he has made pledges which he has violated, and promises which he has repeatedly broken. If they succeed in reducing us to slavery, and closing our lips against speaking of the abuses of this administration, thank God! the voice of history, trumpet-tongued, will proclaim these pledges, and the manner in which they have been violated, to future generations!

Neither here nor elsewhere will I use language, with regard to any gentleman, that may be considered indecorous; and the question not easily solved is, how far shall we restrain ourselves in expressing a just and necessary indignation; and whether the expression of such indignation may be considered a departure from courtesy. That indignation, that reprobation, I shall express on all occasions. But those who have taken upon themselves the guardianship of the Grand Lama, who is surrounded by a light which no one can approach, — about whom no one is permitted to speak without censure, have extended that guardianship to the presiding officer of this house. Gentlemen are not permitted to speak of the qualifications of that officer for the highest office in the government. Shall we, sir, because he is here as presiding officer of this body, keep silent when he is urged upon the people, who are goaded and driven to his support, lest we be guilty of an indecorum against those who are the constituted authorities of the country? Thank God, it is not my practice to "crook the pliant hinges of the knee, that thrift may follow fawning!"

This aggression of power upon our liberties, sir, and this tame submission to aggression, forebode evil to this nation. Coming events cast their shadows before them," deepening and darkening; and, as the sun sets, the shadows lengthen. It may be the going down of the great luminary of the republic, and that we all shall be enveloped in one universal political darkness!

BURNING OF THE LEXINGTON. — E. H. Chapin.

GREAT calamities, though they may startle and appal at first, live but a brief time in the memory of the multitude. There is a

vivid flash, a momentary shock, when the noisy world shrinks back and is silent; and then the vast and busy machinery goes on again, the sentiment of horror is absorbed in the rush of jarring interests and active life, and the event is apparently forgotten; while the hearts that are peculiarly torn and smitten are left to bleed alone, and to heal up slowly in the obscurity of private grief and retirement. But in this instance the cold thrill that ran through every soul upon hearing the "evil tidings" has not yet ceased to vibrate even in the great mass of community at large. The exclamations of surprise and horror which follow the dreadful announcement are yet pealing upon our ears from remote portions of the land. The waters that yawned to receive the wasted treasures, the charred and broken timbers, and the bodies of the drowned, have not yet become quiet and sealed above their awful sepulchres. Still, day after day, disconsolate Love and sorrowing Friendship are called to the sea-shore or the house of the dead, to recognize some lithe and perhaps mangled form, that has been given up and rescued from the deep. Still, ever and anon, some portion of sunken treasure, some relic that was lost with the departed, is plucked all dripping from the bosom of the element, to touch the chord of painful association, and tear the wounds of affection afresh. Still, the anxious wife, or child, or parent, at the hearth of home, and the distant traveller upon the heaving billows, shudder with apprehension and are cold at the heart, as their thought goes back to that scene of death and terror which surrounded the doomed and burning Lexington.

A vessel plying upon the route between two of the most important cities of our country, filled with a multitude of human beings, in sight of a populous shore, in an early hour of the evening, is suddenly enwrapped in flames, surrounded by the darkness of the night, the inclement winter air, and a waste of cold and icy waters; leaving to its wretched inmates, in almost every instance, nothing but the dreadful alternative of death by the consuming flame or by the freezing flood. The alarm-cry bursts from lip to lip of that startled throng, smiting awfully and solemnly upon each heart, like the tone of its own deep death-knell. Imagination

cannot picture, or conceive, the dread reality. In what various moods of thought, in what different occupations, were they engaged! They had left, but a little while ago, the thronged and busy city, through whose streets, filled with light and life, and presenting all the diversities of a mimic world, they had so lately passed; and they were now, calmly as if under the roof of their own dwellings, borne on with all the speed of mighty engines towards other thoroughfares of life and action and joy, where they might mingle among men. Some had grasped warm hands and pressed warm hearts at parting, and bidden a gay or sad, but, as they thought, a brief farewell. Some had left the couch of the sick friend, hurried forth by the urgency of business, with the promise and the thought speedily to return. Some had parted with the traveller's haste, who had already passed over a long and wearisome route, and were looking forward with eager expectation to the welcome of their near and waiting homes. Some had come forth with the gladness and buoyancy of hope, with the strong purpose of gain, with the joyful anticipation of meeting dear and familiar faces. Some had decided to come upon a halting resolution, O! why did they thus decide? Some were far from their homes, and were numbering the days that should bear them back. Some but we will not pause to

enumerate the various circumstances under which the members of that group had set out, and that preceded their solemn end. Suffice it to say, that life and hope, and memories of loved ones, and innumerable thoughts and sympathies and feelings, were stirring in the hearts of the mass of beings that were so soon to go down, amid the chilliness of winter and the flaming shroud of the conflagration, to the cold and unknown chambers of the deep!

What a hurried rush for safety and for life was there! What piercing shrieks, bursting from ashy and quivering lips, rose above the hoarse gurgling of the waters, the roar and crackling of the flames, and rent the flushed and heated brow of night! What frantic cries of the husband for the wife, the wife for the husband, -the mother clutching wildly for her child, the child sobbing for its mother! What strivings of agony with the hot breath of the flame and the suffocating smoke; what moanings of the helpless,

the trampled, and the crushed! What invocations for aid, shrieked into the ears of mortals as impotent! What fervent prayers, rising through the tumult and storm of the elements to the eternal throne! But still the fierce flame swept relentlessly on, and the waters chafed and shouted for their prey!

The strong, brave man, perchance, was there, who had toiled in sun and storm, and faced the billows and the wind, and travelled by land and by sea. And with a desperate struggle did he meet his death, grappling and striving with the overwhelming and terrific powers around him, as though they were living and conquerable things. As he saw behind him, in the fiery jaws of one element, certain destruction, with giant energy did he put by the dense and muffling smoke, and plunged with nerved limbs and dauntless heart into the cold arms of the other. And long did he battle with the waves, and shout and gurgle and shriek and madly toss the icy waters to and fro; and then, benumbed and dead, he went down, down, and all was still, save a hoarse moaning of the deep, above his burial-place!

Beauty, perhaps, was there, in the bloom of youth and health. But when the alarm-cry came, white was that cheek with a paleness that was the seal of death, and horror glared wildly in those beaming eyes, and around her frail and delicate form swept the blast of the wreathing flame. That white hand was lifted for a moment above the ridgy billows, one stifled cry was heard — and she was gone! And now the gentle sunlight lingers and the sorrowful winds lament above her bed; but no flowers shall bloom and no tear be shed upon that spot beneath which, with calm brow, she sleeps, in some rocky and garnished chamber,

"Deep in the silent waters,

A thousand fathoms low."

The esteemed and talented one was there. He who had studied, with the love of the scholar, the sober reason of philosophy, and the earnest faith of religion, whose lips had poured forth the words of instruction and of genius, and whose voice had been heard in the blessed ministrations of the gospel, was called upon thus to die,

to die suddenly and amid a scene of horror, way to fulfil a duty of his sacred station,

to die while on his to die far away from

the graves of his fathers and from his native land, and even from the tombs of those dear to him in the home of his adoption, —— and, O! to die away from the arms of that devoted wife, who sorrowed for his absence, and waited with yearning fondness for his return. But he died leaving fresh, green memories in the hearts of those who knew him, and a good name in the world; and, better than all, he died with his armor on, as a soldier of the cross. He passed away amid the strife of the physical elements and the sufferings of keenest bodily anguish; but we may believe that soul that had imbibed the principles of Jesus was calm and triumphant amid it all, and supported and brightened with the undying hope of the Christian.

Maternal affection was there, deep, firm and true, to the last. Doubtless she struggled long for the boon of life; not only for herself, -O! not only for herself!-but for that dear babe. But when death came to relieve the little suffering child, and she gazed upon its pale brow and saw that it was dead, when she felt the coldness gathering closer about her own yearning heart, and her eyes growing dim, still, still was she true to the unconquerable impulse of a mother's love; and she tore her veil from off her, and cast it about the face of that sleeping one, that the winds and the waves and the ice might not treat it roughly, and that, when they should find its little corse, it might be all as unmarred and natural as if it had been borne in its mother's arms, and laid in the calmness and beauty of its stony slumber at their feet! And then life fluttered and went out in that true heart, and she sunk to her unknown grave!

And so, in various modes, and under circumstances marked by various degrees of horror, the young, the old, the rich, the poor, the talented, the weak, the strong, tender woman and haughty manhood, the budding youth and the helpless child, so they were swept away, upon that night, and devoured by the elements; with wild struggle and terrible agonies of death, with the flames