In March, December, and in July, 'Tis all the same with Harry Gill Beneath the sun, beneath the moon, His teeth they chatter, chatter still! Young Harry was a lusty drover; All day she spun in her poor dwelling, By the same fire to boil their pottage, Two poor old dames, as I have known, Will often live in one small cottage; But she, poor woman! housed alone. 'Twas well enough when summer came — The long, warm, lightsome summer day; Then at her door the canty dame Would sit as any linnet gay. But when the ice our streams did fetter, O, then how her old bones would shake! You would have said, if you had met her, 'Twas a hard time for Goody Blake. Her evenings then were dull and dead; Sad case it was, as you may think, For very cold to go to bed, And then for cold not sleep a wink O joy for her! whene'er, in winter, The winds at night had made a rout, As every man who knew her says, Now, when the frost was past enduring, Then an old hedge to Goody Blake? She left her fire, or left her bed, To seek the hedge of Harry Gill. Now Harry he had long suspected And oft from his warm fire he'd go, And to the fields his road would take, And there, at night, in frost and snow, He watched to seize old Goody Blake. 33. And once behind a rick of barley, Right glad was he when he beheld her; Till she had filled her apron full. And fiercely by the arm he took her, And cried, "I've caught you then at last!' Then Goody, who had nothing said, Her bundle from her lap let fall; She prayed, her withered hand uprearing Thus on her knees did Goody pray, He went complaining all the morrow His face was gloom, his heart was sorrow; 'Twas all in vain, a useless matter, And blankets were about him pinned; And all who see him say 'tis plain, No word to any man he utters, His teeth they chatter, chatter still. Of Goody Blake and Harry Gill. WORDSWORTH 137. On the Life and Character of Lafayette. LEGISLATORS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN CONFEDERATE UNION: The record of the life of Gilbert Motier de Lafay ette is the delineation of his character. Consider him as one human being of one thousand millions, his contemporaries on the surface of the terraqueous globe. Among that thousand millions, seek for an object of comparison with him; assume for the standard of comparison all the virtues which exalt the character of man above that of the brute creation; take the ideal man, little lower than the angels; mark the qualities of the mind and heart which entitle him to this station of preeminence in the scale of created beings, and inquire who, that lived in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of the Christian era, combined in himself so many of those qualities, so little alloyed with those which belong to that earthly vesture of decay in which the immortal spirit is enclosed, as Lafayette. Pronounce him one of the first men of his age, and you have yet not done him justice. Turn back your eyes upon the records of time, summon, from the creation of the world to this day, the mighty dead of every age and every clime, - and where, among the race of merely mortal men, shall one be found, who, as the benefactor of his kind, shall claim to take precedence of Lafayette? There have doubtless been, in all ages men whose discoveries or inventions, in the world of matter or of mind, have opened new avenues to the dominion of man over the material creation; have increased his means or his faculties of enjoyment; have raised him in nearer approximation to that higher and happier condition, the object of his hopes and aspirations in his present state of existence. Lafayette discovered no new principle of politics or of morals. He invented nothing in science. He disclosed no new phenomenon in the laws of nature. He devoted himself, his life, his fortune, his hereditary honors, his towering ambition, his splendid hopes, all to the cause of Liberty. He came to another hemisphere to defend her. He became one of the most effective champions of our independence; but, that once achieved, he returned to his own country and thenceforward took no part in the controversies which have divided us. In the events of our revolution, and in the forms of policy which we have adopted for the establish |