"There's a drop," said the Peri, "that down from the moon Falls through the withering airs of June Upon Egypt's land, of so healing a power, So balmy a virtue, that ev'n in the hour And health reanimates earth and skies!— The precious tears of repentance fall? One heavenly drop hath dispell'd them all!" And now-behold him kneeling there And hymns of joy proclaim through Heaven 'Twas when the golden orb had set, While on their knees they linger'd yet, "Joy, joy forever! my task is done- THE LANDING OF THE MAYFLOWER.-EDWARD EVERETT. Do you think, sir, as we repose beneath this splendid pavil ion, adorned by the hand of taste, blooming with festive garlands, wreathed with the stars and stripes of this great republic, resounding with strains of heart-stirring music, that, merely because it stands upon the soil of Barnstable, we form any idea of the spot as it appeared to Captain Miles Standish, and his companions, on the 15th or 16th of November, 1620? Oh, no, sir. Let us go up for a moment, in imagination, to yonder hill, which overlooks the village and the bay, and suppose ourselves standing there on some bleak, ungenial morning, in the middle of November of that year. The coast is fringed with ice. Dreary forests, interspersed with sandy tracts fill the background. Nothing of humanity quickens on the spot, save a few roaming savages, who, ill-provided with what even they deem the necessaries of life, are digging with their fingers a scanty repast out of the frozen sands. No friendly lighthouses had as yet hung up their cressets upon your headlands; no brave pilot-boat was hovering like a sea-bird on the tops of the waves, beyond the Cape, to guide the shattered bark to its harbor; no charts and soundings made the secret pathways of the deep as plain as a gravelled road through a lawn; no comfortable dwellings along the line of the shore, and where are now your well-inhabited streets, spoke a welcome to the Pilgrim; no steeple poured the music of Sabbath morn into the ear of the fugitive for conscience' sake. Primeval wildness and native desolation brood over sea and land; and from the 9th of November, when, after a most calamitous voyage, the Mayflower first came to anchor in Provincetown harbor, to the end of December, the entire male portion of the company was occupied, for the greater part of every day, and often by night as well as by day, in exploring the coast and seeking a place of rest, amidst perils from the savages, from the unknown shore, and the elements, which it makes one's heart bleed to think upon. But this dreary waste, which we thus contemplate in imagination, and which they traversed in sad reality, is a chosen land. It is a theatre upon which an all-glorious drama is to be enacted. On this frozen soil,-driven from the ivy-clad churches of their mother land,-escaped, at last, from loathsome prisons the meek fathers of a pure church will lay the spiritual base ment of their temple. Here, on the everlasting rock of liberty, they will establish the foundation of a free State. Beneath its ungenial wintry sky, principles of social right, institutions of civil government, shall germinate, in which, what seemed the Utopian dreams of visionary sages, are to be more than realized. But let us contemplate, for a moment, the instruments selected by Providence, for this political and moral creation. However unpromising the field of action, the agents must correspond with the excellence of the work. The time is truly auspicious. England is well supplied with all the materials of a generous enterprise. She is in the full affluence of her wealth of intellect and character. The age of Elizabeth has passed and garnered up its treasures. The age of the commonwealth, silent and unsuspected, is ripening toward its harvest of great men. The Burleighs and Cecils have sounded the depths of statesmanship; the Drakes and Raleighs have run the whole round of chivalry and adventure; the Cokes and Bacons are spreading the light of their master-minds through the entire universe of philosophy and law. Out of a generation of which men like these are the guides and lights, it cannot be difficult to select the leaders of any lofty undertaking; and, through their influence, to secure to it the protection of royalty. But, alas, for New England! No, sir, happily for New England, Providence works not with human instruments. Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. The stars of human greatness, that glitter in a court, are not destined to rise on the lowering horizon of the despised colony. The feeble company of Pilgrims is not to be marshalled by gartered statesmen, or mitred prelates. Fleets will not be despatched to convoy the little band, nor armies to protect it. Had there been honors to be won, or pleasures to be enjoyed, or plunder to be grasped, hungry courtiers, midsummer friends, godless adventurers would have eaten out the heart of the enterprise. Silken Buckinghams and Somersets would have blasted it with their patronage. But, safe amidst their unenvied perils, strong in their inoffensive weakness, rich in their untempting poverty, the patient fugitives are permitted to pursue unmolested the thorny paths of tribulation; and, landed at last on the unfriendly shore, the hosts of God, in the frozen mail of December, encamp around the dwellings of the just: "Stern famine guards the solitary coast, And winter barricades the realms of frost." While Bacon is attuning the sweetest strains of his honeyed eloquence to sooth the dull ear of a crowned pedant, and his great rival, only less obsequious, is on his knees to deprecate the royal displeasure, the future founders of the new republic beyond the sea are training up for their illustrious mission, in obscurity, hardship, and weary exile in a foreign land. And now-for the fulness of time is come-let us go up once more, in imagination, to yonder hill, and look out upon the November scene. That single dark speck, just discernible through the perspective glass, on the waste of waters, is the fated vessel. The storm moans through her tattered canvas, as she creeps, almost sinking, to her anchorage in Provincetown harbor; and there she lies, with all her treasures, not of silver and gold, (for of these she has none,) but of courage, of patience, of zeal, of high spiritual daring. So often as I dwell in imagination on this scene; when I consider the condition of the Mayflower, utterly incapable, as she was, of living through another gale; when I survey the terrible front presented by our coast to the navigator who, unacquainted with its channels and roadsteads, should approach it in the stormy season, I dare not call it a mere piece of good fortune, that the general north and south wall of the shore of New England should be broken by this extraordinary projection of the Cape, running out into the ocean a hundred miles, as if on purpose to receive and encircle the precious vessel. As I now see her, freighted with the destinies of a continent, barely escaped from the perils of the deep, approaching the shore precisely where the broad sweep of this most remarkable headland presents almost the only point, at which, for hundreds of miles, she could, with any ease, have made a harbor, and this, perhaps, the very best on the seaboard, I feel my spirit raised above the sphere of mere natural agencies. I see the mountains of New England rising from their rocky thrones. They rush forward into the ocean, settling down as they advance; and there they range themselves, as a mighty bulwark around the heaven-directed vessel. Yes, the everlasting God himself stretches out the arm of his mercy and his power, in substantial manifestation, and gathers the meek company of his worshippers as in the hollow of his hand. THE TWO FRIENDS.-WORDSWORTH. We talked with open heart and tongue, A pair of friends, though I was young, We lay beneath a spreading oak, Beside a mossy seat; And from the turf a fountain broke, And gurgled at our feet. "Now, Matthew," said I, "let us match This water's pleasant tune With some old border-song, or catch "Or of the church clock and the chimes In silence Matthew lay, and eyed "No check, no stay, this streamlet fears; How merrily it goes! "Twill murmur on a thousand years, And flow as it now flows. "And here, on this delightful day, I cannot choose but think How oft, a vigorous man, I lay "My eyes are dim with childish tears, For the same sound was in my ears "Thus fares it still in our decay; And yet the wiser mind Mourns less for what age takes away, "The blackbird amid leafy trees, The lark above the hill, Let loose their carols when they please, Are quiet when they will. |