surface, every manifestation of power, organic and inorganic, vital and physical, is produced by the sun. His warmth keeps the sea liquid, and the atmosphere a gas, and all the storms which agitate both are blown by the mechanical force of the sun. He lifts the rivers and the glaciers up to the mountains; and thus the cataract and the avalanche shoot with an energy derived immediately from him. In Thunder and lightning are also his transmitted strength. Every fire that burns and every flame that glows, dispenses light and heat which originally belonged to the sun. these days, unhappily, the news of battle is familiar to us, but every shock and every charge is an application or misapplication of the mechanical force of the sun. He blows the trumpet, he urges the projectile, he bursts the bomb. And, remember, this is not poetry, but rigid mechanical truth. He rears, as I have said, the whole vegetable world, and through it the animal; the lilies of the field are his workmanship, the verdure of the meadows, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. He forms the muscles, he urges the blood, he builds the brain. His fleetness is in the lion's foot; he springs in the panther, he soars in the eagle, he slides in the snake. He builds the forest and hews it down, the power which raised the tree, and which wields the ax, being one and the same. The clover sprouts and blossoms, and the scythe of the mower swings, by the operation of the same force. The sun digs the ore from our mines, he rolls the iron; he rivets the plates, he boils the water; he draws the train. He not only grows the cotton, but he spins the fiber and weaves the web. There is not a hammer raised, a wheel turned, or a shuttle thrown, that is not raised, and turned, and thrown by the sun. His energy is poured freely into space, but our world is a halting-place where this energy is conditioned. Here the Proteus works his spells; the self-same essence takes a million shapes and hues, and finally dissolves into its primitive and almost formless form. The sun comes to us as heat; he quits us as heat; and between his entrance and departure the multiform powers of our globe appear. They are all special forms of solar power-the molds into which his strength is temporarily poured in passing from its source through infinitude. NOTE.-Proteus (pro. Prō'te-ŭs) was a mythological divinity. His distinguishing characteristic was the power of assum ing different shapes. CIV. COLLOQUIAL POWERS OF FRANKLIN. William Wirt, 1772-1834, an American lawyer and author, was born at Bladensburg, Maryland. Left an orphan at an early age, he was placed in care of his uncle. He improved his opportunities for education so well that he became a private tutor at fifteen. In 1792 he was admitted to the bar, and began the practice of law in Virginia; he removed to Richmond in 1799. From 1817 to 1829 he was Attorney-general of the United States. His last years were spent in Baltimore. Mr. Wirt was the author of several books; his "Letters of a British Spy," published in 1803, and "Life of Patrick Henry," published in 1817, are the best known of his writings. NEVER have I known such a fireside companion. Great as he was both as a statesman and philosopher, he never shone in a light more winning than when he was seen in a domestic circle. It was once my good fortune to pass two or three weeks with him, at the house of a private gentleman, in the back part of Pennsylvania, and we were confined to the house during the whole of that time by the unintermitting constancy and depth of the snows. But confinement never could be felt where Franklin was an inmate. His cheerfulness and his colloquial powers spread around him a perpetual spring. When I speak, however, of his colloquial powers, I do not mean to awaken any notion analogous to that which Boswell has given us of Johnson. The conversation of the latter continually reminds one of the "pomp and circumstance of glorious war." It was, indeed, a perpetual contest for victory, or an arbitrary or despotic exaction of homage to his superior talents. It was strong, acute, prompt, splendid, and vociferous; as loud, stormy, and sublime as those winds which he represents as shaking the Hebrides, and rocking the old castle which frowned on the dark-rolling sea beneath. But one gets tired of storms, however sublime they may be, and longs for the more orderly current of nature. Of Franklin, no one ever became tired. There was no ambition of eloquence, no effort to shine in any thing which came from him. There was nothing which made any demand upon either your allegiance or your admiration. His manner was as unaffected as infancy. It was nature's self. He talked like an old patriarch; and his plainness and simplicity put you at once at your ease, and gave you the full and free possession and use of your faculties. His thoughts were of a character to shine by their own light, without any adventitious aid. They only required a medium of vision like his pure and simple style, to exhibit to the highest advantage their native radiance and beauty. His cheerfulness was unremitting. It seemed to be as much the effect of a systematic and salutary exercise of the mind, as of its superior organization. His wit was of the first order. It did not show itself merely in occasional coruscations; but, without any effort or force on his part, it shed a constant stream of the purest light over the whole of his discourse. Whether in the company of commons or nobles, he was always the same plain man; always most perfectly at his ease, with his faculties in full play, and the full orbit of his genius forever clear and unclouded. And then, the stores of his mind were inexhaustible. He had commenced life with an attention so vigilant that nothing had escaped his observation; and a judgment so solid that every incident was turned to advantage. His youth had not been wasted in idleness, nor overcast by intemperance. He had been, all his life, a close and deep reader, as well as thinker; and by the force of his own powers, had wrought up the raw materials which he had gathered from books, with such exquisite skill and felicity, that he has added a hundred fold to their original value, and justly made them his own. NOTES.-Benjamin Franklin (b. 1706, d. 1790) was one of the most prominent men in the struggle of the American colonies for liberty. He was renowned as a statesman, and, although not an author by profession, was a very prolific writer. His "Autobiography," which was first printed in France, is now a household volume in America. See page 431. Boswell, James, (b. 1740, d. 1795,) was a Scotch lawyer, and is chiefly known as the biographer of Dr. Johnson, of whom he was the intimate friend and companion. Johnson, Samuel. See biographical notice, page 78. CV. THE DREAM OF CLARENCE. SCENE-Room in the Tower of London. Enter CLARENCE and BRAKENBURY. Brak. WHY looks your grace so heavily to-day? So full of ugly sights, of ghastly dreams, Brak. What was your dream? I long to hear you tell it. And, in my company, my brother Gloster; Methought that Gloster stumbled; and, in falling, Oh, then, methought, what pain it was to drown! All scattered in the bottom of the sea. Some lay in dead men's skulls; and, in those holes And mocked the dead bones that lay scattered by. To yield the ghost: but still the envious flood |