Their voices meet me in thy breeze;
Their steps are on thy plains;
Their names, by old majestic trees,
Are whisper'd round thy fanes.
Their blood hath mingled with the tide
Of thine exulting sea:

O be it still a joy, a pride,

To live and die for thee!

1. How severed?

Inherit.

Undegenerate.
Captured.
Martyrs.

VIII. MEN OF ENGLAND.

"How many brawny arms, generation after generation, sank down wearied; how many noble hearts, toiling while life lasted, and wise heads that wore themselves dim with scanning and discerning before this waste white cliff, Albion so called, with its other Casiterides, Tin Islands, became a British Empire."- Carlyle.

Derivations.

MRS. HEMANS.

Etymology.

Rights.
Fought.

Glow.

MEN of England! who inherit

Rights that cost your sires their blood!'
Men whose undegenerate spirit

Has been proved on land and flood:
By the foes ye've fought uncounted,2

By the glorious deeds ye've done,
Trophies captured-breaches mounted,

Navies conquer'd-kingdoms won!
Yet remember, England gathers

Hence but fruitless wreaths of fame,
If the virtues of your fathers

Glow not in your hearts the same.
What are monuments of bravery,

Where no public virtues bloom?
What avails in lands of slavery

Trophied temples, arch, and tomb?
Pageants!-let the world revere us

For our people's rights and laws,
And the breasts of civic heroes

Bared in Freedom's holy cause.

GREAT MEN HAVE BEEN AMONG US.

Yours are Hampden's, Russell's glory,

Sydney's matchless shade is yours,-
Martyrs in heroic story,

Worth a thousand Agincourts !"

We're the sons of sires that baffled
Crown'd and mitred tyranny:
They defied the field and scaffold,
For their birthrights-so will we.

1. How do you account for the two objectives sires and blood, in this line? 2. What is uncounted meant to qualify?

3. Why is the verb plural?

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CAMPBELL.

4. Breasts what case?

5. Sydney "a name indissolubly attached to the interests of liberty."Milton.

6. Why worth a thousand Agincourts?

IX. GREAT MEN HAVE BEEN AMONG US.

"PLACE before your eyes the Island of Britain in the reign of Alfred, its unpierced woods, its wide morasses and dreary heaths, its bloodstained and desolate shores, its untaught and scanty population; behold the monarch listening now to a Bede and now to John Erigena; and then see the same realm, a mighty Empire, full of motion, full of books, where the cotter's son, twelve years old, has read more than archbishops of yore, and possesses the opportunity of reading more than our Alfred himself."- Coleridge.

GREAT men have been among us; hands that penned
And tongues that uttered wisdom-better none:
The later Sidney, Marvel, Harrington,

Young Vane, and others who called Milton friend.
These moralists could act and comprehend:
They knew how genuine glory was put on ;
Taught us how rightfully a nation shone
In splendour: what strength was, that would not bend
But in magnanimous meekness. France,' 'tis strange,
Hath brought forth no such souls as we had then.
Perpetual emptiness! unceasing change!
No single volume paramount, no code,
No master spirit, no determined road;
But equally a want of books and men !

WORDSWORTH.

1. We could have wished that Wordsworth had sung the praises of England without making any reflection on France, but at the time he wrote, national animosities ran high. We live in happier times, and he would now be justly accounted foolish, who should seek to manifest love to England by "bearing false witness' against his neighbour.

X. ENGLAND'S OAK.

·

"IN point of strength, durability, and general use, oak claims the precedence of all timber; and to England, which has risen to the highest rank among the nations mainly through her commerce and her marine, the oak, the father of ships,' as it has been called, is inferior in value only to her religion, her liberty, and the spirit and industry of her people. The knotty oak of England, when cut down at a proper age, -from fifty to seventy years,-is really the best timber that is known. Some timber is harder, some more difficult to rend, and some less capable of being broken across; but none contains all the three qualities in so great and so equal proportions. For at once supporting a weight, resisting a strain, and not splintering by a cannon-shot, the timber of the oak is superior to every other."-Library of Entertaining Knowledge.

Its stem, though rough, is stout and sound,
Its giant branches throw

Their arms in shady blessings round
O'er man and beast below;

ENGLAND'S OAK.

Its leaf, though late in spring it shares
The zephyr's gentle sigh,
As late and long in autumn wears
A deeper, richer dye.
Type of an honest English heart,
It opes not at a breath,
But having open'd plays its part
Until it sinks in death.
Its acorns, graceful to the sight,
Are toys to childhood dear;
Its mistletoe, with berries white,

Adds mirth to Christmas cheer.
And when we reach life's closing stage,
Worn out with care or ill,
For childhood, youth, or hoary age,
Its arms are open still.

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BERNARD BARTON.

XI. HOME JOYS.

"INDEED the great sources of a nation's power and happiness must always lie about the domestic hearth. There or nowhere are sown, and for many years cherished by culture, all those virtues which bloom afterwards in public, and form the best ornaments of the commonwealth. Men are everywhere what their mothers make them. If these are slaves, narrowminded, ignorant, unhappy, those in their turn will be so also. The domestic example, small and obscure though it be, will impress its image on the state; since that which individually

is base and little, can never by congregating with neighbouring littleness become great, or lead to those heroic efforts, those noble selfsacrifices, which elevate human nature to a sphere in which it appears to touch upon and partake something of the divine."-A. St. John.

SWEET are the joys of home,

And pure as sweet; for they
Like dews of morn and evening come,
To wake and close the day.

The world hath its delights,
And its delusions too;
But home to calmer bliss invites,
More tranquil and more true.

The mountain flood is strong,
But fearful in its pride;
While gently rolls the stream along
The peaceful valley's side.

Life's charities, like light,
Spread smilingly afar;

But stars approached, become more bright,
And home is life's own star.

The pilgrim's step in vain

Seeks Eden's sacred ground!
But in home's holy joys, again
An Eden may be found.

A glance of heaven to see,

To none on earth is given;
And yet a happy family

Is but an earlier heaven.

JOHN BOWRING.

XII. HOME.

"EVERY people is attached to its country just in proportion as it is free. No matter if that country be in the rocky fastnesses of Switzerland, amidst the snows of Tartary, or on the most barren and lonely island shore: no matter if that country be so poor as to force away its children to other and richer lands for employment and sustenance; yet when the songs of those free homes chance to fall upon the exile's ear, no soft and ravishing airs that wait upon the timid feastings of Asiatic opulence ever thrilled the heart with such mingled rapture and agony as those simple tones. Sad mementos might they be of poverty and want of toil; yet it was enough that they were mementos