Nor wreck, nor change, nor winter's flight,

Nor time's remorseless doom,

Shall mar one ray of glory's light
That gilds your deathless tomb.

LESSON CXXX.

THE WIDOWED SWORD.

ANON.

1. HEY have sent me the sword that my brave boy

THEY

wore

On the field of his young renown,

On the last red field, where his faith was sealed,

And the sun of his days went down.

Away with the tears

That are blinding me so!

There is joy in his years,

Though his young head be low:

And I'll gaze with a solemn delight, evermore,
On the sword that my brave boy wore.

2. 'Twas for Freedom and Home that I gave him away, Like the sons of his race of old;

And though, aged and gray, I am childless this day, He is dearer a thousand-fold.

There's glory above him

To hallow his name;
A land that will love him

Who died for its fame;

And a solace will shine, when my old heart is sore,
Round the sword that my brave boy wore.

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.

THE

the surgeon bore

1. THE knife was still,
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

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 VALLUM, rampart; ION, the act of,) the act of surrounding with a wall or rampart.

THE

THE TEACHER, THE HOPE OF AMERICA.

SAMUEL EELLS, 1837.

HE patriot who contemplates the vastness of this republic, 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