I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under ;
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skyey bowers,
Lightning, my pilot, sits;

In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits;

Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,

This pilot is guiding me,

Lured by the love of the genii that move

In the depths of the purple sea;

Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,

Over the lakes and the plains,

Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,

The Spirit he loves remains;

And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile,

Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,

Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,

When the morning star shines dead,

As on the jag of a mountain crag,

Which an earthquake rocks and swings,

An eagle alit one moment may sit

In the light of its golden wings.

And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,

Its ardors of rest and of love,

And the crimson pall of eve may fall

From the depth of heaven above,

With wings folded I rest on mine airy nest,

As still as a brooding dove.

That orbed maiden, with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon,

Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn ;

And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,

May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,

The stars peep behind her and peer.

And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,

Like a swarm of golden bees,

When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,

Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,

Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.

I find the sun's throne with a burning zone,

And the moon's with a girdle of pearl;

The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim, When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl,

From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,

The triumphal arch through which I march,

With hurricane, fire, and snow,

When the powers of the air are chained to my chair,

Is the million-colored bow;

The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove,

While the moist earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of earth and water,

And the nursling of the sky;

I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;

I change, but I cannot die.

For after the rain, when with never a stain

The pavilion of heaven is bare,

And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams Build up the blue dome of air,

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

And out of the caverns of rain,

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.

PUBLIC DISHONESTY.

HENRY WARD BEECHER.

A CORRUPT public sentiment produces dishonesty. A public sentiment in which dishonesty is not disgraceful, in which bad men are respectable, are trusted, are honored, are exalted, is a curse to the young. The fever of speculation, the universal derangement of business, the growing laxness of morals, is, to an alarming extent, introducing such a state of things.

If the shocking stupidity of the public mind to atrocious dishonesties is not aroused; if good men do not bestir themselves to drag the young from this foul sorcery; if the relaxed bands of honesty are not tightened, and conscience tutored to a severer morality, our night is at hand, our midnight not far off. Woe to that guilty people who sit down upon broken laws, and wealth saved by injustice! Woe to a generation fed by the bread of fraud, whose children's inheritance shall be a perpetual memento of their fathers' unrighteousness; to whom dishonesty shall be made pleasant by association with the revered memories of father, brother, and friend!

But when a whole people, united by a common disregard of justice, conspire to defraud public creditors; and States vie with States in an infamous repudiation of just debts, by open or sinister methods; and nations exert their sovereignty to protect and dignify the knavery of the Commonwealth; then the confusion of domestic affairs has bred a fiend, before whose flight honor fades away, and under whose feet the sanctity of truth and the religion of solemn compacts are stamped down and ground into the dirt. Need we

ask the cause of growing dishonesty among the young, the increasing untrustworthiness of all agents, when States are seen clothed with the panoply of dishonesty, and nations put on fraud for their garments?

Absconding agents, swindling schemes, and defalcations, occurring in such melancholy abundance, have at length ceased to be wonders, and rank with the common accidents of fire and flood. The budget of each week is incomplete without its mob and runaway cashier, its duel and defaulter; and as waves which roll to the shore are lost in those which follow on, so the villanies of each week obliterate the record of the last.

Men of notorious immorality, whose dishonesty is flagrant, whose private habits would disgrace the ditch, are powerful and popular. I have seen a man stained with every sin, except those which required courage; into whose head I do not think a pure thought has entered for forty years; into whose heart an honorable feeling would droop for very loneliness ; · in evil he was ripe and rotten; hoary and depraved in deed, in word, in his present life, and in all his past; evil when by himself, and viler among men; corrupting to the young;-to domestic fidelity, a recreant; to common honor, a traitor; to honesty, an outlaw; to religion, a hypocrite; base in all that is worthy of man, and accomplished in whatever is disgraceful; and yet this wretch could go where he would; enter good men's dwellings, and purloin their votes. Men would curse him, yet obey him; hate him, and assist him; warn their sons against him, and lead them to the polls for him. A public sentiment which produces ignominious knaves cannot breed honest men.

We have not yet emerged from a period in which debts are insecure ; the debtor legally protected against the rights of the creditor; taxes laid, not by the requirements of justice, but for political effect, and lowered to a dishonest inefficiency; and when thus diminished, not collected; the citizens resisting their own officers;

officers resigning at the bidding of the electors; the laws of property paralyzed; bankrupt laws built up; and stay-laws unconstitutionally enacted, upon which the courts look with aversion, yet fear to deny them, lest the wildness of popular opinion should roll back disdainfully upon the bench, to despoil its dignity, and prostrate its power. General suffering has made us tolerant of general dishonesty; and the gloom of our commercial disaster threatens to become the pall of our morals.

ELOQUENCE.

WEBSTER.

WHEN public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great interests are at stake, and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable in speech further than it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness are the qualities which produce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from afar. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire after it; they cannot reach it. It comes, if it comes at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men, when their own lives, and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country, hang on the decision of the hour. Then words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then patriotism is eloquent; then self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception,