Look on these letters! Here's a deep-laid plot The time Is desperate, all the slaves are up ;-Rome shakes! Cat. [haughtily rising]. Come, consecrated lictors, from your thrones: [To the Senate. Fling down your scepters :-take the rod and ax, Cic. [interrupting him]. Give up the record of his banishment. [The officer gives it to the CONSUL.] [To an officer. Cat. Banished from Rome! What's banished, but set free From daily contact of the things I loathe? "Tried and convicted traitor!" Who says this? Banished-I thank you for 't. It breaks my chain! But here I stand and scoff you: here I fling Your Consul's merciful. For this, all thanks. [The Consul reads]:-"Lucius Sergius Catiline by the The Consul. Lictors, drive the traitor from the temple! Cat. [furious]. "Traitor!" I go-but I return. This-trial! Here I devote your Senate! I've had wrongs To stir a fever in the blood of age, Or make the infant's sinews strong as steel. This day's the birth of sorrows!-this hour's work Will breed proscriptions :-look to your hearths, my lords! [The Senators rise in tumult and cry out, Go, enemy and parricide, from Rome! Cic. Expel him, lictors! Clear the Senate-house! [They surround him. Cat. [struggling through them]. I go, but not to leap the gulf alone. I go-but when I come, 'twill be the burst Of ocean in the earthquake-rolling back In swift and mountainous ruin. Fare you well! Shall quench its flame. Back, slaves! [To the lactors.]—I will [He rushes out.] return! CROLY. GEORGE CROLY, LL.D., for many years rector of St. Stephens, Walbrook, London, was born in Ireland, toward the close of the last century, and was edu. cated at Trinity College, Dublin. Talented, and astonishingly industrious, he wrote much both in prose and verse. Among his productions are his tragedy of Catiline;" his comedy of "Pride shall have a Fall;" "Salathiel," a romance; “Political Life of Burke;" "Tales of the Great St. Bernard," and "Marston.” He was a correct and elegant poet. His prose style is clear, rich, idiomatic, and at times remarkably eloquent. He died in 1860. SECTION XXIII. I. 125. SELECT PASSAGES IN VERSE. B I. PATRIOTISM.-SCOTT. REATHES there a man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, "This is my own-my native land!" 'Tăr' ta rus, in Homer's Iliad, a place beneath the earth, as far below Hades as heaven is above the earth, and closed by iron gates. Later poets Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned From wandering on a foreign strand? II. AMBITION.-BYRON. He who ascends to mountain-tops shall find The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow: He who surpasses or subdues mankind Must look down on the hate of those below. Contending tempests on his naked head; And thus reward the toils which to those summits led. III. INDEPENDENCE.-THOMSON. I CARE not, Fortune, what you me deny ; You can not rob me of free Nature's grace; Through which Aurora' shows her brightening face; describe this as the place of punish. ment in the lower world; also as Hades, or the lower world in general. 1 Aurora, (â rò ́ rå), the goddess of the morning red. It is said, in my thology, at the close of every night she rose from the couch of her spouse, Tithonus, and, on a chariot drawn by the swift horses Lampus and Phaethon, ascended up to heaven from the river Oceanus, to announce the coming light of the sun to gods as well as to mortals: hence, the dawning light; the morning. IV. THE CAPTIVE'S DREAMS.-MRS. HEMANS. I DREAM of all things free! of a gallant, gallant bark, I follow some wild river, on whose breast no sail may be ; V. WILLIAM TELL.-BRYANT. CHAINS may subdue the feeble spirit, but thee, That creed is written on the untrampled snow, Thundered by torrents which no power can hold, And breathed by winds that through the free heaven blow: A vision of thy Switzerland unbound. The bitter cup they mingled, strengthened thee VI. TELL ON SWITZERLAND.-KNOWLES.1 ONCE Switzerland was free! With what a pride 'James Sheridan Knowles, an English poet, one of the most successful of modern actors and tragic dramatists, was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1784. His second play; "Virginius," appeared in 1820, and had an extraordinary run of success. All his plays have been collected and repub lished, of which, perhaps, none is more deservedly popular than “ William Tell," from which the above was extracted. A few years since, he became a zealous and eloquent preacher of the Baptist denomination. He died at Forquay, England, November 30th, 1862. From end to end, from cliff to lake 'twas free! In my boat at night, when midway o'er the lake And I have thought of other lands, whose storms Have wished me there ;—the thought that mine was free Has checked that wish, and I have raised my head, And cried in thralldom to that furious wind, VII.-HOW SLEEP THE BRAVE.-COLLINS. |