THE CROWDED STREET. Men who their duties know, 163 But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain, Prevent the long aimed blow, And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain : These constitute a state; And sovereign law, that state's collected will, O'er thrones and globes elate, Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill. XXX. THE CROWDED STREET. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. LET me move slowly through the street, The murmuring walks like autumn rain. How fast the flitting figures come! The mild, the fierce, the stony face; Some bright with thoughtless smiles, and some They pass to toil, to strife, to rest; To halls in which the feast is spread; And some to happy homes repair, Where children, pressing cheek to cheek, With mute caresses shall declare The tenderness they cannot speak. And some who walk in calmness here, Shall shudder as they reach the door, Where one who made their dwelling dear, Its flower, its light, is seen no more. Youth, with pale cheek and slender frame, Keen son of trade, with eager brow! Who of this crowd to-night shall tread Who writhe in throes of mortal pain? Some famine-struck, shall think how long The cold dark hours, how slow the light; And some who flaunt amid the throng, Shall hide in dens of shame to-night. DISCOVERIES OF GALILEO. Each, where his tasks or pleasures call, In his large love and boundless thought. These struggling tides of life that seem 165 XXXI. DISCOVERIES OF GALILEO. EDWARD EVErett. THERE are occasions in life, in which a great mind lives years of rapt enjoyment in a moment. I can fancy the emotions of Galileo when, first raising the newly constructed telescope to the heavens, he saw fulfilled the grand prophecy of Copernicus, and beheld the planet Venus crescent like the moon. It was such another moment as that, when the immortal printers of Metz and Strasburg received the first copy of the Bible into their hands, the work of their divine art; like that, when Columbus, through the gray dawn of the 12th of October, 1492, beheld the shores of San Salvador; like that, when the law of gravitation first revealed itself to the intellect of, Newton; like that, when Franklin saw, by the stif fening fibres of the hempen cord of his kite, that he held the lightning in his grasp; like that, when Leverrier received back from Berlin the tidings that the predicted planet was found. Yes, noble Galileo, thou art right. "It does move." Bigots may make thee recant it, but it moves, nevertheless. Yes, the earth moves, and the planets move, and the mighty waters move, and the great sweeping tides of air move, and the empires of men move, and the world of thought moves, ever onward and upward, to higher facts and bolder theories. The Inquisition may seal thy lips, but they can no more stop the progress of the great truth propounded by Copernicus, and demonstrated by thee, than they can stop the revolving earth. Close, now, venerable sage, that sightless, tearful eye; it has seen what man never before saw; it has seen enough. Hang up that poor little spy-glass; it has done its work. Not Herschel nor Rosse have, comparatively, done more. Franciscans and Dominicans deride thy discoveries now, but the time will come when, from two hundred observatories in Europe and America, the glorious artillery of science. shall nightly assault the skies; but they shall gain no new conquests in those glittering fields, before which thine shall be forgotten. Rest in peace, great Columbus of the heavens; like him, scorned, persecuted, broken-hearted! In other ages, in distant hemispheres, when the votaries LIFE'S LESSONS. 167 of science, with solemn acts of consecration, shall dedicate their stately edifices to the cause of knowledge and truth, thy name shall be mentioned with honor. XXXII. LIFE'S LESSONS. AUTHOR NOT KNOWN. THE saying of an ancient sage, For deep within the key is found First stage whereby the soul ascends, But harder lesson yet remains, |