11. ON RESISTANCE TO BRITISH OPPRESSION. - Patrick Henry. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the active, the vigilant, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election! If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged. Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston. The war is inevitable, and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come! It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry Peace! peace! but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field. Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Heaven! I know not what course others may take; but, as for me, give me liberty, or give me death! 12. THE AMERICAN UNION.· ΕΙ Webster. When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on states dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as, "What is all this worth?" nor those other words of delusion and folly, "Liberty first, and union afterward; " but everywhere spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart, — Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable! Yes, I have ambition; but it is the ambition of being the humble instrument, in the hands of Providence, to reconcile a distracted people, once more to revive concord and harmony in a distracted land, the pleasing ambition of contemplating the glorious spectacle of a free, united, prosperous, and fraternal people! If there be any who want civil war, — who want to see the blood of any portion of our countrymen spilt, I am not one of them. I wish to see war of no kind; but, above all, do I not desire to see a civil war. When war begins, whether civil or foreign, no human foresight is competent to foresee when, or how, or where, it is to terminate. But when a civil war shall be lighted up in the bosom of our own happy land, and armies are marching, and commanders are winning their victories, and fleets are in motion on our coast, tell me, if you can, tell me, if any human being can tell, its duration! God alone knows where such a war will end! CXXVI. ELEGYEI WKITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCH-YARD, 1. THE curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, 2. Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, 3. Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower The moping owl does to the moon complain 4. Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. 5. The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. 7. Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke ; 8. Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile Await alike the inevitable hour. The paths of glory lead but to the grave. 10. Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault, 11. Can storied urn or animated bust Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? 12. Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; 13. But Knowledge to their121 eyes her ample page, 14. Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear, 15. Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast The little tyrant of his fields withstood, Some mute, inglorious Milton, - here may rest; Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood. 16. The applause of listening senates to command, The threats of pain and ruin to despise, ΕΙ To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, 17. Their lot forbăde; nor circumscribed alone 131 Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined; 18. The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, 19. Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife They kept the noiseless tenor of their way. 20. Yet even these bōnes from insult to protect, With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked, 21. Their name, their years, spelt by the unlettered Muse, This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned, 24. For thee, who, mindful of the unhonored dead, "Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn To meet the sun upon the upland lawn. Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love. Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood, was he: 29. "The next, with dirges due, in sad array, Slow through the churchway path we saw him borne. The Epitaph. 30. Here rests his head upon the lap of earth 31. Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere He gained from heaven ('t was all he wished) a friend. 32. No further seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose,) The bosom of his Father and his God. GRAY. 1. ARCHIMEDES was born in the year 287 before the Christian era, in the island of Sicily and city of Syracuse. Of his childhood and early education we know absolutely nothing, and nothing of his family, save that he is stated to have been one of the poor relations of King Hiero, who came to the throne when Archimedes was quite a young man, and of whose royal patronage he more than repaid whatever measure he may have enjoyed. There is no more characteristic anecdote of this great philosopher than that relating to his detection of a fraud in the composition of the royal crown. Nothing, certainly, could more vividly illus'trate the ingenuity, the enthusiasm, and the complete concentration and abstraction of mind, with which he pursued whatever problem was proposed to him. 2. King Hiero, or his son Gelon, it seems, had given out a certain amount of gold to be made into a crown, and the workman to whom it had been intrusted had at last brought back a crown of corresponding weight. But a suspicion arose that it had been alloyed with silver, and Archimedes was applied to by the king, either to disprove or to verify the allegation. The great problem, of course, was to ascertain the precise bulk of the crown in its existing form; for, gold being so much heavier than silver, it is obvious that if the weight had been in any degree made up by the substitution of silver, the bulk would be proportionately increased. Now, it happened that Archimedes went to take a bath while this problem was exercising his mind, and, on approaching the bath-tub, he found it full to the very brim. It instantly occurred to him that a quantity of water of the same bulk with his own body must be displaced before his body could be immersed. 3. Accordingly, he plunged in; and while the process of displacement was going on, and the water was running out, the idea suggested itself to him, that by putting a lump of gold of |