Aye, let them rail—those haughty ones— While safe thou dwellest with thy sons. They do not know how loved thou art, How many a fond and fearless heart Would rise to throw Its life between thee and the foe. They know not, in their hate and pride, What virtues with thy children bide; How true, how good, thy graceful maids Make bright, like flowers, the valley shades; What generous men Spring, like thine oaks, by hill and glen. What cordial welcomes greet the guest By thy lone rivers of the west; How faith is kept and truth revered, And man is loved and God is feared In woodland homes, And where the solemn ocean foams. There’s freedom at thy gates, and rest, For earth’s down-trodden and opprest, A shelter for the hunted head, For the starved laborer toil and bread— Power, at thy bounds, Stops, and calls back his baffled hounds. Oh fair young mother! on thy brow Shall sit a nobler grace than now. Deep in the brightness of thy skies The thronging years in glory rise, And, as they fleet, Drop strength and riches at thy feet. Thine eye, with every coming hour, Shall brighten, and thy form shall tower, And when thy sisters, elder born, Would brand thy name with words of scorn, Before thine eye Upon their lips the taunt shall die. * * * * * CAIUS MARIUS. BY MRS. E. J. EAMES. “Man—darest thou slay Caius Marius?” Semblance of him who at three-score-and-ten, Bleeding and stark, chained in a dungeon lay— Yet all untamed—whose eye flashed fire as when The stormy fight he led in war array; Well might the Cimbrian slave in awe start back, Oh! fearful Roman, when he met thine eye! Well might the Gaul, though bold, the courage lack To consummate thy purposed destiny. For through the dim and solemn twilight burnt That eye—in stern and awful grandeur flashing Its warning light on one who ne’er had learnt Pale fear till then. Well might his sword fall clashing At that dread voice—“Man, darest thou slay _me_?” So didst thou look, and speak, and wert made free! * * * * * ONE OF THE “UPPER TEN THOUSAND,” AND ONE OF THE PEOPLE. BY MRS. J. C. CAMPBELL. CHAPTER I.