March, 1854.

although

fectly reconciled at the dash we made upon their treasuresit cost them one or two groans we left them to enjoy themselves as best they could; to their mutual consolations.

The money was collected, every dollar and cent, from Rington; and I never admired Thison's peculiar felicity more than in this particular transaction. He went in for large items: his genius was bent on the collection of the large execution, and it was collected; but when he attempted to collect the small one, also, my modesty was abashed at his effrontery, and I submitted to him that I thought it was rather close shaving indeed, I might say that it was a flaying service.

'All right!' said he,

for a long time?

'Ha' n't they been carrying on this business but dey got it dis time. See, Mr. Sheriff, a n't my advice good? If we'd 'a' gone for the little one, dat 's all we'd 'a' got. My advice is, go it allers for the biggest and if you lay your plans right, you're sure to hit.'

CUPID ARMED.

CUPID, thrice-ungrateful boy,
Once my bosom-friend and joy,
Tired of peace and friendship's calms,
Sought me, late, with hostile arms.
See, equipped with helm and lance,
Shield and bow, the god advance!
Cried he: Either dare the field,
Or in craven silence yield!
None can cope with me above,
None below can conquer LOVE!'
Glad I sprang to try the field,

Yet paused before his blazoned shield.
There, with more than mortal grace,
Glowed my mistress' form and face.
Fell my arms; I paused amazed;
War forgotten while I gazed.
From her eyes her merry glances
Darted forth like fire-tipped lances;
Arching lips of rosy hue,

(Rose-buds sparkling in the dew!)
Rounded chin and glowing cheeks,

Where the warm heart's passion speaks:

Polished forehead, high and fair,

Crowned with wealth of raven hair:

(Would my hand, in soft caresses,

Might be sporting with its tresses!

Vain the thought! she mocks my plaining:
O'er a thousand bosoms reigning!)

Thus the limner decked the shield.
Was it strange I lost the field?
While I gazed, false CUPID's dart
Pierced my unprotected heart.

CREDIA

WAR.

AGAIN the tocsin sounds; the trumpet's blast
Rings through the earth its stirring call to arms,
Breaks up the slumbers of the peaceful past,
And shakes a prospering world with dread alarms:
Again BELLONA guides, with awful charms,
The crushing progress of her crimson car

O'er maddened hearts, and quivering human forms:
PRIDE, HATRED, RAGE, DESPAIR, malignant jar
By turns the minds of men, and HELL is loosed with WAR.

On Europe's teeming fields and smiling plains,
Rich with the harvests of her forty years,
Enthroned supreme, the dark DESTROYER reigns,
To drench her soil anew with blood and tears:
The epoch now, whose lurid dawn appears,
With horrid portents, o'er her darkened sky,
Those signs of widest desolation wears
That lowered when, kindled at Gaul's battle-cry,
Her nations all were joined in dreadful rivalry.

Millions of men, her flower, in manhood's prime,
May die in anguish at each other's hands;
And ah! the millions more, unstained by crime,
Whose tears will flow upon her bloody sands!
Her lofty cities sacked by hostile bands;
Her wealth, her commerce, sunk in ocean's wave:
Her peaceful strength transferred to other lands;
Her sons the tenants of an early grave:
These are the fruits of war, and all it ever gave.

That rolling cycle comes to earth again,
When FOLLY, CRIME, and MADNESS rule the hour:
Too high the joys which PEACE, with gentle reign,
Hath brought to nations as her heavenly dower:
False HONOR spurns her ever-spreading power;
AMBITION trails her symbols in the dust:
MAN, restless, rushes from her roseate bower,
Where safety circles his unfaltering trust,

To brave the certain ills of anarchy and lust.

What though for JUSTICE spring his glittering sword?

For FREEDOM, ring th' exulting battle-cry?

For meek RELIGION, blood in seas be poured?

For GLORY'S meed, his countless squadrons die?

Has not earth heard that oft-repeated lie

Enough to learn the worthlessness of war?

Is not, in woes alone, the history

Of every contest writ, on every shore,

Since CAIN's first murder stained her virgin soil with gore?

Shall she repeat, on Europe's cultured plains,
The last great drama of her crimsoned page,
To feel, at length, that some NAPOLEON reigns,
The demon-despot of a brutal age?

That war, which fed, must crush his boundless rage,
And all her labors end where they began?
That nations, drained, exhausted, vainly wage
The horrid combat between man and man?
Have all her sufferings taught no wiser, better plan?

Shall tyrants frame communities to share
Of one, or wise or weak, the weal or woe?
Shall statesmen still their fettered country bear
To cast its fortunes on a desperate throw,
And risk all hopes in war's uncertain blow?
Must man be ever chained to feel and fight
The banded puppets of AMBITION'S Show?
Must patriot folly drown all sense of right?
Then truly EARTH is yet in her primeval night!

VOL. XLIV.

What hope had VIRTUE here, or gentle PEACE,
Her sweet concomitant, were this a scene
Not ended soon by welcome DEATH'S release,
While stern OPPRESSION clouds its silvery sheen?
Though skies are bright, and smiling landscapes green,
In full luxuriance pouring forth their store;

What if the conqueror tread this fair terrene,

To drench its flowery fields with human gore,

But kindred Hell were Earth, without that happier shore?

Alas! too surely of a fallen race,

Is ceaseless war th' unanswerable seal!

To men redeemed by HEAVEN-appointed grace,

Its mission here is not to cause, but heal

The thousand ills which suffering brethren feel.

How wide the contrast, when a world is swayed

By airy trifles, pretexts scarcely real,

For mortal strife to draw the glittering blade,

And march, the tools of POWER, in serried bands arrayed!

What were the pleasures of a scene like this,

With man th' eternal habitant, as now,

A selfish foeman to his neighbor's bliss

Nor less his own-through wickedness and woe?

The fabled torturers in realms below,

Were impotent of ill to human sway:

Remove DEATH's signet from his iron brow,

Renew his lease within this house of clay,

And fiends, as types of men, would shrink with wild dismay!

Does he not vainly hope for future heaven,
Who bears the hell of hatred in his heart;
Asks of a FATHER'S love to be forgiven,
Yet plays on earth the fratricidal part,
Where LUST and FOLLY rule its every start?
A true descendant of the first-born CAIN,
The causeless murderer, drilled by nicer art,

As doomed, a wanderer o'er her fair domain,

To bring unnumbered woes where'er he treads the plain.

Shall nations never sheathe th' avenging sword,
And learn to trust its doubtful chance no more?

Alas! fulfilment of the prophet's word

Scarce nearer seems than ever yet before!

3

The grim portents of universal war,
Masked in profession of His holy name,

Whose life, and deeds, and heavenly language, bore

The glorious anthem sounded when He came,

Hang o'er a trembling world, to burst with quenchless flame.

HIS doctrine taught Earth's erring child of sin
The truth enforced on each historic page,

That HEAVEN'S loved sway is only known within,
Through bloodless war with man's unhallowed rage;
That, leaving all, his ransomed soul must wage

A contest ended but with NATURE'S life;

A ceaseless fight with self, through every stage

Of fierce rebellion in that nature rife,

Till, meekly bowed like HIM, submission crowns the strife.

When born anew, through Gon's redeeming gift,
The creature learns his law of boundless love,
Then, not till then, may hopes eternal lift

Their raptured reach to realms of peace above.
Here, lust, and hate, and pride, and passion prove
DESTRUCTION's reign o'er JUSTICE, TRUTH, and RIGHT:
These, nor their willing slaves, can ever move
Beyond the gloom of earth's Cimmerian night;
For Heaven is meekness, joy, and purity, and light!
Philadelphia, 4th month, 1854.

J. J. W.

THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF WILLIAM PITT.

BY A. F. PERRY.

ОН АРТЕК

FIFTH.

THE Commencement of the wars of the French revolution was the end of Pitt's economy, and probably the end of his happiness. The picture of the rest of his life is the picture of a brave man struggling with adversity. It was a struggle with sedition at home, and with hostile nations abroad; and so much the more unhappy because his allies, the means with which alone it was possible for him to accomplish his purpose, were, for the most part, corrupt and dishonored monarchs-the representatives of effete and rotten dynasties-impossible to be trusted, unworthy to be saved. It was a succession of leagues to suppress revolution, and the heads of those leagues, with few exceptions, were so many living testimonies to the necessity of revolution. Their public conduct - destitute of integrity alike to friend and foe; weak, fickle, rapacious, wholly wanting in moral stamina; beyond all ordinary measure pusillanimous and detestable was a loud appeal to mankind to dethrone them. He held back from this gloomy companionship. They several times extended their hands to him, but met no answering touch. He undoubtedly prayed that the bitter cup might pass from him. But when his mind was convinced of the necessity of

the case, the die was cast. He straightened himself head and shoulders above them all. His clear voice, his clear character, 'made all Europe ring, from side to side.' From that time, however deserted or abandoned by his allies, he stood firm. Frequent treacheries, multiplying disasters, an ever-increasing density of gloom settling over the prospects of his cause, inflicted their scars upon his heart, and wrote their wrinkles upon his hitherto shining and prosperous brow; but his constant spirit could be neither bent nor broken. It must be frankly acknowledged that he entered upon those wars with a totally inadequate idea of their continuance or magnitude; nor can this be imputed as a fault, or be used to impeach his sagacity. Wars and revolutions were to be found described in history; and from these, inferences could be drawn respecting other wars and revolutions. The natural history, so to speak, of wars and revolutions, could be understood. But there had been no century like the eighteenth- no revolution had evolved such forces or developed such men as the French revolution. It was a new development, as incredible and as little to be inferred from precedents as vertebrate animals from molluscs, or man himself from the lower orders of mammalia. It were as easy from an oyster to infer a man, as from a revolution to infer a Napoleon. The austere virtues

of Washington and his American compeers might be inferred from a sparse, hardy, and frugal population, trained to self-reliance and well grounded in religious faith. But from the infidelity and corruptions of fashionable France, such austerity and unity of impulse could not be foreseen. Least of all could it be predicted that a character would rise from the ruins of society, destitute of religious faith, but vital with religious instincts, for the defence and re-construction of liberty; a character so superior, so beneficent, so grand that he seemed, in his relations to the ideal, to be like one of those mathematical figures constructed in a circle, touching and coïnciding at numerous points of the periphery, and lacking only some small segments to be equal with it. All that any human sagacity could be expected, in Pitt's situation, to foresee was this that the revolution, which was interpolated upon European affairs, must kill monarchy or be killed by it; that revolution, however organized for a time, was in its nature anarchical; that, at some time or other, and somehow or other, it would, if firmly resisted, disorganize itself and be overthrown. This was the problem which, through the influence of Pitt's policy, was, long after his death, worked out on the plains of Waterloo.

Within a short period of the breaking out of war between France and England, and under the impulse given by Pitt's controlling mind, alliances had been contracted with Russia, Prussia, Sardinia, Naples, Spain, the two Sicilies, the emperor of Germany, and with Portugal; and France was hemmed in from Calais to Bayonne with an uninterrupted line of three hundred and sixty thousand bayonets. This line moved gradually in toward Paris, and, in all probability, might have throttled and suppressed the revolution in its infancy. No reason can be discovered why that which was done in 1814, and again in 1815, might not more easily have been done in 1793, except that the allied sovereigns who had entered upon the war avowedly to prevent the