cludes would feign lie hid,
And rise thou with it in thy greater light."

It is hardly possible to read Chapman's serious verse without feeling
that he had in him the elements of a great nature, and that he was a
magnificent specimen of what is called "irregular genius." And one of
his poems, the dedication of his translation of the Iliad to Prince
Henry, is of so noble a strain, and from so high a mood, that, while
borne along with its rapture, we are tempted to place him in the first
rank of poets and of men. You can feel and hear the throbs of the grand
old poet's heart in such lines as these:--

"O, 't is wondrous much,
Though nothing prized, that the right virtuous touch
Of a well-written soul to virtue moves;
Nor have we souls to purpose, if their loves
Of fitting objects be not so inflamed.
How much were then this kingdom's main soul maimed,
To want this great inflamer of all powers
That move in human souls.

* * * *

Through all the pomp of kingdoms still he shines,
And graceth all his gracers.

* * * *

A prince's statue, or in marble carved,
Or steel, or gold, and shrined, to be preserved,
Aloft on pillars and pyramides,
Time into lowest ruins may depress;
_But drawn with all his virtues in learned verse,
Fame shall resound them on oblivion's hearse,
Till graves gasp with their blasts, and dead men rise._"

OUR PACIFIC RAILROADS.

Two thirds of the United States lie west of the Mississippi River. This
vast domain has already exercised a tremendous influence over our
political destiny. The Territories were the immediate occasion of our
civil war. During an entire generation they furnished the arena for the
prelusive strife of that war. The Missouri Compromise was to us of the
East a flag of truce. But neither nature nor the men who populated the
Western Territories recognized this flag. The vexed question of party
platforms and sectional debate, the right and the reason of slavery,
solved itself in the West with a freedom and rough rapidity natural to
the soil and its population. Climatic limitations and prohibitions went
hand in hand with the inflow of an emigration mainly from the Northern
States,--an emigration fostered by political emotions and fevered by
political injustice. While the South was menacing and the North
deprecating war, far removed from this tumult of words the con