Chapter XV: Canto XV: XXX (2)

Knowing that the life of every nation, as of each individual, is a battle, let us remember, also, that the battle is to those who fight with faith and undespairing devotion. Knowing that nothing is worth fighting for at all unless God reigns, let us, at least, believe as much in the goodness of God as we do in the dexterity of the devil. And, viewing this prodigious spectacle of our country--this hope of humanity, this young America, _our_ America--taking the sun full in its front, and making for the future as boldly and blithely as the young David for Goliath, let us believe with all our hearts, and from that faith shall spring the fact that David, and not Goliath, is to win the day; and that, out of the high-hearted dreams of wise and good men about our country, Time, however invisibly and inscrutably, is, at this moment, slowly hewing the most colossal and resplendent result in history.

A HIDDEN WORLD.

OLIVE E. DANA, an American journalist. In the _New England
Journal_.

The hidden world lies in the hand of God,
Waiting, like seed, to fall on the sod;
Tranquil its lakes were, and lovely its shores,
While idly each stream o'er the fretting rocks pours.
Its forests are fair and its mines fathomless,
Grand are its mountains in their loftiness;
Its fields wait the plow, and its harbors the ships,
No sail down the blue of the water-way slips.
God keeps in his palm, through centuries dim,
This hid, idle seed. It belongeth to him.
Away in a corner, where God only knows,
The seed when he plants it quickens and grows.
The pale buds unfold as the nations pass by,
The fragrance is grateful, the blooms multiply,
But it is blossom time, this what we see;
Who knows what the fullness of harvest will be.

COLUMBIA THE QUEEN OF THE WORLD.

TIMOTHY DWIGHT, an American divine and scholar. Born at
Northampton, Mass., May 14, 1752; died at New Haven, Conn., January
11, 1817.

Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise,
The queen of the world and the child of the skies.

A DEFINITION OF PATRIOTISM.

T. M. EDDY, an eloquent speaker and profound scholar. Born, 1823;
died, 1874. From an oration delivered on Independence Day.

Patriotism is the love of country. It has ever been recognized among the cardinal virtues of true men, and he who was destitute of it has been considered an ingrate. Even among the icy desolations of the far north we expect to find, and _do_ find, an ardent affection for the land of nativity, the home of childhood, youth, and age. There is much in our country to create and foster this sentiment. It is a country of imperial dimensions, reaching from sea to sea, and almost "from the rivers to the ends of the earth." None of the empires of old could compare with it in this regard. It is washed by two great oceans, while its lakes are vast inland seas. Its rivers are silver lines of beauty and commerce. Its grand mountain chains are the links of God's forging and welding, binding together North and South, East and West. It is a land of glorious memories. It was peopled by the picked men of Europe, who came hither, "not for wrath, but conscience' sake." Said the younger Winthrop to his father, "I shall call that my country where I may most glorify God and enjoy the presence of my dearest friends." And so came godly men and devoted women, flying from oppressive statutes, where they might find

Freedom to worship God.

There are spots on the sun, and the microscope reveals flaws in burnished steel, and so there were spots and flaws in the character of the early founders of this land; but with them all, our colonial history is one that stirs the blood and quickens the pulse of him who reads. It is the land of the free school, the free press, and the free pulpit. It is impossible to compute the power of this trio. The free schools, open to rich and poor, bind together the people in educational bonds, and in the common memories of the recitation-room and the playground; and how strong _they_ are, you, reader, well know, as some past recollection tugs at your heart-strings. The free press may not always be altogether as dignified or elevated as the more highly cultivated may desire, but it is ever open to complaints of the people; is ever watchful of popular rights and jealous of class encroachments, and the highest in authority know that it is above President or Senate. The free pulpit, sustained not by legally exacted tithes wrung from an unwilling people, but by the free-will offerings of loving supporters, gathers about it the millions, inculcates the highest morality, points to brighter worlds, and when occasion demands will not be silent before political wrongs. Its power, simply as an educating agency, can scarcely be estimated. In this country its freedom gives a competition so vigorous that it must remain in direct popular sympathy. How strong it is, the country saw when its voice was lifted in the old cry, "Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft." Its words started the slumbering, roused the careless, and called the "sacramental host," as well as the "men of the world, to arms." These three grand agencies are not rival, but supplementary, each doing an essential work in public culture.

(See pages 94, 216, and 282.)]

AMERICA--OPPORTUNITY.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON, a noted American essayist, poet, and
speculative philosopher. Born in Boston, Mass., May 25, 1803; died,
April 27, 1882.

America is another name for opportunity.

THE SEQUEL OF THE DISCOVERY.

There is a Columbia of thought and art and character which is the last and endless sequel of Columbus' adventure.--_Ibid._

YOUNG AMERICA.

ALEXANDER HILL EVERETT, an American scholar and diplomatist. Born
in Boston, Mass., 1792; died at Canton, China, May, 1847.

Scion of a mighty stock!
Hands of iron--hearts of oak--
Follow with unflinching tread
Where the noble fathers led.

Craft and subtle treachery,
Gallant youth, are not for thee;
Follow thou in words and deeds
Where the God within thee leads.

Honesty, with steady eye,
Truth and pure simplicity,
Love, that gently winneth hearts,
These shall be thy holy arts.

Prudent in the council train,
Dauntless on the battle plain,
Ready at thy country's need
For her glorious cause to bleed.

Where the dews of night distill
Upon Vernon's holy hill,
Where above it gleaming far
Freedom lights her guiding star,

Thither turn the steady eye,
Flashing with a purpose high;
Thither, with devotion meet,
Often turn the pilgrim feet.

Let the noble motto be:
God--the _country_--_liberty_!
Planted on religion's rock,
Thou shalt stand in every shock.

Laugh at danger, far or near;
Spurn at baseness, spurn at fear.
Still, with persevering might,
Speak the truth, and do the right.

So shall peace, a charming guest,
Dove-like in thy bosom rest;
So shall honor's steady blaze
Beam upon thy closing days.

RESPONSIBILITY.

EZRA STILES GANNETT, an American Unitarian divine. Born at
Cambridge, Mass., 1801; died, August 26, 1871. From a patriotic
address delivered in Boston.

The eyes of Europe are upon us; the monarch, from his throne, watches us with an angry countenance; the peasant turns his gaze on us with joyful faith; the writers on politics quote our condition as a proof of the possibility of popular government; the heroes of freedom animate their followers by reminding them of our success. At no moment of the last half century has it been so important that we should send up a clear and strong light which may be seen across the Atlantic. An awful charge of unfaithfulness to the interests of mankind will be recorded against us if we suffer this light to be obscured by the mingling vapors of passion and misrule and sin. But not Europe alone will be influenced by the character we give to our destiny. The republics of the South have no other guide toward the establishment of order and freedom than our example. If this should fail them, the last stay would be torn from their hope. We are placed under a most solemn obligation, to keep before them this motive to perseverance in their endeavors to place free institutions on a sure basis. Shall we leave those wide regions to despair and anarchy? Better that they had patiently borne a foreign yoke, though it bowed their necks to the ground.

Citizens of the United States, it has been said of us, with truth, that we are at the head of the popular party of the world. Shall we be ashamed of so glorious a rank? or shall we basely desert our place and throw away our distinction? Forbid it! self-respect, patriotism, philanthropy. Christians, we believe that God has made us a name and a praise among the nations. We believe that our religion yields its best fruit in a free land. Shall we be regardless of our duty as creatures of the Divine Power and recipients of His goodness? Shall we be indifferent to the effects which our religion may work in the world? Forbid it! our gratitude, our faith, our piety. In one way only can we discharge our duty to the rest of mankind--by the purity and elevation of character that shall distinguish us as a people. If we sink into luxury, vice, or moral apathy, our brightness will be lost, our prosperity deprived of its vital element, and we shall appear disgraced before man, guilty before God.

ATLANTIC AND PACIFIC.

JAMES A. GARFIELD, American general and statesman; twentieth
President of the United States. Born in Orange, Ohio, November 19,
1831; shot by an assassin, July 2, 1881; died, September 19 in the
same year, at Long Branch, New Jersey. From "Garfield's Words." By
permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Publishers.

The Atlantic is still the great historic sea. Even in its sunken wrecks might be read the record of modern nations. Who shall say that the Pacific will not yet become the great historic sea of the future--the vast amphitheater around which shall sit in majesty and power the two Americas, Asia, Africa, and the chief colonies of Europe. God forbid that the waters of our national life should ever settle to the dead level of a waveless calm. It would be the stagnation of death, the ocean grave of individual liberty.

GREATEST CONTINUOUS EMPIRE.

The Right Hon. WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE, the noted English statesman
and orator. Born at Liverpool, December 29, 1809. From his "Kin
beyond the Sea."

There is no parallel in all the records of the world to the case of that prolific British mother who has sent forth her innumerable children over all the earth to be the founders of half-a-dozen empires. She, with her progeny, may almost claim to constitute a kind of universal church in politics. But among these children there is one whose place in the world's eye and in history is superlative; it is the American Republic. She is the eldest born. She has, taking the capacity of her land into view as well as its mere measurement, a natural base for the greatest continuous empire ever established by man. And it may be well here to mention what has not always been sufficiently observed, that the distinction between continuous empire, and empire severed and dispersed over sea is vital. The development which the Republic has effected has been unexampled in its rapidity and force. While other countries have doubled, or at most trebled, their population, she has risen during one single century of freedom, in round numbers, from two millions to forty-five. As to riches, it is reasonable to establish, from the decennial stages of the progress thus far achieved, a series for the future; and, reckoning upon this basis, I suppose that the very next census, in the year 1880, will exhibit her to the world as certainly the wealthiest of all the nations. The huge figure of a thousand millions sterling, which may be taken roundly as the annual income of the United Kingdom, has been reached at a surprising rate; a rate which may perhaps be best expressed by saying that, if we could have started forty or fifty years ago from zero, at the rate of our recent annual increment, we should now have reached our present position. But while we have been advancing with this portentous rapidity, America is passing us by as if in a canter. Yet even now the work of searching the soil and the bowels of the territory, and opening out her enterprise throughout its vast expanse, is in its infancy. The England and the America of the present are probably the two strongest nations of the world. But there can hardly be a doubt, as between the America and the England of the future, that the daughter, at some no very distant time, will, whether fairer or less fair, be unquestionably yet stronger than the mother.

TYPICAL AMERICAN.

HENRY W. GRADY, the late brilliant editor of the Atlanta
_Constitution_. From an address delivered at the famous New England
dinner in New York.

With the Cavalier once established as a fact in your charming little books, I shall let him work out his own stratum, as he has always done, with engaging gallantry, and we will hold no controversy as to his merits. Why should we? Neither Puritan nor Cavalier long survived as such. The virtues and traditions of both happily still live for the inspiration of their sons and the saving of the old fashion. But both Puritan and Cavalier were lost in the storm of their first revolution, and the American citizen, supplanting both, and stronger than either, took possession of the republic bought by their common blood and fashioned to wisdom, and charged himself with teaching men government and establishing the voice of the people as the voice of God. Great types, like valuable plants, are slow to flower and fruit. But from the union of these colonists, from the straightening of their purposes and the crossing of their blood, slow perfecting through a century, came he who stands as the first typical American, the first who comprehended within himself all the strength and gentleness, all the majesty and grace of this Republic--Abraham Lincoln. He was the sum of Puritan and Cavalier, for in his ardent nature were fused the virtues of both, and in the depths of his great soul the faults of both were lost. He was greater than Puritan, greater than Cavalier, in that he was American, and that in his homely form were first gathered the vast and thrilling forces of this ideal government--charging it with such tremendous meaning and so elevating it above human suffering that martyrdom, though infamously aimed, came as a fitting crown to a life consecrated from the cradle to human liberty. Let us, each cherishing his traditions and honoring his fathers, build with reverent hands to the type of this simple but sublime life, in which all types are honored, and in the common glory we shall win as Americans there will be plenty and to spare for your forefathers and for mine.

GRATITUDE AND PRIDE.

BENJAMIN HARRISON, American soldier, lawyer, and statesman. Born at
North Bend, Ohio, August 20, 1833. Grandson of General William
Henry Harrison, ninth President of the United States, and himself
President, 1888-1892. From a speech at Sacramento, Cal., 1891.

FELLOW-CITIZENS: This fresh, delightful morning, this vast assemblage of contented and happy people, this building, dedicated to the uses of civil government--all things about us tend to inspire our hearts with pride and with gratitude. Gratitude to that overruling Providence that turned hither, after the discovery of this continent, the steps of those who had the capacity to organize a free representative government. Gratitude to that Providence that has increased the feeble colonies on an inhospitable coast to these millions of prosperous people, who have found another sea and populated its sunny shores with a happy and growing people.

Gratitude to that Providence that led us through civil strife to a glory and a perfection of unity as a people that was otherwise impossible. Gratitude that we have to-day a Union of free States without a slave to stand as a reproach to that immortal declaration upon which our Government rests.

Pride that our people have achieved so much; that, triumphing over all the hardships of those early pioneers, who struggled in the face of discouragement and difficulties more appalling than those that met Columbus when he turned the prows of his little vessels toward an unknown shore; that, triumphing over perils of starvation, perils of savages, perils of sickness, here on the sunny slope of the Pacific they have established civil institutions and set up the banner of the imperishable Union.

NATURE SUPERIOR.

Sir FRANCIS BOND HEAD, a popular English writer. Born near
Rochester, Kent, January 1, 1893. Lieutenant-general of Upper
Canada 1836-1838. Died, July 20, 1875.

In both the northern and southern hemispheres of the New World, nature has not only outlined her works on a larger scale, but has painted the whole picture with brighter and more costly colors than she used in delineating and in beautifying the Old World. The heavens of America appear infinitely higher, the sky is bluer, the air is fresher, the cold is intenser, the moon looks larger, the stars are brighter, the thunder is louder, the lightning is vivider, the wind is stronger, the rain is heavier, the mountains are higher, the rivers longer, the forests bigger, the plains broader.

AMERICA'S WELCOME.

PATRICK HENRY, a celebrated American orator and patriot. Born at
Studley, Hanover County, Virginia, May 29, 1736; died, June 6,
1799. The author of the celebrated phrase, "Give me liberty or give
me death," in speaking in the Virginia Convention, March, 1775.

Cast your eyes over this extensive country; observe the salubrity of your climate, the variety and fertility of your soil, and see that soil intersected in every quarter by bold, navigable streams, flowing to the east and to the west, as if the finger of Heaven were marking out the course of your settlements, inviting you to enterprise, and pointing the way to wealth. You are destined, at some time or other, to become a great agricultural and commercial people; the only question is, whether you choose to reach this point by slow gradations, and at some distant period; lingering on through a long and sickly minority; subjected, meanwhile, to the machinations, insults, and oppressions, of enemies, foreign and domestic, without sufficient strength to resist and chastise them; or whether you choose rather to rush at once, as it were, to the full enjoyment of those high destinies, and be able to cope, single-handed, with the proudest oppressor of the Old World. If you prefer the latter course, as I trust you do, encourage immigration; encourage the husbandmen, the mechanics, the merchants, of the Old World to come and settle in this land of promise; make it the home of the skillful, the industrious, the fortunate, and happy, as well as the asylum of the distressed; fill up the measure of your population as speedily as you can, by the means which Heaven hath placed in your power; and I venture to prophesy there are those now living who will see this favored land amongst the most powerful on earth; able to take care of herself, without resorting to that policy, which is always so dangerous, though sometimes unavoidable, of calling in foreign aid. Yes, they will see her great in arts and in arms; her golden harvests waving over fields of immeasurable extent; her commerce penetrating the most distant seas, and her cannon silencing the vain boasts of those who now proudly affect to rule the waves.

THE FLEET OF COLUMBUS (See pages 216 and 282.)]

But you must have _men_; you can not get along without them; those heavy forests of valuable timber, under which your lands are growing, must be cleared away; those vast riches which cover the face of your soil, as well as those which lie hid in its bosom, are to be developed and gathered only by the skill and enterprise of men. Do you ask how you are to get them? Open your doors, and they will come in; the population of the Old World is full to overflowing; that population is ground, too, by the oppressions of the governments under which they live. They are already standing on tiptoe upon their native shores, and looking to your coasts with a wishful and longing eye; they see here a land blessed with natural and political advantages which are not equaled by those of any other country upon earth; a land on which a gracious Providence hath emptied the horn of abundance; a land over which peace hath now stretched forth her white wings, and where content and plenty lie down at every door. They see something still more attractive than all this; they see a land in which liberty hath taken up her abode; that liberty whom they had considered as a fabled goddess, existing only in the fancies of poets; they see her here a real divinity, her altars rising on every hand throughout these happy States, her glories chanted by three millions of tongues, and the whole region smiling under her blessed influence. Let but this our celestial goddess, Liberty, stretch forth her fair hand toward the people of the Old World, tell them to come, and bid them welcome, and you will see them pouring in from the north, from the south, from the east, and from the west; your wildernesses will be cleared and settled, your deserts will smile, your ranks will be filled, and you will soon be in a condition to defy the powers of any adversary.

OUR GREAT TRUST.

GEORGE STILLMAN HILLARD, an eminent American writer, lawyer, and
orator. Born at Machias, Maine, 1808; died, 1879. From an
Independence Day oration.

Our Rome can not fall, and we be innocent. No conqueror will chain us to the car of his triumph; no countless swarm of Huns and Goths will bury the memorials and trophies of civilized life beneath a living tide of barbarism. Our own selfishness, our own neglect, our own passions, and our own vices will furnish the elements of our destruction. With our own hands we shall tear down the stately edifice of our glory. We shall die by self-inflicted wounds.

But we will not talk of themes like these. We will not think of failure, dishonor, and despair. We will elevate our minds to the contemplation of our high duties and the great trust committed to us. We will resolve to lay the foundations of our prosperity on that rock of private virtue which can not be shaken until the laws of the moral world are reversed. From our own breasts shall flow the salient springs of national increase. Then our success, our happiness, our glory, will be as inevitable as the inferences of mathematics. We may calmly smile at all the croakings of all the ravens, whether of native or foreign breed.

The whole will not grow weak by the increase of its parts. Our growth will be like that of the mountain oak, which strikes its roots more deeply into the soil, and clings to it with a closer grasp, as its lofty head is exalted and its broad arms stretched out. The loud burst of joy and gratitude which, on this, the anniversary of our independence, is breaking from the full hearts of a mighty people, will never cease to be heard. No chasms of sullen silence will interrupt its course; no discordant notes of sectional madness mar the general harmony. Year after year will increase it by tributes from now unpeopled solitudes. The farthest West shall hear it and rejoice; the Oregon shall swell it with the voice of its waters; the Rocky Mountains shall fling back the glad sound from their snowy crests.

ON FREEDOM'S GENEROUS SOIL.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, M. D., the distinguished American author,
wit, and poet. Born in Cambridge, Mass., August 29, 1809.

America is the only place where man is full-grown.

NATIONAL HERITAGE.

The Rev. THOMAS STARR KING, an American Unitarian divine. Born in
New York in 1824; died, 1864. From an address on the "Privileges
and Duties of Patriotism," delivered in November, 1862. By
permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Publishers, Boston.

Suppose that the continent could turn toward you to-morrow at sunrise, and show to you the whole American area in the short hours of the sun's advance from Eastport to the Pacific. You would see New England roll into light from the green plumes of Aroostook to the silver stripe of the Hudson; westward thence over the Empire State, and over the lakes, and over the sweet valleys of Pennsylvania, and over the prairies, the morning blush would run and would waken all the line of the Mississippi; from the frosts where it rises to the fervid waters in which it pours, for 3,000 miles it would be visible, fed by rivers that flow from every mile of the Alleghany slope, and edged by the green embroideries of the temperate and tropic zones; beyond this line another basin, too--the Missouri--catching the morning, leads your eye along its western slope till the Rocky Mountains burst upon the vision, and yet do not bar it; across its passes we must follow, as the stubborn courage of American pioneers has forced its way, till again the Sierras and their silver veins are tinted along the mighty bulwark with the break of day; and then over to the gold fields of the western slope, and the fatness of the California soil, and the beautiful valleys of Oregon, and the stately forests of Washington, the eye is drawn, as the globe turns out of the night shadow; and when the Pacific waves are crested with radiance, you have the one blending picture--nay, the reality--of the American domain. No such soil--so varied by climate, by products, by mineral riches, by forest and lake, by wild heights and buttresses, and by opulent plains, yet all bound into unity of configuration and bordered by both warm and icy seas--no such domain, was ever given to one people.

And then suppose that you could see in a picture as vast and vivid the preparation for our inheritance of this land. Columbus, haunted by his round idea, and setting sail in a sloop, to see Europe sink behind him, while he was serene in the faith of his dream; the later navigators of every prominent Christian race who explored the upper coasts; the Mayflower, with her cargo of sifted acorns from the hardy stock of British puritanism, and the ship, whose name we know not, that bore to Virginia the ancestors of Washington; the clearing of the wilderness, and the dotting of its clearings with the proofs of manly wisdom and Christian trust; then the gradual interblending of effort and interest and sympathy into one life--the congress of the whole Atlantic slope--to resist oppression upon one member; the rally of every State around Washington and his holy sword, and again the nobler rally around him when he signed the Constitution, and after that the organization of the farthest West with North and South, into one polity and communion; when this was finished, the tremendous energy of free life, under the stimulus and with the aid of advancing science, in increasing wealth, subduing the wilds to the bonds of use, multiplying fertile fields and busy schools and noble work-shops and churches, hallowed by free-will offerings of prayer; and happy homes, and domes dedicated to the laws of States that rise by magic from the haunts of the buffalo and deer, all in less than a long lifetime; and if we could see also how, in achieving this, the flag which represents all this history is dyed in traditions of exploits, by land and sea, that have given heroes to American annals whose names are potent to conjure with, while the world's list of thinkers in matter is crowded with the names of American inventors, and the higher rolls of literary merit are not empty of the title of our "representative men"; if all that the past has done for us, and the present reveals, could thus stand apparent in one picture, and then if the promise of the future to the children of our millions under our common law, and with continental peace, could be caught in one vast spectral exhibition--the wealth in store, the power, the privilege, the freedom, the learning, the expansive and varied and mighty unity in fellowship, almost fulfilling the poet's dream of "the parliament of man, the federation of the world"--you would exclaim with exultation, "I, too, am an American!" You would feel that patriotism, next to your tie to the Divine Love, is the greatest privilege of your life; and you would devote yourselves, out of inspiration and joy, to the obligations of patriotism, that this land, so spread, so adorned, so colonized, so blessed, should be kept forever against all the assaults of traitors, one in polity, in spirit, and in aim.

SIFTED WHEAT.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. From his "Courtship of Miles Standish,"
IV.

God hath sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat for this planting.

CENTER OF CIVILIZATION.

From _North British Review_.

It is too late to disparage America. Accustomed to look with wonder on the civilization of the past, upon the unblest glories of Greece and of Rome, upon mighty empires that have risen but to fall, the English mind has never fixed itself on the grand phenomenon of a great nation at school. Viewing America as a forward child that has deserted its home and abjured its parent, we have ever looked upon her with a callous heart and with an evil eye, judicially blind to her progress.

But how she has gone on developing the resources of a region teeming with vegetable life. How she has intrenched herself amid noble institutions, with temples enshrined in religious toleration, with universities of private bequest and public organization, with national and unshackled schools, and with all the improvements which science, literature, and philanthropy demand from the citizen or from the state.

Supplied from the Old World with its superabundant life, the Anglo-Saxon tide has been carrying its multiplied population to the West, rushing onward through impervious forests, leveling their lofty pines and converting the wilderness into abodes of populous plenty, intelligence, and taste. Nor is this living flood the destroying scourge which Providence sometimes lets loose upon our species. It breathes in accents which are our own; it is instinct with English life; and it bears on its snowy crest the auroral light of the East, to gild the darkness of the West with the purple radiance of salvation, of knowledge, and of peace.

Her empire of coal, her kingdom of cotton and of corn, her regions of gold and of iron, mark out America as the center of civilization, as the emporium of the world's commerce, as the granary and storehouse out of which the kingdoms of the East will be clothed and fed; and, we greatly fear, as the asylum in which our children will take refuge when the hordes of Asia and the semi-barbarians of Eastern Europe shall again darken and desolate the West.

Though dauntless in her mien, and colossal in her strength, she displays upon her banner the star of peace, shedding its radiance upon us. Let us reciprocate the celestial light, and, strong and peaceful ourselves, we shall have nothing to fear from her power, but everything to learn from her example.

A YOUTHFUL LAND.

JAMES OTIS, a celebrated American orator and patriot. Born at West
Barnstable, Mass., February 5, 1725. Killed by lightning at
Andover, Mass., May, 1783.

England may as well dam up the waters of the Nile with bulrushes as to fetter the step of Freedom, more proud and firm in this youthful land than where she treads the sequestered glens of Scotland or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of Switzerland. We plunged into the wave with the great charter of freedom in our teeth because the faggot and torch were behind us. We have waked this new world from its savage lethargy; forests have been prostrated in our path, towns and cities have grown up suddenly as the flowers of the tropics, and the fires in our autumnal woods are scarcely more rapid than the increase of our wealth and population.

THE COLUMBIAN CHORUS.

Prof. John Knowles Paine of Harvard University has completed the music of his Columbian march and chorus, to be performed on the occasion of the dedication of the Exposition buildings, October 21, 1892, to write which he was especially commissioned by the Exposition management. Prof. Paine has provided these original words for the choral ending of his composition:

All hail and welcome, nations of the earth!
Columbia's greeting comes from every State.
Proclaim to all mankind the world's new birth
Of freedom, age on age shall consecrate.
Let war and enmity forever cease,
Let glorious art and commerce banish wrong;
The universal brotherhood of peace
Shall be Columbia's high inspiring song.

SOVEREIGN OF THE ASCENDANT.

CHARLES PHILLIPS, an Irish barrister. Born at Sligo, about 1788. He
practiced with success in criminal cases in London, and gained a
wide reputation by his speeches, the style of which is rather
florid. He was for many years a commissioner of the insolvent
debtors' court in London. Died in 1859.

Search creation round, where can you find a country that presents so sublime a view, so interesting an anticipation? Who shall say for what purpose mysterious Providence may not have designed her? Who shall say that when in its follies, or its crimes, the Old World may have buried all the pride of its power, and all the pomp of its civilization, human nature may not find its destined renovation in the New! When its temples and its trophies shall have moldered into dust; when the glories of its name shall be but the legend of tradition, and the light of its achievements live only in song, philosophy will revive again in the sky of her Franklin, and glory rekindle at the urn of her Washington.

Is this the vision of romantic fancy? Is it even improbable? I appeal to History! Tell me, thou reverend chronicler of the grave, can all the illusions of ambition realized, can all the wealth of a universal commerce, can all the achievements of successful heroism, or all the establishments of this world's wisdom secure to empire the permanency of its possessions? Alas, Troy thought so once; yet the land of Priam lives only in song. Thebes thought so once; yet her hundred gates have crumbled, and her very tombs are but as the dust they were vainly intended to commemorate. So thought Palmyra; where is she? So thought the countries of Demosthenes and the Spartan; yet Leonidas is trampled by the timid slave, and Athens insulted by the servile, mindless, and enervate Ottoman. In his hurried march, Time has but looked at their imagined immortality, and all its vanities, from the palace to the tomb, have, with their ruins, erased the very impression of his footsteps. The days of their glory are as if they had never been; and the island that was then a speck, rude and neglected, in the barren ocean, now rivals the ubiquity of their commerce, the glory of their arms, the fame of their philosophy, the eloquence of their senate, and the inspiration of their bards. Who shall say, then, contemplating the past, that England, proud and potent as she appears, may not one day be what Athens is, and the young America yet soar to be what Athens was. Who shall say, when the European column shall have moldered, and the night of barbarism obscured its very ruins, that that mighty continent may not emerge from the horizon, to rule, for its time, sovereign of the ascendant.

LAND OF LIBERTY.

WENDELL PHILLIPS, "the silver-tongued orator of America," and
anti-slavery reformer. Born in Boston, Mass., November 29, 1811;
died, February 2, 1884.

The Carpathian Mountains may shelter tyrants. The slopes of Germany may bear up a race more familiar with the Greek text than the Greek phalanx. For aught I know, the wave of Russian rule may sweep so far westward as to fill once more with miniature despots the robber castles of the Rhine. But of this I am sure: God piled the Rocky Mountains as the ramparts of freedom. He scooped the Valley of the Mississippi as the cradle of free States. He poured Niagara as the anthem of free men.

THE SHIP COLUMBIA.

EDWARD G. PORTER. In an article entitled "The Ship Columbia and the
Discovery of Oregon," in the _New England Magazine_, June, 1892.

Few ships, if any, in our merchant marine, since the organization of the republic, have acquired such distinction as the Columbia.

By two noteworthy achievements, 100 years ago, she attracted the attention of the commercial world and rendered a service to the United States unparalleled in our history. _She was the first American vessel to carry the stars and stripes around the globe; and, by her discovery of "the great river of the West" to which her name was given, she furnished us with the title to our possession_ of that magnificent domain which to-day is represented by the flourishing young States of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho.

The famous ship was well-known and much talked about at the time, but her records have mostly disappeared, and there is very little knowledge at present concerning her.

COLUMBIA'S EMBLEM.

EDNA DEAN PROCTOR. In September _Century_

The rose may bloom for England,
The lily for France unfold;
Ireland may honor the shamrock,
Scotland her thistle bold;
But the shield of the great Republic,
The glory of the West,
Shall bear a stalk of the tasseled corn--
Of all our wealth the best.
The arbutus and the golden-rod
The heart of the North may cheer;
And the mountain laurel for Maryland
Its royal clusters rear;
And jasmine and magnolia
The crest of the South adorn;
But the wide Republic's emblem
Is the bounteous, golden corn!

EAST AND WEST.

THOMAS BUCHANAN READ, a distinguished American artist and poet.
Born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, 1822; died in New York, May
11, 1872. From his "Emigrant's Song."[60]

Leave the tears to the maiden, the fears to the child, While the future stands beckoning afar in the wild; For there Freedom, more fair, walks the primeval land, Where the wild deer all court the caress of her hand. There the deep forests fall, and the old shadows fly, And the palace and temple leap into the sky. Oh, the East holds no place where the onward can rest, And alone there is room in the land of the West!

THE PRIMITIVE PITCH.

The Rev. MYRON W. REED, a distinguished American clergyman of
Denver, Colo. From an address delivered in 1892.

The best thing we can do for the world is to take care of America. Keep our country up to the primitive pitch. In front of my old home, in another city, is the largest elm in the county. It never talked, it never went about doing good. It stood there and made shade for an acre of children, and a shelter for all the birds that came. It stood there and preached strength in the air by wide-flung branches, and strength in the earth by as many and as long roots as limbs. It stood, one fearful night, the charge of a cyclone, and was serene in the March morning. It proclaimed what an elm could be. It set tree-planters to planting elms. So America preaches, man capable of self-government; preaches over the sea, a republic is safer than any kingdom. Men have outgrown kings. We shall remember Walt Whitman, if only for a line, "O America! we build for you because you build for the world."

MORAL PROGRESS.

WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD, an eminent American statesman. Born at
Florida, Orange County, N. Y., May 16, 1801; died at Auburn, N. Y.,
October 10, 1872.

A kind of reverence is paid by all nations to antiquity. There is no one that does not trace its lineage from the gods, or from those who were especially favored by the gods. Every people has had its age of gold, or Augustine age, or historic age--an age, alas! forever passed. These prejudices are not altogether unwholesome. Although they produce a conviction of declining virtue, which is unfavorable to generous emulation, yet a people at once ignorant and irreverential would necessarily become licentious. Nevertheless, such prejudices ought to be modified. It is untrue that in the period of a nation's rise from disorder to refinement it is not able to continually surpass itself. We see the _present_, plainly, distinctly, with all its coarse outlines, its rough inequalities, its dark blots, and its glaring deformities. We hear all its tumultuous sounds and jarring discords. We see and hear the _past_ through a distance which reduces all its inequalities to a plane, mellows all its shades into a pleasing hue, and subdues even its hoarsest voices into harmony. In our own case, the prejudice is less erroneous than in most others. The Revolutionary age was truly a heroic one. Its exigencies called forth the genius, and the talents, and the virtues of society, and they ripened amid the hardships of a long and severe trial. But there were selfishness and vice and factions then as now, although comparatively subdued and repressed. You have only to consult impartial history to learn that neither public faith, nor public loyalty, nor private virtue, culminated at that period in our own country; while a mere glance at the literature, or at the stage, or at the politics of any European country, in any previous age, reveals the fact that it was marked, more distinctly than the present, by licentious morals and mean ambition. It is only just to infer in favor of the United States an improvement of morals from their established progress in knowledge and power; otherwise, the philosophy of society is misunderstood, and we must change all our courses, and henceforth seek safety in imbecility, and virtue in superstition and ignorance.

A PROPHETIC UTTERANCE OF COLONIAL DAYS.

SAMUEL SEWELL. Born at Bishopstoke, Hampshire, England, March,
1652. Died at Boston, Mass., January, 1730.

Lift up your heads, O ye Gates of Columbia, and be ye lift up, ye Everlasting Doors, and the King of Glory shall come in.

NATIONAL INFLUENCE.

JOSEPH STORY, a distinguished American jurist. Born in Marblehead,
Mass., September 18, 1779; died at Cambridge, Mass., September 10,
1845. By permission of Messrs. Little, Brown & Co., Publishers.

When we reflect on what has been, and is, how is it possible not to feel a profound sense of the responsibilities of this Republic to all future ages? What vast motives press upon us for lofty efforts! What brilliant prospects invite our enthusiasm! What solemn warnings at once demand our vigilance and moderate our confidence! We stand, the latest, and, if we fail, probably the last, experiment of self-government by the people. We have begun it under circumstances of the most auspicious nature. We are in the vigor of youth. Our growth has never been checked by the oppressions of tyranny. Our constitutions have never been enfeebled by the vices or luxuries of the Old World. Such as we are, we have been from the beginning--simple, hardy, intelligent, accustomed to self-government and self-respect. The Atlantic rolls between us and any formidable foe. Within our own territory, stretching through many degrees of latitude and longitude, we have the choice of many products and many means of independence. The government is mild. The press is free. Religion is free. Knowledge reaches, or may reach, every home. What fairer prospect of success could be presented? What means more adequate to accomplish the sublime end? What more is necessary than for the people to preserve what they themselves have created? Already has the age caught the spirit of our institutions. It has already ascended the Andes, and snuffed the breezes of both oceans. It has infused itself into the life-blood of Europe, and warmed the sunny plains of France and the lowlands of Holland. It has touched the philosophy of Germany and the north, and, moving to the south, has opened to Greece the lessons of her better days.

AN ELECT NATION.

WILLIAM STOUGHTON. From an election sermon at Boston, Mass., April
29, 1669.

God sifted a whole nation that he might send choice grain over into this wilderness.

THE NAME "AMERICA."

MOSES F. SWEETSER, an American _littérateur_. Born in
Massachusetts, 1848. From his "Hand-book of the United States."[61]

The name America comes from _amalric_, or _emmerich_, an old German word spread through Europe by the Goths, and softened in Latin to Americus, and in Italian to Amerigo. It was first applied to Brazil. Americus Vespucius, the son of a wealthy Florentine notary, made several voyages to the New World, a few years later than Columbus, and gave spirited accounts of his discoveries. About the year 1507, Hylacomylus, of the college at St. Dié, in the Vosges Mountains, brought out a book on cosmography, in which he said, "Now, truly, as these regions are more widely explored, and another fourth part is discovered, by Americus Vespucius, I see no reason why it should not be justly called _Amerigen_; that is, the land of Americus, or America, from Americus, its discoverer, a man of a subtle intellect." Hylacomylus invented the name America, and, as there was no other title for the New World, this came gradually into general use. It does not appear that Vespucius was a party to this almost accidental transaction, which has made him a monument of a hemisphere.

THE COLUMBINE AS THE EXPOSITION FLOWER.

T. T. SWINBURNE, the poet, has written to J. M. Samuels, chief of
the Department of Horticulture at the World's Columbian Exposition,
proposing the columbine as the Columbian Exposition and national
flower. He gives as reasons:

It is most appropriate in name, color, and form. Its name is suggestive of Columbia, and our country is often called by that name. Its botanical name, _aquilegia_, is derived from _aquila_ (eagle), on account of the spur of the petals resembling the talons, and the blade, the beak, of the eagle, our national bird. Its colors are red, white, and blue, our national colors. The corolla is divided into five points resembling the star used to represent our States on our flag; its form also represents the Phrygian cap of liberty, and it is an exact copy of the horn of plenty, the symbol of the Columbian Exposition. The flowers cluster around a central stem, as our States around the central government.

THE SONG OF '76.

BAYARD TAYLOR, the distinguished American traveler, writer, and
poet. Born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, in 1835; died at
Berlin, December 19, 1878. From his "Song of '76." By permission of
Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Publishers, Boston.

Waken, voice of the land's devotion!
Spirit of freedom, awaken all!
Ring, ye shores, to the song of ocean,
Rivers answer, and mountains call!
The golden day has come;
Let every tongue be dumb
That sounded its malice or murmured its fears;
She hath won her story;
She wears her glory;
We crown her the Land of a Hundred Years!

Out of darkness and toil and danger
Into the light of victory's day,
Help to the weak, and home to the stranger,
Freedom to all, she hath held her way!
Now Europe's orphans rest
Upon her mother-breast.
The voices of nations are heard in the cheers
That shall cast upon her
New love and honor,
And crown her the Queen of a Hundred Years!

North and South, we are met as brothers;
East and West, we are wedded as one;
Right of each shall secure our mother's;
Child of each is her faithful son.
We give thee heart and hand,
Our glorious native land,
For battle has tried thee, and time endears.
We will write thy story,
And keep thy glory
As pure as of old for a Thousand Years!

MAN SUPERIOR.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU, American author and naturalist. Born in
Concord, Mass., 1817; died in 1862. From his "Excursions" (1863).
By permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Publishers,
Boston.

If the moon looks larger here than in Europe, probably the sun looks larger also. If the heavens of America appear infinitely higher and the stars brighter, I trust that these facts are symbolical of the height to which the philosophy and poetry and religion of her inhabitants may one day soar. At length, perchance, the immaterial heaven will appear as much higher to the American mind, and the intimations that star it, as much brighter. For I believe that climate does thus react on man, as there is something in the mountain air that feeds the spirit and inspires. Will not man grow to greater perfection intellectually as well as physically under these influences? Or is it unimportant how many foggy days there are in his life? I trust that we shall be more imaginative, that our thoughts will be clearer, fresher, and more ethereal, as our sky; our understanding more comprehensive and broader, like our plains; our intellect generally on a grander scale, like our thunder and lightning, our rivers, and mountains, and forests, and our hearts shall even correspond in breadth and depth and grandeur to our inland seas. Else to what end does the world go on, and why was America discovered?

AMERICAN SCENERY.

WILLIAM TUDOR, an American _littérateur_. Born at Boston in 1779;
died, 1830.

Our numerous waterfalls and the enchanting beauty of our lakes afford many objects of the most picturesque character; while the inland seas, from Superior to Ontario, and that astounding cataract, whose roar would hardly be increased by the united murmurs of all the cascades of Europe, are calculated to inspire vast and sublime conceptions. The effects, too, of our climate, composed of a Siberian winter and an Italian summer, furnish new and peculiar objects for description. The circumstances of remote regions are here blended, and strikingly opposite appearances witnessed, in the same spot, at different seasons of the year. In our winters, we have the sun at the same altitude as in Italy, shining on an unlimited surface of snow, which can only be found in the higher latitudes of Europe, where the sun, in the winter, rises little above the horizon. The dazzling brilliancy of a winter's day and a moonlight night, in an atmosphere astonishingly clear and frosty, when the utmost splendor of the sky is reflected from a surface of spotless white, attended with the most excessive cold, is peculiar to the northern part of the United States. What, too, can surpass the celestial purity and transparency of the atmosphere in a fine autumnal day, when our vision and our thought seem carried to the third heaven; the gorgeous magnificence of the close, when the sun sinks from our view, surrounded with various masses of clouds, fringed with gold and purple, and reflecting, in evanescent tints, all the hues of the rainbow.

LIBERTY HAS A CONTINENT OF HER OWN.

HORACE WALPOLE, fourth Earl of Oxford, a famous English literary
gossip, amateur, and wit. Born in London, October, 1717; died,
March, 1797.

Liberty has still a continent to exist in.

LOVE OF AMERICA.

DANIEL WEBSTER, the celebrated American statesman, jurist, and
orator. Born at Salisbury, N. H., January 18, 1782; died at
Marshfield, Mass., October 24, 1852.

I profess to feel a strong attachment to the liberty of the United States; to the constitution and free institutions of the United States; to the honor, and I may say the glory, of this great Government and great country.

I feel every injury inflicted upon this country almost as a personal injury. I blush for every fault which I think I see committed in its public councils as if they were faults or mistakes of my own.

I know that, at this moment, there is no object upon earth so attracting the gaze of the intelligent and civilized nations of the earth as this great Republic. All men look at us, all men examine our course, all good men are anxious for a favorable result to this great experiment of republican liberty. We are on a hill and can not be hid. We can not withdraw ourselves either from the commendation or the reproaches of the civilized world. They see us as that star of empire which, half a century ago, was predicted as making its way westward. I wish they may see it as a mild, placid, though brilliant orb, making its way athwart the whole heavens, to the enlightening and cheering of mankind; and not a meteor of fire and blood, terrifying the nations.

GENIUS OF THE WEST.

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, the distinguished American poet. Born at
Haverhill, Mass, December 17, 1807. From his poem, "On receiving an
eagle's quill from Lake Superior." By permission of Messrs.
Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Publishers, Boston.

I hear the tread of pioneers,
Of nations yet to be;
The first low wash of waves, where soon
Shall roll a human sea.

The rudiments of empire here
Are plastic yet and warm;
The chaos of a mighty world
Is rounding into form.

Each rude and jostling fragment soon
Its fitting place shall find--
The raw material of a state,
Its muscle and its mind.