stake for his faith as triumphantly as any martyr of those times.
It was under the influence of one of these conversations that I could
not avoid addressing to the old man the following youthful stanzas,
which, though they may exhibit little poetry, testify to the patriotism
which his language inspired:

My friend! there have been men
To whom we turn again
After contemplating the present age,
And long, with vain regret,
That they were living yet,
Virtue's high war triumphantly to wage.

Men whose renown was built
Not on resplendent guilt--
Not through life's waste, or the abuse of power,
But by the dauntless zeal
With which at truth's appeal,
They stood unto the death in some eventful hour.

But he who now shall deem,
Because among us seem
No dubious symptoms of a realm's decline--
Wealth blind with its excess
'Mid far-diffused distress,
And pride that kills, professing to refine--

He who deems hence shall flow
The utter overthrow
Of this most honored and long happy land,
Little knows what there lies
Even beneath his eyes,
Slumbering in forms that round about him stand.

Little knows he the zeal
Myriads of spirits feel
In love, pure principle, and knowledge strong;
Little knows he what men
Tread this dear land again,
Whose souls of fire invigorate the throng.

My friend! I lay with thee
Beneath the forest tree,
When spring was shedding her first sweets around.
And the bright sky above
Woke feelings of deep love,
And thoughts which traveled through the blue profound.

I lay, and as I heard--
The joyful faith thus stirred,
Shot like Heaven's lightning through my wondering breast
I heard, and in my thought
Glory and greatness wrought,
And blessing God--my native land I blest.

Now we entered a village inn, and ate our simple luncheon; and now we
stood in some hamlet lane, or by its mossy well, with a group of
children about us, among whom not a child appeared more child-like or
more delighted than the old man. Nay, as we came back from a fifteen or
twenty miles' stroll, he would leap over a stile with the activity of a
boy, or run up to a wilding bush, covered with its beautiful pink
blossoms, and breaking off a branch hold it