gentlemen, drawn from a distance by curiosity, just as I was coming out of church with my ragged regiment, much depressed to think how little good I could do them, quite unexpectedly struck up that beautiful and animating anthem, "Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of these, ye have done it unto Me."

DESCRIPTION OF A MENDIP FEAST.*

HANNAH MORE.

The clergy of most of the parishes attended, and led the procession. A band of rustic music,- a tribute of gratitude from all the neighboring villages, stepped forward, and preceded the whole, playing "God Save the King." We followed the clergy; then Ma'am Baker and her two hundred Cheddarites; and so on, the procession ending with Nailsea, the girls having fine nosegays, and the boys carrying white rods in their hands, the gentlemen and ladies weeping as though we had exhibited a deep tragedy, though the pleasing idea of the hungry going to be fed, I believe, caused these tears - rather those of joy than of sorrow.

At the entrance of our circle the music withdrew, and the children then struck up their psalms and hymns. All were then seated in circles, fifteen completing the whole. The effect was really very interesting. When all were served, they arose; and each pastor, stepping into the midst, prayed for his [God's] blessing on his own flock. And this part of the ceremony they did. Examinations, singing, etc., took place.

well.

At

*This feast was a dinner of beef and plum pudding given to the children from all the schools.

length every voice on the hill was permitted, nay, invited, to join in one general chorus of "God Save the King." This is the only pleasure in the form of a song we ever allow. Instantaneously the children, their masters and mistresses, keeping their eyes on the clergy and ourselves, fell into the procession as at the beginning, walked to the place where we first met, and every school marched off to their several districts singing hallelujahs till they sank into the valley, and their voices could no more be heard. At this moment every heart seemed softened and subdued, and many eyes shed tears.

Seven or eight thousand people attended, and behaved as quietly as the sheep that grazed around us. Thus did this day open to us much matter for reflection. Farmers and their wives mixed with their own

poor, and rode in the same conveyances,- their own wagons. The clergy headed this ragged procession, with hats in their hands. Seven thousand people showed us they could be quiet on a day of merriment, not to say innocent. Upwards of nine hundred children were well fed as a reward for a year's labor, and that labor learning the Bible. The meeting took its rise from religious institutions. The day passed in the exercise of duties, and closed with joy. Nothing of a gay nature was introduced, but loyalty to the king; and this never interfered with higher duties to the King of kings. The examinations were in the repetition of the Bible, Catechism, and Psalms, when the children received prizes according to their proficiency. Either then, or at the annual school feasts, brides of good character were presented with a Bible, a pair of stockings, and five shillings, almost a fortune when a spinning-wheel cost four-and-six-pence.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

PUBLIC SPEECHES AND PATRIOTIC SENTIMENT.

ORATION ON THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN.

GEORGE BANCROFT.

Our grief and horror at the crime which has clothed the continent in mourning, find no adequate expression in words, and no relief in tears. The president of the United States of America has fallen by the hands of an assassin. Neither the office with which he was invested by the approved choice of a mighty people, nor the most simple-hearted kindliness of nature, could save him from the fiendish passions of relentless fanaticism. The wailings of the millions attend his remains as they are borne in solemn procession over our great rivers, along the seaside, beyond the mountains, across the prairie, to their resting-place in the valley of the Mississippi. funeral knell vibrates through the world, and the friends of freedom of every tongue and in every clime are his

mourners.

His

Too few days have passed away since Abraham Lincoln stood in the flush of vigorous manhood, to permit any attempt at an analysis of his character or an exposition of his career. We find it hard to believe that his large eyes, which, in their softness and beauty, expressed nothing but benevolence and gentle

ness,

are closed in death; we almost look for the pleasant smile that brought out more vividly the earnest cast of his features, which were serious even to sadness. A few years ago he was a village attorney, engaged in the support of a rising family, unknown to fame, scarcely named beyond his neighborhood; his administration made him the most conspicuous man in his country, and drew on him first the astonished gaze, and then the respect and admiration of the world.

Those who come after us will decide how much of the wonderful results of his public career is due to his own good common sense, his shrewd sagacity, readiness of wit, quick interpretation of the public mind, his rare combination of fixedness and pliancy, his steady tendency of purpose; how much to the American people, who, as he walked with them side by side, inspired him with their own wisdom and energy; and how much to the overruling laws of the moral world, by which the selfishness of evil is made to defeat itself. But after every

allowance, it will remain that members of the government which preceded his administration opened the gates to treason, and he closed them; that when he went to Washington, the ground on which he trod, shook under his feet, and he left the republic on a solid foundation; that traitors had seized public forts and arsenals, and he recovered them for the United States, to whom they belonged; that the capital, which he found the abode of slaves, is now the home only of the free; that the boundless public domain which was grasped at, and, in a great measure, held for the diffusion of slavery, is now irrevocably devoted to freedom; that then men talked a jargon of a balance of power in a republic between Slave States

and Free States, and now the foolish words are blown away forever by the breath of Maryland, Missouri, and Tennessee; that a terrible cloud of political heresy rose from the abyss, threatening to hide the light of the sun, and under its darkness a rebellion was growing into indefinable proportions; now the atmosphere is purer than ever before, and the insurrection is vanishing away; the country is cast into another mold, and the gigantic system of wrong, which had been the work of more than two centuries, is dashed down, we hope forever. And as to himself, personally: he was then scoffed at by the proud as unfit for his station, and now against usage of later years and in spite of numerous competitors, he was the unbiased and the undoubted choice of the American people for a second term of service. Through all the mad business of treason, he retained the sweetness of a most placable disposition; and the slaughter of myriads of the best on the battle-field, and the more terrible destruction of our men in captivity by the slow torture of exposure and starvation, had never been able to provoke him into harboring one vengeful feeling or one purpose of cruelty.

How shall the nation most completely show its sorrow at Mr. Lincoln's death? How shall it best honor

his memory? There can be but one answer. He was struck down when he was highest in its service, and in strict conformity with duty was engaged in carrying out principles affecting its life, its good name, and its relations to the cause of freedom and the progress of mankind. Grief must take the character of action, and breathe itself forth in the assertion of the policy to which he fell a victim. The standard which he held in his