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Show winds and waves,"" said Gibbon, "are always on the side of the ablest navigators. So are the sun and moon and all the star of heaven Whe a nobl act is done, perchance in a scene of great natura beauty; when Leonidas and his three hundred martyrs consume one day in dying and the sun and moon come each and loe at them once in the steep defile of Thermopylee; when Arnold Winkelried, in th high Alps, under the shadow of the avalanche, gathers in his side a sheaf of Aus trian spears to break the line for his comrades; are not these heroes entitled to ad the beauty of the scene to the beauty of th deed? When the bark of Columbus near the shore of America;-before it, the beac lined with savages, fleeing out of all thei huts of cane; the sea behind; and the pur ple mountains of the Indian Archipelag around, can we separate the man from th living picture? Does not the New Worl clothe his form with her palm-groves an savannahs as fit drapery? Ever does natural beauty steal in like air, and envelop great actions. When Sir Harry Vane wa dragged up the Tower-hill, sitting on sled 2 to suffe death, as th champio o |
