2.

THE GRAVES OF THE PATRIOTS.

Theirs is no vulgar sepulchre-green sods
Are all their monument, and yet it tells
A nobler history than pillar'd piles,
Or the eternal pyramids.

They need

No statue nor inscription to reveal

Their greatness. It is round them; and the joy
With which their children tread the hallow'd ground
That holds their venerated bones, the peace

237

That smiles on all they fought for, and the wealth
That clothes the land they rescued,-these, though mute
As feeling ever is when deepest-these

Are monuments more lasting than the fanes
Rear'd to the kings and demigods of old.

3. Touch not the ancient elms, that bend their shade
Over their lowly graves; beneath their boughs
There is a solemn darkness even at noon,
Suited to such as visit at the shrine
Of serious Liberty. No factious voice
Call'd them unto the field of generous fame,
But the pure consecrated love of home.
No deeper feeling sways us, when it wakes
In all its greatness. It has told itself
To the astonish'd gaze of awe-struck kings,
At Marathon,' at Bannockburn, and here,
Where first our patriots sent the invader back
Broken and cow'd. Let these green elms be all
To tell us where they fought, and where they lie.

4. Their feelings were all nature, and they need

No art to make them known. They live in us,

Mår' a thon, a hamlet, small river, and plain of Greece, government of Attica. The hamlet is 18 miles N. E. of Athens. The plain, bounded S. by Mount Pentelicus, is renowned for the victory of Miltiades over the army of Xerxes, B. c. 490. —a Bån′ nock burn, a town of Scotland, famous for the great victory gained here 24th of June, 1314, by the Scots, under Bruce, over the English, commanded by Edward II., and his generals

5.

While we are like them, simple, hardy, bold,
Worshiping nothing but our own pure hearts,
And the one universal Lord. They need
No column pointing to the heaven they sought,
To tell us of their home. The heart itself,
Left to its own free purpose, hastens there,
And there alone reposes.

Let these elms
Bend their protecting shadow o'er their graves,
And build with their green roof the only fane,
Where we may gather on the hållōw'd day
That rose to them in blood, and set in glōry.
Here let us meet, and while our motionless lips
Give not a sound, and all around is mute
In the deep Sabbath of a heart too full

For words or tears-here let us strew the sod
With the first flowers of spring, and make to them
An offering of the plenty Nature gives,

And they have render'd ours-perpetually.

J. G. PERCIVAL.

JAMES GATES PERCIVAL, the poet, was born in Berlin, near Hartford, in Connecticut, on the 15th of September, 1795. He entered Yale College when fifteen years of age, and graduated in 1815, with the reputation of being the first scholar of his class. From Yale Medical School, in 1820, he received the degree of Dr of Medicine. He wrote verses at an early age, and in his fourteenth year produced an able satire. He composed “Zamor, a Tragedy," while in college He first appeared before the public, as an author, in 1821, when he published some minor poems, and the first part of his " Prometheus," which at once attracted attention, and was favorably noticed by EDWARD EVERETT, in the N. A. Review. In 1822 he published two volumes of miscellaneous poems and prose writings, entitled "Clio," and the second part of "Prometheus," the latter of which is a poem containing nearly four hundred stanzas, in the Spenserian measure. An edition of his principal poetical writings soon after appeared in New York, and was republished in London. He was appointed assistant surgeon in the U. S. army in 1824, and acted as Professor of Chemistry in the Military Academy at West Point. The duties of his office infringing too much upon his favorite studies, after a few months he resigned his commission. The third volume of "Clio" appeared in New York early in 1827. For two years subsequent he superintended the printing of the first quarto edition of Dr. WEBSTER'S American Dictionary, a situation for which his ripe scholarship, and critical acquaintance with ancient and modern languages, rendered him eminently qualified. In 1835 he was employed by the government of Connecticut to make a geological survey of that State, an elaborate and very able report of which was printed in 1842. While engaged in these duties he published poetical translations from eleven modern languages, and wrote a portion of "The

Freclome

PROGRESS OF FREEDOM.

239

In 1854 he was ap

Few men possessed

Dream of Day and other Poems," which appeared in 1813 pointed State Geologist of Wisconsin. He died in 1856. higher poetical qualities than PERCIVAL. His learning was comprehensive and thorough. He had a rich imagination, a remarkable command of language, and wrote with a facility rarely equaled; but he shrunk from the labor of thoroughly revising his writings, and giving them the polished excellence that can only be attained by a slow and laborious process.

VA

68. PROGRESS OF FREEDOM.

ARIOUS have been the efforts in the Old World at popular forms of government, but, from some cause or other, they have failed; and however time, a wider intercourse, a greater familiarity with the practical duties of representation, and, not least of all, our own auspicious example, may prepare the Euro. pe'an mind for the possession of republican freedom, it is věry certain that, at the present moment, Europe is not the place for republics.

2. The true soil for these is our own continent, the New World. This is the spot on which the beautiful theories of the Europe'an philosopher-who had risen to the full freedom of speculation, while action was controled-have been reduced to practice. The atmosphere here seems as fatal to the arbitrary institutions of the Old World as that has been to the democratic

forms of our own. It seems scarcely possible that any other organization than these latter should exist here.

3. In three centuries from the discovery of the country, the various races by which it is tenanted-some of them from the least liberal of the Europe'an monarchies-have, with few exceptions, come into the adoption of institutions of a republican character. Toleration, civil and religious, has been proclaimed, and enjoyed to an extent unknown since the world began, throughout the wide borders of this vast continent. Alas for those portions which have assumed the exercise of these rights without fully comprehending their import-who have been intoxicated with the fumes of freedom, instead of drawing noŭrishment from its living principle!

4. It was fortunate, or, to speak more properly, a providential thing, that the discovery of the New World was postponed to

the precise period when it occurred. Had it taken place at an earlier time during the flourishing period of the feudal ages, for example-the old institutions of Europe, with their hallowed abuses, might have been ingrafted on this new stock, and, instead of the fruit of the tree of life, we should have furnished only varieties of a kind already far exhausted and hastening to decay.

5. But, happily, some important discoveries in science, and, above all, the glorious Reformation, gave an electric shock to the intellect, long benumbed under the influence of a tyrannical priesthood. It taught men to distrust authority, to trace effects back to their causes, to search for themselves, and to take no guide but the reason which God had given them. It taught them to claim the right of free inqui'ry as their inalienable birthright, and, with free inquiry, freedom of action. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the period of the mighty struggle between the conflicting elements of religion, as the eighteenth and nineteenth have been that of the great contest for civil liberty.

6. It was in the midst of this universal fer'ment, and in consequence of it, that these shores were first peopled by our Puritan ancestors. Here they found a world where they might verify the value of those theories which had been derided as visionary, or denounced as dangerous, in their own land. All around was free-free as nature herself: the mighty streams rolling on in their majesty, as they had continued to roll from the creation; the forests, which no hand had violated, flourishing in primeval grandeur and beauty-their only tenants the wild animals, or the Indians, nearly as wild, scarcely held together by any tie of social polity.

7. Nowhere was the trace of civilized man or of his curious contrivances. Here was no star-chamber nor court of high commission; no racks, nor jails, nor gibbets; no feudal tyrant, to grind the poor man to the dust on which he toiled; no inquisition, to pierce into the thought, and to make thought a crime. The only eye that was upon them was the eye of Heaven.

8. True, indeed, in the first heats of suffering enthusiasm, they did not extend that charity to others which they claimed for themselves. It was a blot on their characters, but one

which they share in common with most reformers. The zeal requisite for great revolutions, whether in Church or State, is rarely attended by charity for difference of opinion. Those who are willing to do and to suffer bravely for their own doctrines, attach a value to them which makes them impatient of opposition from others.

9. The martyr for conscience' sake can not comprehend the necessity of leniency to those who denounce those truths for which he is prepared to lay down his own life. If he set so little value on his own life, is it natural he should set more on that of others? The Dominican, who dragged his victims to the fires of the inquisition in Spain, freely gave up his ease and his life to the duties of a missionary among the heathen. The Jesuits, who suffered martyrdom among the American savages in the propagation of their faith, stimulated those věry savages to their horrid massacres of the Protestant settlements of New England. God has not often combined charity with enthusiasm. When he has done so, he has produced his noblest work-a More,' or a Fenelon.

10. But if the first settlers were intolerant in practice, they brought with them the living principle of freedom, which would survive when their generation had passed away. They could not avoid it; for their coming here was in itself an assertion of that principle. They came for conscience' sake-to worship God in their own way. Freedom of political institutions they at once avowed. Every citizen took his part in the political scheme, and enjoyed all the consideration of an equal participation in civil privileges; and liberty in political matters gradually brought with it a corresponding liberty in religious concerns.

SIR THOMAS MORE, author of "Utopia," able and profound in law and divinity, an illustrious statesman, was born in London, in 1480. Ju 1521 he was knighted and made treasurer of the exchequer. He became speaker of the House of Commons in 1523, and succeeded Wolsey, as Lord Chancellor, in 1529. Having refused to take an oath to maintain the lawfulness of the wicked marriage of Henry VIII. with Anne Boleyn, this virtuous man was condemned to death, and beheaded on the 6th of July, 1535.-2 FENELON, an eminent and pious Frenchman, Archbishop of Cambray, author of "Telemachus," was born in 1651, and died in the sixty third year of his age.