It leaps from mount to mount; from vale to vale It wanders, plucking honeyed fruits and flowers; It visits home to hear the fireside tale And in sweet converse pass the joyous hours; 'Tis up before the sun, roaming afar, And in its watches wearies every star. WAR OR PEACE? ABRAHAM LINCOLN. EXTRACT FROM HIS FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS. My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this whole subject! Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If there be an object to hurry any of you in hot haste to a step which you would never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time; but no good object can be frustrated by it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied, still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and on the sensitive point, the laws of your own framing under it; while the new administration will have no immediate power, if it would, to change either. If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the right side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason for precipitate action. Intelligence, Patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulty. In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, are the momentous issues of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to “ preserve, protect, and defend" it. I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. THE CAVALRY CHARGE. EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. OUR good steeds snuff the evening air, Halt! Each carbine sent its whizzing ball: Dash on beneath the smoking dome! One look to Heaven! No thoughts of home; The guidons that we bear are dearer. Cling! clang! forward all! Heaven help those whose horses fall! They flee before our fierce attack! They fall! they spread in broken surges ! The bugles sound the swift recall: Home, and good-night! FARRAGUT. (MOBILE BAY, 5TH AUGUST, 1864.) WILLIAM T. MEREDITH. FARRAGUT, Farragut, Old Heart of Oak, Watches the hoary mist Far, by gray Morgan's walls, Hark, deck to rampart calls See, as the hurricane Hurtles in wrath Hurls the black ships. Now through the battle's roar "Nor' by East keep her," "Steady," but two alive; How the shells sweep her! Lashed to the mast that sways Over red decks, Round the torn wrecks, Over the dying lips Framed for a cheer, Farragut leads his ships, On by heights cannon-browed, Lashed to the mast! Oh! while Atlantic's breast Bears a white sail, While the Gulf's towering crest Tops a green vale; Men thy bold deeds shall tell, GETTYSBURG. EDWARD Everett. "The whole earth," said Pericles, as he stood over the remains of his fellow-citizens, who had fallen in the first year of the Peloponnesian War," the whole earth is the sepulchre of illustrious men." All time, he might have added, is the millennium of their glory. Surely I would |