3. All so noble, so true, how they stood, how they fell,

In the battle, the plague, and the cold!

Oh, as bravely and well as e'er story could tell
Of the flower of the heroes of old!
Like a sword through the foe

Was that fearful attack

That, so bright ere the blow,
Comes so bloodily back;

And, foremost among them, his colors he bore;
And here is the sword that my brave boy wore.

4. It was kind of his comrades, ye know not how kind; It is more than the Indies to me;

Ye know not how kind and how steadfast of mind
The soldier to sorrow can be.
They know well how lonely,
How grievously wrung,
Is the heart that its only

Love loses so young;

And they closed his dark eyes when the battle was o'er,
And sent his old father the sword that he wore.

LESSON CXXXI.

"GOOD-BY, OLD ARM, GOOD-BY!"

GEORGE COOPER.

The incident, so pathetically described in this short poem, took place in one of our hospitals during the war. The piece should be read in a low and plaintive tone of voice.

1.

HE

knife was still, the surgeon bore

THE

The shattered arm away;

Upon his bed, in painless sleep,

The noble hero lay;

He woke, but saw the vacant place
Where limb of his had lain,

Then faintly spoke, "Oh, let me see
My strong right arm again!"

2. "Good-by, old arm!" the soldier said,
As he clasped the fingers cold;
And down his pale but manly cheeks
The tear-drops gently rolled:

My strong right arm, no deed of yours
Now gives me cause to sigh;

But it's hard to part such trusty friends:
Good-by, old arm! good-by!

3. "You've served me well these many years, In sunlight and in shade ;

But, comrade, we have done with war,—
Let dreams of glory fade.

You'll never more my saber swing

In battle fierce and hot;

You'll never bear another flag,
Or fire another shot.

4. I do not mourn to lose you now For home and native land:

Oh, proud am I to give my mite

For freedom pure and grand!
Thank God! no selfish thought is mine
While here I bleeding lie:

Bear, bear it tenderly away,-
Good-by, old arm! good-by!"

LESSON CXXXII

1 CIR CUM VAL LA'TION, (CIRCUM, around; VALLAT, to wall, from VAL LUM, rampart; ION, the act of,) the act of surrounding with a wall or rampart.

THE TEACHER, THE HOPE OF AMERICA.

SAMUEL EELLS, 1837.

THE patriot who contemplates the vastness of this repub

lic, and the diversified and conflicting interests of its entire population, can not but regard its future welfare with the deepest solicitude. Look abroad over this Country; mark her extent, her wealth, her fertility, her boundless resources, the giant energies which every day develops, and which she seems already bending on that fatal race,tempting, yet always fatal to republics, the race for physical greatness and aggrandizement.

2. Behold, too, that continuous and mighty tide of population, native and foreign, which is forever rushing through the great valley toward the setting sun; sweeping away the wilderness before it like grass before the mower; waking up industry and civilization in its progress; studding the solitary rivers of the West with marts and cities; dotting its boundless prairies with human habitations; penetrating every green nook and vale; climbing every fertile ridge; and still gathering and pouring onward, to form new States in those vast and yet unpeopled solitudes where the Oregon rolls his majestic flood, and

"Hears no sound save his own dashing."

3. Mark all this, and then say by what bonds will you hold together so mighty a people and so immense an empire ? What safeguard will you give us against the dangers which must inevitably grow out of so vast and

complicate an organization? In the swelling tide of our prosperity, what a field will open for political corruption ! What a world of evil passions to control, and jarring interests to reconcile! What temptations will there be to luxury and extravagance! What motives to private and official cupidity! What prizes will hang glittering at a thousand goals, to dazzle and tempt ambition!

4. Do we expect to find our security against these dangers in railroads and canals, in our circumvallations,' and ships of war? Alas! when shall we learn wisdom from the lessons of history? Our most dangerous enemies will grow up from our own bosom. We may erect bulwarks against foreign invasion; but what power shall we find in walls and armies to protect the people against themselves? There is but one sort of "internal improvement "— more thoroughly internal than that which is lauded by politicians that is able to save this country. I mean the improvement of the minds and souls of her people.

5. If this improvement shall be neglected, and shall fail to keep pace with the increase of our population and our physical advancement, one of two alternatives is certain : either the nation must dissolve in anarchy, under the rulers of its own choice; or, if held together at all, it must be by a government so strong and rigorous as to be utterly inconsistent with constitutional liberty. Let the hundreds of millions which, at no very distant day, will swarm in our cities, and fill up our great interior, remain sunk in ignorance and vice, and nothing short of an iron despotism will suffice to govern the nation,- to reconcile its vast and conflicting interests, control its elements of agitation, and hold back its fiery and headlong energies from dismemberment and ruin.

6. How, then, is this improvement to be effected? Who

are the agents of it? Who are they who shall stand perpetually as priests at the altar of Freedom, and feed its sacred fires by dispensing that knowledge and cultivation on which hangs our political salvation? They are the TEACHERS of our schools, the instructors in our academies and colleges, and in all those institutions, of whatever name, which have for their object the intellectual and moral culture of our youth, and the diffusion of knowledge among our people.

7. Theirs is the moral dignity of stamping the great features of our national character, and, in the moral worth and intelligence which they give it, of erecting a bulwark which shall prove impregnable in that hour of trial, when armies, and fleets, and fortifications shall be vain. And when those mighty and all-absorbing questions shall be heard, which are even now sending their bold demands into the ear of rulers and lawgivers, which are momentarily pressing forward to a solemn decision in the sight of God and of all nations, and which, when the hour of their decision shall come, will shake this country—the Union, the Constitution-as with the shaking of an earthquake, -it is they who, in that fearful hour, will gather around the structure of our political organization, and, with uplifted hands, stay the reeling fabric till the storm and the convulsion be overpast.

LESSON CXXXIII,

TRUE GLORY OF A NATION.

BISHOP WHIPPLE.

HE true glory of a nation is in an intelligent, honest,

THE

dustrious Christian people. The civilization of a

people depends on their individual character; and a con