And, phrensied with pain, the swart herdsman

Closed round him his terrible grasp, And jerked him, despite of his struggles,

Down from the mule, in his clasp.

They grappled with desperate madness

On the slippery edge of the wall,
They swayed on the brink, and together

Reeled out to the rush of the fall!
A cry of the wildest death anguish

Rang faint through the mist afar, And the riderless mule went homeward

From the fight of the Paso del Mar!

OUR STATE.

LONG years ago, a little band

Of Pilgrims, from a distant shore, Found a wild home in that cold land

Where the Atlantic's surges roar; They were strong, iron-hearted men,

Oppression's stern, unyielding foes; And in each rugged mountain glen

The village church and school-house rose.

Those Pilgrim sires have passed away,

But still they live in deathless fame;
And Pilgrim mothers of that day

Are crowned with an immortal name.
They have departed—but have left

A glorious legacy behind,
Of which we cannot be bereft-

The freedom of the human mind.

We find a new and pleasant home,

From want, and war, and danger free,
Spanned with warm skies and crystal dome,

Laved by Pacific's calmer sea.
The church and school-house, side by side,

Were nurseries of New England men;

And may they be our boast and pride

Adorning every golden glen.

Great God I thy kind and bounteous care

Hath cast our lot in goodly lands, With summer skies and valleys fair,

And rivers paved with golden sands. God of our Fathers! crown and bless

This gold land of Pacific's shore, With plenty, peace, and happiness,

And liberty, forevermore.

BABIE BELL.-T. B. ALDRICH.

Have you not heard the poet tell,
How came the dainty Babie Bell

Into this world of ours ?
The gates of heaven were left ajar

With folded hands and dreamy eyes

She wandered out of Paradise!
She saw this planet, like a star,
Hung in the depths of purple even-
Its bridges, running to and fro,
O'er which the white-winged seraphs go,
Bearing the holy dead to heaven!
She touched a bridge of flowers—those feet
So light they did not bend the bells
of the celestial asphodels !
They fell like dew upon the flowers!
And all the air grew strangely sweet!
And thus came dainty Babie Bell

Into this world of ours !

It came upon us by degrees;
We saw its shadow ere it fell,
The knowledge that our God had sent
His messenger for Babie Bell!

OUR COUNTRY'S ORIGIN,

203

We shuddered with unlanguaged pain,

And all our thoughts ran into tears!

And all our hopes were changed to fears-
The sunshine into dismal rain!

Aloud we cried in our belief:

“Oh smite us gently, gently, God!
Teach us to bend and kiss the rod,

And perfect grow through grief I"
Ah, how we loved her, God can tell;
Her little heart was cased in ours-
They're broken caskets-Babie Bell!

At last he came, the messenger,

The messenger froin unseen lands:
And what did dainty Babie Bell?
She only crossed her little hands!
She only looked more meek and fair!
We parted back her silken hair;
We laid some buds upon her brow-
Death's bride arrayed in flowers !
And thus went dainty Babie Bell

Out of this world of ours!

OUR COUNTRY'S ORIGIN.-DANIEL WEBSTER.

Our fathers came hither to a land from which they were never to return. Hither they had brought, and here they were to fix their hopes, their attachments, and their objects. Some natural tears they shed, as they left the pleasant abodes of their fathers, and some emotions they suppressed when the white cliffs of their native country, now seen for the last time, grew dim to their sight.

A new existence awaited them here; and when they saw these shores, rough, cold, barbarous, and barren, as then they were, they beheld their country. Before they reached the shore, they had established the elements of a social system, and at a much earlier period had settled their forms of religious worship. At

a

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the moment of their landing, therefore, they possessed institutions of government, and institutions of religion. The morning that beamed on the first night of their repose saw the Pilgrims already established in their country. There were political institutions, and civil liberty, and religious worship. Poetry has fancied nothing in the wanderings of heroes so distinct and characteristic. Here was man indeed unprotected, and unprovided for, on the shore of a rude and fearful wilderness; but it was politic, intelligent, and educated man. Every thing was civilized but the physical world. Institutions containing in substance all that ages had done for human government were established in a forest. Cultivated mind was to act on uncultivated nature; and, more than all, a government and a country were to commence with the very first foundations laid under the divine light of the Christian religion. Happy auspices of a happy futurity! Who would wish that his country's existence had otherwise begun? Who would desire the power of going back to the ages of fable? Who would wish for an origin obscured in the darkness of antiquity? Who would wish for other emblazoning of his country's heraldry, or other ornaments of her genealogy, than to be able to say that her first existence was with intelligence; her first breath the inspirations of liberty; her first principle the truth of divine religion ?

HARD WORK.-CHANNING.

I HAVE great faith in hard work. The material world does much for the mind by its beauty and order; but it does more for our minds by the pains it inflicts, by its obstinate resistance which nothing but patient toil can overcome, by its vast forces which nothing but unremitting skill and effort can turn to our use, by its perils which demand continual vigilance, and by its tendencies to decay. I believe that difficulties are more important to the human mind than what we call assistances. Work we all must, if we mean to bring out and perfect our nature. Even if we do not work with the hands, we must undergo equivalent toil in

some other direction. No business or study which does not present obstables, tasking to the full the intellect and the will, is worthy of a man. In science, he who does not grapple with hard questions, who does not concentrate his whole intellect in vigorous attention, who does not aim to penetrate what at first repels him, will never attain to mental force. The uses of toil reach beyond the present world. The capacity of steady, earnest labor is, I apprehend, one of our great preparations for another state of being. When I see the vast amount of toil required of men, I feel that it must have important connections with their future existence; and that he who has met this discipline manfully, has laid one essential foundation of improvement, exertion, and happiness in the world to come. You will here see that labor has great dignity. It is not merely the grand instrument, by which the earth is overspread with fruitfulness and beauty, and the ocean subdued, and matter wrought into innumerable forms for comfort and ornament. It has a far higher function, which, is to give force to the will, efficiency, courage, the capacity of endurance and of persevering devotion to far-reaching plans. Alas, for the man who has not learned to work! He is a poor creature. He does not know himself. He depends on others, with no capacity of making returns for the support they give; and let him not fancy that he has a monopoly of enjoyment. Ease, rest, owes its deliciousness to toil; and no toil is so burdensome as the rest of him who has nothing to task and quicken his powers.

LABOR.–ORVILLE DEWEY.

LABOR is heaven's great ordinance for human improvement. Let not the great ordinance be broken down. What do I say? It is broken down; and it has been broken down for ages. Let it, then, be built again; here, if anywhere, on the shores of a new world-of a new civilization.

But how, it may be asked, is it broken down? Do not men toil ? it may be said. They do, indeed, toil; but they too gene