SHERIDAN'S RIDE.

THOMAS BUCHANAN READ.

Up from the south at break of day,
Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay,
The affrighted air with a shudder bore,
Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain's door,
The terrible grumble, and rumble, and roar,
Telling the battle was on once more,
And Sheridan twenty miles away.

And wider still those billows of war
Thundered along the horizon's bar,
And louder yet into Winchester rolled
The roar of that red sea uncontrolled,
Making the blood of the listener cold

As he thought of the stake in that fiery fray,
With Sheridan twenty miles away.

But there is a road from Winchester town,
A good, broad highway leading down;

And there, through the flash of the morning light,
A steed as black as the steeds of night
Was seen to pass as with eagle flight;
As if he knew the terrible need,

He stretched away with the utmost speed;
Hills rose and fell but his heart was gay,

With Sheridan fifteen miles away.

Still sprung from those swift hoofs, thundering South, The dust, like smoke from the cannon's mouth;

Or the trail of a comet, sweeping faster and faster,

Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster.

The heart of the steed and the heart of the master
Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls,
Impatient to be where the battle-field calls;
Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play,
With Sheridan only ten miles away.

Under his spurning feet the road
Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed,
And the landscape flowed away behind,
Like an ocean flying before the wind;
And the steed, like a bark fed with furnace-ire,
Swept on with his wild eyes full of fire;
But lo! he is nearing his heart's desire,
He is snuffing the smoke of the roaring fray,
With Sheridan only five miles away.

The first that the General saw were the groups

Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops;

What was done-what to do a glance told him both,
And striking his spurs, with a terrible oath,

He dashed down the lines 'mid a storm of hurrahs,
And the wave of retreat checked its course there, because
The sight of the master compelled it to pause.
With foam and with dust the black charger was gray,
By the flash of his eye and his nostril's play
He seemed to the whole great army to say:
"I've brought you Sheridan all the way
From Winchester town to save the day!"
Hurrah! hurrah! for Sheridan!
Hurrah! hurrah! for horse and man!

And when their statues are placed on high,
Under the dome of the Union sky-
The American soldier's temple of fame
There with the glorious General's name,
Be it said, in letters both bold and bright:
"Here is the steed that saved the day
By carrying Sheridan into the fight
From Winchester, twenty miles away!"

GIVE UP THE UNION?

DANIEL S. DICKINSON.

GIVE up the Union? Never! The Union shall endure, and its praises shall be heard, when its friends and its foes-those who support and those who assail, those who bare their bosoms in its defence, and those who aim their daggers at its heart — shall all sleep in the dust together. Its name shall be heard with veneration amidst the roar of Pacific's waves, away upon the rivers of the North and East, where liberty is divided from monarchy, and be wafted in gentle breezes upon the Rio Grande. It shall rustle in the harvest, and wave in the standing corn on the extended prairies of the West, and be heard in the bleating folds and lowing herds upon a thousand hills. It shall be with those who delve in mines, and shall hum in the manufactories of New England, and in the cotton-gins of the South. It shall be proclaimed by the Stars and Stripes in every sea of earth, as the American Union, one and indivisible. Upon the great thoroughfares, wherever steam drives

and engines throb and shriek, its greatness and perpetuity shall be hailed with gladness. It shall be lisped. in the earliest words, and ring in the merry voices of childhood, and swell to Heaven upon the song of maidens. It shall live in the stern resolve of manhood, and rise to the mercy-seat upon woman's gentle, availing prayer. Holy men shall invoke its perpetuity at the altars of religion, and it shall be whispered in the last accents of expiring age. Thus shall survive and be perpetuated the American Union.

Look at all history-consult her pages, ancient or modern; look at human nature; look at the contest in which you would be engaged in the supposition of war following upon the dissolution of the Union, such as I have suggested; and I ask you if it is possible for you to doubt that the final disposition of the whole would be some despot treading down the liberties of the people -the final result would be the extinction of this last and glorious light which is leading all mankind, who are gazing upon it, in the hope and anxious expectation that the liberty which prevails here will sooner or later be diffused throughout the whole of the civilized world. Sir, can you lightly contemplate these consequences? Can you yield yourself to the tyranny of passion, amid dangers which I have depicted in colors far too tame, of what the result would be if that direful

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event to which I have referred should ever occur? Sir, I implore gentlemen—I adjure them, whether from the South or the North, by all that they hold dear in this world-by all their love of liberty-by all their veneration for their ancestors-by all their regard for posterity-by all their gratitude to Him who has bestowed on them such unnumbered and countless blessings - by all the duties which they owe to mankind- and by all the duties which they owe to themselves to pause, solemnly to pause at the edge of the precipice, before the fearful and dangerous leap is taken into the yawning abyss below, from which none who ever take it shall return in safety!

THE PEOPLE ALWAYS CONQUER.

EDWARD EVERETT.

THE people always conquer. They always must conquer. Armies may be defeated, kings may be overthrown, and new dynasties imposed, by foreign arms, on an ignorant and slavish race, that cares not in what language the covenant of their subjection runs, nor in whose name the deed of their barter and sale is made out. But the people never invade, and when they rise against the invader are never subdued. If they are driven from the plains, they fly to the mountains. Steep rocks and everlasting hills are their castles; the tangled, pathless thicket their palisado; and Nature, God, is their ally. Now He overwhelms the hosts of their enemies. beneath his drifting mountains of sand; now He buries