Then from each prow the grand hosannas rise,
Float o'er the deep, and hover to the skies.

Heaven fills each heart; yet home will oft intrude,
And tears of love 'celestial joys exclude.

The wounded man, who hears the soaring strain,
Lifts his pale visage, and forgets his pain;
While parting spirits, mingling with the lay,
On 'hallelujahs wing their heavenward way.

1 Peaceful thunder.-Guns firing lightning sped. The sailors seat

a signal without ball.

themselves on the guns and gun-car

2 Crowd the engines whence the riages.

(681)

48.-NELSON-PITT-FOX.

1. To mute and to material things
New life revolving summer1 brings:
The genial call dead Nature hears,
And in her glory re-appears.
But oh! my country's wintry state
What second spring shall 'renovate?
What powerful call shall bid arise
The buried warlike and the wise;
The mind that thought for Britain's weal,
The hand3 that grasped the victor-steel?
The vernal sun new life bestows
E'en on the meanest flower that blows;
But vainly, vainly may he shine,
Where glory weeps o'er Nelson's shrine;
And vainly pierce the solemn gloom
That shrouds, O Pitt, thy hallowed tomb!

11

NELSON.

2. Deep graved in every British heart,
Oh! never let those names depart!
Say to your sons-Lo, here his grave
Who victor died on Gadite 4 wave!
To him, as to the burning levin,
Short, bright, resistless course was given.
Where'er his country's foes were found,
Was heard the fated thunder's sound,
Till burst the bolt on yonder shore,
Rolled, blazed, destroyed-and was no more.

PITT.

3. Nor mourn ye less his perished worth,5
Who bade the conqueror go forth,

And launched that thunderbolt of war
On Egypt, Hafnia,6 Trafalgár ;
Who, born to guide such high 'emprise,
For Britain's weal was early wise ;7—
Alas! to whom the Almighty gave,
For Britain's sins, an early grave!
His worth, who, in his mightiest hour,
A bauble held the pride of power,
Spurned at the sordid lust of 'pelf,
And served his Albion for herself;
Who, when the frantic crowd9 amain
Strained at subjection's bursting rein,
O'er their wild mood full conquest gained,—
The pride, he would not crush, restrained,—
Showed their fierce zeal a worthier cause,
And brought the freeman's arm to aid the free-
man's laws.

4. Hadst thou but lived, though stript of power,
A watchman on the lonely tower,

Thy thrilling trump had roused the land,
When fraud and danger were at hand;
By thee, as by the beacon-light,
Our pilots had kept course aright;

As some proud column, though alone,

Thy strength had propped the tottering throne.
Now is the stately column broke,

The beacon-light is 'quenched in smoke,

The trumpet's silver sound is still,

The warder silent on the hill!

5. Oh! think how to his latest day,

When Death, just hovering, claimed his prey,

With Palinure's 10 unaltered mood,

Firm at his dangerous post he stood;
Each call for needful rest 'repelled,
With dying hand the rudder held,
Till, in his fall, with fateful sway
The steerage of the realm gave way!
Then, while on Britain's thousand plains
One unpolluted church remains,
Whose peaceful bells ne'er sent around
The bloody tocsin's maddening sound,
But still upon the hallowed day

Convoke the 'swains to praise and pray;
While faith and civil peace are dear,
Grace this cold marble with a tear-

He who preserved them, Pitt, lies here!

FOX.

6. Nor yet suppress the generous sigh,
Because his rival slumbers nigh;
Nor be thy requiescat 11 dumb,
Lest it be said o'er Fox's tomb :-

:

For talents mourn, untimely lost,
When best employed, and wanted most;
Mourn genius high and 'lore 'profound,
And wit that loved to play, not wound;
And all the reasoning powers divine,
To 'penetrate, resolve, combine;
And feelings keen and fancy's glow ;-
They sleep with him who sleeps below.

SCOTT.

8 His worth.-To be connected with, Nor mourn ye less," eight lines above. 9 Frantic crowd. This refers to the excitement produced in England by sympathy with the French Revolu

4 Gad'ite. - Spanish; from Gades, tion. In consequence of these disturbthe ancient name of Cadiz. ances, Pitt renounced the opinions he

5 His perished worth.-The worth had formerly held in favour of parof him who has perished.

6 Haf'nia.-Copenhagen, the Danish name of which is Kjöben-havn, chant's Port."

Mer

7 Early wise.-Pitt was Chancellor of the Exchequer at 22, and Prime Minister before he was 25.

liamentary reform.

10 Palinure'.-Palinurus, the faithful pilot of Aeneas. In devotion to his master's cause he lost his life.

11 Requies/cat.-Prayer. The first word of the prayer, Requiescat in pace May he rest in peace."

66

1812

A. D.

49.-GEORGE III. (PART III.)

1. Meanwhile Napoleon had resolved on the invasion of Russia. He marched into that vast country with an army of nearly half a million men. He intended to take up his winter quarters at Moscow;1 but on arriving at that city his progress was checked by its flames.

The

inhabitants had set fire to their houses and had fled.

2. He was therefore compelled to 'retreat. His *provisions were finished; the Russian winter had 'set in; the snow already lay deep on the ground; and during that terrible march homewards almost the whole of his fine army perished from cold and hunger, and from the attacks of the Russians.

1814

3. The nations of Europe now united to crush the power of Napoleon; and an army of Russians, Austrians, and Prussians met and defeated him at the Battle of Leipsic,2 entered Paris, A.D. and forced him to resign the throne. He retired to the island of Elba; and Louis the Eighteenth was made King of France.

3

4. Early in the next year, however, Napoleon left Elba, landed in France, and marched to Paris. There he was soon surrounded by thousands of his old *comrades, who were ready to lay down their lives in his service. Once more he mounted the throne; but his glory was soon to end. He was met on the field of Waterloo, near Brussels, by the British and Prussian armies, under the Duke of Wellington, and in a long and bloody battle, fought on Sunday, June 18, 1815, he was completely and finally defeated.

4

1815

A. D.

5. Napoleon fled from the field, but afterwards gave himself up to the English, and was sent a prisoner to the lonely island of St. Helena. There he lingered six years, and there he died in 1821. Thus ended a long and terrible war, which in twenty-two years had cost hundreds of thousands of