emptied into the bay, without the least injury to other property. "All things were conducted with great order, decency, and perfect submission to government." The people around, as they looked on, were so still that the noise of breaking open the tea chests was distinctly heard. A delay of a few hours would have placed the tea under the protection of the admiral at the Castle. After the work was done, the town became as still and calm as if it had been holy time. The men from the country that very night carried back the great news to their villages. Decked with flags and streamers gay, Her snow-white signals fluttering, blending, Ready to be And lo! from the assembled crowd "Take her, O bridegroom, old and gray; How beautiful she is! how fair Through wind and wave, right onward steer! The moistened eye, the trembling lip, Are not the signs of doubt or fear. Sail forth into the sea of life, Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! Fear not each sudden sound and shock; This speech of Ulysses is from the play of Troilus and Cressida, in which the incidents and characters are taken from, or suggested by, the Iliad of Homer; and it is one of the triumphs of Shakspeare's unequalled genius, that he has treated so familiar a subject in a manner so original. The character of Ulysses, especially, is drawn with great skill and power. In the play, as in Homer's epic, Achilles is represented as having, from a quarrel with Agamemnon, withdrawn from all coöperation with the army, and as living in sulky solitude among his own troops. The object of the other leaders is to induce him to join them and act with them once more. Ulysses instructs the generals and officers to pass Achilles by without any notice. Achilles is naturally chafed at this neglect, and when Ulysses appears, the latter skilfully induces him to remark upon it. He then addresses this speech to Achilles, as if it were the immediate suggestion of the moment. The young reader will notice how adroitly this is managed. Ulysses has to deal with a haughty and undisciplined spirit, who would have been only confirmed in his wrong course by any thing like a scolding or a lecture; but the shrewd speaker contrives to administer the lesson without wounding the self-love of the pupil. How admirably, too, those arguments and considerations are pressed upon Achilles which would be most likely to influence an ambitious young man, with whom love of glory was the ruling passion! Shakspeare stands alone in the variety and comprehensiveness of his powers. He is like four or five men of the highest class of genius blended into one. He had the imagination of Milton and the philosophical glance of Bacon; he was as great an orator as Demosthenes, and as wise as Franklin.] TIME hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, Wherein he puts alms for oblivion, A great-sized monster of ingratitudes; Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devoured As fast as they are made, forgot as soon As done. Persev'erance, dear my lord, Keeps honor bright. To have done, is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail, In monumental mockery. Take the instant way; Where one but goes abreast; keep then the path; That one by one pursue; if you give way, Or, like a gallant horse, fallen in first rank, O'errun and trampled on. Then what they do in present, For time is like a fashionable host, That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand, And farewell goes out sighing. Let not virtue seek For beauty, wit, High birth, vigor of bone, desert in service, One touch of nature makes the whole world kin* More laud than gilt † o'erdusted. The present eye praises the present object. CIX. THE WORTH OF THE BUNKER HILL MONUMENT. EVERETT. BUT I am met with the great objection, What good will the monument do? I beg leave to exercise my birthright as a Yankee, and answer this question by asking two or three more, to which, I believe, it will be quite as difficult to furnish a satisfactory reply. I am asked, What good will the monument do? and I ask, What good does any thing do? What is good? Does any thing do any good? The persons who suggest this objection of course think that there are some projects That is, all mankind agree in this one natural trait. + Gilt here means gold. |