But there's the request he made; you know it, parson, about
Bein' laid under the maples that his own hand set out,
And me to be laid beside him when my time comes to go;
As if-as if-don't mind me; but 'twas that unstrung me so.

And now that some scales, as we think, have fallen from our eyes,

And things brought so to a crisis have made us both more

wise,

Why, Caleb says, and so I say, till the Lord parts him and

me,

We'll love each other better, and try our best to agree.

TO A SKELETON.

The MSS. of this poem, was found in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, in London, near a perfect human skeleton, and sent by the curator to the Morning Chronicle for publication. It excited so much attention that every effort was made to discover the author, and a responsible party went so far as to offer a reward of fifty guineas for information that would discover its origin. The author preserved his incognito, and, we believe, has never beev discovered.

Behold this ruin! "Twas a skull,

Once of ethereal spirit full.

This narrow cell was life's retreat,

This space was thought's mysterious seat.
What beauteous visions filled this spot,
What dreams of pleasure long forgot?
Nor hope, nor joy, nor love, nor fear,
Have left one trace of record here.

Beneath this mouldering canopy
Once shone the bright and busy eye;
But start not at the dismal void;
If social love that eye employed,
If with no lawless fire it gleamed,

But through the dews of kindness beamed,―

That eye shall be forever bright

When stars and sun are sunk in night.

Within this hollow cavern hung

The ready, swift, and tuneful tongue;

If falsehood's honey it disdained,

And when it could not praise was chained;

If bold in virtue's cause it spoke,

Yet gentle concord never broke,—
This silent tongue shall plead for thee
When time unveils eternity!

Say, did these fingers delve the mine,
Or with the envied rubies shine?
To hew the rock or wear a gem
Can little now avail to them.
But if the page of truth they sought,
Or comfort to the mourner brought,
These hands a richer meed shall claim
Than all that wait on wealth and fame.

Avails it whether bare or shod
These feet the paths of duty trod?
If from the bowers of ease they fled,
To seek affliction's humble shed;
If grandeur's guilty bribe they spurned,
And home to virtue's cot returned,—
These feet with angel wings shall vie,
And tread the palace of the sky!

A REVOLUTIONARY SERMON.*
HUGH HENRY BRECKENRIDGE.

Soldiers and countrymen :-We have met this evening perhaps for the last time. We have shared the toil of the march, the peril of the fight, the dismay of the retreat; alike we have endured toil and hunger, the contumely of the internal foe, the outrage of the foreign oppressor. We have sat night after night beside the same camp-fire, shared the same rough soldier's fare; we have together heard the roll of the reveille which called us to duty, or the beat of the tattoo which gave the signal for the hardy sleep of the soldier, with the earth for his bed, and a knapsack for his pillow.

And now, soldiers and brethren, we have met in this peaceful valley, on the eve of battle, while the sunlight is dying away beyond yonder heights, the sunlight that to-morrow morn will glimmer on scenes of blood. We have met amid the whitening tents of our encampment; in times of terror and gloom have we gathered togetherGod grant it may not be for the last time! It is a solemn time. Brethren, does not the awful voice of nature

*Preached on the eve of the battle of Brandywine, September 10, 1777, in the presence of Washington and his army, at Chadd's Ford.

seem to echo the sympathies of this hour? The flag of our country droops heavily from yonder staff; the breeze has died away along the plain of Chadd's Ford,—the plain that spreads before us glistening in sunlight; the heights of the Brandywine arise gloomy and grand beyond the waters of yonder stream; and all nature holds a pause of solemn silence, on the eve of the bloodshed and strife of the morrow.

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They that take the sword shall perish by the sword." And have they not taken the sword? Let the desolated plain, the blood-soddened valley, the burned farmhouse, the sacked village, and the ravaged town, answer; let the whitening bones of the butchered farmer, strewn along the fields of his homestead, answer; let the starving mother, with the babe clinging to her withered breast, that can afford no sustenance, let her answer, with the death rattle mingling with the murmuring tones that mark the last struggle for life,-let the dying mother and her babe answer! It was but a day past, and our land slept in the light of peace. War was not here, wrong was not here. Fraud, and woe, and misery, and want, dwelt not among us. From the eternal solitude of the green woods, arose the blue smoke of the settler's cabin, and golden fields of corn peered forth from amid the waste of the wilderness, and the glad music of human voices awoke the silence of the forest. Now, God of mercy, behold the change! Under the shadow of a pretext, under the sanctity of the name of God, invoking the Redeemer to their aid, do these foreign hirelings slay our people! They throng our towns, they darken our plains, and now they encompass our posts on the lonely plain of Chadd's Ford.

tell

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'They that take the sword shall perish by the sword." Brethren, think me not unworthy of belief when I you that the doom of the Britisher is near! Think me not vain when I tell you that beyond that cloud that now enshrouds us, I see gathering, thick and fast, the darker cloud and the blacker storm of a Divine retribution! They may conquer us to-morrow! Might and wrong may prevail, and we may be driven from this field-but the hour of God's own vengeance will come!

Aye, if in the vast solitudes of eternal space, if in the

heart of the boundless universe, there throbs the being of an awful God, quick to avenge, and sure to punish guilt, then will the man George of Brunswick, called King, feel in his brain and in his heart, the vengeance of the Eternal Jehovah! A blight will be upon his life,—a withered brain, an accursed intellect; a blight will be upon his children, and on his people. Great God! how dread the punishment!

A crowded populace, peopling the dense towns where the man of money thrives, while the laborer starves; want striding among the people in all its forms of terror; an ignorant and God-defying priesthood, chuckling over the miseries of millions; a proud and merciless nobility, adding wrong to wrong, and heaping insult upon robbery and fraud; royalty corrupt to the very heart, aristocracy rotten to the core; crime and want linked hand in hand, and tempting men to deeds of woe and death,-these are a part of the doom and retribution that shall come upon the English throne and people. Soldiers: I look around among your familiar faces with a strange interest! Tomorrow morning we will all go forth to battle-for need I tell you that your unworthy minister will go with you, invoking God's aid in the fight? We will march forth to battle. Need I exhort you to fight--to fight for your homesteads, for your wives and your children? My friends, I might urge you to fight by the galling memories of British wrong! Walton, I might tell you of your father, butchered in the silence of midnight, on the plains of Trenton; I might picture his gray hairs, dabbled in blood; I might ring his death shriek in your ears. Shelmire, I might tell you of a mother butchered, and a sister outraged; the lonely farm house, the night assault, the roof in flames, the shouts of the troopers as they despatched their victims, the cries for mercy, the pleadings of innocence for pity. I might paint this all again, in the terrible colors of vivid reality, if I thought your courage needed such wild excitement. But I know you are strong in the might of the Lord. You will go forth to battle to-morrow with light hearts and determined spirits, though the solemn duty, the duty of avenging the dead, may rest heavy on your souls. And in the hour of battle when all around is darkness, lit by the lurid

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cannon-glare and the piercing musket-flash, when the wounded strew the ground, and the dead litter your path, remember, soldiers, that God is with you. The Eternal God fights for you; he rides on the battle cloud, he sweeps onward with the march of the hurricane charge. The Awful and the Infinite fights for you, and you will triumph. They that take the sword shall perish by the sword." You have taken the sword, but not in the spirit of wrong and ravage. You have taken the sword for your homes, for your wives, for your little ones. You have taken the sword for truth, for justice and right, and to you the promise is, be of good cheer; for your foes have taken the sword, in defiance of all that man holds dear, in blasphemy of God; they shall perish by the sword.

And now, brethren and soldiers, I bid you all farewell. Many of us may fall in the fight of to-morrow,-God rest the souls of the fallen!-many of us may live to tell the story of the fight of to-morrow, and in the memory of all, will ever rest and linger the quiet scene of this autumnal night. When we meet again, may the long shadows of twilight be flung over a peaceful land. God in heaven grant it!

THE DECLARATION.-N. P. WILLIS.

"Twas late, and the gay company was gone,
And light lay soft on the deserted room
From alabaster vases, and a scent

Of orange-leaves, and sweet verbena came
Through the unshuttered window on the air;
And the rich pictures with their dark old tints,
Hung like a twilight landscape, and all things
Seemed hushed into a slumber. Isabel,
The dark-eyed, spiritual Isabel,

Was leaning on her harp, and I had stayed
To whisper what I could not when the crowd
Hung on her look like worshipers. I knelt,
And with the fervor of a lip unused

To the cold breath of reason, told my love.
There was no answer, and I took the hand
That rested on the strings, and pressed a kiss
Upon it unforbidden-and again