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was besieged by Alfred in a fortified camp to which they fled; but, being reduced to extremity by want and hunger, they had recourse to the clemency of the victor, and offered to submit on any conditions. The king, no less generous than brave, gave them their lives; and even formed a scheme for converting them, from mortal enemies, into faithful subjects and confederates. HUME.

1.

LESSON LXXXVI.

Music.

How supreme her sway!

How lovely is the power that all obey!
Dumb matter trembles at her thrilling shock;
Her voice is echo'd by the desert rock;
For her, the asp withholds the sting of death,
And bares his fangs but to inhale her breath;
2. The royal lion leaves his desert lair,

And, crouching, listens when she treads the air;
And man, by wilder impulse driven to ill,
Is tamed, and led by this enchantress still.
Who ne'er has felt her hand assuasive steal
Along his heart-that heart will never feel.
3. "Tis her's to chain the passions, sooth the soul,
To snatch the dagger, and to dash the bowl
From Murder's hand; to smooth the couch of care,
Extract the thorns, and scatter roses there;

Of Pain's hot brow to still the bounding throb, Despair's long sigh, and Grief's convulsive sob. 4. How vast her empire! Turn through earth, through air, Your aching eye, you find her subjects there; Nor is the throne of heaven above her spell, Nor yet beneath it is the host of hell.

To her, Religion owes her holiest flame: Her eye looks heaven-ward, for from heaven she came. 5. And when Religion's mild and genial ray Around the frozen heart begins to play, Music's soft breath falls on the quivering light: The fire is kindled, and the flame is bright; And that cold mass, by either power assail'd, Is warmed-made liquid-and to heaven exhaled. PIERPONT.

LESSON LXXXVII.

Religion the only Basis of Society.

1. Few men suspect, perhaps no man comprehends, the extent of the support given by religion to every virtue. No man, perhaps, is aware, how much our moral and social sentiments are fed from this fountain; how powerless conscience would become, without the belief of a God; how palsied would be human benevolence, were there not the sense of a higher benevolence to quicken and sustain it; how suddenly the whole social fabric would quake, and with what a fearful crash it would sink into hopeless ruin, were the ideas of a Supreme Being, of accountableness, and of a future life, to be utterly erased from every mind.

2. And, let men thoroughly believe that they are the work and sport of chance; that no superior intelligence concerns itself with human affairs; that all their improvements perish for ever at death; that the weak have no guardian, and the injured no avenger; that there is no recompense for sacrifices to uprightness and the public good; that an oath is unheard in Heaven; that secret crimes have no witness but the perpetrator; that human existence has no purpose, and human virtue no unfailing friend; that this brief life is every thing to us, and death is total, everlasting extinction; once let them thoroughly abandon religion; and who can conceive or describe the extent of the desolation which would follow!

3. We hope, perhaps, that human laws and natural sympathy would hold society together. As reasonably might we believe, that, were the sun quenched in the heavens, our torches would illuminate, and our fires quicken and fertilize the creation. What is there in human nature to awaken respect and tenderness, if man is the unprotected insect of a day? And what is he more, if atheism be true?

4. Erase all thought and fear of God from a community, and selfishness and sensuality would absorb the whole man. Appetite, knowing no restraint; and suffering, having no solace or hope, would trample in scorn on the restraints of human laws. Virtue, duty, principle, would be mocked and spurned as unmeaning sounds. A sordid selfinterest would supplant every other feeling; and man would become, in fact, what the theory of atheism declares him to be, a companion for brutes. CHANNING.

LESSON LXXXVIII.

Extract from an Oration, delivered at Plymouth, Mass. 22d December, 1824, in commemoration of the landing of the Pilgrims.

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1. The occasion which has called us together is certainly one, to which no parallel exists in the history of the world. Other countries, and our own also, have their national festivals. They commemorate the birth-days of their illustrious children; they celebrate the foundation of important institutions: momentous events, victories, reformations, revolutions, awaken, on their anniversaries, the grateful and patriotic feelings of posterity. But we commemorate the birth-day of all New England; the foundation, not of one institution, but of all the institutions, the settlements, the establishments, the communities, the societies, the improvements, comprehended within our broad and happy borders.

2. Were it only as an act of rare adventure; were it a trait in foreign or ancient history; we should fix upon the achievement of our fathers, as one of the noblest deeds in the annals of the world. Were we attracted to it by no other principle than that sympathy we feel in all the fortunes of our race, it could lose nothing-it must gain—in the contrast, with whatever history or tradition has preserved to us of the wanderings and settlements of the tribes of man.

3. A continent for the first time effectually explored; a vast ocean traversed by men, women, and children, voluntarily exiling themselves from the fairest regions of the old world; and a great nation grown up, in the space of two centuries, on the foundations so perilously laid by this pious band:-point me to the record, to the tradition, nay, to the fiction, of any thing, that can enter into competition with it. It is the language, not of exaggeration, but of truth and soberness, to say, that there is nothing in the accounts of Phenician, of Grecian, or of Roman colonization, that can stand in the comparison.

4. What new importance, then, does not the achievement acquire to our minds, when we consider that it was the deed of our fathers; that this grand undertaking was accomplished on the spot where we dwell; that the mighty region they explored is our native land; that the unrivalled enterprise they displayed is not merely a fact proposed to

our admiration, but is the source of our being; that their cruel hardships are the spring of our prosperity; their amazing sufferings the seed, from which our happiness has sprung; that their weary banishment gave us a home; that to their separation from every thing which is dear and pleasant in life, we owe all the comforts, the blessings, the privileges, which make our lot the envy of mankind.

EVERETT.

LESSON LXXXIX.

The Importance of a Good Education.

1. I consider a human soul, without education, like marble in the quarry; which shows none of its inherent beauties, until the skill of the polisher fetches out the colours, makes the surface shine, and discovers every ornamental cloud, spot, and vein, that runs through the body of it. Education, after the same manner, when it works upon a noble mind, draws out to view every latent virtue and perfection, which, without such helps, are never able to make their appearance.

2. If my reader will give me leave to change the allusion, so soon upon him, I shall make use of the same instance to illustrate the force of education, which Aristotle has brought to explain his doctrine of substantial forms, when he tells us, that a statue lies hid in a block of marble; and that the art of the statuary only clears away the superfluous matter, and removes the rubbish. The figure is in the stone, and the sculptor only finds it.

3. What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul. The philosopher, the saint, or the hero, the wise, the good, or the great man, very often lies hid and concealed in a plebian, which a proper education might have disinterred, and brought to light. I am therefore much delighted with reading the accounts of savage nations, and with contemplating those virtues which are wild and uncultivated: to see courage exerting itself in fierceness, resolution in obstinacy, wisdom in cunning, patience in sullenness and despair.

4. Men's passions operate variously, and appear in different kinds of actions, according as they are more or less

rectified and swayed by reason. When one hears of negroes, who, upon the death of their masters, or upon changing their service, hang themselves upon the next tree, as it sometimes happens in our American plantations, who can forbear admiring their fidelity, though it expresses itself in so dreadful a manner?

5. What might not that savage greatness of soul, which appears in these poor wretches on many occasions, be raised to, were it rightly cultivated? And what colour of excuse can there be, for the contempt with which we treat this part of our species; that we should not put them upon the common footing of humanity; that we should only set an insignificant fine upon the man who murders them; nay, that we should, as much as in us lies, cut them off from the prospects of happiness in another world, as well as in this; and deny them that which we look upon as the proper means for attaining it?

6. It is therefore an unspeakable blessing to be born in those parts of the world where wisdom and knowledge flourish; though it must be confessed that there are, even in these parts, several poor, uninstructed persons, who are but little above the inhabitants of those nations, of which I have been here speaking; as those who have had the advantages of a more liberal education, rise above one another by several different degrees of perfection.

7. For, to return to our statue in the block of marble, we see it sometimes only begun to be chipped, sometimes rough hewn, and but just sketched into a human figure; sometimes we see the man appearing distinctly in all his limbs and features; sometimes we find the figure wrought up to great elegancy; but seldom meet with any to which the hand of a Phidias or a Praxiteles could not give several nice touches and finishings. ADDISON.

LESSON XC.

Comforts of Religion.

1. There are many who have passed the age of youth and beauty; who have resigned the pleasures of that smiling season; who begin to decline into the vale of years, impaired in their health, depressed in their fortunes, stript of their friends, their children, and perhaps still more tender

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