hore.

"But for me, my mother, lying on her sick-bed
all the day,
Lifts her weary head to watch me, coming through
the twilight gray.

"Should I leave her sick and helpless, even freedom,
shared with thee,
Would be sadder far than bondage, lonely toil, and
stripes to me.

"For my heart would die within me, and my brain
would soon be wild;
I should hear my mother calling through the twilight
for her child!"

Blazing upward from the ocean, shines the sun of
morning-time,
Through the coffee-trees in blossom, and green
hedges of the lime.

Side by side, amidst the slave-gang, toil the lover
and the maid;
Wherefore looks he o'er the waters, leaning forward
on his spade?

Sadly looks he, deeply sighs he: 't is the Haytien's
sail he sees,
Like a white cloud of the mountains, driven seaward
by the breeze.

But his arm a light hand presses, and he hears a
low voice call
Hate of Slavery, hope of Freedom, Love is mightier
than all.

1848.

THE CURSE OF THE CHARTER-BREAKERS.

The rights and liberties affirmed by Magna Charta were deemed of such
importance, in the thirteenth century, that the Bishops, twice a year,
with tapers burning, and in their pontifical robes, pronounced, in the
presence of the king and the representatives of the estates of England,
the greater excommunication against the infringer of that instrument.
The imposing ceremony took place in the great Hall of Westminster. A
copy of the curse, as pronounced in 1253, declares that, "by the
authority of Almighty God, and the blessed Apostles and Martyrs, and all
the saints in heaven, all those who violate the English liberties, and
secretly or openly, by deed, word, or counsel, do make statutes, or
observe then being made, against said liberties, are accursed and
sequestered from the company of heaven and the sacraments of the Holy
Church."

William Penn, in his admirable political pamphlet, England's
Present Interest Considered, alluding to the curse of the Charter-
breakers, says: "I am no Roman Catholic, and little value their
other curses; yet I declare I would not for the world incur this
curse, as every man deservedly doth, who offers violence to the
fundamental freedom thereby repeated and confirmed."

IN Westminster's royal halls,
Robed in their pontificals,
England's an