opinion of such men as I have mentioned, have no substantial existence, are in truth everything, and all in all. Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together. If we are conscious of our situation, and glow with zeal to fill our places as becomes our station and ourselves, we ought to auspicate our public proceedings on America with the old warning of the Church, Sursum Corda! * We ought to elevate our minds to the greatness of that trust to which the order of Providence has called us. By adverting to the dignity of this high calling, our ancestors have turned a savage wilderness into a glorious empire; and have made the most extensive, and the only honorable conquests, not by destroying, but by promoting the wealth, the number, the happiness of the human race. Let us get an American revenue as we have got an American empire. English privileges have made it all that it is; English privileges alone will make it all it can be. THE DECAY OF CHIVALROUS SENTIMENT. † It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in, glittering like the morning star, full of life and splendor and joy. O, what a revolution! and what a heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor, and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never, * SURSUM CORDA, Lift up your hearts. This is justly estimated as one of the finest rhetorical passages in our language. It refers to the execution of Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI., and Queen of France. She was guillotined by the Jacobins in 1793, during the celebrated French Revolution. The remarks about the "age of chivalry" and the "cheap defense of nations " have become famous. never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defense of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness. This mixed system of opinion and sentiment had its origin in the ancient chivalry; and the principle, though varied in its appearance by the varying state of human affairs, subsisted and influenced through a long succession of generations, even to the time we live in. If it should ever be totally extinguished, the loss I fear would be great. It is this which has given its character to modern Europe. It is this which has distinguished it under all its forms of government, and distinguished it to its advantage, from the states of Asia, and possibly from those states which flourished in the most brilliant periods of the antique world. It was this which, without confounding ranks, had produced a noble equality, and handed it down through all the gradations of social life. It was this opinion which mitigated kings into companions, and raised private men to be fellows with kings. Without force, or opposition, it subdued the fierceness of pride and power; it obliged sovereigns to submit to the soft collar of social esteem, compelled stern authority to submit to elegance, and gave a dominating vanquisher of laws, to be subdued by manners. But now all is to be changed. All the pleasing illusions, which made power gentle and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life, and which, by a bland assimilation, incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns and the understanding ratifies as necessary to cover the defects of our naked, shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded as a ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion. COWPER. 1731-1800. WILLIAM COWPER was born in 1731 and died in 1800. His life was a sad one, and his last years were shadowed by a mental gloom which almost amounted to insanity. His thoughts dwelt on somber themes, and his poems, with a few exceptions, are didactic to an unpleasant degree. It is not easy to understand how the same mind could have given birth to the melancholy imaginings which constitute the staple of his verse, and the warm, free humor of John Gilpin's Ride. Morbid and unsocial though he was, Cowper was able to win and retain the hearty attachment of a few friends, in whose tender care he passed the closing years of his life. Though not one of the greatest English poets, Cowper holds and will hold an honorable place. His sentiments were always elevated, and his expression graceful, if not exceptionally brilliant or vigorous. He is emphatically the poet for thoughtful minds. One of his best-known poems is Alexander Selkirk, of which we give some specimen stanzas. * ALEXANDER SELKIRK was a Scottish sailor, who, having quarreled on one of his voyages with his captain, was left, in 1704, on the uninhabited island of Juan Fernandez, where he remained for more than four years before his rescue. Selkirk's adventures, it is said, suggested to Defoe the celebrated romance of Robinson Crusoe, with which all young people are familiar. My sorrows I then might assuage In the ways of religion and truth; Might learn from the wisdom of age, And be cheered by the sallies of youth. Religion! what treasure untold Ye winds that have made me your sport, Convey to this desolate shore Some cordial endearing report Of a land I shall visit no more. Though a friend I am never to see. How fleet is a glance of the mind! Compared with the speed of its flight, The tempest itself lags behind, And the swift-wingéd arrows of light. When I think of my own native land, In a moment I seem to be there; But, alas! recollection at hand Soon hurries me back to despair. But the sea-fowl is gone to her nest ; And I to my cabin repair. Gives even affliction a grace, And reconciles man to his lot. GIBBON. 1737-1794. EDWARD GIBBON, the historian, was born in Surrey, England, in 1737, and died in 1794. He entered Magdalen College, Oxford, but remained only a short time. At an early age he became deeply interested in religion, and devoted himself to study, relieving the tedium of his labors by assiduous courtship of Mademoiselle Curchod, whose acquaintance he made in Switzerland. The lady inclined to him; but her father did not, and she finally married M. Necker, and became the mother of Madame de Staël. In 1759 he returned to England and was admitted into the most cultivated society. Two years later he published in French an Essay on the Study of Literature, which attracted but little attention in England. In 1763 he went to France, and became the intimate friend of Helvetius, D'Alembert, Diderot, and other eminent men. The next year he went to Rome, and there conceived the project of writing the history of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In 1776 the first volume of this great work was published, and at once made him famous. His attacks on Christianity called out many severe rebukes, which enhanced the popular interest in his book. The concluding volumes of the History appeared in 1787. The author's last literary work was his own Autobiography, which has been pronounced the finest specimen of that kind of composition in the English language. The graces of Gibbon's style have always been the subject of wonder and admiration. In his History he is stately and magnificent; in his Autobiography he is easy, spirited, and charming. The style of his History has been censured by some critics for its excessive elaboration, and its opulence of French phrases; but the general verdict of literary authorities of his own and later ages awards him the highest rank among English historians as a master of the language. ARABIA. IN the dreary waste of Arabia, a boundless level of sand is intersected by sharp and naked mountains; and the face of the desert, without shade or shelter, is scorched by the direct and intense rays of a tropical sun. Instead of refreshing breezes, the winds, particularly from the southwest, diffuse a noxious and even deadly vapor; the hillocks of sand which they alternately raise and scatter are compared to the billows of the ocean, and whole caravans, whole armies, have been lost and buried in the whirlwind. The common benefits of water are an object of desire and contest; and such is the scarcity of wood, that some art is requisite to preserve and propagate the element of fire. Arabia is destitute of navigable rivers, which fertilize the soil, and convey its produce to the adjacent regions; the torrents that fall from the hills are imbibed by the thirsty earth; the rare and hardy plants, the tamarind or the acacia, that strike their roots into the clefts of the rocks, are nourished by the dews of the night: a scanty supply of rain is collected in cisterns and aqueducts: the wells and springs are the secret treasure of the desert; and the pilgrim of Mecca,* * MECCA. A city in Arabia and the birthplace of Mahomet, a celebrated religious teacher and pretended prophet, born about 750 A. D. He was the founder of one of the most widely diffused |