! The present race must confess their virtues, and ages to come
must crown their monuments, and place them above heroes and kings in
glory everlasting....

Do you wish to confirm this military tyranny in the heart of Europe,--a
tyranny founded on the triumph of the army over the principles of civil
government, tending to universalize throughout Europe the domination of
the sword,--and to reduce to paper and parchment, Magna Charta and all
our civil constitutions? An experiment such as no country ever made and
no good country would ever permit: to relax the moral and religious
influences; to set heaven and earth adrift from one another, and make
God Almighty a tolerated alien in his own creation; an insurrectionary
hope to every bad man in the community, and a frightful lesson to profit
and power, vested in those who have pandered their allegiance from king
to emperor, and now found their pretensions to domination on the merit
of breaking their oaths and deposing their sovereign. Should you do
anything so monstrous as to leave your allies in order to confirm such a
system; should you forget your name, forget your ancestors, and the
inheritance they have left you of morality and renown; should you
astonish Europe by quitting your allies to render immortal such a
composition, would not the nations exclaim: "You have very providently
watched over our interests, and very generously have you contributed to
our service,--and do you falter now? In vain have you stopped in your
own person the flying fortunes of Europe; in vain have you taken the
eagle of Napoleon and snatched _invincibility_ from his standard, if
now, when confederated Europe is ready to march, you take the lead in
the desertion and preach the penitence of Bonaparte and the poverty of
England."

[Illustration: THOMAS GRAY.]

THOMAS GRAY

(1716-1771)

BY GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP

The fame of Thomas Gray is unique among English poets, in that, although
world-wide and luminous, it springs from a single poem, a flawless
masterpiece,--the 'Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard.' This is the
one production by which he is known to the great mass of readers and
will continue to be known to coming generations; yet in his own time his
other poems were important factors, in establishing the high repute
accorded to him then and still maintained in the esteem of critics.
Nevertheless, living to be nearly fifty-five and giving himself
exclusively to lette