Ah! my heart has it e'er been so, Cold clouds shading life's sunniest glow, Warm hopes drowned in the cold wave's flow In the same low room my mother pressed Yet with the bursting leaves and flowers, Waverly Magazine. THE CONQUERED BANNER. (Prize Selection at North Mo. State Normal, Jan., 1889.) Furl that banner, for 'tis weary, 'Round its staff 'tis drooping dreary, For there's not a man to wave it, And there's not a hand to lave it Take that banner down, 'tis tattered; And the valiant hosts are scattered Over whom it floated high. Oh! 'tis hard for us to fold it, Hard to think there's none to hold it, Hard that those who once Now must furi it with a sign. rolled it Furl that banner-furl it sadly! Furl it, for the hand that grasped it, For though conquered they adore it, Furl that banner--true 'tis gory, Furl that banner--softly-slowly— Father Ryan. ROBERT E. LEE. When the future historian comes to survey the character of Robert E. Lee, he will find it rising like a huge mountain above the undulating plain of humanity, and he will have to lift his eyes high, high toward heaven to catch its summit. He possessed every virtue of the other great commanders without their vices. He was a foe without hate, a friend without treachery, a soldier without cruelty, and a victim without murmuring. He was a public officer without vice, a private citizen without wrong, a Christian without hypocrisy, and a man without guile. He was Cæsar without Cæsar's ambition, Frederick without Frederick's tyranny, Napoleon without Napoleon's selfishness, and Washington without Washington's reward. He was obedient to authority as a servant, and royal in authority as a king. In life, gentle as a woman, in thought modest and pure as a virgin! Watchful as a Roman Vestal in duty, submissive to law as Socrates, and grand in battle as Achilles.-B. H. AN. THE PURITANS. The Puritans-the most remarkable body of men, perhaps, which the world has ever produced! The odious and ridiculous parts of their character lie on the surface. He that runs may read them; nor have there been wanting attentive and malicious observers to point them out. For many years after the Restoration they were the theme of unmeasured invective and derision. They were not men of letters; they were, as a body, unpopular; they could not defend themselves; and the public would not take them under its protection. They were therefore abandoned to the tender mercies of the satirists and the dramatists. The ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their sour aspect, their stiff posture, their long graces, their Hebrew names, their contempt of human learning, and their detestation of polite amusement were, indeed, fair game for the laughers. But it is not from the laughers alone that the philosophy of human history is to be learnt. Those who roused the people to resistance, who formed, out of the most unpromising material, the finest army that Europe had ever seen, who trampled down king, church and aristocracy, who made the name of England terrible to every nation on the face of the earth, were no vulgar fanatics. The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging in general terms an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To know Him, to serve Him, to enjoy Him, was with them the great end of existence. They recognized no title to superiority but His favor and confident of that favor, they despised all the accomplishments and all the dignities of the world. If they were unacquainted with the works of philosophers and of poets, they were deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names were not found in the registers of heralds, they felt assured that they were recorded in the Book of Life. If their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials, legions of ministering angels had charge over them. Their palaces were houses not made with hands; their diadems, crowns of glory which should never fade away! On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt; for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure and eloquent in a more sublime language. The very meanest of them was a being to whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged. For his sake empires had risen and flourished and decayed. For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the pen of the evangelist and the harp of the prophet. It was for him that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had arisen, that all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God. The Puritan was made up of two different men, the one all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion; the other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before his Maker; but he set his foot on the neck of his king. In his devotional retirement he prayed with convulsions, and groans, and tears. He was half maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He heard the lyres of angels or the tempting whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam of the Beatific Vision, or woke screaming from dreams of everlasting fire. Like Vane, he thought himself intrusted with the sceptre of the millennial year. Like Fleetwood, he cried in the bitterness of his soul that God had hid His face from him. But when he took his seat in the council, or girt on his sword for war, these tempestuous workings of the soul had left no perceptible trace behind them. People who saw nothing of the godly but their uncouth visages, and heard nothing from them but their groans and whining hymns, might laugh at them. But those had little reason to laugh who encountered them in the hall of debate or in the field of battle. These fanatics brought to civil and military affairs an immutability of purpose and a coolness of judgment, which some writers have thought inconsistent with their religious zeal, but which were, in fact, the necessary effects of it. The intensity of their feelings on one subject made them tranquil on every other. Death had lost its terrors, and pleasure its charms. They had their smiles and their tears, their raptures and their sorrows, but not for the things of this world. Enthusiasm had made them Stoics, had cleared their minds from every vulgar passion and prejudice, and raised them above the influence of danger and of corruption.-Macaulay. |