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And on the wings of mighty winds
Came flying all abroad.

William Billings died in 1800, and his remains lie in an unmarked grave
in the old "Granary" Burying Ground in the city of his birth.

National feeling has taken maturer speech and finer melody, but it was
these ruder voices that set the pitch. They were sung with native pride
and affection at fireside vespers and rural feasts with the adopted
songs of Burns and Moore and Mrs. Hemans, and, like the lays of Scotland
and Provence, they breathed the flavor of the country air and soil, and
taught the generation of home-born minstrelsy that gave us the
Hutchinson family, Ossian E. Dodge, Covert with his "Sword of Bunker
Hill," and Philip Phillips, the "Singing Pilgrim."

THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER.

Near the close of the last war with England, Francis Scott Key, of
Baltimore, the author of this splendid national hymn, was detained under
guard on the British flag-ship at the mouth of the Petapsco, where he
had gone under a flag of truce to procure the release of a captured
friend, Dr. William Beanes of Upper Marlboro, Md.

The enemy's fleet was preparing to bombard Fort McHenry, and Mr. Key's
return with his friend was forbidden lest their plans should be
disclosed. Forced to stay and witness the attack on his country's flag,
he walked the deck through the whole night of the bombardment until the
break of day showed the brave standard still flying at full mast over
the fort. Relieved of his patriotic anxiety, he pencilled the exultant
lines and chorus of his song on the back of a letter, and, as soon as he
was released, carried it to the city, where within twenty-four hours it
was printed on flyers, circulated and sung in the streets to the air of
"Anacreon in Heaven"--which has been the "Star Spangled Banner" tune
ever since.

O say, can you see by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming,
And the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air
Gave proof through the night that the flag was still there:
O say, does the star-spangled banner yet wave,
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

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O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand,
Between their loved homes and the war's desolation;