart, and I think I see a gleam of rare joy in the eyes of the old man.

5. For those, in particular, whose leisure time is short, and precious as scant rations to beleaguered men, I believe there could not be a better expenditure of time than deliberately giving an occasional hour-it requires no more -to committing to memory chosen passages from great authors. If the mind were thus daily nourished with a few choice words of the best English poets and writers; if the habit of learning by heart were to become so general, that, as a matter of course, any person presuming to be educated amongst us might be expected to be equipped with a few good pieces,-I believe it would lead, far more than the mere sound of it suggests, to the diffusion of the best kind of literature, and the right appreciation of it, and men would not long rest satisfied with having a few stock pieces.

6. The only objection I can conceive to what I have been saying is, that it may be said that a relish for higher literature belongs only to the few; that it is the result of cultiva