two or three thousand, in the face of a mountain eleven thousand feet high, and tumbling, crashing, thundering down, with a continuous din of far greater sublimity than the sound of the grandest cataract.

10. The roar of the falling mass begins to be heard the moment it is loosened from the mountain; it pours on with the sound of a vast body of rushing water; then comes the first great concussion, a booming crash of thunders, breaking on the still air in mid-heaven; your breath is suspended, as you listen and look; the mighty glittering mass shoots headlong over the main precipice, and the fall is so great, that it produces to the eye that impression of dread majestic slowness, of which I have spoken, though it is doubtless more rapid than Niagara. But if you should see the cataract of Niagara itself coming down five thousand feet above you in the air, there would be the same impression. The image remains in the mind, and can never fade from it; it is as if you had seen an alabaster cataract from heaven.

11. The sound is far more sublime than that of Niagara, because of the preceding stillness in those Alpine solitudes. In the midst of such silence and solemnity, from out the bosom of those glorious, glittering forms of nature, comes that rushing, crashing, thunder-burst of sound! If it were not that your soul, through the eye, is as filled and fixed with the sublimity of the vision, as through the sense of hearing with that of the audible report, methinks you would wish to bury your face in your hands, and fall prostrate, as at the voice of the Eternal.

LESSON LVI.

DIRECTION.—In reading or speaking the following sublime composition, the elocution should be slow, full, and distinct, expressing emotions of sublimity and reverence.

THE MOUNTAIN HYMN.

COLERIDGE.

1. O DREAD and silent mount! I gazed upon thee, Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,

Didst vanish from my thought;-entranced in prayer, I worshiped the INVISIBLE alone.

Yet like some sweet beguiling melody,

So sweet we know not we are listening to it,
Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought,
Yea, with my life and life's own secret joy;
Till the dilating soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing,-there,

As in her natural form, swelled vast to heaven!
2. Awake, my soul! not only passive praise
Thou owest ;-not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks and secret ecstasy. Awake,
Voice of sweet song! awake, my heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn.
3. Thou first and chief, sole sovereign of the vale!
O struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,

Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink!
Companion of the morning star at dawn,
Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald, wake! O wake! and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?
4. And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
Forever shattered, and the same forever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,

Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam ?

And who commanded, and the silence came,"Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest ?"

5. Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow Adown enormous ravines slope amain—

Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge! -.
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven Beneath the keen full moon! Who bade the sun Clothe you with rainbows? Who with living flowers Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet? "GOD!" let the torrents, like a shout of nations, Answer! and let the ice-plains echo,—“ GOD!" "GOD!" sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice! Ye pine groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds! And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow, And in their perilous fall shall thunder,-" GOD!" 6. Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost! Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest! Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain storm! Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds! Ye signs and wonders of the elements!

Utter forth-" GOD!" and fill the hills with praise!

7. Once more, hoar mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks, Oft from whose brow the avalanche, unheard,

Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene,
Into the depth of clouds that vail thy breast,-
Thou too, again, stupendous mountain, thou,
That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low
In adoration, upward from thy base,

Slow traveling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud, ·
To rise before me,-rise, O ever rise!

Rise, like a cloud of incense, from the earth!
Thou kingly spirit, throned among the hills,
Thou dread embassador from earth to heaven,
Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
“Earth, with her thousand voices, praises GOD:"

LESSON LVII.

EXPLANATORY NOTE.-1. WILLIAM TELL, a peasant of Switzerland, is celebrated for his resistance to the tyranny of the Austrian Governor, GESLER, and as one of the heroes who restored liberty to his oppressed country in 1307. For want of obedience to the mandate of Gesler, in bowing to his hat, Tell was condemned to shoot an apple from the head of his own son. He succeeded without harming his boy, but confessed that the second arrow which he had concealed, was intended, in case he failed, for shooting the tyrant.

TELL ON THE ALPS.

1. ONCE more I breathe the mountain air; once more
I tread my own free hills! My lofty soul
Throws all its fetters off; in its proud flight,
'Tis like the new-fledged eaglet, whose strong wing
Soars to the sun it long has gazed upon
With eye undazzled. O! ye mighty race

2.

That stand like frowning giants, fixed to guard
My own proud land; why did ye not hurl down
The thundering avalanche, when at your feet
The base usurper stood? A touch-a breath,
Nay, even the breath of prayer, ere now, has brought
Destruction on the hunter's head; and yet

The tyrant passed in safety. God of Heaven!
Where slept thy thunder-bolts?

O, liberty!

Thou choicest gift of Heaven, and wanting which
Life is as nothing; hast thou then forgot
Thy native home? Must the feet of slaves
Pollute this glorious scene? It can not be.

Even as the smile of Heaven can pierce the depths
Of these dark caves, and bid the wild flowers bloom
In spots where man has never dared to tread;
So thy sweet influence still is seen amid

These beetling cliffs. Some hearts still beat for thee,
And bow alive to Heaven; thy spirit lives,
Aye, and shall live, when even the very name
Of tyrant is forgot.

3.

Lo! while I

gaze

Upon the mist that wreathes yon mountain's brow,
The sunbeam touches it, and it becomes
A crown of glory on his hoary head;

O! is not this a presage of the dawn

Of freedom o'er the world? Hear me, then, bright
And beaming Heaven! while kneeling thus I vow
To live for FREEDOM, or with her-to die!

4.

Oh! with what pride I used
To walk these hills, and look up to my God,
And bless Him that it was so. It was free,-
From end to end, from cliff to lake 'twas free,-
Free as our torrents are, that leap our rocks,
And plow our valleys, without asking leave,-
Or as our peaks that wear their caps of snow,
In
very presence of the regal sun!

How happy was I in it then! I loved

Its very storms! Yes, I have sat and eyed
The thunder breaking from his cloud, and smiled
To see him shake his lightnings o'er my head,
And think I had no master save his own!

5. Ye know the jutting cliff, round which a track
Up hither winds, whose base is but the brow
To such another one, with scanty room
For two abreast to pass? O'ertaken there
By the mountain blast, I've laid me flat along,
And while gust followed gust more furiously,
As if to sweep me o'er the horrid brink,

And I have thought of other lands, where storms
Are summer flaws to those of mine, and just

Have wished me there-the thought that mine was free,
Has checked that wish, and I have raised my head,
And cried in thralldom to that furious wind,

Blow on! THIS IS THE LAND OF LIBERTY!

KNOWLES.