"I have sat In my boat at night, when, midway o'er the lake, The stars went out, and down the mountain gorge The wind came roaring,--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. You 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, whose 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 thraldom to that furious wind, Blow on! This is the land of liberty!" And the following is another example, still happier in the climax of its eloquence: "Scaling yonder peak, I saw an eagle wheeling near its brow: O'er the abyss his broad expanded wings Lay calm and motionless upon the air, As if he floated there without their aid, By the sole act of his unlorded will, That buoyed him proudly up. Instinctively I bent my bow; yet kept he rounding still His airy circle, as in the delight Of measuring the ample range beneath And round about: absorbed, he heeded not The death that threatened him. I could not shoot-- 'Twas liberty! I turned my bow aside, And let him soar away." Old Melctal, the father of Tell's wife, is led in by Albert, blind and trembling, his eyes having been plucked from their sockets by order of Gesler. As Tell, horror-struck, listened to the frightful story from the lips of the old man, the revelation of the feelings it stirred in him was one of the most genuine and moving pieces of emotional portraiture ever shown to an audience. It was an unveiled storm of contending pity, amazement, wrath, tenderness, tears, loathing, and revenge. Every muscle worked, his soul seemed wrapt and shaken with thunders and lightnings of passion, which alternately darkened and illumined his features, and he seemed going mad, until at last he seized his weapons and darted away in search of the monster whose presence profaned the earth, crying, as he went, "Father, thou shalt be revenged, thou shalt be revenged!" The power of this effort is shown in the fact that more than one critic compared his struggle with his own feelings under the narrative of Melctal to his subsequent struggle with the guards of Gesler, when, like a lion amidst a pack of curs, he hurled them in every direction, and held them at bay till overpowered by sheer numbers. The mental struggle was quite as visibly defined and terrible as the physical one.