Night, at its pulseless noon! When the far voice of waters mourns in song, Hark! how it sweeps away, As if some sprite of sound went wandering by, Swell, swell in glory out! Thy tones come pouring on my leaping heart, O! have ye heard that peal, From sleeping city's moon-bathed battlements, Or have ye in the roar Of sea, or storm, or battle, heard it rise, Go, go-no other sound, No music that of air or earth is born, 113.- -A HEALTH. MELLEN. I FILL this cup to one made up of loveliness alone, To whom the better elements and kindly stars have given A form so fair, that, like the air, 'tis less of earth than heaven. Her every tone is music's own, like those of morning birds, And something more than melody dwells ever in her words; The coinage of her heart are they, and from her lips each flows As one may see the burden'd bee forth issue from the rose Affections are as thoughts to her, the measure of her hours, Her feelings have the fragrance and the freshness of young flowers; And lonely passions changing oft, so fill her, she appears The image of themselves by turns-the idol of past years. Of her bright face one glance will trace a picture on the brain, And of her voice in echoing hearts a sound must long remain ; But memory such as mine of her so very much endears, When death is nigh, my latest sigh will not be life's, but hers. I fill this cup to one made up of loveliness alone, Her health and would on earth there stood some more of such a frame, That life might be all poetry, and weariness a name. PINKNEY. 114.-EXTRACT FROM MR. WEBSTER'S SPEECH, at the DINNER IN HONOUR OF THE MEMORY OF WASHINGTON, IN THE CITY OF WASHINGTON, FEBRUARY 22, 1832. I RISE, gentlemen, to propose to you the name of that great man, in commemoration of whose birth, and in honour of whose character and services, we have here assembled. I am sure that I express a sentiment common to every one present when I say, that there is something more than ordinarily solemn and affecting on this occasion. We are met to testify our regard for him, whose name is intimately blended with whatever belongs most essentially to the prosperity, the liberty, the free institutions, and the renown of our country. That name was of power to rally a nation, in the hour of thick-thronging public disasters and calamities; that name shone, amid the storm of war, a beacon light, to cheer and guide the country's friends; its flame, too, like a meteor, to repel her foes. That name, in the days of peace, was a loadstone, attract ing to itself a whole people's confidence, a whole people's love, and the whole world's respect; that name, descending with all time, spread over the whole earth, and uttered in all the languages belonging to the tribes and races of men, will for ever be pronounced with affectionate gratitude by every one in whose breast there shall arise an aspiration for human rights and human liberty. We perform this grateful duty, gentlemen, at the expiration of a hundred years from his birth, near the place so cherished and beloved by him, where his dust now reposes, and in the capital which bears his own immortal name. are All experience evinces, that human sentiments strongly affected by associations. The recurrence of anniversaries, or of longer periods of time, naturally freshens the recollection, and deepens the impression of events with which they are historically connected. Renowned places, also, have a power to awaken feeling, which all acknowledge. No American can pass by the fields of Bunker Hill, Monmouth, or Camden, as if they were ordinary spots on the earth's surface. Whoever visits them feels the sentiment of love of country kindling anew, as if the spirit that belonged to the transactions which have rendered these places distinguished still hovered round with power to move and excite all who in future time may approach them. But neither of these sources of emotion equals the power with which great moral examples affect the mind. When sublime virtues cease to be abstractions, when they become imbodied in human character, and exemplified in human conduct, we should be false to our own nature, if we did not indulge in the spontaneous effusions of our gratitude and our admiration. A true lover of the virtue of patriotism delights to contemplate its purest models; and that love of country may be well suspected which affects to soar so high into the regions of sentiment as to be lost and absorbed in the abstract feeling, and becomes too elevated, or too refined, to glow either with power in the commendation or the love of individual benefactors. All this is immaterial. It is as if one should be so enthusiastic a lover of poetry as to care nothing for Homer or Milton; so passionately attached to eloquence as to be indifferent to Tully and Chatham; or such a devotee to the arts, in such an ecstasy with the elements of beauty, proportion, and expression, as to regard the master pieces of Raphael and Michael Angelo with coldness or contempt. We may be assured, gentlemen, that he who really loves the thing itself, loves its finest exhibitions. A true friend of his country loves her friends and benefactors, and thinks it no degradation to commend and commemorate them. The voluntary out-pouring of public feeling made to-day, from the north to the south, and from the east to the west, proves this sentiment to be both just and natural. In the cities and in the villages, in the public temples and in the family circles, among all ages and sexes, gladdened voices, to-day, bespeak grateful hearts, and a freshened recollection of the virtues of the father of his country. And it will be so, in all time to come, so long as public virtue is itself an object of regard. The ingenuous youth of America will hold up to themselves the bright model of Washington's example, and study to be what they behold; they will contemplate his character till all its virtues spread out and display themselves to their delighted vision, as the earliest astronomers, the shepherds on the plains of Babylon, gazed at the stars till they saw them form into clusters and constellations, overpowering at length the eyes of the beholders, with the united blaze of a thousand lights. Gentlemen, we are at the point of a century from the birth of Washington; and what a century it has been! During its course the human mind has seemed to proceed with a sort of geometric velocity, accomplishing more than had been done in fives or tens of centuries preceding. Washington stands at the commencement of a new era, as well as at the head of the new world. A century from the birth of Washington has changed the world. The country of Washington has been the theatre on which a great part of that change has been wrought; and Washington himself a principal agent by which it has been accomplished. His age and his country are equally full of wonders, and of both he is the chief. If the prediction of the poet, uttered a few years before his birth, be true; if indeed it be designed by Providence that the proudest exhibition of human character and human affairs shall be made on this theatre of the western worle 'f be true that "The first four acts already past, A fifth shall close the drama with the day; how could this imposing, swelling, final scene be appropriately opened; how could its intense interest be adequately sustained, but by the introduction of just such a character as our Washington? Washington had attained his manhood when that spark of liberty was struck out in his own country, which has since kindled into a flame, and shot its beams over the earth. In the flow of a century from his birth, the world has changed in science, in arts, in the extent of commerce, in the improvement of navigation, and in all that relates to the civilization of man. But it is the spirit of human freedom, the new elevation of individual man, in his moral, social, and political character, leading the whole long train of other improvements, which has most remarkably distinguished the era. Society, in this century, has not made its progress, like Chinese skill, by a greater acuteness of ingenuity in trifles; it has not merely lashed itself to an increased speed round the old circles of thought and action, but it has assumed a new character, it has raised itself from beneath governments, to a participation in governments; it has mixed moral and political objects with the daily pursuits of individual men, and, with a freedom and strength before altogether unknown, it has applied to these objects the whole power of the human understanding. It has been the era, in short, when the social principle has triumphed over the feudal principle; when society has maintained its rights against military power, and established, on foundations never hereafter to be shaken, its competency to govern itself. WEBSTER. 115.--EXTRACT FROM MR. HAYNE'S SPEECH ON THE TARIFF BILL, IN CONGRESS, JANUARY, 1832. MR. PRESIDENT, The plain and seemingly obvious truth, that in a fair and equal exchange of commodities all parties gained, is a noble discovery of modern times. The contrary principle naturally led to commercial rivalries, wars, and abuses of all sorts. The benefits of commerce |