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With arms reversed and muffled drum,

Follow the funeral car.

They show the banners taken,

They tell his battles won,

And after him lead his masterless steed,
While peals the minute gun.

6. Amid the noblest of the land
Men lay the sage to rest,
And give the bard an honored place,
With costly marble dressed,

In the great minster transept,
Where lights like glories fall,

And the choir sings and the organ rings
Along the emblazoned wall.

7. This was the bravest warrior
That ever buckled sword;

This the most gifted poet

That ever breathed a word;
And never earth's philosopher
Traced, with his golden pen,

On the deathless page, truths half so sage
As he wrote down for men.

8. And had he not high honor?
The hill side for his pall;
To lie in state while angels wait

With stars for tapers tall;

And the dark rock pines, like tossing plumes,

Over his bier to wave;

And God's own hand, in that lonely land,

To lay him in the grave,—

9. In that deep grave, without a name, Whence his uncoffined clay

Shall break again--O wondrous thought!
Before the judgment day,

And stand with glory wrapped around
On the hills he never trod,

And speak of the strife that won our life
With the incarnate Son of God.

10. O lonely tomb in Moab's land,
O dark Beth-peor's hill,

Speak to these curious hearts of ours,

And teach them to be still.

God hath his mysteries of grace,—

Ways that we cannot tell;

He hides them deep, like the secret sleep

Of him he loved so well.

LXXXII. THE DYING CHRISTIAN TO HIS SOUL

ALEXANDER POPE.

1. Vital spark of heavenly flame!
Quit, O quit this mortal frame:
Trembling, hoping, lingering, flying,
O the pain, the bliss of dying!
Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife,
And let me languish into life!

2. Hark! they whisper; angels say,
"Sister spirit, come away!
What is this absorbs me quite ?
Steals my senses, shuts my sight,
Drowns my spirits, draws my breath?
Tell me, my soul, can this be death?

3. The world recedes; it disappears!
Heaven opens on my eyes! my ears

With sounds seraphic ring;

Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
O Grave! where is thy victory?

O Death! where is thy sting?

LXXXIII.-HISTORIC DOUBTS.

RICHARD WHATELY.

1. Still it will be said, that unless we suppose a regularly preconcerted plan, we must at least expect to find great discrepancies in the accounts published. Though they might adopt the general outlines of facts one from another, they would have to fill up the detail for themselves; and in this, therefore, we should meet with infinite and irreconcilable variety.

2. Now this is precisely the point I am tending to; for the fact exactly accords with the above supposition; the discordance and natural contradictions of these witnesses being such as alone throw a considerable shade of doubt over their testimony. It is not in minute circumstances alone that the discrepancy appears, such as might be expected to appear in a narrative substantially true; but in very great and leading transactions, and such as are intimately connected with the supposed hero. For instance, it is by no means agreed whether Bonaparte led in person the celebrated charge over the bridge of Lodi (for celebrated it certainly is, as well as the siege of Troy, whether either event really took place or no), or was safe in the rear while Augereau performed the exploit.

3. The same doubt hangs over the charge of the French cavalry at Waterloo. The peasant Lacoste, who professed to

have been Bonaparte's guide on the day of battle, and who earned a fortune by detailing over and over again to visitors all the particulars of what the great man said and did up to the moment of flight, this same Lacoste has been suspected by others, besides me, of having never been near the great man and having fabricated the whole story for the sake of making a gain of the credulity of travelers.

4. In the accounts that are extant of the battle itself, published by persons professing to have been present, the reader will find there is a discrepancy of three or four hours as to the time the battle began!—a battle, be it remembered, not fought with javelins and arrows, like those of the ancients, in which one part of a large army might be engaged, while a distant portion of the same army knew nothing of it; but a battle commencing-if indeed it were fought at allwith the firing of cannon, which would have announced pretty loudly what was going on.

5. It is no less uncertain whether or no this strange personage poisoned, in Egypt, a hospital-full of his own soldiers, and butchered in cold blood a garrison that had surrendered. But not to multiply instances, the battle of Borodino, which is represented as one of the greatest ever fought, was unequivocally claimed as a victory by both parties; nor is the question decided at this day. We have official accounts on both sides, circumstantially detailed, in the names of supposed respectable persons professing to have been present on the spot, yet totally irreconcilable. Both these accounts may be false; but since one of them must be false, that one (it is no matter which we suppose) proves incontrovertibly this important maxim: that it is possible for a narrativehowever circumstantial-however steadily maintained-however public and however important the event it relates-however grave the authority on which it is published-to be

nevertheless an entire fabrication.

6. Many of the events which have been recorded were probably believed much the more readily and firmly, from the apparent caution and hesitation with which they were at first published, the vehement contradiction in our papers of many pretended French accounts, and the abuse lavished upon them for falsehood, exaggeration, and gasconade. But is it not possible,-is it not indeed perfectly natural,— that the publishers even of known falsehood should assume this cautious demeanor, and this abhorrence of exaggeration, in order the more easily to gain credit?

7. Is it not also very possible that those who actually believe what they published, may have suspected mere exaggeration in stories which were entire fictions? Many men have that sort of simplicity, that they think themselves quite secure against being deceived, provided they believe only part of the story they hear, when perhaps the whole is equally false. So that perhaps these simple-hearted editors who were so vehement against lying bulletins, and so wary in announcing their great news, were in the condition of a clown, who thinks he has bought a great bargain of a Jew because he has beat down the price, perhaps from a guinea to a crown, for some article that is really not worth a groat.

8. With respect to the character of Bonaparte, the dissonance is, if possible, still greater. According to some, he was a wise, humane, magnanimous hero; others paint him as a monster of cruelty, meanness, and perfidy; some, even of those who are most inveterate against him, speak very highly of his political and military ability; others place him on the very verge of insanity.

9. But allowing that all this may be the coloring of party prejudice (which surely is allowing a great deal), there is one point to which such a solution will hardly apply. If there

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