after conducting his own defense with great power, his notes of what he had meant to say to the people were torn away from him, and the drums and trumpets were ordered to sound lustily and drown his voice; for the people had been so much impressed with what the regicides had calmly said with their last breath, that it was the custom now to have the drums and trumpets always upon the scaffold, ready to strike up. Vane said no more than this: "It is a bad cause which cannot bear the words of a dying man;" and bravely died.

4. These merry scenes were succeeded by another, perhaps even merrier. On the anniversary of the late king's death, the bodies of Oliver Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw were torn out of their graves in Westminster Abbey, dragged to Tyburn, hanged there on a gallows all day long, and then beheaded. Imagine the head of Oliver Cromwell set upon a pole, to be stared at by a brutal crowd, not one of whom would have dared to look the living Oliver in the face for half a moment! Think, after you have read this reign, what England was under Oliver Cromwell, who was torn out of his grave, and under this merry monarch, who sold it, like a merry Judas, over and over again.

5. Of course the remains of Oliver's wife and daughter were not to be spared either, though they had been most excellent women. The base clergy of that time gave up their bodies, which had been buried in the Abbey, and — to the eternal disgrace of England-they were thrown into a pit, together with the moldering bones of Pym, and of the brave and bold old Admiral Blake.

6. The clergy acted this disgraceful part because they hoped to get the Nonconformists, or Dissenters, thoroughly put down in this reign, and to have but one prayer-book and one service for all kinds of people, no matter what their private opinions were. This was pretty well, I think, for a

Protestant church, which had displaced the Romish church because people had a right to their own opinions in religious matters. However, they carried it with a high hand, and a prayer-book was agreed upon, in which the extremest opinions of Archbishop Laud were not forgotten. An act was passed, too, preventing any Dissenter from holding any office under any corporation. So the regular clergy, in their triumph, were soon as merry as the king. The army being by this time disbanded, and the king crowned, everything was to go on easily for evermore.

Questions.

What is meant by "tonnage"? "poundage"? [See dictionary.] What had "General Monk" done to deserve being made Earl? [See Notes, Charles II.] Who are the "regular clergy"? "dissenters"? What seems to be the author's opinion of Charles II.?

VI. THE BOYS.

OLIVER W. HOLMES.

This selection is a poem addressed to the class of 1829, in Harvard College, some thirty years after their graduation. The author, who retains, in a high degree, the freshness and joyousness of youth, addresses his classmates as "boys".

1. Has there any old fellow got mixed with the boys? If there has, take him out, without making a noise. Hang the almanac's cheat and the catalogue's spite! Old Time is a liar! we're twenty to-night!

2. We're twenty! We're twenty! Who says we are more?

He's tipsy,-young jackanapes!-show him the door! "Gray temples at twenty "?-Yes! white if we please; Where the snow-flakes fall thickest there's nothing can freeze!

3. Was it snowing I spoke of? Excuse the mistake! Look close, you will see not a sign of a flake!

We want some new garlands for those we have shed,
And these are white roses in place of the red.

4. We've a trick, we young fellows, you may have been told,

Of talking (in public) as if we were old;

That boy we call "Doctor," and this we call "Judge";
It's a neat little fiction, of course it's all fudge.

5. That fellow's the "Speaker," the one on the right; "Mr. Mayor," my young one, how are you to-night? That's our "Member of Congress," we say when we chaff f; There's the "Reverend"-what's his name?-don't make

me laugh.

6. That boy with the grave mathematical look Made believe he had written a wonderful book, And the Royal Society thought it was true!

So they chose him right in,—a good joke it was too!

7. There's a boy, we pretend, with a three-decker brain, That could harness a team with a logical chain;

When he spoke for our manhood in syllabled fire,
We called him "The Justice," but now he's the "Squire."

8. And there's a nice youngster of excellent pith;
Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith;
But he shouted a song for the brave and the free,—
Just read on his medal, "My country," "of thee"!

9.-You hear that boy laughing? You think he's all fun; But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done; The children laugh loud as they troop to his call,

And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all!

10. Yes, we're boys,-always playing with tongue or with

pen;

And I sometimes have asked, Shall we ever be men?
Shall we always be youthful, and laughing, and gay,
Till the last dear companion drops smiling away?

11. Then here's to our boyhood, its gold and its gray!
The stars of its winter, the dews of its May!
And when we have done with our life-lasting toys,
Dear Father, take care of Thy children, THE Boys!

Questions.

What "catalogue" is meant? Why does the author denounce the almanac and catalogue? Why are the persons here spoken of called "boys"? What is meant by "a threedecker brain"? What " song is meant, in the eighth stanza? Is this spirit to be commended that aims to preserve through life the joyousness of childhood and youth? Is this piece purely humorous? Where does it seem to breathe an earnest and serious spirit?

[Let the student acquire carefully the tone of mockindignation required at the beginning.]

VII. THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY.

WM. H. MILBURN.

"And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature."

1. To appreciate the text, it is necessary to place yourselves in the sight of the speaker, and of those that heard him. A handful of despised and proscribed men are standing upon the summit of a mountain, and there amidst the company is one who has passed a life of poverty, sorrow, and suffering; upon whom contumely and derision have descended like rain from the clouds of summer. He has been the butt of ridicule,

the target at which malignity has directed all its arrows; and now, surrounded by a handful of disciples, of those who have striven to be loyal to him, but whose flesh and heart have failed, time and time again,—the Jewish peasant utters in the ear of Jewish peasants, publicans, and fishermen, this language, the like of which had not been spoken on the earth before:-"Go into all the world." It is either sublimity or absurdity; it is the emanation of a divine soul projecting itself in the shape of a divine purpose, or it is the most preposterous nonsense that was ever addressed by one man to another.

2. "Go into all the world and preach my gospel to every creature." A Jewish peasant, I say, speaking to a handful of Jewish peasants; and these men, without education, without friends, without advantages of any sort, belonging to an obscure tribe, living in a narrow and insignificant province, masters of a single dialect alone, and that a mere patois, these men, without adventitious helps of any kind, without the power to obtain credentials from any quarter of the earth, were to go into all the world, and preach what he had been preaching, and what he should yet declare to them. Is it sublimity or absurdity?

3. I fancy if you and I had been present on that occasion, we should have said, had we thought of it at all, What perfect nonsense! For it is likely that the scales would have been upon our eyes, and the dust in our atmosphere, so that we should not have discerned him for what, in truth, he was,

-the Son of the Living God. We should have seen the derided Nazarene, the contemned Galilean, the carpenter's son; we should have seen the earthly side, the mere mortal presentation.

4. It required a spirit quickened by light from heaven to discern him, for what, in reality, he was-Jesus, the Son of