24. LAUS DEO.

Ir is done!

Clang of bell and roar of gun Send the tidings up and down. How the belfreys rock and reel, How the great guns, peal on peal, Fling the joy from town to town!

Ring, O bells!

Every stroke exulting tells Of the burial hour of crime.

Loud and long, that all may hear,

Ring for every listening ear Of Eternity and Time!

Let us kneel;

God's own voice is in that peal, And this spot is holy ground. Lord, forgive us! What are we, That our eyes this glory see,

That our ears have heard the sound?

For the Lord

On the whirlwind is abroad; In the earthquake he hath spoken; He has smitten with his thunder The iron walls asunder,

And the gates of brass are broken!

Did we dare,

In our agony of prayer,

Ask for more than He has done?

When was ever His right hand,
Over any time or land,

Stretched as now, beneath the sun?

It is done!

In the circuit of the sun
Shall the sound thereof go forth;
It shall bid the sad rejoice,

It shall give the dumb a voice,
It shall belt with joy the earth!

Ring and swing,

Bells of joy! On morning's wing Send the song of praise abroad; With a sound of broken chains, Tell the Nations that He reigns,

Who alone is Lord and God!

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

25. OUR HERITAGE.

WHAT doth the poor man's son inherit?
Stout muscles and a sinewy heart,

A hardy frame, a hardier spirit;
King of two hands, he does his part
In every useful toil and art:

A heritage, it seems to me,
A king might wish to hold in fee.

What doth the poor man's son inherit?
Wishes o'erjoyed with humble things,
A rank adjudged by toil-worn merit,
Content that from employment springs,
A heart that in his labor sings:

A heritage, it seems to me,
A king might wish to hold in fee.

What doth the poor man's son inherit?

A patience learned of being poor; Courage, if sorrow come, to bear it; A fellow-feeling that is sure

To make the outcast bless his door: A heritage, it seems to me,

A king might wish to hold in fee.

O rich man's son! there is a toil
That with all others level stands;
Large charity doth never soil,

But only whitens, soft white hands;
This is the best crop from thy lands:
A heritage, it seems to me,

A king might wish to hold in fee.

O poor man's son! scorn not thy state;
There is worse weariness than thine,

In merely being rich and great

Toil only gives the soul to shine,
And makes rest fragrant and benign:

A heritage, it seems to me,

Worth being poor to hold in fee.

Both, heirs to some six feet of sod,
Are equal in the earth at last;
Both, children of the same dear God,
Prove title to your heirship vast
By record of a well-filled past:

A heritage, it seems to me,
Well worth a life, to hold in fee.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

26. THE ROMAN SENATE AND THE

AMERICAN CONGRESS.

From Address of Louis KOSSUTH, Ex-Governor of Hungary, before the Congress of the United States, in 1851.

As once Cineas of Epirus stood among the senators of Rome, who, with a word of conscious authority and majesty, arrested kings in their ambitious march, thus full of admiration and of reverence, I stand before you, legislators of the new capitol, that glorious hall of your people's collected majesty. The capitol of old yet stands, but the spirit has departed from it and has come over to yours, purified by the air of liberty. The old stands, a mournful monument of the fragility of human things; yours, as a sanctuary of eternal rights.

The old beamed with the red lustre of conquest, darkened by the gloom of oppression; yours is bright with freedom. The old absorbed the world into its own centralized glory; yours protects your own nation from being absorbed even by itself. The old was awful with unrestricted power; yours is glorious by having restricted it. At the view of the old, nations trembled; at the view of yours, humanity hopes. To the old, misfortune was introduced with fettered hands, to kneel at triumphant conquerors' feet; to yours, the triumph of introduction is granted to the unfortunate exiles who are invited to the honor of a seat. And, where kings and Cæsars never will be hailed for their power and wealth, there the persecuted chief of a down-trodden people is welcomed as your great Republic's guest, precisely because he is persecuted, helpless, and poor. In the old, the terrible va victis, "woe to the conquered."

27. THE PATRIOT PRESIDENT.

Extract from MARK LEMON's Tribute to Abraham Lincoln, in the London "Punch."

How humble, yet how hopeful he could be!
How in good fortune and in ill the same!
Nor bitter in success nor boastful he,

Thirsty for gold, nor feverish for fame.
He went about his work such work as few
Ever had laid on head and heart and hand
As one who knows where there's a task to do,
Man's honest will must Heaven's good grace command.

So went he forth to battle, on the side

That he felt clear was Liberty's and Right's,

As in his peasant boyhood he had plied

His warfare with rude Nature's warring mights.

The uncleared forest, the unbroken soil,

The iron bark that turns the lumb'rer's axe, The rapid that o'erbears the boatman's toil,

The prairie hiding the mazed wanderer's tracks,
The ambushed Indian, and the prowling bear,-

Such were the needs that helped his youthful train :
Rough culture, but such trees large fruit may bear,
If but their stocks be of right girth and grain.

So he grew up,

a destined work to do,
And lived to do it, four long-suffering years;
Ill fate, ill feeling, ill report lived through,
And then he heard the hisses change to cheers,
The taunts to tributes, the abuse to praise,

And took both with the same unwavering mood;
Till, as he came on light, from darkening days,

And seemed to touch the goal from where he stood,