submission Cornwallis, since the conqueror of India; thus finishing his long career of military glory with a luster corresponding to his great name, and in this his last act of war, affixing the seal of fate to our nation's birth. First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen, he was second to none in humble and endearing scenes of private life. Pious, just, humane, temperate, sincere, uniform, dignified, and commanding, his example was edifying to all around him, as were the effects of that example lasting. To his equals, he was condescending; to his inferiors, kind; and to the dear object of his affections, exemplarily tender. Correct throughout, vice shuddered in his presence, and virtue always felt his fostering hand; the purity of his private character gave effulgence to his public virtues. His last scene comported with the whole tenor of his life. Although in extreme pain, not a sigh, not a groan, escaped him; and with undisturbed serenity he closed his well-spent life. Such was the man America has lost! Such was the man for whom our nation mourns! NOTES. At Brandywine Creek, in Pennsylvania, 18,000 British, under Howe, defeated 13,000 Americans under Washington. Germantown, near Philadelphia, was the scene of an American defeat by the British, the same generals commanding as at Brandywine. The battle of Monmouth, in New Jersey, resulted in victory for the Americans. The hero of Saratoga was General Gates, who there compelled the surrender of General Burgoyne. At Eutaw Springs, General Greene defeated a superior force of British. Cornwallis, Charles, second earl and first marquis (b. 1738, d. 1805), surrendered his forces to a combined American and French army and French fleet at Yorktown, in 1781, virtually ending the war. CXXXII. THE SOLITARY REAPER. William Wordsworth, 1770-1850, the founder of the "Lake School" of poets, was born at Cockermouth, Cumberland, England. From his boyhood he was a great lover and student of nature, and it is to his beautiful descriptions of landscape, largely, that he owes his fame. He was a graduate of Cambridge University, and while there commenced the study of Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, and Shakespeare, as models for his own writings. Two legacies having been bequeathed him, Wordsworth determined to make poetry the aim of his life, and in 1795 located at Racedown with his sister Dorothy, where he commenced the tragedy of "The Borderers." A visit from Coleridge at this period made the two poets friends for life. In 1802 Wordsworth married Miss Mary Hutchinson, and in 1813 he settled at Rydal Mount, on Lake Windermere, where he passed the remainder of his life. Wordsworth's poetry is remarkable for its extreme simplicity of language. At first his efforts were almost universally ridiculed, and in 1819 his entire income from literary work had not amounted to £140. In 1830 his merit began to be recognized; in 1839 Oxford University conferred upon him the degree of D. C. L.; and in 1843 he was made poet laureate. "The Excursion" is by far the most beautiful and the most important of Wordsworth's productions. "Salisbury Plain," "The White Doe of Rylstone," ," "Yarrow Revisited," and many of his sonnets and minor poems are also much admired. BEHOLD her, single in the field, Yon solitary Highland lass! Alone she cuts and binds the grain, Is overflowing with the sound. No nightingale did ever chant A voice so thrilling ne'er was. heard Will no one tell me what she sings?— Or is it some more humble lay, Whate'er the theme, the maiden sang CXXXIII. VALUE OF THE PRESENT. Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882, the celebrated essayist and philosopher, was born in Boston. His father was a Unitarian minister, and the son, after graduating at Harvard University, entered the ministry also, and took charge of a Unitarian congregation in Boston. His peculiar ideas on religious topics soon caused him to retire from the ministry, and he then devoted himself to literature. As a lecturer, Emerson attained a wide reputation, both in this country and in England, and he is considered as one of the most independent and original thinkers of the age. His style is brief and pithy, dazzling by its wit, but sometimes paradoxical. He wrote a few poems, but they are not generally admired, being didactic in style, bare, and obscure. Among his best known publications are his volume "Nature," and his lectures, "The Mind and Manners of the Nineteenth Century," "The Superlative in Manners and Literature," "English Character and Manners," and "The Conduct of Life." In 1850 appeared "Representative Men," embracing sketches of Plato, Swedenborg, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Napoleon, and Goethe. SUCH are the days,—the earth is the cup, the sky is the cover, of the immense bounty of nature which is offered us for our daily aliment; but what a force of illusion begins life with us, and attends us to the end! We are coaxed, flattered, and duped, from morn to eve, from birth to death; and where is the old eye that ever saw through the deception? The Hindoos represent Maia, the illusory energy of Vishnu, as one of his principal attributes. As if, in this gale of warring elements, which life is, it was necessary to bind souls to human life as mariners in a tempest lash themselves to the mast and bulwarks of a ship, and Nature employed certain illusions as her ties and straps,-a rattle, a doll, an apple, for a child; skates, a river, a boat, a horse, a gun, for the growing boy;—and I will not begin to name those of the youth and adult, for they are numberless. Seldom and slowly the mask falls, and the pupil is permitted to see that all is one stuff, cooked and painted under many counterfeit appearances. Hume's doctrine was that the circumstances vary, the amount of happiness does not; that the beggar cracking fleas in the sunshine under a hedge, and the duke rolling by in his chariot, the girl equipped for her first ball, and the orator returning triumphant from the debate, had different means, but the same quantity of pleasant excitement. This element of illusion lends all its force to hide the values of present time. Who is he that does not always find himself doing something less than his best task? "What are you doing?" "Oh, nothing; I have been doing thus, or I shall do so or so, but now I am only-" Ah! poor dupe, will you never slip out of the web of the master juggler?-never learn that, as soon as the irrecoverable years have woven their blue glory between to-day and us, these passing hours shall glitter and draw us, as the wildest romance and the homes of beauty and poetry? How difficult to deal erect with them! The events they bring, their trade, entertainments, and gossip, their urgent work, all throw dust in the eyes and distract attention. He is a strong man who can look them in the eye, see through this juggle, feel their identity, and keep his own; who can know surely that one will be like another to the end of the world, nor permit love, or death, or politics, or money, war, or pleasure, to draw him from his task. The world is always equal to itself, and every man in moments of deeper thought is apprised that he is repeating the experiences of the people in the streets of Thebes or Byzantium. An everlasting Now reigns in nature, which hangs the same roses on our bushes which charmed the Roman and the Chaldean in their hanging gardens. "To what end, then," he asks, "should I study languages, and traverse countries, to learn so simple truths?" - History of ancient art, excavated cities, recovery of books and inscriptions,—yes, the works were beautiful, and the history worth knowing; and academies convene to settle the claims of the old schools. What journeys and measurements,-Niebuhr and Müller and Layard, to identify the plain of Troy and Nimroud town! And your homage to Dante costs you so much sailing; and to ascertain the discoverers of America needs as much voyaging as the discovery cost. Poor child! that flexible clay of which these old brothers molded their admirable symbols was not Persian, nor Memphian, nor Teutonic, nor local at all, but was common lime and silex and water, and sunlight, the heat of the blood, and the heaving of the lungs; it was that clay which thou heldest but now in thy foolish hands, and threwest away to go and seek in vain in sepulchers, mummy pits, and old bookshops of Asia Minor, Egypt, and England. It was the deep to-day which all men scorn; the rich poverty, which men hate; the populous, all-loving solitude, which men quit for the tattle of towns. He lurks, he hides,—he who is success, reality, joy, and power. One of the illusions is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday. 'Tis the old secret of the gods that they come in low disguises. "Tis the vulgar great who come dizened with gold and jewels. Real kings |