O! come with us, and come with him, the husband of thy daughter; O come with us, and come with them, the sister and the brother, Who, prattling, climb thine aged knees, and call thy daughtermother." "Ah! go, my children, go away—obey this inspiration; Go, with the mantling hopes of health and youthful expecta tion; Go, clear the forests, climb the hills, and plough the expectant prairies; Go, in the sacred name of God, and the Blessed Virgin Mary's. "But though I feel how sharp the pang from thee and thine to sever, To look upon these darling ones the last time and for ever; "A thousand fibres still have life, although the trunk is dying— They twine around the yet green grave where thy father's bones are lying; Ah! from that sad and sweet embrace no soil on earth can loose 'em, Though golden harvests gleam on its breast, and golden sands in its bosom. "Others are twined around the stone, where ivy blossoms smother The crumbling lines that trace thy names, my father and my mother; God's blessing be upon their souls-God grant, my old heart prayeth, Their names be written in the Book whose writing ne'er decayeth. "Alas! my prayers would never warm within those great cold buildings, Those grand cathedral churches, with their marbles and their gildings; Far fitter than the proudest dome that would hang in splendor o'er me, Is the simple chapel's white-washed wall, where my people knelt before me. "No doubt it is a glorious land to which you now are going, Like that which God bestowed of old, with milk and honey flowing; But where are the blessed saints of God, whose lives of his law remind me, Like Patrick, Brigid, and Columbkille, in the land I'd leave behind me? "So leave me here, my children, with my old ways and old notions; Leave me here in peace, with my memories and devotions; Leave me in sight of your father's grave, and as the heavens allied us. Let not, since we were joined in life, even the grave divide us. "There's not a week but I can hear how you prosper better and better, For the mighty fireships o'er the sea will bring the expected letter; And if I need aught for my simple wants, my food or my winter firing, Thou'lt gladly spare from thy growing store a little for my requiring. "Remember with a pitying love the hapless land that bore you; At every festal season be its gentle form before you ; When the Christmas candle is lighted, and the holly and ivy glisten, Let your eye look back for a vanished face-for a voice that is silent, listen! "So go, my children, go away-obey this inspiration; Go, with the mantling hopes of health and youthful expecta tion; Go, clear the forests, climb the hills, and plough the expectant prairies; Go, in the sacred name of God, and the blessed Virgin Mary's." D. F. M'CARTHY. FOR 80. ENGLAND'S PRESENT. OR nearly two hundred years, until within the present century, she has not met her match on lake or ocean, gun to gun and man to man—and certainly not yet among the nations of Europe. 2. She has consequently rested for ages secure from the devastations of war. Since the Norman invasion nc hostile foreign force has found footing on her shores. The jutting cliff which she presents as her nearest point to Europe, "That pale and white-faced shore, Whose foot spurns back the raging ocean's tides," is typical of the defensive power of this island people. But her power, beyond her own rock-bound coast, is on the sea alone : "Her march is on the mountain wave, Her home is on the deep;" and though there, on her own proper element, she is all-powerful, yet on land, in the wars of Europe, she has, except in two memorable instances, acted but a secondary part. 3. Her merchant and coasting ships employ great numbers of sailors, and out of these she supplies abundantly her navy with men whose lives have been on the ocean, and who know no home but the deck. She never lacks sailors. 4. But her miners and manufacturers, who live and work under shelter, are not fit for service in the open field; and her agricultural laborers have no taste for military adventure. Shakspeare, with his instinctive appreciation of character, gives in the second part of his King Henry IV. a just measure of the military predilection of the English boor. 5. His Mouldy and Bull Calf may be fairly taken, then and at the present time, as representatives of the class to which they belong. When drafted as soldiers, one begs to be released, for if he go, "his old dame will be undone for some one to do her husbandry and her drudgery;" and the other "would as lief be hanged as to go." 6. And at no time, down to the present day, has the British peasant panted for the tented field, or been eager to advance to "the imminent deadly breach." He has always preferred, and still prefers, his old dame's "husbandry and drudg. ery," with the home comforts of the English cottage, to the laurels to be won, and the limbs to be lost, at Waterloo or Sebastopol. For his "own part, he would as lief be hanged. as to go." 7. Ireland has supplied much the larger contingent of soldiers for the British service. Her sons have been starved into the ranks of the army; and there is more truth than poetry in the doggerel triplet of Daniel O'Connell : "At famous Waterloo, Duke Wellington would have looked blue, If Paddy had not been there too." But Irishmen, though fond of war, have no love for the British service. They enter it only from necessity; and since the natural increase has been kept down by emigration, the ranks of the army can no longer be filled in Ireland. 8. Great Britain, therefore, cannot raise an army for conti nental service; but has been compelled to resort to the em ployment of foreign troops, and to enlistments in foreign countries. Her necessities drove her to try even ours; and with all her boundless wealth, and with the spindles which conquered Buonaparte quadrupled, she is able to bear but an nferior part in the present conflict of mighty nations. war. 9. It is evident, therefore, that Great Britain, powerful as she is on the ocean, is comparatively feeble everywhere off her own soil, and out of the range of the guns of her men-of"Her home is on the deep." There, too, was the home of her predecessors, Tyre, and Carthage, and Venice. Like them in the days of their prosperity, she has foreign possessions quite disproportioned to the power of her own people; and like them she must trust to foreign mercenaries to defend those possessions, and to hold them in subjection. 10. Besides her inability to raise men, her military arm is paralyzed by a vice inherent in her system. Her armies are not well officered. Commissions, up to a certain grade, are the subject of purchase and sale, not the reward of merit. By this the morale of the army suffers, and that too even to the highest in command; for the General-in-Chief himself, if he have military experience, must be selected from those who have bought their way, instead of those who have fought their way, to high military rank. 11. Her soldiers are as brave as any on the face of the earth; but all who have attended to the details of the war in the Crimea, must have felt the great superiority of the French over the English organization and command. The French commissariat has from the first been better; their medical staff better; their corps of engineers better; and fewer mistakes have been committed by their officers. 12. All this is perceived and felt, and the proud spirit of the British nation is wounded and revolts at the contrast; and the ministry is censured for what is inherent in the system, and not under their control. Great Britain had in times past |