8. Which hovers round, and chills his anguished soul; * * * * Not his the verse that virtue must condemn: Nor seeks to cover aught impure in thought; 10. Religion, free from ostentatious pride, The simple, pure religion taught by Christ- * Where vengeful passions rage through flames and blood, Relieved his pains, and steeped his wounds in tears; 14. Since Coffin's name must swell the mournful list Save, save him, Heaven! from that most wretched doom Nor add his name to that more awful roll Where Chatterton and Carey lead the band! 15. And O! protect him from the dreadful fate 1. LESSON LIX. The same continued. And must this hapless child of genius starve? O! what is wealth in hands that will not save From want's benumbing blast a mind like his? A mind with fancy's richest stores replete― Conceptions tender, beautiful and pure! 2. Can man in barren piles of golden dust, Amassed for pomp and show alone, delight, Nor yield a grain to sooth a brother's woes? Can human hearts regard with higher joy Their richly furnished domes, and spreading farms, Than happy souls from pain and want relieved By their own noble deeds? 3. 4. 5. 6. Can life be sweet- Can parents hear the sufferer's mournful wail They, too, although their morning opens bright, Poor shivering outcasts from the domes of wealth, To melt for them-may raise their suppliant cry LESSON LX. Description of a Storm. 1. Once, at high noon, amidst a sultry calm, Lowering and thickening till it hid the sun, 4. Meanwhile Beneath was one wild whirl of foaming surges: 6. Of cherubim, wide brandish'd, to repel Aggression from heaven's gates; their faming strokes The voice of Him who walks upon the wind, The headlong tempest in its mid-career, And turn'd its horrors to magnificence. 7. The evening sun broke through the embattled clouds, In the full rainbow's harmony of beams; MONTGOMERY. LESSON LXI. Character of Napoleon Bonaparte 1. Nature had no obstacles that he did not surmountspace no opposition that he did not spurn: and, whether amid Alpine rocks, Arabian sands, or Polar snows, he seemed proof against peril, and empowered with ubiquity! The whole continent of Europe trembled at beholding the audacity of his designs, and the miracle of their execution. 2. Scepticism bowed to the prodigies of his performance; romance assumed the air of history, nor was there aught too incredible for helief, or too fanciful for explanation, when the work saw a subaltern of Corsica waving his imperial flag over her most ancient capitals. All the visions of antiquity became common-places in his contemplation; kings were his people; nations were his outposts; and he disposed of courts, and crowns, and camps, and churches, and cabinets, as if they were the titular dignitaries of the chess-board! 3. Amid all these changes, he stood immutables adamant. It mattered little whether in the field or the drawingroom, with the mob or the levee,-wearing the Jacobin bonnet or the iron crown,-banishing a Braganza, or espousing a Hapsburg,-dictating peace on a raft to the Czar of Russia, or contemplating defeat at the gallows of Leipsic, he was still the same military despot! Cradled in the camp, he was, to the last hour, the darling of the army; and, whether in the camp or the cabinet, he never forsook a friend or forgot a favour. Of all his soldiers, not one abandoned him till affection was useless; and their first stipulation was for the safety of their favourite. They knew well, that, if he was lavish of them, he was prodigal of himself; and that, if he exposed them to peril, he repaid them with plunder. 5. For the soldier, he subsidized every body; to the people he made even pride pay tribute. The victorious veteran glittered with his gains; and the capital, gorgeous with the spoils of art, became the miniature metropolis of the universe. In this wonderful combination, his affectation of literature must not be omitted. 6. The gaoler of the press, he affected the patronage of letters, the proscriber of books, he encouraged philosophy, the persecutor of authors, and the murderer of printers, he yet pretended to the protection of learning!—the assassin of Palm, the silencer of De Stael, and the denouncer of Kotzebue, he was the friend of David, the benefactor of De Lille, and sent his academic prize to the philosopher of England.* 7. Such a medley of contradictions, and at the same time such an individual consistency, were never before united in the same character. A Royalist, a Republican, and an Emperor,-a Mahometan, a Catholic, and a patron of the Synagogue,―a Subaltern and a Sovereign,—a Traitor and a Tyrant, a Christian and an Infidel,--he was, through all his vicissitudes, the same sternt, inflexible original,—the same mysterious, incomprehensible self,the man without a model, and without a shadow. 8. His fall, like his life, baffled all speculation; in short, his whole history was like a dream to the world, and no man can tell how or why he was awakened from the reverie. Such is a faint and feeble picture of Napoleon Bonaparte. 9. That he has done much evil, there is little doubt; that he has been the origin of much good, there is just as little. Through his means, intentional or not, Spain, Portugal, and France, have risen to the blessings of a free constitution: Superstition has found her grave in the ruins of the * Sir H. Davy. |