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And striped its pure celestial white,
With streakings from the morning light!
Then, from her mansion in the sun,
She called her eagle bearer down,
And gave into his mighty hand
The symbol of her chosen land!
Majestic monarch of the cloud!

Who rear'st aloft thy regal form,
To hear the tempest trumping loud,
And see the lightning lances driven,
When strides the warrior of the storm,
And rolls the thunder-drum of heaven!
Child of the sun! to thee 'tis given
To guard the banner of the free-
To hover in the sulphur smoke,
To ward away the battle-stroke,
And bid its blendings shine afar,
Like rainbows on the cloud of war,
The harbinger of victory!

Flag of the brave! thy folds shall fly,
The sign of hope and triumph high!
When speaks the signal trumpet's tone,
And the long line comes gleaming on;
Ere yet the life-blood, warm and wet,
Has dimm'd the glistening bayonet-
Each soldier's eye shall brightly turn,
To where thy meteor glories burn,
And as his springing steps advance,
Catch war and vengeance from the glance!
And when the cannon's mouthings loud,
Heave in wild wreaths the battle shroud,
And gory sabres rise and fall,
Like shoots of flame on midnight pall!
There shall thy victor glances glow,
And cowering foes shall fall beneath
Each gallant arm that strikes below
That lovely messenger of death!
Flag of the seas! on ocean's 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;
The dying wanderer of the sea
Shall look at once to heaven and thee,
And smile to see thy splendours fly,
In triumph o'er the closing eye.

Flag of the free heart's only home,
By angel hands to valour given !
Thy stars have lit the welkin dome
And all thy hues were born in heaven;
For ever 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!

DRAKE AND HALLECK.

148.-INFLUENCE OF GREAT ACTIONS DEPENDENT ON THEIR RESULTS.

GREAT actions and striking occurrences, having excited a temporary admiration, often pass away and are forgotten, because they leave no lasting results, affecting the prosperity of communities. Such is frequently the fortune of the most brilliant military achievements. Of the ten thousand battles which have been fought; of all the fields fertilized with carnage; of the banners which have been bathed in blood; of the warriors who have hoped that they had risen from the field of conquest to a glory as bright and as durable as the stars, how few that continue long to interest mankind! The victory of yesterday is reversed by the defeat of to-day; the star of military glory, rising like a meteor, like a meteor has fallen; disgrace and disaster hang on the heels of conquest and renown; victor and vanished presently pass away to oblivion, and the world holds on its course, with the loss, only, of so many lives, and so much treasure.

But if this is frequently, or generally, the fortune of military achievements, it is not always so. There are enterprises, military as well as civil, that sometimes check the current of events, give a new turn to human affairs, and transmit their consequences through ages. We see

their importance in their results, and call them great, because great things follow. There have been battles which have fixed the fate of nations. These come down to us in history with a solid and permanent influence, not created by a display of glittering armour, the rush of adverse battalions, the sinking and rising of pennons, the flight, the pursuit, and the victory; but by their effect in advancing or retarding human knowledge, in overthrowing or establishing despotism, in extending or destroying human happiness. When the traveller pauses on the plains. of Marathon, what are the emotions which strongly agitate his breast; what is that glorious recollection that thrills through his frame, and suffuses his eyes? Not, I imagine, that Grecian skill and Grecian valour were here most signally displayed; but that Greece herself was saved. It is because to this spot, and to the event which has rendered it immortal, he refers all the succeeding glories of the republic. It is because, if that day had gone otherwise, Greece had perished. It is because he perceives that her philosophers and orators, her poets and painters, her sculptors and architects, her government and free institutions, point backward to Marathon, and that their future existence seems to have been suspended on the contingency, whether the Persian or Grecian banner should wave victorious in the beams of that day's setting sun. And as his imagination kindles at the retrospect, he is transported back to the interesting moment: he counts the fearful odds of the contending hosts; his interests for the result overwhelms him ; he trembles as if it was still uncertain, and seems to doubt whether he may consider Socrates and Plato, Demosthenes, Sophocles, and Phidias, as secure, yet, to himself and to the world. WEBSTER.

149.-"A POLITICAL PAUSE."

"BUT we must pause!" says the honourable gentleman. What! must the bowels of Great Britain be torn out -her best blood be spilt her treasures wasted-that you may make an experiment? Put yourselves, O! that you would put yourselves on the field of battle, and learn to judge of the sort of horrors that you excite. In former

wars a man might, at least, have some feeling, some interest, that served to balance in his mind the impressions which a scene of carnage and of death must inflict.

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But if a man were present now at the field of slaughter, and were to inquire for what they were fighting,—“ Fighting!" would be the answer; they are not fighting; they are pausing." "Why is that man expiring? Why is that other writhing with agony? What means this implacable fury?" The answer must be," You are quite wrong, sir, you deceive yourself-they are not fightingdo not disturb them-they are merely pausing! This man is not expiring with agony-that man is not dead-he is only pausing! Lord help you, sir! they are not angry with one another: they have now no cause of quarrel; but their country thinks that there should be a pause. All that you see, sir, is nothing like fighting-there is no harm, nor cruelty, nor bloodshed in it, whatever; it is nothing more than a political pause! It is merely to try an experiment to see whether Bonaparte will not behave himself better than heretofore; and in the mean time we have agreed to a pause, in pure friendship!"

And is this the way, sir, that you are to show yourselves the advocates of order? You take up a system calculated to uncivilize the world-to destroy order-to trample on religion-to stifle in the heart, not merely the generosity of noble sentiment, but the affections of social nature; and in the prosecution of this system, you spread terror and devastation all around you. Fox.

150.-PREVALENCE OF WAR.

WAR is the law of violence. Peace the law of love. That law of violence prevailed without mitigation from the murder of Abel to the advent of the Prince of Peace.

We might have imagined, if history had not attested the reverse, that an experiment of four thousand years would have sufficed to prove, that the rational and valuable ends of society can never be attained, by constructing its institutions in conformity with the standard of war. But the sword and the torch had been eloquent in vain. A thousand battle-fields, white with the bones of brothers, were counted

as idle advocates in the cause of justice and humanity. Ten thousand cities, abandoned to the cruelty and licentiousness of the soldiery: and burnt, or dismantled, or razed to the ground, pleaded in vain against the law of vio lence. The river, the lake, the sea, crimsoned with the blood of fellow citizens, and neighbours, and strangers, had lifted up their voices in vain to denounce the folly and wickedness of war. The shrieks and agonies, the rage and hatred, the wounds and curses of the battle-field, and the storm and the sack, had scattered in vain their terrible warnings throughout all lands. In vain had the insolent Lysander destroyed the walls and burnt the fleets of Athens, to the music of her own female flute-players. In vain had Scipio, amid the ruins of Carthage, in the spirit of a gloomy seer, applied to Rome herself the prophecy of Agamemnon. "The day shall come, the great avenging day,

Which Troy's proud glories in the dust shall lay;
When Priam's power, and Priam's self shall fall,
And one prodigious ruin swallow all."

In vain had Pyrrhus exclaimed, as for all the warrior gamblers of antiquity, "One such victory more and I am undone." In vain had the disgrace and the sufferings of Miltiades, and Nicias, of Themistocles, Pausanias, and Alcibiades; of Marius and Sylla, of Hannibal, Pompey, and Cæsar, filled the nations with pity and dismay. The lamentations of the widow and the tears of the orphan, the broken hearts of age and the blasted hopes of youth, and beauty, and love, had pleaded in vain against the law of violence. The earth had drunk in the life-blood of the slain, and hidden their mangled bodies in her bosom and there the garden, the orchard, and the harvest, flourished once more beautiful in the tints of nature, and rich in the melody of fount, and leaf, and breeze. The waters have

swallowed into their depths the dying and the dead, and the ruined fleets both of victor, and vanquished; and again the waves danced in their sportiveness, or rushed in their fury, over the battle-plain of hostile navies. The innocence of childhood had forgotten the parent's violent death, the widow had recovered the lost smile of former years, the miserable old man had been gathered to his fathers, and affection had found new objects for its attachments.

GRIMKE.

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