have been, impartial and indifferent between the subject and the crown?

My lords, you may deem this language unbecoming in me, and perhaps it may seal my fate. But I am here to speak the truth, whatever it may cost; I am here to regret nothing I have ever done to retract nothing I have ever said. I am here to crave, with no lying lip, the life I consecrate to the liberty of my country. Far from it, even here-here, where the thief, the libertine, the murderer, have left their footprints in the dust; here, on this spot, where the shadows of death surround me, and from which I see my early grave in an unanointed soil opened to receive me—even here, encircled by these terrors, the hope which has beckoned me to the perilous sea upon which I have been wrecked still consoles, animates, enraptures me.

No, I do not despair of my poor country-her peace, her liberty, her glory. For that country, I can do no more than bid her hope. To lift this island up,--to make her a benefactor to humanity, instead of being the meanest beggar in the world, to restore to her her native powers and her ancient constitution, —this has been my ambition, and this ambition has been my crime. Judged by the law of England, I know this crime entails the penalty of death; but the history of Ireland explains this crime, and justifies it. Judged by that history, I am no criminal, I deserve no punishment. Judged by that history, the treason of which I stand convicted loses all its guilt, is sanctioned as a duty, will be ennobled as a sacrifice. With these sentiments, my lord, I await the sentence of the court.

Having done what I felt to be my duty-having spoken what I felt to be the truth, as I have done on every other occasion of my short career,-I now bid farewell to the country of my birth, my passion, and my death; the country whose misfortunes have invoked my sympathies; whose factions I have sought to still; whose intellect I have prompted to a lofty aim; whose freedom has been my fatal dream. I offer to that country, as a proof of the love I bear her, and the sincerity with which I thought and spoke and struggled for her freedom, the life of a young heart, and with that life all the hopes, the honors, the endearments,

of a happy and honored home. Pronounce, then, my lords, the sentence which the laws direct, and I will be prepared to hear it. I trust I shall be prepared to meet its execution. I hope to be able, with a pure heart and perfect composure, to appear before a higher tribunal-a tribunal where a Judge of infinite goodness as well as of justice will preside, and where, my lords many, many of the judgments of this world will be reversed.

SPARTACUS TO THE GLADIATORS AT CAPUA.—Bird.

YE call me chief; and ye do well to call him chief who for twelve long years has met upon the arena every shape of man or beast the broad empire of Rome could furnish, and who never yet lowered his arm. If there be one among you who can say that ever, in public fight or private brawl, my actions did belie my tongue, let him stand forth and say it. If there be three in all your company dare face me on the bloody sands, let them come on. And yet I was not always thus-a hired butcher, a savage chief of still more savage men. My ancestors came from old Sparta, and settled among the vine-clad rocks and citron groves of Syrasella. My early life ran quiet as the brooks by which I sported; and when, at noon, I gathered the sheep beneath the shade, and played upon the shepherd's flute, there was a friend, the son of a neighbor, to join me in the pastime. We led our flocks to the same pasture, and partook together our rustie meal. One evening, after the sheep were folded, and we were all seated beneath the myrtle which shaded our cottage, my grandsire, an old man, was telling of Marathon and Leuctra; and how, in ancient times, a little band of Spartans, in a defile of the mountains, had withstood a whole army. I did not then know what war was; but my cheeks burned, I know not why, and I clasped the knees of that venerable man, until my mother, parting the hair from off my forehead, kissed my throbbing temples, and bade me go to rest, and think no more of those old tales and savage wars. That very night the Romans landed on our coast. I saw the breast that had nourished me trampled by the hoof

in

of the war-horse-the bleeding body of my father flung amidst the blazing rafters of our dwelling! To-day I killed a man in the arena; and, when I broke his helmet clasps, behold he was my friend. He knew me, smiled faintly, gasped, and died;the same sweet smile upon his lips that I had marked, when, adventurous boyhood, we scaled the lofty cliff to pluck the first ripe grapes, and bear them home in childish triumph! I told the prætor that the dead man had been my friend, generous and brave; and I begged that I might bear away the body, to burn it on a funeral pile, and mourn over its ashes. Ay! upon my knees, amid the dust and blood of the arena, I begged that poor boon, while all the assembled maids and matrons, and the holy virgins they call Vestals, and the rabble, shouted in derision, deeming it rare sport, forsooth, to see Rome's fiercest gladiator turn pale and tremble at sight of that piece of bleeding clay! And the prætor drew back as I were pollution, and sternly said, "Let the carrion rot; there are no noble men but Romans." And so, fellow-gladiators, must you, and so must I, die like dogs. O Rome! Rome! thou hast been a tender nurse to me. Ay! thou hast given to that poor, gentle, timid shepherd lad, who never knew a harsher tone than a flute-note, muscles of iron, and a heart of flint; taught him to drive the sword through plaited mail and links of rugged brass, and warm it in the marrow of his foe;-to gaze into the glaring eyeballs of the fierce Numidian lion, even as a boy upon a laughing girl! And he shall pay thee back, until the yellow Tiber is red as frothing wine, and in its deepest ooze thy life-blood lies curdled.

Ye stand here now like giants, as ye are. The strength of brass is in your toughened sinews, but to-morrow some Roman Adonis, breathing sweet perfume from his curly locks, shall with his lily fingers pat your red brawn, and bet his sesterces upon your blood. Hark! hear ye yon lion roaring in his den? 'Tis three days since he has tasted flesh; but to-morrow he shall break his fast upon yours-and a dainty meal for him ye shall be! If ye are beasts, then stand here like fat oxen, waiting for the butcher's knife! If ye are men, follow me! Strike down yon guard, gain the mountain passes, and then do bloody work,

as did your sires at old Thermopyla! Is Sparta dead? Is the old Grecian spirit frozen in your veins, that you do crouch and cower like a belabored hound beneath his master's lash? O comrades! warriors! Thracians! if we must fight, let us fight for ourselves! If we must slaughter, let us slaughter our oppressors! If we must die, let it be under the clear sky, by the bright waters, in noble, honorable battle!

RIENZI'S LAST APPEAL TO THE ROMANS.-BULWER. YE come, then, once again! Come ye as slaves or freemen? A handful of armed men are in your walls: will ye, who chased from your gates the haughtiest knights-the most practised battlemen of Rome, succumb now to one hundred and fifty hirelings and strangers?-Will ye arm for your Tribune?you are silent!-be it so! Will you arm for your own liberties, your own Rome?-silent still! By the saints that reign on the throne of the heathen gods, are ye thus fallen from your birthright? Have you no arms for your own defence?

Romans, hear me! Have I wronged you?-if so, by your hands let me die: and then, with knives yet reeking with my blood, go forward against the robber who is but the herald of your slavery; and I die honored, grateful, and avenged.

You weep! Ay, and I could weep, too-that I should live to speak of liberty in vain to Romans. Weep!-is this an hour for tears? Weep now, and your tears shall ripen harvests of crime, and license, and despotism to come!

Romans, arm; follow me, at once, to the Place of the Colonna expel this ruffian Minorbino, expel your enemy (no matter what afterward you do to me): or I abandon you to your fate.

What! and is it ye who forsake me, for whose cause alone man dares to hurl against me the thunders of his God, in this act of excommunication? Is it not for you that I am declared heretic and rebel? What are my imputed crimes?—that I have

made Rome, and asserted Italy to be free!-that I have subdued the proud magnates, who were the scourge both of pope and people.

And you, you upbraid me with what I have dared and done for you! Men, with you I would have fought, for you I would have perished. You forsake yourselves in forsaking me; and, since I no longer rule over brave men, I resign my power to the tyrants you prefer.

Seven months I have ruled over you, prosperous in commerce, stainless in justice,-victorious in the field: I have shown you what Rome could be; and since I abdicate the government ye gave me,-when I am gone, strike for your own freedom! It matters nothing who is the chief of a brave and great people. Prove that Rome hath many a Rienzi, but of brighter fortunes.

Heed me I ride with these faithful few through the quarter of the Colonna, before the fortress of your foe. Three times before that fortress shall my trumpet sound; if at the third blast ye come not, armed as befits you,-I say not all, but three, but two, but one hundred of ye,-I break up my wand of office, and the world shall say one hundred and fifty robbers quelled the soul of Rome, and crushed her magistrate and her laws!

LAST MOMENTS OF COPERNICUS.-EVERETT.

COPERNICUS, after harboring in his bosom for long, long years that pernicious heresy,-the solar system,-died on the day of the appearance of his book from the press. The closing scene of his life, with a little help from the imagination, would furnish a noble subject for an artist. For thirty-five years he has revolved and matured in his mind his system of the heavens. A natural mildness of disposition, bordering on timidity, a reluctance to encounter controversy, and a dread of persecution, have led him to withhold his work from the press, and to make known his system but to a few confidential friends and disciples.