Chapter III: Part 3

We have the greatest country on the face of the earth. Let not our minds be so distracted by mere party strife and confusion that we shall see our government fall to pieces before our eyes, and sacrifice our country to our party instead of being ready at all times to sacrifice our party to our country. After we become the slave of party, we dare not, in the presence of any danger to the country, turn our backs to our parties, and say that we have a country that demands our services, and to it will we give them. Are we now unable to do this? Have we lost this spirit? has it gone from among us?

Providence has given this great country to us. Our wise and valiant forefathers gave us liberty and established a government for us. Let us take care of it--take care of the Constitution and the Union. That is all we require. We have before us the prospect of a glory unknown to other nations--a prospect in which our land will become the glory of the earth. Neither Rome nor any of the great empires of antiquity or of modern times can compare with what we shall be at no distant day. We are now thirty millions strong, yet we have been but eighty years in existence as a free nation. From the year 1776 down to the present time, God Almighty has blessed us above all other people and all other nations. Where shall we be thirty years hence, if such prosperity attend us? A great nation of one hundred million souls, with not enough then to develop all our resources. Every man free to think, free to speak, free to act, free to work. What must this mighty freedom produce with this mighty concurrence of hearts, of heads, of hands! What navies, what armies, what cities! Let us lift ourselves to the contemplation of what our children will be. Shall we not leave them a legacy as great as that our fathers left us? Let the contemplation of the mighty destinies involved in our Confederacy engage us until we absorb the genius of this Republic and its Constitution. Let it enter into all our motives of public action, that we may no longer be the tools and slaves of parties, of party platforms, and of party conventions.

EULOGIUM ON HENRY CLAY.--_Lincoln, 1852._

On the 4th day of July, 1776, the people of a few feeble and oppressed colonies of Great Britain, inhabiting a portion of the Atlantic coast of North America, publicly declared their National Independence, and made their appeal to the justice of their cause, and to the God of battles, for the maintenance of that declaration. That people were few in numbers, and without resources, save only their wise heads and stout hearts. Within the first year of that declared independence, and while its maintenance was yet problematic--while the bloody struggle between those resolute rebels and their haughty would-be masters, was still waging, of undistinguished parents, and in an obscure district of one of those colonies, Henry Clay was born. The infant nation and the infant child began the race together. For three-quarters of a century they have traveled hand in hand. They have been companions ever. The nation has passed its peril, and is free, prosperous, and powerful. The child has reached his manhood, his middle age, his old age, and is dead. In all that has concerned the nation the man ever sympathized, and now the nation mourns for the man.

But do we realize that Henry Clay is dead? Who can realize that never again that majestic form shall rise in the council-chamber of his country, to beat back the storms of anarchy which may threaten, or pour the oil of peace upon the troubled billows, as they rage and menace around? Who can realize that the workings of that mighty mind have ceased--that the throbbings of that gallant heart are stilled--that the mighty sweep of that graceful arm will be felt no more, and the magic of that eloquent tongue, which spake as spake no other tongue besides, is hushed--hushed forever? Who can realize that freedom's champion--the champion of a civilized world, and of all tongues and kindred and people, has indeed fallen? Alas! in those dark hours of peril and dread which our land has experienced, and which she may be called to experience again--to whom now may her people look up for that counsel and advice, which only wisdom and experience and patriotism can give, and which only the undoubting confidence of a nation will receive?

But Henry Clay is dead. His long and eventful life is closed. Our country is prosperous and powerful; but could it have been quite all it has been, and is, and is to be, without Henry Clay? Such a man the times have demanded, and such, in the Providence of God, was given us. But although his form is lifeless, his name will live and be loved and venerated in both hemispheres. For it is

"One of the few, the immortal names,
That were not born to die."

OHIO.--_Bancroft's Oration at Cleveland, Sept. 10th, 1860._

Ohio rises before the world as the majestic witness to beneficent reality of the democratic principle. A commonwealth younger in years than he who addresses you, not long ago having no visible existence but in the emigrant wagons, now numbers almost as large a population as that of all England when it gave birth to Raleigh, and Bacon, and Shakspeare, and began, its continuous attempts at colonizing America. Each one of her inhabitants gladdens in the fruit of his own toil. She possesses wealth that must be computed by thousands of millions; and her frugal, industrious, and benevolent people, at once daring and prudent, unfettered in the use of their faculties, restless in enterprise, do not squander the accumulations of their industry in vain show, but ever go on to render the earth more productive, more beautiful, and more convenient to man; mastering for mechanical purposes the unwasting forces of nature; keeping exemplary good faith with their public creditors; building in half a century more churches than all England has raised since this continent was discovered; endowing and sustaining universities and other seminaries of learning. Conscious of the dynamic power of mind in action as the best of fortresses, Ohio keeps no standing army but that of her school-teachers, of whom she pays more than 20,000; she provides a library for every school-district; she counts among her citizens more than 300,000 men who can bear arms, and she has more than twice that number of children registered as students in her public schools. Here the purity of domestic morals is maintained by the virtue and dignity of woman.

In the heart of the temperate zone of this continent, in the land of the corn, of wheat, and the vine, the eldest daughter of the Ordinance of 1787, already the young mother of other commonwealths, that bid fair to vie with her in beauty, rises in her loveliness and glory, crowned with cities, and challenges the admiration of the world. Hither should come the political skeptic, who, in his despair, is ready to strand the ship of state; for here he may learn how to guide it safely on the waters. Should some modern Telemachus, heir to an island empire, touch these shores, here he may observe the vitality and strength of the principle of popular power; take from the book of experience the lesson that in public affairs great and happy results follow in proportion to faith in the efficacy of that principle, and learn to rebuke ill-advised counselors who pronounce the most momentous and most certain of political truths a delusion and a failure.

OLIVER HAZARD PERRY.--_Ibid._

This anniversary of the great action of Oliver Hazard Perry is set apart for inaugurating a monument to his fame. Who has not heard how gallantly, forty-seven years ago, the young hero, still weak from a wasting fever, led his squadron to battle? As if shielded by a higher power, he encountered death on his right hand, and death on his left, ever in advance, almost alone for two hours fighting his ship, till it became a wreck, so that but one of its guns could be used any longer, and more than four-fifths of his crew lay around him wounded or killed; then unharmed, standing as beseemed his spirit, he passed in a boat to the uninjured Niagara, unfurled his flag, bore down within pistol-shot of his enemy, poured into them broadsides starboard and broadsides port, and while the sun was still high above the horizon, left no office to be done but that of mercy to the vanquished. If the comparison does not seem fanciful, I will call his conduct during those eventful hours a complete lyric poem, perfect in all its parts. Though he was carried away and raised above himself by the power with which he was possessed, the passion of his inspiration was tempered by the serene self-possession of his faultless courage; his will had the winged rapidity of fiery thought, and yet observed with deliberateness the combinations of harmony and the proportions of measured order.

Nor may you omit due honors to the virtues of the unrecorded dead; not as mourners who require consolation, but with a clear perception of the glory of their end. The debt of nature all must pay. To die, if need be, in defense of the country is a common obligation; it is granted to few to exchange life for a victory so full of benefits to their fellow-men. These are the disinterested, unnamed martyrs, who, without hope, or fame, or gain, gave up their lives in testimony to the all pleading love of country, and left to our statesmen the lesson to demand of others nothing but what is right, and to submit to no wrong.

"We have met the enemy," were Perry's words as he reported the result of the battle. And who was that enemy? A nation speaking another tongue? A state abandoned to the caprices of despotism? A people inimical to human freedom? No! they were the nation from whom most of us sprung, using the same copious language, cherishing after their fashion the love of liberty, enjoying internally the freest government that the world had known before our own. But the external policy of their government has been less controlled by regard for right than their domestic administration; and a series of wanton aggression, upon us, useless to England, condemned by her own statesmen and judges as violations of the law of nature and the law of nations, forced into a conflict two peoples whose common sympathies should never have been disturbed. And is this aggressive system forever to be adventured by her rulers? How long is the overshadowing aristocratic element in her government to stand between the natural affections of kindred nations.

OUR DOMAIN.--_Ibid._

Even now a British minister, whose past career gave hope of a greater fairness, is renewing the old system of experiments on the possible contingency of the pusillanimity, the indifference, or the ignorance of some future American administration, and disputes our boundary in the Northwest, though the words of the treaty are too plain to be perverted, and though the United States claims no more than the British secretary of state, who offered the treaty, explained as its meaning before it was signed. British soldiers are now encamped on part of our territory which bears the name of Washington. With a moderation that should have commanded respect, the United States waived their better claim to Vancouver, and even to any part of it, thinking it conducive to peace to avoid two jurisdictions on different parts of the same island; and in return for this forbearance the British Minister, yielding perhaps to some selfish clamor of a trading company, as much against British interests as against American rights, reproduces on an American island the inconvenience of divided occupation, which it was the very purpose of the treaty to avoid.

If the hum of the American seaboard is in part the echo of sentiments from abroad, here the unmixed voice of America may be heard, as it pronounces that it is too late to wrest territory from the United States by prevarication, by menace, or by force. From the English dockyards it is a long voyage to San Juan; the only good land route across the continent lies south of Lake Superior; in a few years there will be three Ohios on the shores of the Pacific. It is England's interest as well as duty to give effect to the treaty as it was interpreted by her own minister to ours. Your voices on this memorable day give the instruction to our own Government to abide by the treaty faithfully, on the condition that Britain will do the same; but the treaty must bind neither party or both--must be executed in good faith or canceled. The men who honor the memory of Perry will always know how to defend the domain of their country.

Has any European statesman been miscounting the strength of this nation, by substituting a reminiscence of our feeble confederation for the present efficient and almost perfect organism of the body politic? Has any foreign ruler been so foolish as to listen with credulity to the tales of impending disunion? Every man of the people of Ohio, this great central highway of national travel, will, without one exception, tell the calumniator or the unbeliever that the voices of discontent among us are but the evanescent vapor of men's breath; that our little domestic strifes are no more than momentary disturbances on the surface, easily settled among ourselves; that the love of Union has wound its cords indissolubly round the whole American people.

So, then, our last word shall be for the Union. The Union will guard the fame of its defenders, and ever more protect our entire territory; it will keep alive for mankind, the beacon lights of popular liberty and power; it will dissuade nations in a state of unripeness from attempting to found republican governments before they spring up naturally by an inward law; and its mighty heart will throb with delight at every true advance in any part of the world, toward republican happiness and freedom.

SYSTEMS OF BELIEF.--_Rev. W. H. Milburn, 1860._

Pleasure is right, and right is pleasure; and hence comes the system of Epicurus. Epicurus fasted because it gave him an exquisite taste and enjoyment of his meal; Epicurus slept not unduly because with his waking he found his intellect balanced and his _physique_ refreshed. He awaked and remained awake, in order that his slumber might bring him quiet and repose. Thus starting from his condition we come very naturally to the luxury of the Sybarite, where the crimson wine sparkles and obscenity riots, and where the forms of vice and beastly debauchery flourish, in the saloons, the gambling-houses, and drinking-shops of this city. In all the forms of impurity and sensuality you have the practical life of this Epicurean philosophy: virtue is pleasure; therefore, pleasure is virtue, and wherever there is wrong done to our nature, by the gratification of our animal passions; wherever God's law is degraded and man's nature reduced to the level of the brute--you have the practical exposition of the tenets of the system.

Upon the other hand, the system of Zeno seems to stand in direct opposition, in antipodal relations to that of Epicurus. Virtue sufficeth, says Zeno. Virtue is the law of the universe; the universe is law, law and law only. Dead, mechanical force, iron necessity; the sweep of fatalism in its terrific circle; this, and nothing more. No pulse of pity; no heart of tenderness; no thought of God in all the sweep of imagination or circle of reason. I, man, am a microcosm, a synopsis of all the laws and facts of the universe; I am not only part and parcel of it, but an image and reflection of it; virtue is resident in the mind, and has nothing to do with pain or pleasure. Pain and pleasure are of the senses and are wholly alien to the understanding, says Zeno. I am to be master of all suffering. What care I for infirmity? I stand here the noblest being in the whole creation; may I not be master of that creation? The brutes may writhe in their ecstasy of pain, they may shriek in the fearful spasms of their suffering; but I, a man, that seem to be a mirror of creation, may I not be master of these agonies, and stand, with folded arms, disdainful of every sort of sorrow, of all pangs of pity, or tenderness, or affection? of what is called friendship, love? These things are the whimpering sentimentalities of women and children, and I have nothing to do with them. The folded arms, the clenched fist, the tightly drawn lips, be mine; and if pain become too strong for suffering there is a portal which my own hand can open; it swings apart obedient to my poignard, and suicide is my resort; therefore apathy is the perfection of human character; a deadness of sentiment, a hardihood of courage, a noble daring, a port of pride, a disdainful mien--these are what become the intellect as the master of the earth. Therefore, my brain is to be all crystal, my heart of adamant. Such is the Stoical system. In both there was much of beauty and ingenuity, of philosophical insight and depth, largeness of conception, fullness and admirableness of treatment. But they both, in common with all other systems, aside and apart from our holy faith, lacked one master-power; the great power of the heart, which appeals to the heart of the whole earth.

I might convince your understanding of the propriety of Epicureanism, of the grandeur and nobleness of Stoicism; I might warm you in this direction; I might chill you in that; but when I speak to that part of your nature which is deeper and nobler than the intellect; when I come to ask the suffrage of a simple human nature, I must be armed with a sublimer word than the language of either. Take Christianity in comparison with them; it teaches that there is consistency and coherency between virtue and pleasure, but that I am to be loyal to virtue. It unites the opposite systems of Epicurus and Zeno; it takes their half-truths and solidifies and unites them in one complete full-orbed and rounded whole.

THE INDIAN CHIEF.

[The following poem is founded on a traditionary story which
is common on the borders of the great Falls of Niagara,
although differing in some unimportant particulars.]

The rain fell in torrents, the thunder roll'd deep,
And silenced the cataract's roar;
But neither the night, nor the tempest could keep
The warrior chieftain on shore.

The war-shout has sounded, the stream must be cross'd
Why lingers the leader afar?
'Twere better his life than his glory be lost;
He never came late to the war.

He seized a canoe as he sprang from the rock,
But fast as the shore fled his reach,
The mountain wave seem'd all his efforts to mock,
And dash'd the canoe on the beach.

"Great Spirit," he cried "shall the battle be given,
And all but their leader be there?
May this struggle land me with them or in heaven!"
And he push'd with the strength of despair.

He has quitted the shore, he has gained the deep;
His guide is the lightning alone!
But he felt not with fast, irresistible sweep,
The rapids were bearing him down!

But the cataract's roar with the thunder now vied;
"Oh, what is the meaning of this?"
He spoke, and just turn'd to the cataract's side,
As the lightning flash'd down the abyss.

All the might of his arm to one effort was given,
At self-preservation's command;
But the treacherous oar with the effort was riven,
And the fragment remain'd in his hand.

"Be it so," cried the warrior, taking his seat,
And folding his bow to his breast;
"Let the cataract shroud my pale corpse with its sheet,
And its roar lull my spirit to rest.

"The prospect of death with the brave I have borne,
I shrink not to bear it alone;
I have often faced death when the hope was forlorn,
But I shrink not to face him with none."

The thunder was hush'd, and the battle-field stain'd,
When the sun met the war-wearied eye,
But no trace of the boat, or the chieftain remain'd,
Though his bow was still seen in the sky.

THE INDEPENDENT FARMER.--_W. W. Fosdick._

Let sailors sing the windy deep,
Let soldiers praise their armor.
But in my heart this toast I'll keep,
The Independent Farmer:
When first the rose, in robe of green,
Unfolds its crimson lining,
And round his cottage porch is seen
The honeysuckle twining;
When banks of bloom their sweetness yield,
To bees that gather honey,
He drives his team across the field,
Where skies are soft and sunny.

The blackbird clucks behind his plow,
The quail pipes loud and clearly;
Yon orchard hides behind its bough
The home he loves so dearly;
The gray, old barn, whose doors enfold
His ample store in measure,
More rich than heaps of hoarded gold,
A precious, blessed treasure;
But yonder in the porch there stands
His wife, the lovely charmer,
The sweetest rose on all his lands--
The Independent Farmer.

To him the spring comes dancing gay,
To him the summer blushes;
The autumn smiles with mellow ray,
His sleep old winter hushes.
He cares not how the world may move,
No doubts or fears confound him;
His little flock are link'd in love,
And household angels round him;
He trusts in God and loves his wife,
Nor grief nor ill may harm her,
He's nature's noble man in life--
The Independent Farmer.

MRS. GRAMMAR'S BALL.--_Anon._

Mrs. Grammar she gave a ball
To the nine different parts of Speech,--
To the big and the tall,
To the short and the small,
There were pies, plums, and puddings for each.

And first, little Articles came,
In a hurry to make themselves known--
Fat A, An, and The,
But none of the three
Could stand for a minute alone.

Then Adjectives came to announce
That their dear friends the Nouns were at hand.
Rough, Rougher, and Roughest,
Tough, Tougher, and Toughest,
Fat, Merry, Good-natured, and Grand.

The Nouns were, indeed, on their way--
Ten thousand and more, I should think;
For each name that we utter--
Shop, Shoulder, and Shutter--
Is a Noun: Lady, Lion, and Link.

The Pronouns were following fast
To push the Nouns out of their places,--
I, Thou, You, and Me,
We, They, He, and She,
With their merry, good-humor'd old faces.

Some cried out--"Make way for the Verbs!"
A great crowd is coming in view--
To Bite and to Smite,
And to Light and to Fight,
To Be, and to Have, and to Do.

The Adverbs attend on the Verbs,
Behind them as footmen they run;
As thus:--"To fight Badly,
They run away Gladly,"
Shows how fighting and running were done.

Prepositions came--In, By, and Near,
With Conjunctions, a poor little band,
As--"Either you Or me,
But Neither them Nor he"
They held their great friends by the hand.

Then, with Hip, Hip, Hurra!
Hushed Interjections uproarious--
"Oh, dear! Well-a-day!"
When they saw the display,
"Ha! ha!" they all shouted out, "Glorious!"

But, alas, what misfortunes were nigh!
While the fun and the feastings pleased each,
There pounced in at once
A monster--a Dunce,
And confounded the Nine parts of Speech!

Help, friends! to the rescue! on you
For aid Noun and Article call,--
Oh, give your protection
To poor Interjection,
Verb, Adverb, Conjunction, and all!

HOW THE MONEY COMES.

Queer John has sung, how money goes,
But how it comes, who knows? Who knows?
Why every Yankee mother's son
Can tell you how "the thing" is done.
It comes by honest toil and trade;
By wielding sledge and driving spade,
And building ships, balloons, and drums;
And that's the way the money comes.

How does it come? Why, as it goes,
By spinning, weaving, knitting hose,
By stitching shirts and coats for Jews,
Erecting churches, renting pews,
And manufacturing boots and shoes;
For thumps and twists, and cuts and hues,
And _heads_ and _hearts_, tongues, lungs, and thumbs
And that's the way the money comes.

How does it come? The way is plain--
By raising cotton, corn, and _cane_;
By wind and steam, lightning and rain;
By guiding ships across the main;
By building bridges, roads, and dams,
And sweeping streets, and digging clams,
With whistles, hi's! ho's! and hums!
And that's the way the money comes.

The money comes--how did I say?
Not _always_ in an _honest_ way.
It comes by _trick_ as well as toil,
But how is that? why, slick as oil,--
By putting peas in coffee-bags;
By swapping watches, knives, and nags,
And peddling _wooden clocks_ and _plums_;
And that's the way the money comes.

How does it come?--wait, let me see,
It very seldom comes to me;
It comes by _rule_ I guess, and _seale_,
Sometimes by riding on a _rail_,
But oftener, that's the way it goes
From silly belles and fast young beaux;
It comes in big, nay, _little sums_,
Ay! that's the way the money comes.

THE FUTURE OF THE FASHIONS.--_Punch._

There was a time when girls wore hoops of steel,
And with gray powder used to drug their hair,
Bedaub'd their cheeks with rouge; white lead, or meal,
Added, to stimulate complexions fair;
Whereof by contrast to enhance the grace,
Specks of court-plaster deck'd the female face.

That fashion pass'd away, and then were worn
Dresses whose skirts came scarce below the knee,
With waists girt round the shoulder-blades, and scorn,
Now pointed at the prior finery,
When here and there some antiquated dame
Still wore it, to afford her juniors game.

Short waists departed; Taste awhile prevail'd
Till ugly Folly's reign return'd once more,
And ladies then went draggle-tail'd;
And now they wear hoops also, as before.
Paint, powder, patches, nasty and absurd,
They'd wear as well, if France had spoke the word.

Young bucks and beauties, ye who now deride
The reasonable dress of other days;
When time your forms shall have puffed out or dried,
Then on your present portraits you will gaze,
And say what dowdies, frights, and guys you were,
With their more precious figures to compare.

Think, if you live till you are lean or fat,
Your features blurred, your eyes bedimm'd with age,
Your limbs have stiffen'd; feet grown broad and flat:
You may see other garments all the rage,
Preposterous as even that attire
Which you in mirrors now so much admire.

LOYALTY TO LIBERTY OUR ONLY HOPE.--_Bishop Whipple, of Minnesota._

The love of country is the gift of God--it can not dwell in homes of sin, it has no abiding place in saloons of vice or dens of infamy, it belongs not to infidel clubs or fanatical conventions, they would tear down the sacred edifice which they have never loved; they are impatient for change, for in the seething caldron of rebellion they are brought to the surface. With nothing to lose, they have no fear of the days of terror; their only dread is in the majesty of the law. The love of country belongs to a God-fearing people; it is seen in the purity of private life, in the privacy of Christian homes, in the devotions of the closet, in the manliness of Christian character. The church is its nursing mother. Loyalty to God and to His institutions is her first and last lesson; it is the earnest cry of her loyal children "that peace and happiness, truth and justice, religion and piety may be established among us for all generations." The love of country belongs to loyal men. The power of self-government depends upon a loyal people.

The protection of the nation depends not on the wisdom of its senators, not on the vigilance of its police, not on the strong arm of standing armies: but the loyalty of a united people. Other nations have equaled us in all the arts of civilization, in discoveries, in science, in skill, and in invention; they have kept even step with us and often surpassed us in philosophy and literature; they have been brave in war and wise in council; they have clustered around their homes all that art can lavish of beauty--but ripe scholarship, cunning in art, or skill in invention, never gave to the people a constitution. This is the outgrowth of a manly spirit of loyalty. It teaches men _duty_--a right manly word for right manly men. Loyalty was God's gift to our fathers; it was learned in the hard school of adversity, and by self-denial and suffering inwrought into the nation's life; it grew up in the sheltered valleys and on the rocky hillsides of New England, it was cradled in Virginia, in New York, in the Carolinas, among the patricians of Virginia; it gave to the world a Washington, and from the shop, the store, the farm, and professional life there sprung up from the people many who shared his spirit to become the founders of the Republic.

OUR COUNTRY FIRST, LAST, AND ALWAYS.--_Ibid._

The first defense to any people is in the love of country. The nation is one great family, with one common interest, welfare, and destiny; a nation dwelling together in love must be a happy people. Kindness begets kindness, and love awakens love; this is that magic touch which makes the world of kin. A confederacy like ours can not be held together by the strong arm of a central government; if the band of unity is gone, such a union is no whit better than a rope of sand. The danger which besets us is not in individual sins which fasten on the body politic--we may labor with forbearance and firmness for their removal. Our danger lies in that spirit of selfishness and self-will which forgets brotherhood and God. In a nation like ours, with its countless differing interests of rival productions, its conflicts of trade and sectional rivalries of commerce, we must differ on questions of public policy; but it may be the manly difference of manly men. Never did men differ more widely than the fathers of the republic, never did earnest hearts battle with more zeal for their rival interests, nor contend more fiercely inch by inch in political struggles. Never did the rallying cry of parties take a deeper hold on its liege-men, or braver shouts of triumph herald in its victory. But there was a deeper love of country, which made the brotherhood of a nation, and a charity which more respected the opinions of those from whom they differ. The Christian patriot dare not close his eye to the evils which mar the nation; for their removal he will work and pray, but never with rash hand tear down the sacred edifice of the Constitution, because some stains deface its walls. The query may well arise whether we are not fast reaching the time when the question is not of the right or wrong of this or that legislation, the benefit of this or that public policy, but whether this or that party shall divide the spoils of office among their political camp followers. We hear of angry words and fierce invectives, of rumors of corruption, of bribery in public office; they belong to no one party, they are not ranked under any one leader; these things came because the people have lost sight, in the strifes of men for office, of that great destiny which God offers to Americans. I believe the love of country dwells in the people's hearts. The honest-hearted sons of toil will be true to the country and its constitution. That love may have slumbered for a time, but the great heart of the country _will_ be true to itself. Its love _can not_ be hedged in by the paling of any man's door-yard. It _will_ sweep away every barrier of strife, and keep us one united people.

BRITISH INFLUENCE.--_John Randolph._

Imputations of British influence have been uttered against the opponents of this war. Against whom are these charges brought? Against men who, in the war of the Revolution, were in the Councils of the Nation, or fighting the battles of your country! And by whom are these charges made? By runaways, chiefly from the British dominions, since the breaking out of the French troubles. The great autocrat of all the Russias receives the homage of our high consideration. The Dey of Algiers and his divan of pirates are very civil, good sort of people, with whom we find no difficulty in maintaining the relations of peace and amity. "Turks, Jews, and Infidels,"--Melimelli or the Little Turtle,--barbarians and savages of every clime and color, are welcome to our arms. With chiefs of banditti, negro or mulatto, we can treat and can trade. Name, however, but England, and all our antipathies are up in arms against her. Against whom? Against those whose blood runs in our veins; in common with whom we claim Shakspeare, and Newton, and Chatham, for our countrymen; whose form of government is the freest on earth, our own only excepted; from whom every valuable principle of our own institutions has been borrowed,--representation, jury trial, voting the supplies, writ of habeas corpus, our whole civil and criminal jurisprudence;--against our fellow-Protestants, identified in blood, in language, in religion, with ourselves.

In what school did the worthies of our land--the Washingtons, Henrys, Hancocks, Franklins, Rutledges, of America--learn those principles of civil liberty which were so nobly asserted by their wisdom and valor? American resistance to British usurpation has not been more warmly cherished by these great men and their compatriots,--not more by Washington, Hancock, and Henry,--than by Chatham, and his illustrious associates in the British Parliament. It ought to be remembered, too, that the heart of the English people was with us. It was a selfish and corrupt ministry, and their servile tools, to whom _we_ were not more opposed than _they_ were. I trust that none such may ever exist among us; for tools will never be wanting to subserve the purposes, however ruinous or wicked, of kings and ministers of state. I acknowledge the influence of a Shakspeare and a Milton upon my imagination; of a Locke, upon my understanding; of a Sidney, upon my political principles; of a Chatham, upon qualities which would to God I possessed in common with that illustrious man! of a Tillotson, a Sherlock, and a Porteus, upon my religion. This is a British influence which I can never shake off.

DEFENSE OF THOMAS JEFFERSON.--_Henry Clay._

Next to the notice which the opposition has found itself called upon to bestow upon the French emperor, a distinguished citizen of Virginia, formerly President of the United States, has never for a moment failed to receive their kindest and most respectful attention. An honorable gentleman from Massachusetts, of whom I am sorry to say, it becomes necessary for me, in the course of my remarks, to take some notice, has alluded to him in a remarkable manner. Neither his retirement from public office, his eminent services, nor his advanced age, can exempt this patriot from the coarse assaults of party malevolence. No, sir! In 1801, he snatched from the rude hand of usurpation the violated Constitution of his country,--and _that_ is his crime. He preserved that instrument, in form, and substance, and spirit, a precious inheritance for generations to come,--and for _this_ he can never be forgiven. How vain and impotent is party rage, directed against such a man! He is not more elevated by his lofty residence, upon the summit of his own favorite mountain, than he is lifted, by the serenity of his mind and the consciousness of a well-spent life, above the malignant passions and bitter feelings of the day. No! his own beloved Monticello is not less moved by the storms that beat against its sides, than is this illustrious man, by the howlings of the whole British pack, let loose from the Essex kennel! When the gentleman to whom I have been compelled to allude shall have mingled his dust with that of his abused ancestors,--when he shall have been consigned to oblivion, or, if he lives at all, shall live only in the treasonable annals of a certain junto,--the name of Jefferson will be hailed with gratitude, his memory honored and cherished as the second founder of the liberties of the people, and the period of his administration will be looked back to as one of the happiest and brightest epochs of American history!

NATIONAL HATREDS ARE BARBAROUS.--_Rufus Choate._

That there exists in this country an intense sentiment of nationality; a cherished energetic feeling and consciousness of our independent and separate national existence; a feeling that we have a transcendent destiny to fulfil, which we mean to fulfil; a great work to do, which we know how to do, and are able to do; a career to run, up which we hope to ascend, till we stand on the steadfast and glittering summits of the world; a feeling, that we are surrounded and attended by a noble historical group of competitors and rivals, the other nations of the earth, all of whom we hope to overtake, and even to distance;--such a sentiment as this exists, perhaps, in the character of this people. And this I do not discourage, I do not condemn. But, sir, that among these useful and beautiful sentiments, predominant among them, there exists a temper of hostility towards this one particular nation, to such a degree as to amount to a habit, a trait, a national passion,--to amount to a state of feeling which "is to be regretted," and which really threatens another war,--this I earnestly and confidently deny. I would not hear your enemy say this. Sir, the indulgence of such a sentiment by the people supposes them to have forgotten one of the counsels of Washington. Call to mind the ever seasonable wisdom of the Farewell Address: "The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is, in some degree, a slave. It is a slave to its animosity, or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest."

No, sir! no, sir! We are above all this. Let the Highland clansman, half-naked, half-civilized, half-blinded by the peat-smoke of his cavern, have his hereditary enemy and his hereditary enmity, and keep the keen, deep, and precious hatred, set on fire of hell, alive, if he can; let the North American Indian have his, and hand it down from father to son, by Heaven knows what symbols of alligators, and rattlesnakes, and war-clubs smeared with vermilion and entwined with scarlet; let such a country as Poland,--cloven to the earth, the armed heel on the radiant forehead, her body dead, her soul incapable to die,--let her remember the "wrongs of days long past;" let the lost and wandering tribes of Israel remember theirs--the manliness and the sympathy of the world may allow or pardon this to them;--but shall America, young, free, prosperous, just setting out on the highway of heaven, "decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just begins to move in, glittering like the morning star, full of life and joy," shall she be supposed to be polluting and corroding her noble and happy heart, by moping over old stories of stamp act, and tea tax, and the firing of the Leopard upon the Chesapeake in a time of peace? No, sir! no, sir! a thousand times, no! Why, I protest I thought all that had been settled. I thought two wars had settled it all. What else was so much good blood shed for, on so many more than classical fields of Revolutionary glory? For what was so much good blood more lately shed, at Lundy's Lane, at Fort Erie, before and behind the lines at New Orleans, on the deck of the Constitution, on the deck of the Java, on the lakes, on the sea, but to settle exactly these "wrongs of past days?" And have we come back sulky and sullen from the very field of honor? For my country, I deny it.

MURDER WILL OUT.--_Daniel Webster._

An aged man, without an enemy in the world, in his own house, and in his own bed, is made the victim of a butcherly murder, for mere pay. The fatal blow is given! and the victim passes, without a struggle or a motion, from the repose of sleep to the repose of death! It is the assassin's purpose to make sure work. He explores the wrist for the pulse. He feels for it, and ascertains that it beats no longer! It is accomplished. The deed is done. He retreats, retraces his steps to the window, passes out through it as he came in, and escapes. He has done the murder;--no eye has seen him, no ear has heard him. The _secret_ is his own,--and it is safe!

Ah! gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake. Such a secret can be safe nowhere. The whole creation of God has neither nook nor corner where the guilty can bestow it, and say it is safe. Not to speak of that eye which glances through all disguises, and beholds every thing as in the splendor of noon, such secrets of guilt are never safe from detection, even by men. True it is, generally speaking, that "murder will out." True it is, that Providence hath so ordained, and doth so govern things, that those who break the great law of heaven, by shedding man's blood, seldom succeed in avoiding discovery. Especially, in a case exciting so much attention as this, discovery must come, and will come, sooner or later. A thousand eyes turn at once to explore every man, every thing, every circumstance, connected with the time and place; a thousand ears catch every whisper; a thousand excited minds intensely dwell on the scene, shedding all their light, and ready to kindle the slightest circumstance into a blaze of discovery. Meantime, the guilty soul can not keep its own secret. It is false to itself; or, rather, it feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be true to itself. It labors under its guilty possession, and knows not what to do with it. The human heart was not made for the residence of such an inhabitant. It finds itself preyed on by a torment, which it dares not acknowledge to God nor man. A vulture is devouring it, and it can ask no sympathy or assistance, either from heaven or earth. The secret which the murderer possesses soon comes to possess him; and, like the evil spirits of which we read, it overcomes him, and leads him whithersoever it will. He feels it beating at his heart, rising to his throat, and demanding disclosure. He thinks the whole world sees it in his face, reads it in his eyes, and almost hears its workings in the very silence of his thoughts. It has become his master. It betrays his discretion, it breaks down his courage, it conquers his prudence. When suspicions from without, begin to embarrass him, and the net of circumstance to entangle him, the fatal secret struggles, with still greater violence, to burst forth. It _must_ be confessed;--it _will_ be confessed;--there is no refuge from confession but suicide--and suicide is confession!

STRIVE FOR THE BEST.

'Tis better to give a kindly word
Than ever so hard a blow,
To know we have by kindness stirr'd
The man who was our foe;
To feel we have a good intent,
Whatever he may feel--
That gentleness with us is meant
To make the old wounds heal.

'Tis better to give our wealth away
Than let our neighbors want,
To help them in their needful day,
While they are weak and gaunt;
A kindly deed brings kindly thought
In hamlet and in city;
A little help, we have been taught,
Is worth a world of pity.

'Tis better to work and slave and toil,
Than lie about and rust;
An idle man upon the soil
Is one of the very worst.
He eats the bread that others earn,
And lifts his head so high,
As if it was not his concern
How others toil'd, or why.

'Tis better to have an humble heart,
Living in faith and trust,
To act an ever upward part,
Remembering we are dust;
To let the streams of life run past,
Beloved and lovingly,
Until we reach in joy at last
The great eternal sea.

EARLY RISING.--_John G. Saxe._

"God bless the man who first invented sleep!"
So Sancho Panza said, and so say I;
And bless him, also, that he didn't keep
His great discovery to himself; or try
To make it--as the lucky fellow might--
A close monopoly by "patent right!"

Yes--bless the man who first invented sleep
(I really can't avoid the iteration);
But blast the man, with curses loud and deep,
Whate'er the rascal's name, or age, or station,
Who first invented, and went round advising
That artificial cut-off--Early Rising!

"Rise with the lark, and with the lark to bed,"
Observes some solemn, sentimental owl.
Maxims like these are very cheaply said;
But ere you make yourself a fool or fowl,
Pray, just inquire about the rise--and fall,
And whether larks have any bed at all!

The "time for honest folks to be in bed,"
Is in the morning, if I reason right;
And he who can not keep his precious head
Upon his pillow till 'tis fairly light,
And so enjoys his forty morning winks,
Is up to knavery; or else--he drinks!

Thomson, who sung about the "Seasons," said
It was a glorious thing to _rise_ in season;
But then he said it--lying--in his bed
At 10 o'clock, A. M.--the very reason
He wrote so charmingly. The simple fact is,
His preaching wasn't sanctioned by his practice.

'Tis, doubtless, well to be sometimes awake--
Awake to duty and awake to truth--
But when, alas! a nice review we take
Of our best deeds and days, we find, in sooth,
The hours that leave the slightest cause to weep,
Are those we pass'd in childhood, or--asleep!

'Tis beautiful to leave the world awhile,
For the soft visions of the gentle night;
And free at last from mortal care or guile,
To live, as only in the angels' sight,
In sleep's sweet realms so cosily shut in,
Where, at the worst, we only _dream_ of sin!

So, let us sleep, and give the Maker praise.
I like the lad who, when his father thought
To clip his morning nap by hackney'd phrase
Of vagrant worm by early songster caught,
Cried: "Served him right! it's not at all surprising--
The worm was punish'd, sir, for early rising!"

DEEDS OF KINDNESS.

Suppose the little cowslip
Should hang its golden cup,
And say: "I'm such a tiny flower,
I'd better not grow up;"
How many a weary traveler
Would miss its fragrant smell!
How many a little child would grieve
To lose it from the dell!

Suppose the glistening dew-drops
Upon the grass should say:
"What can a little dew-drop do?
I'd better roll away;"
The blade on which it rested,
Before the day was done,
Without a drop to moisten it,
Would wither in the sun.

Suppose the little breezes,
Upon a summer's day,
Should think themselves too small to cool
The traveler on his way;
Who would not miss the smallest
And softest ones that blow,
And think they made a great mistake
If they were talking so?

How many deeds of kindness
A little child may do,
Although it has so little strength,
And little wisdom, too!
It wants a loving spirit
Much more than strength, to prove
How many things a child may do
For others by his love.

THE GATES OF SLEEP.--_Dr. John Henry._

There are two gates of Sleep, the poet says:
Of polished ivory one, of horn the other;
But I, besides these gates, to blessed Sleep
Three other gates have found which thus I count:
First the star-spangled arch of deep midnight,
When labor ceases, every sound is hush'd,
And Nature, drowsy, nods upon her throne.
Pale-visaged Specters round this gate keep watch,
And Fears and Horrors vain, and beyond these
Rest, balmy Sweat, and dim Forgetfulness,
Relieved, at dawn of day, by buoyant Hope,
Fresh Strength and ruddy Health and calm Composure
And daring Enterprise and Self-reliance.

The second gate is wreathed, sideposts and lintel,
With odorous trailing hop, and poppy-stalks;
The shadowy gateway paved with poppy-heads,
And there, all day and night, keeps watch sick Fancy
Haggard and trembling, and Delirium wild,
And Impotence with drunken glistening eye,
And Idiocy, and, in the background, Death.

The third gate is of lead, and there sits, ever
Humming her tedious tune, Monotony,
Tired of herself; about her on the ground
Sermons and psalms and hymns lie numerous strew'd,
To the same import all, and all almost
In the same words varied in form and order
To cheat, if possible, the weary sense,
And different seem, where difference is none.
At th' opposite doorpost, on her knees, Routine
Keeps turning over still the well-thumbed leaves
Of the same prayer-book, reading prayers, not praying;
Behind them waiting stand Conformity
And Uniformity, Oneness of faith,
Oneness of laws and customs, arts and manners,
And Self-development's unrelenting foe,
Centralization; and behind these still,
Far in the portal's deepest gloom ensconced,
A perfect, unimprovable Paradise
Of mere, blank naught, unchangeable forever--
These, as _I_ count them, are the Gates of Sleep.

THE BUGLE.--_Tennyson._

The splendor falls on castle walls,
And snowy summits old in story;
The long light shines across the lake,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying;
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

Oh, hark! oh, hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going;
Oh, sweet and far, from cliff and spar,
The horns of Elf-land faintly blowing.
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying;
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

Oh, love, they die in yon rich sky;
They faint on field, or hill, or river;
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow forever and forever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

A HOODISH GEM.

The little snarling, caroling "babies,"
That break our nightly rest,
Should be packed off to "Baby"-lon,
To "Lapland," or to "Brest."

From "Spit"-head, "Cooks" go o'er to "Greece,"
And while the "Miser" waits
His passage to the "Guinea" coast,
"Spendthrifts" are in the "Straits."

"Spinsters" should to the "Needles" go,
"Wine-bibbers" to "Burgundy;"
"Gourmands" should lunch at "Sandwich Isles,"
"Wags" at the Bay of "Fun"-dy.

"Bachelors" flee to the "United States,"
"Maids" to the "Isle of Man;"
Let "Gardeners" go to "Botany" Bay,
And "Shoe-blacks" to "Japan."

Thus emigrate, and misplaced men
Will they no longer vex us;
And all who ain't provided for
Had better go to "Texas."

PURITY OF THE AMERICAN STRUGGLE. _By Hon. Henry Wilson. 1859._

While the exalted heroism of the illustrious men who, in the Cabinet and field, defied and baffled the whole power of the British empire, excites the admiration of mankind, the consciousness that the founders of American Independence were not allured into that deadly struggle by the lust of dominion and power, by the seductions of interest and ambition, or by the dazzling dreams of glory and renown, excites far higher and holier emotions. Theirs was not a contest of interest, of ambition or of glory,--theirs was a contest for principle, for the inherent and indefeasible rights of humanity. They accepted the bloody issues of civil war, rather than surrender the liberties of the people. When the terrific struggle began, which was not to be closed until the power of England on the North American continent was broken, they reverently "appealed to the supreme Ruler of the universe for the rectitude of their intentions;" and when it closed with the Independence of America achieved, they avowed to mankind in the sincerity of profound conviction that they "had contended for the rights of human nature." They "deduced from universal principles," in the words of the brilliant and philosophic Bancroft, "a bill of rights as old as creation and as wide as humanity." They embodied in this bill of rights, the promulgation of which made this day immortal in history, these sublime ideas: "all men are created equal;" "endowed by their creator with the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;" "to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed;" and "whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it." The embodiment of these ideas, these self-evident truths, which "are as old as creation, and as wide as humanity," into the organic law of Independent America, associated the names of the founders of national independence with the general cause of human liberty, development and progress. They were champions of American Independence,--they were, also, the champions of the sacred rights of human nature, and mankind proudly claims them, in the words of Mirabeau, "as the heroes of humanity."

OLD AGE.--_Theodore Parker._