to live to see an election at all; and, as I understood, settled it so that each named a candidate, and canvassed for votes. The Honourable Mrs. James wanted to get in one Mr. and Mrs. Bradshaw (I wonder had they any call to the book); and they were decent people-bred, born, and reared in the Cranley family-and to be sure, Mrs. James beat Bannagher at canvassing! She was hand and glove with every one that had the least call in life to a vote; she kissed every child in the village; she promised everything that everybody wanted; she promised Mr. Skeggs his eyesight, and an ould Mrs. Bland the use of her limbs; she danced in a hay-field, and sang Italian songs to those who never heard a word of the language before. Dear! Oh, dear! I could not help thinking how she was wasting her vitalsdoing no real good for man or beast! Oh! if my poor mistress had but half her strength, what a woman she would be! And it was sore to see the downright black lies and falsities they all told of each other. There was some grand point of dispute about the weight of a loaf at one time, one party had held with a mistress of the Cranley charity, that so much bread was enough for each child; and the other set said, "No; so much." This was a grand quarrel. But those who would have voted for the small bread gave in, and owned they were wrong, and agreed to the large weight; but this made no differ, the others cried against them all the same, and paraded the country with a lump of bread pinched in, to make it look less, and decked it out on the top of its pole with black ribbands, and called it "The Cranley Hurst Starvation Loaf for Poor Children." Well, I was fairly bothered amongst them; and every time the Honourable Mrs. James came across me-full or fasting, in public or in private-she would make me go over my Irish, and smile, and say— turning to ladies or gentlemen, no matter which, until I was shamed out of my very life "Now, is not she delicious? Will she not make a sensation? She will carry all before her!"

I'd have given the world for a clear head, just to think about my mistress, and the Honourable Mr. Francis, and that horrid old Maud, who ought to be burnt for a witch, as she is. My mistress was obliged to get her own bonnet and shawl; and, indeed, when she went out, she had not strength to come in, only that the Honourable Mr. Francis helped her. At last the day came: I had been up stairs to my lady, and found she had gone down stairs to breakfast!-there was a won

der!-and returning through the back hall, I saw two such pretty little children, all in rags, not real natural rags, such as we see (I am sure I ought to know what rags are), but nice, pretty, clean, pink gingham frocks, with pieces cut out of them on purpose-torn down here, and looped up there-and their clean pretty white legs and feet quite bare, and their dear little, sweet, fat, fubsy hands filled with artificial flowers, poppies, and ears of corn. Well, aunt, you know how I doat on children; so I just stooped down to kiss them, as I used poor Tom's, and it seemed so natural to say to the youngest, who was hardly bigger than a Clonmel turf-"O! lanna machree was you, every bit of you "-when I heard a scream of delight from the Honourable Mrs. James: it was like the skirle of a paycock.

"You dear creature!" she shouted, "to get up such a delicious rehearsal; the very thing I wanted. Your dress is quite ready; Clotilde shall dress you. You must talk Irish unceasingly, it will prove the extensive charity we propose that we mean to take in even the Irish. It is a bold stroke, but this is the period for bold strokes." And so she talked and hustled me into a room, and the children with me; and before I could turn round (I had not had a bit of breakfast that day, and was starving alive with the hunger) she had my cap off, and my hair down about my shoulders, and my gown off, and a bran new bright scarlet petticoat, that (saving your presence) was half a mile too short, cut into a scollop here, and a scollop there, and a bright blue patch tacked on it here, and a green one there; and the body of a gown that did not half fit, in the same style, with folds of white muslin for shift-sleeves; and a bran new blue cloak, with such a beautiful pink bow in the back of the hood, and the wickedness of her to tare two or three slits in that. I was so bothered entirely, that I could not speak; and then the maid tossicated my hair, and stuck a bunch of shamroques over my ear, and placed one of the children in my arms (the grawleen of a thing got hers about my neck in a minute); and every now and then the Honourable Mrs. James would stop and clap her hands, and talk that outlandish gibberish to her maid.

"And what is it all for, my lady?" I asked, when the breath returned to my body, and the courage to my heart "Now that you are done with me, I'd like to go back to myself, if you plaze, for I never did join the mummers in my own country, and I don't like it, my lady."

"But you must like it!" she exclaimed,

“you must like it—you are to be an Irish beggar-woman."

"None of my breed was ever that ma'am," I said, feeling as if a bolt of ice had run through my heart; but she never heeded me.

And those are to be your children!" 'My children!” I repeated, "my children-oh, holy Father!-to even the like of that to me," and I came all over like a flash of fire. So with that she called me a fool, and repeated, it was all for the good of the country-to show the boundless nature of the "Cranley Hurst Charity "—that it took in even the Irish. Oh, how my blood boiled; and I up and told her, that it was true the English now and again did a great deal for Ireland, and very good it was of them, for no doubt the Irish were a mighty troublesome people; and, indeed, it was hard to think how any people could sit down quiet and cheerful that had only potatoes to eat, and rags to cover them. But if the English were good to them, they were always telling them of it, and they never gave their gratitude time to grow; and as for me, I had seen too much real misery in rags ever to make a play of it;" and then the tears would come and choke me almost, and I hid my face in the child's lap; I was so ashamed of them tears. Now, would you believe, that instead of being angry, she got out her pencil, and wrote it every word down-and clapt her hands in delight,

and said it was as fine as Mrs. Keeley's humour and pathos-and begged of me to say it again, that I might be sure to say it right-in public -and when she found I would not make a mummer of myself, in what she called a tablou, she said she would pay me to do it. And I made answer, that what I could not do for love, I would never do for money, which surprised her. The English think they can get everything done through their money. And, aunt, she got into such a state, poor lady, she cried, she wrung her hands, she declared she was ruined, she upbraided mc, she said I had promised to do it-and all this time the blue flags were flying, and the band playing on the lawn, and a great flat open carriage of a thing, waiting to take me and the children for a show --for a show through the place! think of that! and while she was debating with me, some one came in, and told her she was guilty of bribery-and while the band played, "See the Conquering Hero comes," she went off into little hysterics-upbraiding me all the time. And in the thick of it my mistress entered, leaning on Mr. Francis' arm. "Oh, cousin, cousin!" she screamed, "that horrid Irish woman will lose me my little election!"

The Hon. Mr. Francis seemed not much to mind her, but I heard him whisper my lady"But I have gained mine."

[At the Semi-Centennial Anniversary of the Philolexian Society of New York, the anniversary oration was delivered by Theodore Sedgwick, who discharged that duty at a very short notice, in consequence of the absence of the Hon. Hamilton Fish, from whom the oration was in due course expected. The address is at once nervous and graceful, powerfully eloquent, strongly impressive, and highly effective in the illustrations the orator has introduced. We find the following abstract of it published in the Literary World, and avail ourselves of the power to reprint it in our pages.]

ON the semi-centennial anniversary of our society, the first half-hundred years of whose existence is coeval with the first half of our own nineteenth century, it might seem not inappropriate to cast a rapid glance over the track of time through which our institution has passed, and to recal to mind the extraordinary events by which our age has been made so conspicuous in the annals of the world.

But I dare not venture on the task. It is at once too vast and too painful. If we look at the other hemisphere the state of things is of the most anxious uncertainty-too many bright hopes have been blasted, too many brilliant anticipations dashed, to make the retrospect on the whole other than one of deep disappointment.

Even were I to attempt to recount or commemorate the rising glories of our own happier land, I know not but my voice would in spite of myself assume a mournful tone. No perceptible obstacle yet checks our progress, no visible cloud yet obscures our horizon, our eager gaze detects no coming danger. he, whose glance takes in as well the past as the future, cannot without apprehension and anxiety cast even the horoscope of our destinies. The very vastness of our material triumphs awakens memories well calculated to temper

But

our enthusiastic anticipations. All that we
have done has been done before, much of it
better done, and all done in vain. The dust
of Assyria and the sands of Egypt cover monu-
ments to which our costliest structures are
frail and perishable erections, and from the
rubbish of fifteen centuries accumulated in
Rome, works of art are exhumed which, dis-
coloured, mutilated, defaced, still baffle the
utmost efforts of our self-complacent energy.
I turn, then, from the "unrelenting Past:"
"Far in her realm withdrawn,

Old Empires set in sullenness and gloom,
And glorious ages gone,

Lie deep within the shadow of her womb!" But the memories of departed greatness are not all of so sad a hue. There are those which, instead of depressing human confidence and chilling human hope, awaken man to a fuller consciousness of his capacitics, and arouse him to a truer sense of his energies.

It is an interesting and a cheerful consideration, that over the intellectual, the mental, the moral world Time holds no sway. The frailest construction of the mind outlives the most massive monument of material power. The Temple of the Capitoline Jove lies in ruins; not even the foundations of the Palace of the Cæsars can be accurately traced, but Cicero and Tacitus, and Horace and Sallust, enjoy a reputation vastly wider, and reach a public immeasurably more extended than in the very zenith of their life-times. The workmen in the Roman forum are still painfully exploring the traces of the pavement of the Basilica Julia, beneath the lofty roof of which the magistrates declared her law,--but the refined reasoning and enlightened equity of that body of jurisprudence, commands now a wider empire than when it was first proclaimed by a despotic sovereign to what was then the world. The mouldering column, the broken arch, the foundation hidden by the accumulated wrecks of ages, awake none but painful or at the best but sombre emotions. The memories associated with departed genius, energy, and virtue, on the contrary, tend but to sooth, to arouse, to stimulate the mind.

And these memories can be adequately awakened in but two ways, either by corporeal representation of the immortal dead, or by a faithful and vivid representation of their labours, their achievements, and their sufferings. There is a room in the Capitol at Rome which, I think, yields to none in its extreme interest. It is that which contains the simple unadorned busts of some of the greatest men of antiquity. Others are scattered through

the wonderful halls of the Vatican; and it is impossible to gaze at these images of departed greatness, without having a livelier sense of the reality of their genius and their deeds. Two, especially, transport you most forcibly back to the greatest days of Rome. Among the treasures of a bygone world, the eye is rivetted upon the head of a boy of twelve or thirteen years of age, beautiful in its roundness, freshness, and intelligence, and yet stern, self-collected, cold, impassioned all that youth is, and all that it ought not to be. I mean the bust of the young Augustus. And that other collossal head, so vast in its intellectual developments, and on which as you gaze you are told it is the face of the immortal orator, lawyer, and philosopher who received the reward which his cold and cruel age conferred on genius and virtue, and offered his neck at Dyracchium to the assassins of the Triumvirate -the bust of Cicero. There is no head that I know either in antiquity or modern times to be compared with it, except that of one, the massive structure of whose mind is so well represented by his breadth of brow-our own Webster.

Among such speaking, life-breathing images of departed greatness, it is well to walk. It is well to do all in our power to lift ourselves above the comfort-devising materialism of our age, and to escape from the paltry cares of daily life. And when we cannot call to our aid the hand of the sculptor or the painter, we can unroll the mass of history, gaze at her canvas, and contemplate her monuments. They are often as life-like, very often far more enduring than memorials of apparently less perishable material. Thucydides is not a meaner artist than Apelles, and Tacitus has outlived Phidias.

Let us then, in the few moments allowed, re-enter the long-drawn aisles of history, and people them with some of the august forms of the departed great. But in our gallery of heroic personages a selection must be had, and I shall make it from among those who have adorned their youth by great deeds, and on the other hand, whose great deeds have been adorned and graced by youth. The peculiar attribute of our country is its vigorous infancy, its energetic youth. Let us, then, from among the great names of our race, select some of them who, while young, have done things which the world does not willingly let die. "There be some," says Bacon, "who have an over-early ripeness in their years, which fadeth by times-these are such as have brittle wits, the edge whereof is soon turned." To these I do not allude. I do not allude to juvenile pro

digies of acquisition, or infant phenomena; I speak of those who have shown from their earliest age that capacity of application—that power of concentration-that singleness of purpose which are the secrets of success and the master-key of fortune.

Of all those into whose lives great actions have been most compressed, who have most shown how much can be effected by unflinching energy and persevering purpose-and his name is so familiar that I should not mention it here, but that I may not seem intentionally to overlook it-is Buonaparte. At twentyfive he wore the uniform of general, earned through successive grades of service; between that and the age of thirty he swept the Austrians out of Italy, and laid the foundations of his power. At thirty-five he was the emperor of France, the first soldier of the world, and the arbiter of the destinies of Europe.

But while the name of Buonaparte can never be mentioned, without producing that thrill of pleasure which the manifestation of the highest intellectual capacities of our nature excites, so it should never be recalled without the expression of the just judgment which history will record against him. The greatest intellect for all purposes of action which the world has seen-great as a soldier -great as a lawgiver-great as an administrator of his vast empire, was informed and purified by no equal moral sense. No moderation restrained his ambition-no regard for the rights of others checked his desire of aggrandizement-no family affliction withheld him from sacrificing the interests of those nearest to him-he perished the outlaw of the world. As Brennus flung his sword into the Roman scales, so the modern Gaul crushed justice, humanity, and all the dearest attributes of civil society under his military system. He perfected and consolidated that formidable centralization which still holds France in bonds and forbids her to be free. Yet such is the force of genius that his name still lives the wonder of mankind, and from his grave he now dictates the destinies of his country.

The name of another youthful soldier occurs to me, and I select him from a glittering crowd-though far distant from Napoleon in point of time. On the skirts of the Roman Forum athwart the Via Sacra, that Broadway of the imperial city, where the antique pavement still shows itself, the very stones, perchance, once trod by Horace

"Ibam forte via sacra, sicut meus est mos;" there stands an ancient monument which has

defied the ravages of time, and of barbarians more ruthless than time itself. The slant moonbeam which silvers the wild grass growing on the topmost stone of the Coliseum, falls beneath its archway. On its sides, amid defaced bas-reliefs, the eye detects the image of the mystic candlestick of the Jews. The original, it is said, lies in the bed of the yellow Tiber. Beneath that arch countless processions have passed—it was erected nearly two thousand years ago to commemorate the capture of Jerusalem, by a soldier of thirty years of age, who had already lived a long life of military service. But this exploit is among the least of his achievements. It is the true glory of TITUS that his early frailties were controlled and his appetites subdued; that he exercised supreme power with rectitude, benevolence, and magnanimity, and that he stands out from the base crowd of the Cæsars a model of virtue and self-command. Over his head is a tablet on which is inscribed the title more full of true praise than that borne by any other absolute sovereign in the annals of the world, "TITUS, the Delight of Mankind."

I turn to those who have been renowned in the arts of peace, and I pause before the haughty figure of an English statesman, who, at the age of twenty-four, bore the burden of prime minister of that vast empire. It was at that age that PITT became premier of England, and till his death, at the age of fortyseven, his policy controlled the destinies of his country. I am not here to discuss the wisdom of that policy. Viewed in the light of our later experience, its sagacity with regard to the permanent interest of England may well be questioned. Its aim at home was to consolidate and perpetuate the power of a great landed aristocracy, and for that purpose no sacrifice of life or treasure was considered extravagant; while its direct result abroad was to cause a series of wars the most dreadful that humanity has ever witnessed. But the genius, the courage, the skill of Pitt cannot well be extravagantly lauded. He was the embodiment of the old English system, of which we now see the dying struggle-a system which has produced great men, and which long commanded the affections of the nation whose destinies it ruled. It will be well for mankind when the English people shall insist on a policy more enlarged, more humane, more liberal-when the energy and intelligence of that great nation shall be as steadily directed to advance the cause of peace and freedom, as they were during the days of Pitt to promote the interests of the despotic power.

We pass from the damps and fogs of the once mistress of the seas to return to a more genial clime. We seek again a sun as bright as our own; a sky as brilliant, but of tenderer hues. We seek that country which, in its ruins, is still the delight and wonder of the world; the art of which is as unrivalled as its nature is unapproached; which of all countries is that which has most a personal and individual character; which makes itself, as it were, a friend-which seizes on the affections and takes possession of the memory--and has a reality like a being of our own race.

In the history of Italy-of Italian valour of Italian art-of Italian genius--perhaps the most attractive figure is that of Raphael. His intelligent and beautiful face still speaks to us from the canvas, and if we had no such record of his features, perhaps the grace and beauty and soul which breathe from all his works would have suggested some such countenance to the mind. Raphael was a painter at seventeen; at twenty-seven he was called to Rome (such was then his reputation) to compete with Michael Angelo in the execution of the works designed to adorn the Capitol; and at thirtyseven he was snatched from an admiring world, leaving, however, behind him, works which will render his name immortal, long after time and ignorance and neglect have destroyed the last shred of canvas on which his fingers rested. It is amazing, as we pass through the halls where he has left the enduring impress of his genius, to consider how the young years of the great artist must have been devoted to labour. Some of his productions have been defaced by damp and mould some destroyed by the ignorance of those who have attempted to restore them but a long life would seem inadequate even for those which still remain. In looking at his mild and placid face, it is difficult to believe that he united, with his rare perception of the beautiful, such patience, industry, and laborious perseverance. At the age of thirty-seven, as I have said, he fell a victim to his devotion to his art. His latest work, "the Transfiguration," was suspended by the side of his dying bed. His last glance was fixed on that personification of our Saviour which he had just completed. He sleeps in the Pantheon, the only one still entire of all the ancient temples of Rome-fitting shrine for his spirit.

I have spoken of deeds of war of the acts of peace-of the arts that beautify and adorn life-I now turn to higher and holier themes. Luther is an eminent instance of greatness in youth. At the age of twenty-five, he was appointed professor at Wittenburg; at that of

thirty-four, in his attack on the system of Indulgences, he laid the foundation of religious freedom. I have not, of course, the least intention of even alluding to subjects of ecclesiastical dogma or discipline. I am speaking now merely of the right of private judgment in religious affairs, uncontrolled by any human power, clerical or secular. This constitutes in my eyes the real greatness of the struggle into which Luther threw himself. This is its great result. That contest is the strongest illustration of the terrible truth of our Saviour's words that he came "not to bring peace, but a sword. The first martyrs in the conflict fell in the time of Luther himself. A long array of others followed. The fires of Smithfield were lighted, the Low Countries devastated by the remorseless fanaticism of Spain, and France consumed by her religious wars. In the next century, for thirty years Germany was given up to sack and slaughter, and France again convulsed by the folly and superstition of Louis XIV. But the end appears to have been in great part gained. The doctrines of religious toleration have grown out of a struggle, the fruits of which, frightful as it was, are worth all that they have cost. The principle of, religious liberty has been in the greater part of the civi lized world established- -a principle denied and derided, from the days of Diocletian to those of the revocation of the edict of Nantes. Civil society has, in the Old World at least, made but small progress. Despotic and centralized governments still cover or overshadow almost the whole of Christendom; but it cannot be denied that statesmen have learned wisdom, and that sectarians show increased moderation in the humanity with which they now tolerate difference of religious belief. That this acquisition has been made, is due in great part, under God, to the great German, who declared that he feared neither despot nor devil.

Another prodigy of youth is Pascal. I do not speak of the marvellous mathematical labours of his childhood-of his almost intuitive discovery of one of the most important of Euclid's problems, at the age of twelve-his calculations on the weight of the air, nor those of the cycloid curve; but of those long, laborious, early years those years of research, of study, of reflection, which were requisite to produce the Provincial Letters, at the age of thirtythree. Those letters have remained the most conspicuous work of the age to which they belong, and they are still regarded as one of the master-pieces of that French literature, so abundant in genius, in reasoning, and in wit. But these letters are not only wonderful, as