The prattler had stirred, in the veteran's breast,
The embers of fires that had long been at rest.
The blood of his youth rushed anew through his
veins;

The soldier returned to his weary campaigns;
His perilous battles at once fighting o'er,
While the soul of nineteen lit the eye of four-score.

“I carried my musket, as one that must be
But loosed from the hold of the dead, or the free!
And fearless I lifted my good, trusty sword,
In the hand of a mortal, the strength of the Lord!
In battle, my vital flame freely I felt

Should go, but the chains of my country to melt!

"I sprinkled my blood upon Lexington's sod, And Charlestown's green height to the war-drum I trod.

From the fort, on the Hudson, our guns I depressed, The proud coming sail of the foe to arrest.

I stood at Stillwater, the Lakes, and White Plains, And offered for freedom to empty my veins!

"Dost now ask me, child, since thou hear'st where I've been,

Why my brow is so furrowed, my locks white and thin

Why this faded eye cannot go by the line,
Trace out little beauties, and sparkle like thine;
Or why so unstable this tremulous knee,

Who bore sixty years since,' such perils for thee?
"What! sobbing so quick? are the tears going to
start?

Come! lean thy young head on thy grandfather's

heart!

It has not much longer to glow with the joy
I feel thus to clasp thee, so noble a boy!
But when in earth's bosom it long has been cold,
A man, thou 'lt recall, what, a babe, thou art told.”

HYMN OF THE REAPERS.

Our Father, to fields that are white,
Rejoicing, the sickle we bear,

In praises our voices unite

To thee, who hast made them thy care. The seed, that was dropped in the soil, We left, with a holy belief

In One, who, beholding the toil,

Would crown it at length with the sheaf. And ever our faith shall be firm

In thee, who hast nourished the root;
Whose finger has led up the germ,

And finished the blade and the fruit!
The heads, that are heavy with grain,
Are bowing and asking to fall:
Thy hand is on mountain and plain,
Thou maker and giver of all!

Thy blessings shine bright from the hills,
The valleys thy goodness repeat;
And, Lord, 't is thy bounty that fills

The arms of the reaper with wheat!
Oh! when with the sickle in hand,
The angel thy mandate receives,
To come to the field with his band

To bind up, and bear off thy sheaves,
May we be as free from the blight,
As ripe to be taken away,
As full in the year, to thy sight,

As that which we gather to-day! Our Father, the heart and the voice Flow out our fresh off'rings to yield. The Reapers! the Reapers rejoice,

And send up their song from the field!

Miss Gould died at the age of seventy-seven, at her residence in Newburyport, Massachusetts, | September 5, 1865. An obituary notice in the Boston Transcript pays this tribute to her amiable career as a Christian lady and author:--

"Miss Gould led a quiet life in the homestead where she dwelt for half a century; a life which would have been as secluded as it was unostentatious, but for her genial hospitality, and the many visitors, among them not a few of our distinguished authors, who sought the acquaintance of a lady widely known as a charming writer when American literature was in its infancy, and when but few of her own sex joined her in contributing to its growth. The personal character of the deceased was of rare excellence. She united the graces of a Christian to the attractions of a cultivated mind; and in her pursuit of letters never neglected the simplest womanly duties or failed to exhibit the womanly virtues of home. As a daughter her devotion to her venerated father was untiring in its respect, affection, and watchful care; and throughout her life her friendship was sought and prized both by the young and the old. Her memory will be tranquilly cherished in many hearts; and her pleasant and pathetic lyrics will continue to be read for their fine feeling, unaffected simplicity, and patriotic and religious sentiments."

BENJAMIN MOORE NORMAN,

The author of several works relating to the geography and archæology of America, was born at Hudson, New York, December 22, 1809. His father, William E. Norman, an Englishman by birth and descent, was settled in that place as a bookseller, and bore a high character for uprightness and intelligence. The name given to his son, that of the estimable Bishop Moore, is indicative of his love of Episcopacy, and of the class of society which he cultivated. He numbered among his friends many persons of great worth, among others Dr. Croswell, of New Haven, and the late William L. Stone, of the New York Commercial Advertiser, who wrote of him, in an obituary notice, that "he left to his children the rich inheritance of an honest name.'

On the father's death, the son was called from a clerkship in New York, to take charge of the business at Hudson. In 1830 he visited Europe, and was present in Paris during the Revolution of that year, of his observations of which he kept an account, which, with the journals of subsequent visits to the West Indies and to England, were destroyed by a fire in New Orleans. He became established in the latter city, as a bookseller, in 1837, after conducting the business for a time in Philadelphia. The loss of his wife, to whom he had been married scarcely a year, by yellow fever, in New Orleans, in 1841, led him to an unusual sympathy with the sufferers by this pestilence in subsequent seasons. He became one of the most devoted and self-sacrificing of the many philanthropic citizens whom the Southern metropolis has always found, when the need arose, within her limits. It was also owing to this personal affliction that he became a traveller in Yucatan, giving the results of his observations to the public in an octavo volume, issued in New York, at the close of 1842, entitled Rambles in Yucatan; or, Notes of Travel through the Peninsula, including a visit to the

Remarkable Ruins of Chi-chen, Kabal, Zayi, and Uxwal. The volume, in octavo, was illustrated by numerous engravings in lithograph, from drawings made by the author. A second edition of this work, with the title slightly altered, appeared in 1843. The interest which had been excited by the explorations of Messrs. Catherwood and Stephens, in the countries visited by Mr. Norman, was sustained by the fidelity of his observations in a new field, and his unaffected narrative of what he had seen. A collection of idols and remains of utensils and instruments collected by Mr. Norman in Yucatan, were presented by him to the New York Historical Society. His researches attracted attention abroad, and led to his election as a member of the Royal Antiquarian Society of Copenhagen. He was also a member of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Science, of the American Ethnological Society, and of the New York Historical Society.

In 1845, Mr. Norman published, at New Orleans, a little work entitled, New Orleans and its Environs; containing a Brief Historical Sketch of the Territory and State of Louisiana and the City of New Orleans, from the Earliest Period to the Present Time, presenting a Complete Guide to the Southern Metropolis. the same year he also published, at New York, Rambles by Land and Water; or, Notes of Travel in Cuba and Mexico, the result of a tour the previous season. As in his former

In

work on Yucatan, he presented various observations of antiquities, and his book, like its predecessor, was well received by his countrymen. With the exception of an Essay on Agriculture, read before the Agriculturists and Mechanics' Association of Louisiana, at Baton Rouge, in 1847, this completes the list of Mr. Norman's publications. In the later years of his life, during which he continued his business as a bookseller in New Orleans, his health was much impaired, but he always found strength, as he had the earnest desire, to minister to the necessities of others, being, as we have intimated, foremost in his labors of philanthropy, not only in the frequent seasons of pestilence, but in the furtherance of charitable and religious institutions for the relief of destitute females and others. In these and kindred labors of love he was frequently associated with the Rev. Dr. Hawks, who then held a pastoral charge in the city, whose warm friendship he gained no less by this disinterested benevolence than by his fondness for history and antiquities.

The last year of Mr. Norman's life was spent with his wife, whom he had married in 1855, in various journeys in pursuit of health, in Texas and in Mississippi. He died of an attack of pneumonia, which his broken constitution was unable to resist, near Summit, in the latter State, February 1, 1860. His remains were brought to the banks of his native Hudson, and lie, marked by a simple stone with a pious inscription, in the cemetery at Poughkeepsie.

PARK BENJAMIN.

PARK BENJAMIN is descended from a New England family, which came originally from Wales.

His father resided as a merchant in Demerara, in British Guiana. The son in his infancy suffered from an illness, the improper treatment of which left him with a permanent lameness. He was brought to America, was educated in New England, studied law at Cambridge, and was admitted to practice in Connecticut. He soon, however, withdrew from the law to the pursuits of literature, embarking in the editorship of the New England Magazine in March, 1835, shortly after the retirement of its projector, Mr. Buckingham. In less than a year he brought the work to New York, continuing it with the publishing house of Dearborn and Co., with which he became connected, as the American Monthly Magazine, five volumes of which were published from January, 1836, to June, 1838. He next published the New Yorker, a weekly journal, in association with Horace Greeley; and in January, 1840, established the New World, a weekly newspaper of large size, which met the wants of the day by its cheap, wholesale republication of the English magazine literature. It was also well sustained by a corps of spirited writers which the editor drew round him in its original departments. Of those more immediately connected with the conduct of the paper were Epes Sargent, James Aldrich, H. C. Deming, and Rufus W. Griswold; while among the frequent contributors were Judge W. A. Duer, Judge J. D. Hammond, author of the Life and Times of Silas Wright, H. W. Herbert, Charles Lanman, W. M. Evarts, John O. Sargent, John Jay, E. S. Gould, and many others.

Mr. Aldrich was a merchant of New York, and the writer of a number of poems which find a place in the collections, though never brought together by the author into a volume. One of the most popular of these is entitled

A DEATH-KED.

Her suff'ring ended with the day,
Yet lived she at its close,
And breathed the long, long night away
In statue-like repose.

But when the sun in all his state,
Illumed the eastern skies,

She passed through glory's morning-gate,
And walked in Paradise!

The success of the New World led to the cheap publishing enterprises of Winchester, which were conducted with boldness, and had for the time a marked effect on the book trade. Mr. Benjamin conducted the New World for nearly five years, when it passed into the hands of Mr. Charles Eames, a writer of marked ability, by whom it was edited for a short time in 1845, when it was finally discontinued. In 1846 Mr. Benjamin projected, at Baltimore, The Western Continent, a weekly newspaper on the plan of the New World. It was published only for a short time. The next year he published another weekly paper on a similar plan, involving a liberal outlay of expenditure, The American Mail, of which twelve numbers were issued from June 5 to August 21.·

Mr. Benjamin's poems, lyrics, and occasional effusions are numerous, but have not been collected. They are to be found scattered over the entire periodical literature of the country for the last twenty years. His only distinct publications

Park Benjamin died, after a brief illness, at his residence in the city of New York, September 12, 1864. In his later years he was much before the public as a popular lecturer on social and other topics, his discourses on which were varied with the recitations of humorous or satirical poems of his own composition. Though a fertile author of occasional poems, and of numerous prose contributions to periodicals, no collection of his writings has been published. His style, both in prose and verse, was marked by ease and fluency.

THE DEPARTED.

The departed! the departed!
They visit us in dreams,

And they glide above our memories
Like shadows over streams;

But where the cheerful lights of home
In constant lustre burn,

The departed, the departed,
Can never more return.

The good, the brave, the beautiful,
How dreamless is their sleep,
Where rolls the dirge-like music
Of the ever-tossing deep!

Or where the hurrying night winds
Pale winter's robes have spread
Above their narrow palaces,
In the cities of the dead!

I look around and feel the awe
Of one who walks alone

Among the wrecks of former days,
In mournful ruin strown

I start to hear the stirring sounds
Among the cypress trees,
For the voice of the departed

Is borne upon the breeze.
That solemn voice! it mingles with
Each free and careless strain;
I scarce can think earth's minstrelsy
Will cheer my heart again.
The melody of summer waves,
The thrilling notes of birds,

Can never be so dear to me

As their remembered words.

I sometimes dream their pleasant smiles Still on me sweetly fall,

Their tones of love I faintly hear

My name in sadness call.

I know that they are happy,
With their angel-plumage on,

But

my heart is very desolate To think that they are gone.

INDOLENCE.

Time! thou destroy'st the relics of the past,
And hidest all the footprints of thy march
On shattered column and on crumbled arch,
By moss and ivy growing green and fast.
Hurled into fragments by the tempest-blast,
The Rhodian monster lies: the obelisk,
That with sharp line divided the broad disc
Of Egypt's sun, down to the sands was cast:
And where these stood, no remnant-trophy stands,
And even the art is lost by which they rose:
Thus, with the monuments of other lands,

The place that knew them now no longer knows. Yet triumph not, oh, Time; strong towers decay, But a great name shall never pass away!

SPORT.

To see a fellow of a summer's morning,

With a large foxhound of a slumberous eye
And a slim gun, go slowly lounging by,
About to give the feathered bipeds warning,
That probably they may be shot hereafter,
Excites in me a quiet kind of laughter;
For, though I am no lover of the sport

Of harmless murder, yet it is to me
Almost the funniest thing on earth to see
A corpulent person, breathing with a snort,
Go on a shooting frolic all alone;

For well I know that when he's out of town,
He and his dog and gun will all lie down,
And undestructive sleep till game and light are
flown.

STEPHEN GREENLEAF BULFINCH,

A UNITARIAN CLERGYMAN, and contributor to the collection of hymns in use in that denomination, was born in Boston, June 18th, 1809. At nine years of age he was taken to Washington, in the District of Columbia, where his father, Charles Bulfinch, had been appointed architect of the Capitol. He was graduated at the Columbian College, D. C., in 1826, and entered the Divinity School at Cambridge the following year. From

1830 to 1837, with some interruptions, he ministered as a Unitarian clergyman at Augusta, Georgia. After this he preached and kept school at Pittsburgh, Pa., for a short time, and was then engaged in similar relations for six years at Washington, D. C. In 1845 he became settled at Nashua, N. H., and in 1852 removed to Boston. He died at Cambridge, October 12, 1870.

His writings are a volume, Contemplations of the Saviour, published at Boston in 1832; a volume of Poems published at Charleston, South Carolina, in 1834; The Holy Land, issued in Ware's Sunday Library in 1834; Lays of the Gospel, 1845; a devotional volume, Communion Thoughts, 1852; The Harp and the Cross, 1857; Honor; or, The Slave Dealer's Daughter, 1864; Manual of the Evidences of Christianity, 1866; Studies in the Evidences of Christianity, 1869.

Father! these rocks are thine,

Of Thee the everlasting monument,

Since at thy glance divine,

Earth trembled and her solid hills were rent.

Thine is this flashing wave,

Poured forth by thee from its rude mountain urn,

And thine yon secret cave,

Where haply, gems of orient lustre burn.

I hear the eagle scream;

And not in vain his cry! Amid the wild
Thou hearest! Can I deem

Thou wilt not listen to thy human child?

God of the rock and flood!

In this deep solitude I feel thee nigh.
Almighty, wise and good,

Turn on thy suppliant child a parent's eye.

Guide through life's vale of fear

My placid current, from defilement free,
Till, seen no longer here,

It finds the ocean of its rest in Thee!

ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP.

MR. WINTHROP is justly and honorably considered a representative man of Massachusetts. Tracing his descent through six generations of a family always eminent in the state, he arrives at the first emigrant of the name, John Winthrop, who became the first Governor of the colony, and who bore not only the truncheon of office but the pen of the chronicler.*

His son John, the Governor of Connecticut, was also a man of liberal tastes, was one of the founders of the Royal Society, and contributed to its proceedings and collections. His second wife was a step-daughter of Hugh Peters. Of his two sons, one of them, Fitz John, was Governor of Connecticut, and the younger, Wait Still (a family and not a fanciful Puritanical designation), became Chief Justice of the Superior Court of Massachusetts. The latter left a son John, who renewed the connexion with the Royal Society and remove to England. His son John married in New England and was a gentleman of wealth and leisure, passing his time in New London, Conn. His son, Thomas Lindall Winthrop, in the fifth generation of the American founder of the family, filled the position of Lieuten: nt Governor of Massachusetts. He married a daughter of Sir John Temple, the associate of Franklin in England, and a grand-daughter of Governor James Bowdoin.

Thus honorably connected, in the direct and collatera. branches of the family tree, Robert Charles Winthrop was born in Boston, May 12, 1809. He was educated at the Boston Latin school, and once, as "a medal boy," received a set of books from the city authorities. He was graduated at Harvard in 1828. For the next three years he studied law with Daniel Webster. Being a man of fortune, with an inherited taste for public life, he chose employment in affairs of the state in preference to the more private pursuit of the law. He took a prominent part in military affairs as captain of the Boston Light Infantry and other civic stations of the kind. In 1834 he became a member of the Massachusetts State Legislature, and was speaker of its House of Representatives from 1838 till his election to Congress in 1840.

* Ante, vol. i. pp. 30-33.

Roth Minthrop .

After seven years' service in the national House of Representatives he was chosen its speaker for the sessions of 1848-9. In 1850 he was appointed by the executive of Massachusetts to succeed Webster in the Senate, when the latter withdrew to the office of Secretary of State under President Fillmore. In 1851 he was a candidate for the office of Governor of Massachusetts, and received 65,000 votes, the two other candidates receiving about 40,000 and 30,000 respectively; but an absolute majority being required for an election by the people, he was defeated by a coalition of the minority parties in the legislature.

Besides his political relations Mr. Winthrop is President of the Massachusetts Historical Society, of which his father was also President, and which he lately represented in 1854, delivering a speech of much ability at the semi-centennial anniversary of the New York Historical Society; a member of the American Antiquarian Society, and of other kindred institutions.

The claims to literary distinction of Mr. Winthrop are through his Addresses and Orations. A series of these is strung along the whole course of his public life; all marked by their careful execution, literary propriety, and marked utility. They are easy, natural, finished performances, whether addressed to the State Legislature or the larger audience of national Representatives; whether in the popular political meeting, at an Agric ltural, Scientific, or Historical Anniversary, or at the bril liant Public Dinner The prominent trait of the orator and rhetorician, as he shows himself on these occasions, is self-command; command of himself and of his subject. In person at once lithe and full-formed, tall and erect, he speaks with plenary, distinct tone, without the least effort. effort. Each thought takes its appropriate place in his skilful method, which seems rather the result of a healthy physique of the mind than of art. In temper he is moderate, as his counsels

in affairs of state have shown. This disposition is reflected in his discourses. The style has a tendency to expansion which might degenerate into weakness were it not relieved by the frequent points of a poetical or fanciful nature, at times of great ingenuity.

country is to preserve peace, even under provocations which might justify war. The deepest disgrace to any country is to plunge into war under circumstances which leave the honorable alternative of peace. I heartily hope and trust, Sir, that in deference to the sense of the civilized world, in deference to that spirit of Christianity which is now spreading its benign and healing influences over both hemispheres with such signal rapidity, we shall explore the whole field of diplomacy, and exhaust every art of negotiation, before we give loose to that passion for conflict which the honorable gentleman from Pennelement of the American character.

OBJECTS AND LIMITS OF SCIENCE.*

PEACE BETWEEN ENGLAND AND AMERICA.†

If it be a fit subject for reproach, to entertain the most anxious and ardent desire for the peace of this country, its peace with England, its peace with all the world, I submit myself willingly to the fullest measure of that reproach. War between the United States and Great Britain for Oregon! Sir, there is something in this idea too monstrous to be entertained for a moment. The two greatest nations on the globe, with more territorial possessions than they know what to do with already, and bound together by so many ties of kindred, and language, and commercial interest, going to war for a piece of barren earth! Why, it would put back the cause of civilization a whole century, and would be enough not merely to call down the rebuke of men, but the curse of God. I do not yield to the honorable gentleman in a just concern for the national honor. I am ready to maintain that honor, whenever it is really at stake, against Great Britain as readily as against any other nation. Indeed, if war is to come upon us, I am quite willing that it should be war with a firstrate power-with a foeman worthy of our steel.

Oh! the blood more stirs,
To rouse a lion, than to start a hare.

If the young Queen of England were the veritable Victoria whom the ancient poets have sometimes described as descending from the right hand of Jupiter to crown the banner of predestined Triumph, I would still not shrink from the attempt to vindicate the rights of my country on every proper occasion, To her forces, however, as well as to ours, may come the "cita mors," as well as the " as well as the "Victoria læta. We have nothing to fear from a protracted war with any nation, though our want of preparation might give us the worst of it in the first encounter. are all and always ready for war, when there is no other alternative for maintaining our country's honor. We are all and always ready for any war into which a Christian man, in a civilized land, and in this age of the world, can have the face to enter. But I thank God that there are very few such cases. War and honor are fast getting to have less and less to do with each other. The highest honor of any

We

* "Life and Public Services of R. C. Winthrop," American Review, March, 1848. Loring's Hundred Boston Orators. Wheeler's Biog, and Polit. Hist. of Congress, 1848, vol. i. + From a Speech in Congress, 1844.

There are fields enough for the wildest and most extravagant theorizings, within his own appropriate domain, without overleaping the barriers which separate things human and divine. Indeed, I have often thought that modern science had afforded a most opportune and providential safety-valve for the intellectual curiosity and ambition of man, at a moment when the progress of education, invention, and liberty, had roused and stimulated them to a pitch of such unprecedented eagerness and ardor. Astronomy, Chemistry, and more than all, Geology, with their incidental branches of study, have opened an inexhaustible field for investigation and speculation. Here, by the aid of modern instruments and modern modes of analysis, the most ardent and ear: est spirits may find ample room and verge enough for their insatiate activity and audacious enterprise, and may pursue their course not only without the slightest danger of doing mischief to others but with the certainty of promoting the great end of scientific truth.

Let them lift their vast reflectors or refractors to the skies, and detect new planets in their hidingplaces. Let them waylay the fugitive comets in. their flight, and compel them to disclose the precise period of their orbits, and to give bonds for their punctual return. Let them drag out reluctant satellites from their habitual concealments." Let them resolve the unresolvable nebulæ of Orion or Andromeda. They need not fear. The sky will not fall, nor a single star be shaken from its sphere.

Let them perfect and elaborate their marvellous processes for making the light and the lightning their ministers, for putting "a pencil of rays" into the hand of art, and providing tongues of fire for the communication of intelligence. Let them foretell the path of the whirlwind and calculate the orbit of the storm. Let them hang out their gigantic pendulums, and make the earth do the work of describing and measuring her own motions. Let them annihilate human pain, and literally "charm ache with air, and agony with ether." The blessing of God will attend all their toils, and the gratitude of man will await all their triumphs.

Let them dig down into the bowels of the earth. Let them rive asunder the massive rocks, and unfold the history of creation as it lies written on the pages of their piled up strata. Let them gather up the fossil fragments of a lost Fauna, reproducing the ancient forms which inhabited the land or the seas, bringing them together, bone to his bone, till Leviathan and Behemoth stand before us in bodily presence and in their full proportions, and we almost tremble lest these dry bones should live again! Let them put nature to the rack, and torture her, in all her forms, to the betrayal of her inmost secrets and confidences. They need not forbear. The founda

*From an Address to the Alumni of Harvard University, 1852.