"Lordee! it was grand! but 'twas awful!
The flames leaped up higher and higher;
The wind seemed to get underneath them,
Till they roared like a big blacksmith's fire!

"I was just looking round at the people, With their faces lit up by the glare,

When I heerd some one shriek, hoarse with terror, 'Oh, look! there's a young gal up there!'

"I shall never forget the excitement,
My heart beat as loud as a clock;
I looked at the crowd, still a-standing,
As if turned to stone by the shock.

"And there was the pooty face shining, With its blank look of haggard despairHer hands tightly clasped on her bosom,

And her white lips a-moving in prayer.

"The staircase was burnt to a cinder,

There wasn't a fire-escape near ;
But a ladder was brought from a builder's,
And the mob give a half-frightened cheer.

"The ladder was put to the window,
While the flames were still raging below;
We looked, with hearts in our throttle,
To see who would offer to go!

"When up stood a sturdy young fireman! As a sailor would climb up a mast,

We see him go in at the window,

And we cheered as though danger were past

"We saw nothing more for a moment,

But the sparks flying round us like rain;

And then as we breathlessly waited,

He come to the window again.

And on his broad shoulders were lying The face of that poor, fainting thing, And we gave him a tiger as never

Was give to your prince or your king.

"He got on the top of the ladder

I can see him there now, noble lad! And the flames underneath seemed to know it, For they leaped at that ladder like mad.

"So just as he got to the middle,

Good God! it began to give way,

For the flames had got hold of it spiteful!
You could see the poles tremble and sway.

"He came but a step or two lower,

Then leaped, with his prize, to the ground; And there, you would hardly believe it, He landed the girl safe and sound.

"I took off my old hat and waved it ;
I couldn't join in with the cheer,
For the smoke had got into my peepers,
And I felt such a choking just here.

"And now, sir, they're going to get married, I bet you, she'll make a good wife;

And who has the most right to have her? Why, the fellow that saved her young life!

"A beauty! ah, sir, I believe you!

Stand back, lads! stand back! here they are ! We'll give them the cheer that we promised, Now, lads, with a hi, hi, tigar-r-r!"

DESPAIR.

DOW, JR.

I

The whitest foam dances upon the darkest billow, and the stars shine the brightest when surrounded by the blackest of thunder-clouds; so hope mirrors its most brilliant rays in the dark wave of despair, and happiness is never so complete as when visited occasionally by the ministers of misery. These ups and downs in the pathway of man's existence are all for the best, and yet he allows them to vex and torment his peace till he bursts the boiler of his rage, and scalds his own toes. have no doubt but the common run of people would like to have a railroad built from here to the grave, and go through by steam; but if they all worked as easy in life's galling collar as I do, they would have things just as they are; some ups and some downs-some sweet and some bitter-some sunshine and some storm; because they constitute a variety. I wouldn't give a shinplaster penny to have the road of existence perfectly level; for I should soon become tired of a dull sameness of prospect, and make myself miserable in the idea that I must experience no material change, either for better or for worse. Plum-pudding is most excellent stuff to wind off a dinner with ; but all plum-pudding would be worse than none at all. So you see, my friends, the trouble and trials of life are absolutely necessary to enable us to judge rightly of genuine happiness, whenever it happens to enliven the saturnine region of the heart with its presence.

If we were never to have our jackets and shirts wet with the cold rain of misfortune, we should never know how good it feels to stand out and dry in the warm rays of comfort. You needn't hesitate ever to travel through swamps of trouble, for fear of sinking over head in the mud of despondency; for despair is never quite despair. No, my friends, it never comes quite up to the mark in the most desperate cases. I know the prospects of man are sometimes most tormentingly conglomerous; but the clouds eventually clear away, and his sky again becomes clear and quiescent as a basin of potato starch. His sun of ambition may be darkened-his moon of memory turned

to blood—and the star of his peace blotted from the firmament of his, I don't know what; but he is not entirely a gone goose even in this situation. Those semi-celestial angels of light and loveliness, Hope and Fancy, will twine the sweetest of roses round his care-wrinkled brow; and while one whispers in his ear, "Don't give up the ship," the other dresses up for him a bower of future happiness, and festoons it with the choicest of elysian flowers. The very darkest cell of despair always has a gimlet-hole to let the glory of hope shine in, and dry up the tears of the poor prisoner of woe.

THE HEROISM OF THE PILGRIMS.

R. CHOATE.

If one were called on to select the most glittering of the instances of military heroism to which the admiration of the world has been most constantly attracted, he would make choice, I imagine, of the instance of that desperate valor, in which, in obedience to the laws, Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans cast themselves headlong, at the passes of Greece, on the myriads of their Persian invaders. From the simple page of Herodotus, longer than from the Amphyctionic monument, or the games of the commemoration, that act speaks still to the tears and praise of all the world.

Judge if, that night, as they watched the dawn of the last morning their eyes could ever see; as they heard with every passing hour the stilly hum of the invading host, his dusky lines stretched out without end, and now almost encircling them around; as they remembered their unprofaned home, city of heroes and of the mother of heroes-judge if, watching there, in the gateway of Greece, this sentiment did not grow to the nature of madness, if it did not run in torrents of literal fire to and from the laboring heart; and when morning came and passed, and they had dressed their long locks for battle, and when, at a little after noon, the countless invading throng was

seen at last to move, was it not with a rapture, as if all the joy, all the sensation of life, was in that one moment, that they cast themselves, with the fierce gladness of mountain torrents, headlong upon that brief revelry of glory?

I acknowledge the splendor of that transaction in all its aspects. I admit its morality, too, and its useful influence on every Grecian heart in that greatest crisis of Greece.

And yet, do you not think that whoso could, by adequate description, bring before you that winter of the Pilgrims,-its brief sunshine; the nights of storm, slow waning; the damp and icy breath, felt to the pillow of the dying; its destitutions its contrasts with all their former experience in life, its utter insulation and loneliness, its death beds and burials, its memories, its apprehensions, its hopes; the consultations of the prudent; the prayers of the pious; the occasional cheerful hymn, in which the strong heart threw off its burden, and, asserting its unvanquished nature, went up, like a bird of dawn, to the skies ;-do ye not think that whoso could describe them calmly waiting in that defile, lovelier and darker than Thermopylæ, for a morning that might never dawn, or might show them, when it did, a mightier arm than the Persian raised as in act to strike, would he not sketch a scene of more difficult and rarer heroism? A scene, as Wordsworth has said, "melancholy, yea, dismal, yet consolatory and full of joy ;" a scene even better fitted to succor to exalt, to lead the forlorn hopes of all great causes, till time shall be no more!

I have said that I deemed it a great thing for a nation, in all the periods of its fortunes, to be able to look back to a race of founders, and a principle of institution, in which it might rationally admire the realized idea of true heroism. That felicity, that pride, that help, is ours. Our past, with its great eras, that of settlement, and that of independence, should announce, should compel, should spontaneously evolve as from a germ, a wise, moral, and glowing future. Those heroic men and women should not look down on a dwindled posterity. That broad foundation, sunk below frost or earthquake, should bear up something more permanent than an encampment of tents, pitched at random, and struck when the trumpet of march