PART III. OUR FATHERS AND THEIR HOMES. 1. OLD ENGLAND. NURSE of the Pilgrim sires who sought, Beyond th' Atlantic's foam, For fearless truth and honest thought A refuge and a home, Who would not be of them or thee That hears amid the chained or free Cradle of Shakspeare, Milton, Knox, No! by the Eliots, Hampdens, Vanes, No for the blood which kings have gorged While every lie that Fraud hath forged But time shall change the despot's mood; And monsters into men. 1 Eminent friends of liberty. See Vocabulary. If round the soul the chains are bound Lord, let not Britain arm her hands But bless through her all other States, For freedom if thy Hampden fought; For peace and love if Bentham wrote, EBENEZER ELIOT. 2. ERIN AND THE DAYS OF OLD. MALACHI, monarch of Ireland in the tenth century, is reported to have taken a gold collar from the neck of a Danish champion of an invading army. At that time the Red Knights flourished, claiming to have occupied Ulster before the time of Christ. The round towers referred to by the poet still remain, scattered through Ireland; and according to ancient legends, the waters of Lough Neagh, once a fountain, revealed other towers when the waters were placid. LET Erin remember the days of old, When her kings, with standard of green unfurled, Ere the emerald gem of the western world On Lough Neagh's banks, as the fisherman strays THOMAS MOORE. 3. OUR RELATIONS WITH ENGLAND. WHAT reflecting American does not acknowledge the incalculable advantages derived to this land out of the deep foundations of civil, moral, and intellectual truth from which we have drawn in England? What American does not feel proud that his fathers were the countrymen of Bacon, of Newton, and of Locke? Who does not know that every pulse of civil liberty in the heart of our ancestors, the sobriety, the firmness, and the dignity with which the cause of free principles came into existence here, constantly found encouragement from the friends of Liberty there? For myself, I can truly say that, after my native land, I feel a strong reverence for that of my fathers. The pride I take in my own country makes me respect that from which we sprang. The sound of my native language beyond the sea is a music to my ears beyond the richest strains of Tuscan softness or Castilian majesty. I tread with reverence the spots where I can retrace the footsteps of our suffering fathers. The pleasant land of their birth has a claim on my heart. It seems to me a classic, yea, a holy land; rich in the memory of the great and the good, the champions and the martyrs of Liberty, the exiled heralds of truth, and richer, as the parent of this land of promise in the west. I am not the panegyrist of England. I am not dazed by her riches, nor awed by her power. Nor is my admiration awakened by her armies, mustered for the battles of Europe; her navies overshadowing the ocean; nor her empire grasping the farthest East. It is these, and the price of guilt and blood by which they are too often maintained, which are the causes why no friend of Liberty can salute her with undivided affections. But it is the cradle and the refuge of free principles, though often persecuted; the school of religious liberty, the more precious for the struggles through which it has passed; the tombs of those who have reflected honor upon all who speak the English language; the birthplace of our fathers; the home of the Pilgrims, it is these which I love and venerate in England. I should feel ashamed of an enthusiasm for Italy and Greece, did I not also feel it for a land like this. In an American, it would seem to me degenerate and unthankful to hang with rapture and passion upon the traces of Homer and Virgil, and follow, without emotion, the nearer and plainer footsteps of Shakspeare and Milton. I should think him cold in his love for his native land, who felt no melting in his heart for that other native country which holds the ashes of his forefathers. EDWARD EVERETT. 4. NEW ENGLAND. HAIL to the land whereon we tread, The sepulchre of mighty dead, The truest hearts that ever bled, Who sleep on glory's brightest bed, A fearless host! No slave is here, -our unchained feet Our fathers crossed the ocean's wave They left behind the coward slave, Such toils as meaner souls had quelled; Hail to the morn when first they stood And, fearless, stemmed the invading flood, And mowed in ranks the hireling brood, |