Sinks to the grave with unperceived decay,
While resignation gently slopes the way;
And, all his prospects brightening to the last,
His heaven commences ere the world be past.

GOLDSMITH.

UNION AND LIBERTY.

FLAG of the heroes who left us their glory,

Borne through their battlefields' thunder and flame, Blazoned in song and illumined in story, Wave o'er us all who inherit their fame! Up with our banner bright,

Sprinkled with starry light,

Spread its fair emblems from mountain to shore,
While through the sounding sky

Loud rings the Nation's cry

Union and Liberty! One evermore!

Light of our firmament, guide of our Nation,
Pride of her children, and honored afar,
Let the wide beams of thy full constellation
Scatter each cloud that would darken a star!

Empire unsceptred! what foe shall assail thee,
Bearing the standard of Liberty's van?
Think not the God of thy fathers shall fail thee,
Striving with men for the birthright of man!

Yet if, by madness and treachery blighted,

Dawns the dark hour when the sword thou must

draw,

Then with the arms to thy millions united,

Smite the bold traitors to Freedom and Law!

Lord of the Universe! shield us and guide us,

Trusting Thee always, through shadow and sun!
Thou hast united us, who shall divide us?
Keep us, O keep us the many in one!
Up with our banner bright,

Sprinkled with starry light,

Spread its fair emblems from mountain to shore,
While through the sounding sky

Loud rings the Nation's cry

Union and Liberty! One evermore!

O. W. HOLMES.

TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE.*

If I were to tell you the story of Napoleon, I should take it from the lips of Frenchmen, who find no language rich enough to paint the great captain of the nineteenth century. Were I to tell you the story of Washington, I should take it from your hearts, - you, who think no marble white enough on which to carve the name of the Father of his country. But I am to tell you the story of a negro, Toussaint L'Ouvert..re, who has left hardly one written line. I am to glean it from the reluctant testimony of his enemies, men who despised him because he was a negro and a slave, hated him because he had beaten them in battle.

*Toussaint L'Ouverture, who has been pronounced one of the greatest statesmen and generals of the nineteenth century, saved his master and family by hurrying them on board a vessel at the insurrection of the negroes of Hayti. He then joined the negro army, and soon found himself at their head. Napoleon sent a fleet with French veterans, with orders to bring him to France at all hazards. But all the skill of the French soldiers could not subdue the negro army; and they finally made a treaty, placing Toussaint L'Ouverture governor of the island. The negroes no sooner disbanded their army, than a squad of soldiers seized Toussaint by night, and taking him on board a vessel, hurried him to France. There he was placed in a dungeon, and finally starved to death.

Cromwell manufactured his own army. Napoleon, at the age of twenty-seven, was placed at the head of the best troops Europe ever saw. Cromwell never saw an army till he was forty; this man never saw a soldier till he was fifty. Cromwell manufactured his own army. out of what? Englishmen, the best blood in Europe. Out of the middle class of Englishmen, the best blood of the island. And with it he conquered what? Englishmen, their equals. This man manufactured his army out of what? Out of what you call the despicable race of negroes, debased, demoralized by two hundred years of slavery, one hundred thousand of them imported into the island within four years, unable to speak a dialect intelligible even to each other. Yet out of this mixed, and, as you say, despicable mass he forged a thunderbolt, and hurled it at what? At the proudest blood in Europe, the Spaniard, and sent him home conquered; at the most warlike blood in Europe, the French, and put them under his feet; at the pluckiest blood in Europe, the English, and they skulked home to Jamaica. Now, if Cromwell was a general, at least this man was a soldier.

Now, blue-eyed Saxon, proud of your race, go back with me to the commencement of the century, and select what statesman you please. Let him be either American or European; let him have a brain the result of six generations of culture; let him have the ripest training of university routine; let him add to it the better education of practical life; crown his temples with the silver locks of seventy years, and show me the man of Saxon lineage for whom his most sanguine admirer will wreathe a laurel, rich as embittered foes have placed on the brow of this negro, rare military skill, profound knowledge of human nature, content to blot out all party distinctions, and trust a state to the blood of its sons, anticipating Sir Robert Peel fifty years, and taking his station by the side of Roger Williams, before any Englishman or American had won the right; and yet this is the record which the history of rival States makes up for this inspired black of St. Domingo.

Some doubt the courage of the negro. Go to Hayti, and stand on those fifty thousand graves of the best soldiers France ever had, and ask them what they think of the negro's sword.

I would call him Napoleon, but Napoleon made his way to empire over broken oaths and through a sea of blood. This man never broke his word. I would call him Cromwell, but Cromwell was only a soldier, and the state he founded went down with him into his grave. I would call him Washington, but the great Virginian held slaves. This man risked his empire rather than permit the slave-trade in the humblest village of his dominions.

You think me a fanatic, for you read history, not with your eyes but with your prejudices. But fifty years hence, when Truth gets a hearing, the Muse of history will put Phocion for the Greek, Brutus for the Roman, Hampden for England, Fayette for France, choose Washington as the bright consummate flower of our earlier civilization, then, dipping her pen in the sunlight, will write in the clear blue, above them all, the name of the soldier, the statesman, the martyr, TOUSSAINT L'OUVERture.

WENDELL PHILLIPS.

SCENE FROM HAMLET.

[The Platform.]

Enter HAMLET, HORATIO, and MARCEllus.

Ham. The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.
Hor. It is a nipping and an eager air.

Ham. What hour now?

Hor. I think it lacks of twelve.

Mar.

No, it is struck.

Hor. Indeed? I heard it not; it then draws near the

season

Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.

(A flourish of trumpets, and ordnance shot off within.) What does this mean, my lord?

Ham. The king doth wake to-night, and takes his rouse,

Keeps wassel, and the swaggering up-spring reels;

And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,

The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out

The triumph of his pledge.

Hor. Is it a custom?

Ham.

Ay, marry is't:

But to my mind, — though I am native here

And to the manner born, it is a custom

More honor'd in the breach than the observance.
This heavy-headed revel east and west,

Make us traduced, and taxed of other nations:
They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase

Soil our addition; and, indeed it takes

From our achievements, though perform'd at height,
The pith and marrow of our attribute.
So, oft it chances in particular men,

That, for some vicious mole of nature in them,
As in their birth, (wherein they are not guilty,
Since nature cannot choose his origin,)
By the o'ergrowth of some complexion,

Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason;
Or by some habit that too much o'er-leavens
The form of plausive manners; - that these men,
Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect;
Being nature's livery, or fortune's star,
Their virtues else (be they as pure as grace,
As infinite as man may undergo,)

Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault: the dram of base

Doth all the noble substance often doubt,
To his own scandal.

Hor.

Enter GHOST.

Look, my lord, it comes!

Ham. Angels and ministers of grace defend us! Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd;

Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell,