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Each gallant arm that strikes below
That lovely messenger of death.

4. Flag of the seas! on ocean wave

Thy stars shall glitter o'er the brave,
When Death, careering on the gale,
Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail,
And frighted waves rush wildly back,
Before the broadside's reeling rack;
Each dying wanderer of the sea
Shall look at once to heaven and thee,
And smile to see thy splendors fly,
In triumph o'er his closing eye.

. Flag of the free heart's hope and home,
By angel hands to valor given!

Thy stars have lit the welkin dome,

And all thy hues were born in heaven.
Forever float that standard sheet!

Where breathes the foe but falls before us,
With Freedom's soil beneath our feet,

And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us?
J. R. DRAKE.

JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE, author of "The Culprit Fay," was born in the city o New York, on the 7th of August, 1795. He entered Columbia College at an early period, through which he passed with a reputation for scholarship, taste, and admirable social qualities. He soon after made choice of the medical profession, and completed his professional studies in his native city. Immediately after he was married to Miss SARAH ECKFORD, a daughter of the noted marine architect, HENRY ECKFORD, through whom he inherited a moderate fortune. His health, about the same time, began to decline; and in the winter of 1819 he visited New Orleans. He had anticipated some benefit from the sea-voyage and the mild climate of Louisiana, but was disappointed, and in the spring of 1820, he returned to New York. His disease-consumption-had now become deeply seated. He lingered through the summer, and died near the close of September, in the twenty-sixth year of his age. He began to write verses when very young, and was a contributor to several gazettes before he was sixteen years old. The secrets of his authorship, however, were only known to his most intimate friends. His longest poem, "The Culprit Fay," was composed in the summer of 1819, though it was not printed until several years after his death. It exhibits the most delicate fancy, and much artistic taste. DRAKE placed a very modest estimate on his own productions, and it is thought that but a small portion of them has been preserved. A collection of them appeared in 1836. It includes, be sides "The Culprit Fay," eighteen short pieces, some of which are very war tiful.

54. WASHINGTON AND NAPOLEON.

one, in tracing the history of our struggle, can deny that Providence watched over our interests, and gave us the only man who could have conducted the car of the Revolution to the goal it finally reached. Our Revolution brought to a speedy crisis the one that must sooner or later have convulsed France. One was as much needed as the other, and has been productive of equal good.

2. But in tracing the progress of each, how striking is the contrast between the instruments employed-Napoleon' and Washington! Heaven and earth are not wider apart than were their moral characters, yet bōth were sent of Heaven to perform a great work. God acts on more enlarged plans than the bigoted and ignorant have any conception of, and adapts his instruments to the work he wishes to accomplish.

3. To effect the regeneration of a comparatively religious, virtuous, and intelligent people, no better man could have been selected than Washington. To rend asunder the feudal system of Europe, which stretched like an iron frame-work over the people, and had rusted so long in its place, that no slow corrosion or steadily wasting power could effect its firmness, there could have been found no better than Bonaparte.

4. Their missions were as different as their characters. Had

'NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, first emperor of the French, one of the greatest of warriors and statesmen, was born at Ajaccio, in Corsica, on the 5th of February, 1768, and died a prisoner, on the island of St. Helena, May 5th, 1821. From thence his remains were, in December, 1841. translated to Paris, where, on the 15th of that month, they were interred in a mausoleum under the dome of the Invalids.- GEORGE WASHINGTON, Commander-in-chief of the army of independence during the American Revolution, first President of the United States, styled the "Father of his Country," was born in Westmoreland, in the State of Virginia, on the 22d of February, 1732. He retired from public life in 1796, and died on the 14th of December, 1799, leaving a reputation without a stain.- Feudal system, a system by which a kingdom or country was divided into different portions, among the chiefs or companions of the monarch, with the right of subdividing their respective portions among their immediate followers. The monarch was called the liege-lord, and his dependents, vassals or feudatories.

Bonaparte been put in the place of Washington, he would have overthrown the Congress, as he did the Directory,' and taking supreme power into his hands, developed the resources and kindled the enthusiasm of this country with such astonishing rapidity, that the war would scarcely have begun ere it was ended. But a vast and powerful monarchy, instead of a repub lic, would have occupied this continent. Had Washington been put in the place of Bonaparte, his transcendent virtues and unswerving integrity would not have prevailed against the tyranny of faction, and a prison would have received him, as it did Lafayette.

5. Both were children of a revolution, both rose to the chief command of the army, and eventually to the head of the nation. One led his country step by step to freedom and prosperity; the other arrested at once, and with a strong hand, the earthquake that was rocking France asunder, and sent it rolling under the thrones of Europe. The office of one was to defend and build up Liberty; that of the other to break down the prison walls in which it lay a captive, and rend asunder its century-bound fetters.

6. To suppose that France could have been managed as America was, by any human hand, shows an ignorance as blind as it is culpable. That, and every other country of Europe, will have to pass through successive stages before they can reach the point at which our revolution commenced. Here Liberty needed virtue and patriotism, as well as strength; on the Continent it needed simple power-concentrated and terrible power. Europe at this day trembles over that volcano Napoleon kindled, and the next eruption will finish what he began. Thus does Heaven, selecting its own instruments, break up the systems of oppression men deemed eternal, and out of the power and ambition, as wel. as out of the virtues of men, work the welfare of our race.

J. T. HEADLEY.

'Di rect' o ry, a form of government adopted in France during the revolution, in which the executive power was vested in five persons.

LAFAYETTE (laf à yêt'), a French nobleman, one of the most illustrious names in the annals of modern history, was born in 1757. He aided the Americans in their revolutionary war. He held several offices in France; and though unfortunate during the French revolution, was ever a faithful advocate of constitutional liberty. He died in 1834.

J. T. HEADLEY was born on the 13th of December, 1814, at Walton, in New York, where his father was settled as a clergyman. He commenced his studies with the law in view, but changed his plan, and after graduating at Union College, became a student of theology at Auburn. He was licensed in New York, and offered a church in that city; but his health not permitting, he took charge of a small church in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. After two years and a half he planned a European tour and residence for the recovery of his health. He went to Italy in the summer of 1842, where he remained about eight months, traveled some time in Switzerland, passed through Germany and the Netherlands, went into Belgium, thence to France, then over England and Wales, and finally home, having been absent less than two years. His health being worse, he gave up his profession, and turned his attention to literature. His first work, a translation from the German, appeared anonymously in 1844. In the following year he gave to the press "Letters from Italy, the Alps, and the Rhine," and in 1846, "Napoleon and his Marshals," and "The Sacred Mountains." He has shown his capacity to write an agreeable book, and to write a popular one. His Letters from Italy is a work upon which a man of taste will delight to linger. The style is natural, familiar, and idiomatic. It approaches the animation, variety, and ease of spoken language. His later works appear to have been written more for popularity and effect than to satisfy literary men's ideas of excellence. Mr. HEADLEY is at present Secretary of State, in the State of New York.

1.

55. NAPOLEON AND THE SPHINX.

ENEATH him stretch'd the sands of Egypt's burning lands,
The desert panted to the sweltering ray;

The camel's plashing feet, with slow, uneasy beat,
Threw up the scorching dust like ǎrrowy spray,
And fierce the sunlight glow'd, as young Napoleon rode
Around the Gallic camp, companionless that day.

2. High thoughts were in his mind, unspoken to his kind;
Calm was his face-his eyes were blank and chill;
His thin lips were compress'd: the secrets of his breast
Those portals never pass'd, for good or ill;

And dreaded-yet adored his hand upon his sword,
He mused on Destiny, to shape it to his will.

3. "Ye haughty Pyramids! thou Sphinx! whose eyeless lids On my presumptuous youth seem bent in scorn,

1Sphinx, a monster both in Grecian and Egyptian mythology, usually represented with the body of a lion and the face of a young woman. The Grecian sphinx was cruel and bloodthirsty, proposing riddles to the passers-by, whom she devoured if they could not explain them. The

What though thou hast stood coëval' with the flood

Of all earth's monuments the earliest born; And I so mean and small, with armies at my call,

Am recent in thy sight as grass of yester-morn!

4. "Yet in this soul of mine is strength as great as thine,
O duil-eyed Sphinx, that wouldst despise me now;
Is grandeur like thine own, O melancholy stone,
With forty centuries fùrrow'd on thy brow:

Deep in my heart I feel what time shall yet reveal,
That I shall tower o'er men, as o'er these deserts thou.

5. "I shall upbuild a name of never-dying fame,

My deeds shall fill the world with their renown:
To all succeeding years, the populous hemispheres
Shall pass the record of my glories down;

And nations yet to be, surging from Time's deep sea,
Shall teach their babes the name of great Napoleon.

6. "On History's deathless page, from wondering age to age,
New light and reverence o'er that name shall glow.
My deeds already done, are histories begun,

Whose great conclusion centuries shall not know.
O melancholy Sphinx! Present with Future links,
And both shall yet be mine. I feel it as I go!"

7. Over the mighty chief a shadow came of grief.
The lips gigantic seem'd to move, and say—
"Know'st thou his name that bid arise yon Pyramid?
Know'st thou who paced me where I stand to-day
Thy deeds are but as sand, strewn on the heedless land:
Think, little mortal, think! and pass upon thy way!

8. "Pass, little mortal, pass! grow like the vernal
The autumn sickle shall destroy thy prime.

grass

Egyptian sphinx is the figure of a lion, without wings, in a lying attitude, the upper part of the body being that of a human being. The sphinxes appear in Egypt to have been set up in avenues forming the approaches to temples. A colossal image of the sphinx has been discovered near the group of pyramids at Gheezeh, in Egypt.-1 Co è' val, existing at the same time; of the same age.

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