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With feeble hand his blade he grasped, yet dark with spoil

ers' blood;

And then, as though with dying bound, once more erect he stood;

But scarcely had he kissed that cheek, so pale, so purely fair, When flashed their bayonets round him and his Kathleen ban Adair!

Then up arose his trembling, yet his dreaded hero's hand, And up arose, in struggling sounds, his cheer for mother land:

A thrust-a rush-their foremost falls; but ah! good God! see there,

Thy lover's quivering at thy feet, young Kathleen ban Adair!

But heavens! men, what recked he then your heartless taunts and blows,

When from his lacerated heart ten dripping bayonets rose? And maiden, thou with frantic hands, what boots it kneeling there,

The winds heed not thy yellow locks, young Kathleen ban Adair.

Oh! what were tears, or shrieks, or swoons, but shadows of

the rest,

When torn was frantic Kathleen from the slaughtered hero's breast?

And hardly had his last-heaved sigh grown cold upon the air, When oh! of all but life they robbed young Kathleen ban Adair!

But whither now shall Kathleen fly ?-already she has gone; Thy water, Kells, is tempting fair, and thither speeds she on; A moment on its blooming banks she kneels in hurried prayer

Now in its wave she finds a grave, poor Kathleen ban Adair!

BENEVOLENCE.-BEATTIE.

From the low prayer of want and plaint of woe,

Oh never, never turn away thine ear!

Forlorn, in this bleak wilderness below,

Ah! what were man, should Heaven refuse to hear.
To others do-the law is not severe,-

What to thyself thou wishest to be done;

Forgive thy foes; and love thy parents dear,

And friends and native land;-nor these alone;

All human weal and woe learn thou to make thine own.

PASSING AWAY.-JOHN PIERPONT.

Was it the chime of a tiny bell,

That came so sweet to my dreaming ear, Like the silvery tones of a fairy's shell,

That he winds on the beach, so mellow and clear, When the winds and the waves lie together asleep, And the moon and the fairy are watching the deep, She dispensing her silvery light,

And he his notes as silvery quite,
While the boatman listens and ships his oar,
To catch the music that comes from the shore?
Hark! the notes on my ear that play,
Are set to words: as they float, they say,
Passing away! passing away!"

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But no; it was not a fairy's shell,

Blown on the beach, so mellow and clear; Nor was it the tongue of a silver bell

Striking the hour, that filled my ear,
As I lay in my dream; yet was it a chime
That told of the flow of the stream of time;
For a beautiful clock from the ceiling hung,
And a plump little girl, for a pendulum, swung;
(As you've sometimes seen, in a little ring,
That hangs in his cage, a canary-bird swing;)
And she held to her bosom a budding bouquet,
And, as she enjoyed it, she seemed to say,
"Passing away! passing away!"

Oh! how bright were the wheels that told
Of the lapse of time as they moved round slow!
And the hands, as they swept o'er the dial of gold,
Seemed to point to the girl below.

And lo! she had changed;-in a few short hours
Her bouquet had become a garland of flowers,

That she held in her outstretched hands, and flung
This way and that, as she, dancing, swung,

In the fullness of grace and womanly pride,
That told me she soon was to be a bride;

Yet then, when expecting her happiest day,
In the same sweet voice I heard her say,
Passing away! passing away!"

When I gazed on that fair one's cheek, a shade
Of thought, or care, stole softly over,
Like that by a cloud on a summer's day made,
Looking down on a field of blossoming clover.
The rose yet lay on her cheek, but its flush
Had something lost of its brilliant blush;

And the light in her eye, and the light on the wheels,
That marched so calmly round above her,

Was a little dimmed,—as when evening steals

Upon noon's hot face:-yet one couldn't but love her, For she looked like a mother whose first babe lay Rocked on her breast, as she swung all day; And she seemed in the same silver tone to say, Passing away! passing away!"

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While yet I looked, what a change there came!
Her eye was quenched, and her cheek was wan:
Stooping and staffed was her withered frame,
Yet just as busily swung she on;

The garland beneath her had fallen to dust;
The wheels above her were eaten with rust;
The hands that over the dial swept

Grew crooked and tarnished, but on they kept:
And still there came that silver tone

From the shriveled lips of the toothless crone
Let me never forget to my dying day,
The tone or the burden of that lay-
"Passing away! passing away!"

THE PROGRESS OF HUMANITY.—CHARLES SUMNER.

Let us, then, be of good cheer. From the great law of progress we may derive at once our duties and our encouragements. Humanity has ever advanced, urged by the instincts and necessities implanted by God,-thwarted sometimes by obstacles which have caused it for a time-a moment only, in the immensity of ages-to deviate from its true line, or to seem to retreat,-but still ever onward.

Amidst the disappointments which may attend individual exertions, amidst the universal agitations which now surround us, let us recognize this law, confident that whatever is just, whatever is humane, whatever is good, whatever is true, according to an immutable ordinance of Providence, in the golden light of the future, must prevail. With this faith, let us place our hands, as those of little children, in the great hand of God. He will ever guide and sustain us— through pains and perils, it may be-in the path of progress.

In the recognition of this law, there are motives to beneficent activity, which shall endure to the last syllable of life. Let the young embrace it: they shall find in it an everliving spring. Let the old cherish it still: they shall derive from it fresh encouragement. It shall give to all, both old and young, a new appreciation of their existence, a new sentiment of their force, a new revelation of their destiny.

Be it, then, our duty and our encouragement to live and to labor, ever mindful of the future. But let us not forget the past. All ages have lived and labored for us. From one has come art, from another jurisprudence, from another the compass, from another the printing-press; from all have proceeded priceless lessons of truth and virtue. The earliest and most distant times are not without a present influence on our daily lives. The mighty stream of progress, though fed by many tributary waters and hidden springs, derives something of its force from the earlier currents which leap and sparkle in the distant mountain recesses, over precipices, among rapids, and beneath the shade of the primeval forest.

Nor should we be too impatient to witness the fulfilment of our aspirations. The daily increasing rapidity of discovery and improvement, and the daily multiplying efforts of beneficence, in later years outstripping the imaginations of the most sanguine, furnish well-grounded assurance that the advance of man will be with a constantly accelerating speed. The extending intercourse among the nations of the earth, and among all the children of the human family, gives new promises of the complete diffusion of truth, penetrating the most distant places, chasing away the darkness of night, and exposing the hideous forms of slavery, of war, of wrong, which must be hated as soon as they are clearly seen.

Cultivate, then, a just moderation. Learn to reconcile order with change, stability with progress. This is a wise conservatism; this is a wise reform. Rightly understanding these terms, who would not be a conservative? who would not be a reformer?—a conservative of all that is good, a reformer of all that is evil; a conservative of knowledge, a reformer of ignorance; a conservative of truths and principles whose seat is the bosom of God, a reformer of laws and in

stitutions which are but the wicked or imperfect work of man; a conservative of that divine order which is found only in movement, a reformer of those earthly wrongs and abuses which spring from a violation of the great law of human progress. Blending these two characters in one, let us seek to be, at the same time, REFORMING CONSERVATIVES AND CONSERVATIVE REFORMERS.

WAX WORK.

Once on a time, some years ago,
Two Yankees, from Connecticut,
Were traveling,-on foot of course,
A style now out of date;

And, being far away down South,
It wasn't strange or funny,
That they, like other folks, sometimes
Should be out of money.

So, coming to a thriving place,
They hired a lofty hall,

And the corners of the streets
Put handbills, great and small,
Telling the people, far and near,
In printed black and white,
They'd give a show of wax work
In the great town-hall that night.

Of course the people thought to see
A show of figures grand,-
Napoleon, Byron, George the Third,
And great men of our land;—
Of Mary, Queen of Scots, you know,
And monks in black and white,
Heroes, peasants, potentates,

In "wax work" brought to light.

One of the Yankees had, they say,
No palate to his mouth,
And this, perhaps, the reason was
Why he was going South;
Be that as it may,—you see

He couldn't speak quite plain,
But talked with much obscurity,
And sometimes talked-in vain.

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