passing by the tribunals of justice and the High Court of Parliament; neither imagine that by any formation of apology you can palliate such conduct to your hearts, still less to your children, who will sting you with their curses in your graves, for having interposed between them and their Maker, robbing them of an immense occasion, and losing an opportunity which you did not create and can never restore. - From Speech of April 19, 1780.

THE SPIRIT OF LIBERTY.

I have no ambition, unless it be the ambition to break your chain and contemplate your glory. I never will be satisfied so long as the meanest cottager in Ireland has a link of the British chain clanking to his rags. He may be naked, he shall not be in irons; and I do see that the time is at hand, the spirit is gone forth, the Declaration is planted. And though the public speawer should die, yet the immortal fire shall outlast the organ that conveyed it, and the breath of liberty, like the word of the holy man, will not die with the prophet but survive him. I shall move you, that the King's most excellent majesty, and the Lords and Commons of Ireland, are the only powers competent to make laws to bind Ireland.-From Speech Before the House, 1780.

DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES.

May the kingly power that forms one estate in our Constitution continue forever; but let it be as it professes to be, and as by the principles and laws of these countries it should be, one estate only, and not a power constituting one estate, creating another, and influencing a third.

May the parliamentary Constitution prosper; but let it be an operative, independent, and integral part of the Constitution advising, confining, and sometimes directing the kingly power.

May the House of Commons flourish; but let the people be the sole author of its existence, as they should be the great object of its care.

May the connection with Great Britain continue, but

let the result of that connection be the perfect freedom, in the fullest and fairest sense, of all descriptions of men, without distinction of religion.

To this purpose we spoke; speaking this to no purpose, withdrew. It now remains to add this supplication: However it may please the Almighty to dispose of princes or of Parliaments, may the liberties of the people be immortal. From Address to the People, 1797.

RAY, DAVID, a Scottish poet; born at Kirkintilloch, January 29, 1838; died there, December 31, 1861. He was the son of a hand-loom weaver, but, being intended for the Church, he studied at the University of Glasgow, where he supported himself by teaching. Numerous verses which he wrote for the Glasgow Chronicle gave promise of unusual power, and at the age of twenty-two he went to London to pursue a literary career. He found friends who gave him aid-pecuniary and other. But he was already stricken by consumption, and died before the publication of the volume The Luggie and Other Poems, a part of which was already in print when he passed away. Four years after his death a monument to him was erected at Kirkintilloch, bearing the following inscription by Richard Monckton Milnes, afterward known as Lord Houghton: "This monument of affection, admiration, and regret, is erected to David Gray, the poet of Merkland, by friends far and near, desirous that the grave should be remembered amid the scenes of his rare genius, and early death, and by the Luggie, now numbered with the streams illustrious in Scottish song." Among the

poems of David Gray are a series of beautiful sonnets entitled Under the Shadow.

A WINTER SCENE ON THE LUGGIE.

How beautiful! afar on moorland ways,
Bosomed by mountains darkened by huge glens
(Where the lone altar raised by Druid hands
Stands like a mournful phantom), hidden clouds
Let fall soft beauty, till each green fir branch
Is plumed and tasselled, till each heather stalk
Is delicately fringed. The sycamores,
Through all their mystical entanglement

Of boughs, are draped with silver. All the green
Of sweet leaves playing with the subtle air
In dainty murmuring; the obstinate drone
Of limber bees that in the monkshood bells
House diligent; the imperishable glow

Of summer sunshine never more confessed;
The harmony of nature, the divine
Diffusive spirit of the Beautiful.

Out in the snowy dimness, half revealed,

Like ghosts in glimpsing moonshine, wildly run
The children in bewildering delight.

SPRING

-The Luggie.

Now, while the long-delaying ash assumes
The delicate April green, and, loud and clear,
Through the cool yellow twilight glooms,

The thrush's song enchants the captive's ear;
Now while a shower is pleasant in the falling,

Stirring the still perfume that wakes around;
Now that doves mourn, and from the distance calling,
The cuckoo answers with a sovereign sound
Come with thy native heart, O true and tried!

But leave all books: for what with converse high,
Flavored with Attic wit, the time shall glide
On smoothly, as a river floweth by,
Or as on stately pinion, through the gray
Evening, the culver cuts his liquid way.

WINTRY WEATHER.

O Winter! wilt thou never, never go?

O Summer! but I weary for thy coming, Longing once more to see the Luggie flow,

And frugal bees laboriously humming. Now the east wind diseases the infirm,

And I must crouch in corners from rough weather; Sometimes a winter sunset is a charm

When the fired clouds, compacted, blaze together, And the large sun dips red behind the hills. I from my window can behold this pleasure; And the eternal moon, what time she fills Her orb with argent, treading a soft measure, With queenly motions of a bridal mood, Through the white spaces of infinitude.

FAIR THINGS AT THEIR DEATH THE FAIREST.

Why are all fair things at their death the fairest Beauty the beautifullest in decay?

Why doth rich sunset clothe each closing day
With ever new apparelling the rarest?

Why are the sweetest melodies all born
Of pain and sorrow? Mourneth not the dove,
In the green forest gloom, an absent love?

Leaning her breast against that cruel thorn,
Doth not the nightingale, poor bird complain,
An integrate her uncontrollable woe
To such perfection that to hear is pain?
Thus Sorrow and Death alone realities -
Sweeten their ministrations and bestow

On troublous life a relish of the skies!

6

RAY, THOMAS, an English poet; born at London, December 26, 1716; died at Cambridge, July 30, 1771. He was the son of a scrivener, a harsh, ungenial man, who was separated from his wife, and refused to aid in the maintenance of his family. Gray was educated at Eton, where his maternal uncle was master. From Eton he went to Cambridge. He formed a close intimacy with Horace Walpole, son of the Prime-Minister, who induced him to accompany him on a tour in France and Italy (1739-41). Some dispute occurred between them, and Gray returned to Cambridge, where he took the degree of Bachelor of Civil Law, though he never entered upon practice, but continued to reside at the University until 1759, and afterward for two or three years in London. In 1758 he received the appointment of Professor of Modern History at Cambridge. Soon after, his health began to decline, although a year before his death he was able to make a tour in Westmoreland, Cumberland, Wales, and Scotland, of which he wrote pleasant accounts in the form of letters. He died of an attack of gout, and was buried in the churchyard of Stoke-Pogis, the scene of his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.

Gray was one of the most accomplished men of his time. His knowledge of the classics was wide and accurate. He was versed in every department of history; was a good botanist, zoologist, and entomologist; he was an expert antiquarian and heraldist. He had excellent taste in music, painting, and architecture. His letters descriptive of his travels on the Continent and in Great Britain are graceful and animated. Sir