let him step forth and say it. If there be three in all your throng dare face me on the bloody sand, let them come on! "Yet, I was not always thus, a hired butcher, a savage chief of savage men. My father was a reverent man, who 5 feared great Jupiter, and brought to the rural deities his offerings of fruits and flowers. He dwelt among the vineclad rocks and olive groves at the foot of Helicon. My early life ran quiet as the brook by which I sported. I was taught to prune the vine, to tend the flock; and then, 10 at noon, I gathered my sheep beneath the shade, and played upon the shepherd's flute. I had a friend, the son of our neighbor; we led our flocks to the same pasture, and shared together our rustic meal. "One evening, after the sheep were folded, and we were 15 all seated beneath the myrtle that shaded our cottage, my grandsire, an old man, was telling of Marathon and Leuctra, and how, in ancient times, a little band of Spartans, in a defile of the mountains, withstood a whole army. I did not then know what war meant; but my cheeks burned, I 20 knew not why; and I clasped the knees of that venerable man, till my mother, parting the hair from off my brow, kissed my throbbing temples, and bade me go to rest, and think no more of those old tales and savage wars. 66 That very night the Romans landed on our shore, and 25 the clash of steel was heard within our quiet vale. I saw the breast that had nourished me trampled by the iron hoof of the war-horse; the bleeding body of my father flung amid the blazing rafters of our dwelling. To-day I killed a man in the arena, and when I broke his helmet 30 clasps, behold! it was my friend! He knew me, smiled faintly, gasped, — and died. The same sweet smile that I had marked upon his face, when, in adventurous boyhood, we scaled some lofty cliff to pluck the first ripe grapes, and bear them home in childish triumph. I told 35 the Prætor he was my friend, noble and brave, and 1 begged his body, that I might burn it upon the funeral pile, and mourn over him. Ay, on my knees, amid the dust and blood of the arena, I begged that boon, while all the Roman maids and matrons, and those holy virgins they call vestal, and the rabble, shouted in mockery, deem5 ing it rare sport, forsooth, to see Rome's fiercest gladiator turn pale, and tremble like a very child, before that piece of bleeding clay; but the Prætor drew back as if I were pollution, and sternly said, 'Let the carrion rot! There are no noble men but Romans!' And he, deprived of funeral rites, 10 must wander, a hapless ghost, beside the waters of that sluggish river, and look—and look — and look in vain to the bright Elysian fields where dwell his ancestors and noble kindred. And so must you, and so must I, die like dogs! "O Rome! Rome! thou hast been a tender nurse to me! 15 Ay, thou hast given to that poor, gentle, timid shepherd lad, who never knew a harsher sound than a flute-note, muscles of iron, and a heart of flint; taught him to drive the sword through rugged brass and plaited mail, and warm it in the marrow of his foe! to gaze into the glaring 20 eyeballs of the fierce Numidian lion, even as a smooth cheeked boy upon a laughing girl. And he shall pay thee back till thy yellow Tiber is red as frothing wine, and in its deepest ooze thy life-blood lies curdled! "Ye stand here now like giants, as ye are! the strength 25 of brass is in your toughened sinews; but to-morrow some Roman Adonis, breathing sweet odors from his curly locks, shall come, and with his lily fingers pat your brawny shoulders, and bet his sesterces upon your blood! Hark! Hear ye yon lion roaring in his den? 'Tis three days since he 30 tasted meat; but to-morrow he shall break his fast upon your flesh; and ye shall be a dainty meal for him. 66 If ye are brutes, then stand here like fat oxen waiting for the butcher's knife; if ye are men, follow me! strike down yon sentinel, and gain the mountain passes, and there 35 do bloody work as did your sires at old Thermopyla! Is Sparta dead? Is the old Grecian spirit frozen in your veins, that ye do crouch and cower like base-born slaves, beneath your master's lash? 0! comrades! warriors! Thracians! if we must fight, let us fight for ourselves; if we must slaughter, let us slaughter our oppressors; if we 5 must die, let us die under the open sky, by the bright waters, in noble, honorable battle." CXIV. THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE BERLIN LANDSTURM. KÖRNER. [KARL THEODOR KÖRNER was born September 23, 1791, at Dresden, Saxony, and was killed in battle against the French, August 26, 1813. He wrote dramas and lyrical poems, of which latter, many are full of patriotic feeling and warlike spirit. In Germany, when the whole people are called upon to take arms in defence of their country, the name of Landsturm is given to the military force thus raised.] 1 FATHER of earth and heaven! I call thy name! One deeper prayer, 't was that no cloud might lower The cloud that pours the thunder from its womb, But show the sterner grandeur of thy form; The lightnings, glancing through the midnight gloom, As splendors of the autumnal evening star, 3 God! thou art mighty!— At thy footstool bound, Lie gazing to thee, Chance and Life and Death; Nor in the Angel-circle flaming round, Nor in the million worlds that blaze beneath, Is one that can withstand thy wrath's hot breath. - Hear my last prayer! I ask no mortal wreath; Then take my spirit, All Omnipotent, to thee. 4 Now for the fight-now for the cannon peal – Forward through blood and toil and cloud and fire! They shake—like broken waves their squares retire, On them hussars! - Now give them rein and heel; Think of the orphaned child, the murdered sire: Earth cries for blood, in thunder on them wheel! This hour to Europe's fate shall set the triumph-seal! CXV.- TRUE GREATNESS. CHANNING. [From an article on the "Life and Character of Napoleon Bonaparte," originally published in the "Christian Examiner," in 1827.] SUCH was Napoleon Bonaparte. But some will say he This we mean not to deny. But was still a great man. we would have it understood, that there are various kinds or orders of greatness, and that the highest did not belong 5 to Bonaparte. There are different orders of greatness. Among these, the first rank is unquestionably due to moral greatness, or magnanimity; to that sublime energy by which the soul, smitten with the love of virtue, binds itself indissolubly, for life and for death, to truth and duty; espouses as its own the interests of human nature; scorns all meanness, and defies all peril; hears in its own conscience a voice louder than threatenings and thunders; withstands all the 5 powers of the universe which would sever it from the cause of freedom and religion; reposes an unfaltering trust in God in the darkest hour; and is ever "ready to be offered up" on the altar of its country or of mankind. Of this moral greatness, which throws all other forms of 10 greatness into obscurity, we see not a trace in Napoleon. Though clothed with the power of a God, the thought of consecrating himself to the introduction of a new and higher era, to the exaltation of the character and condition of his race, seems never to have dawned on his mind. 15 The spirit of disinterestedness and self-sacrifice seems not to have waged a moment's war with self-will and ambition. His ruling passions, indeed, were singularly at variance with magnanimity. Moral greatness has too much simplicity, is too unostentatious, too self-subsistent, and enters 20 into others' interests with too much heartiness, to live an hour for what Napoleon always lived, to make itself the theme and gaze and wonder of a dazzled world. Next to moral comes intellectual greatness, or genius in the highest sense of that word; and by this we mean that 25 sublime capacity of thought, through which the soul, smitten with the love of the true and the beautiful, essays to comprehend the universe, soars into the heavens, penetrates the earth, penetrates itself, questions the past, anticipates the future, traces out the general and all compre80 hending laws of nature, binds together by innumerable affinities and relations all the objects of its knowledge, rises from the finite and transient to the infinite and the everlasting, frames to itself, from its own fulness, lovelier ΤΟ and sublimer forms than it beholds, discerns the harmonies 135 between the world within and the world without us, and Alfinds in every region of the universe types and interpreters |