Chapter I: The Noble Purposes of Eloquence (5)

Tell me--for you were there,--I appeal to the gallant soldier before me, from whose opinions I differ, but who bears, I know, a generous heart in an intrepid breast;--tell me, for you must needs remember, on that day when the destinies of mankind were trembling in the balance,--while death fell in showers when the artillery of France was levelled with a precision of the most deadly science, when her legions, incited by the voice and inspired by the example of their mighty leader, rushed again and again to the onset,--tell me if, for an instant, when to hesitate for an instant was to be lost, the "aliens" blenched? And when, at length, the moment for the last and decided movement had arrived, and the valor which had so long been wisely checked was, at last, let loose,--when, with words familiar but immortal, the great captain commanded the great assault,--tell me if Catholic Ireland with less heroic valor than the natives of this your own glorious country precipitated herself upon the foe? The blood of England, Scotland, and of Ireland, flowed in the same stream, and drenched the same field. When the chill morning dawned, their dead lay cold and stark together;--in the same deep pit their bodies were deposited; the green corn of spring is now breaking from their commingled dust; the dew falls from heaven upon their union in the grave. Partakers in every peril, in the glory shall we not be permitted to participate; and shall we be told as a requital, that we are estranged from the noble country for whose salvation our life-blood was poured out? R. L. Sheil.

LXXIV.

THE ILIAD AND THE BIBLE.

Of all the books with which, since the invention of writing, this world has been deluged, very few have produced any perceptible effect on the mass of human character. By far the greater part have been, even by their contemporaries, unnoticed and unknown. Not many a one has made its little mark upon that generation that produced it, though it sunk with that generation to utter forgetfulness. But, after the ceaseless toil of six thousand years, how few have been the works, the adamantine basis of whose reputation has stood unhurt amid the fluctuations of time, and whose impression can be traced through successive centuries, on the history of our species!

When, however, such a work appears, its effects are absolutely incalculable; and such a work, you are aware, is the Iliad of Homer. Who can estimate the results produced by the incomparable efforts of a single mind? Who can tell what Greece owes to this first-born of song? Her breathing marbles, her solemn temples, her unrivalled eloquence, and her matchless verse, all point us to that transcendent genius, who, by the very splendor of his own effulgence, woke the human intellect from the slumber of ages. It was Homer who gave laws to the artist; it was Homer who inspired the poet; it was Homer who thundered in the Senate; and, more than all, it was Homer who was sung by the people; and hence a nation was cast into the mould of one mighty mind, and the land of the Iliad became the region of taste, the birthplace of the arts.

But, considered simply as an intellectual production, who will compare the poems of Homer with the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments? Where in the Iliad shall we find simplicity and pathos which shall vie with the narrative of Moses, or maxims of conduct to equal in wisdom the Proverbs of Solomon, or sublimity which does not fade away before the conceptions of Job, or David, or Isaiah, or St. John? But I cannot pursue this comparison. I feel that it is doing wrong to the mind which dictated the Iliad, and to those other mighty intellects on whom the light of the holy oracles never shined.

If, then, so great results have flowed from this one effort of a single mind, what may we not expect from the combined efforts of several, at least his equals in power over the human heart? If that one genius, though groping in the thick darkness of absurd idolatry, wrought so glorious a transformation in the character of his countrymen, what may we not look for from the universal dissemination of those writings on whose authors was poured the full splendor of eternal truth? If unassisted human nature, spell-bound by a childish mythology, have done so much, what may we not hope for from the supernatural efforts of preeminent genius, which spake as it was moved by the Holy Ghost? Dr. Wayland.

LXXV.

ON ADMITTING CALIFORNIA TO THE UNION.

A year ago, California was a mere military dependency of our own. To-day, she is a State, more populous than the least, and richer than several of the greatest of our thirty States. This same California, thus rich and populous, is here asking admission into the Union, and finds us debating the dissolution of the Union itself. No wonder if we are perplexed with ever-changing embarrassments! No wonder if we are appalled by ever-increasing responsibilities! No wonder if we are bewildered by the ever-augmenting magnitude and rapidity of national vicissitudes!

SHALL CALIFORNIA BE RECEIVED? For myself, upon my individual judgment and conscience, I answer--yes. Let California come in. Every new State, whether she come from the east or the west every new State, coming from whatever part of the continent she may, is always welcome. But, California, that comes from the clime where the west dies away into the rising east,--California, that bounds at once the empire and the continent,--California, the youthful queen of the Pacific, in her robes of freedom, gorgeously inlaid with gold, is doubly welcome.

The question now arises, shall this one great people, having a common origin, a common language, a common religion, common sentiments, interests, sympathies and hopes, remain one political state, one nation, one republic; or shall it be broken into two conflicting, and, probably, hostile nations or republics? Shall the American people, then, be divided? Before deciding on this question, let us consider our position, our power, and capabilities. The world contains no seat of empire so magnificent as this; which, embracing all the varying climates of the temperate zone, and traversed by wide expanding lakes and long branching rivers, offers supplies on the Atlantic shores to the overcrowded nations of Europe, and, on the Pacific coast, intercepts the commerce of the Indies. The nations thus situated, and enjoying forest, mineral, and agricultural resources unequaled, if endowed, also with moral energies adequate to the achievement of great enterprises, and flavored with a government adapted to their character and condition, must command the empire of the seas, which, alone, is real empire.

We think we may claim to have inherited physical and intellectual vigor, courage, invention, and enterprise; and the systems of education prevailing among us, open to all the stores of human science and art. The Old World and the Past were allotted by Providence to the pupilage of mankind. The New World and the Future seem to have been appointed for the maturity of mankind, with the development of self-government, operating in obedience to reason and judgment.

We may, then, reasonably hope for greatness, felicity, and renown, excelling any hitherto attained by any nation, if, standing firmly on the continent, we lose not our grasp on either ocean. Whether a destiny so magnificent would be only partially defeated, or whether it would be altogether lost by a relaxation of the grasp, surpasses our wisdom to determine, and happily it is not important to be determined. It is enough, if we agree, that expectations so grand, yet so reasonable and so just, ought not in any degree to be disappointed. And now, it seems to me, that the perpetual unity of the empire hangs on the decision of this day and this hour.

California is already a State,--a complete and fully appointed State. She never again can be less than that. She never again can be a province or a colony; nor can she be made to shrink or shrivel into the proportions of a federal dependent territory. California, then, henceforth and forever, must be, what she is now,--a State.

The question whether she shall be one of the United States of America, has depended on her and on us. Her election has been made. Our consent alone remains suspended; and that consent must be pronounced now or never. W. H. Seward.

LXXVI.

A HIGHWAY TO THE PACIFIC.

Mr. President, I go for a national highway from the Mississippi to the Pacific. And I go against all schemes of individuals or of companies, and especially those who come here and ask of the Congress of the United States to give themselves and their assigns the means of making a road, and taxing the people for the use of it. If they should make it, they are to tax us for the use of it--tax the people eight or ten millions a year for using a road which their own money built. A fine scheme, that! But they would never build it, neither themselves nor their assigns. It would all end in stock-jobbing. I repudiate the whole idea, sir. I go for a national highway--no stock-jobbing.

We find all the localities of the country precisely such as a national central road would require. The Bay of San Francisco, the finest in the world, is in the centre of the western coast of North America; it is central, and without a rival. It will accommodate the commerce of that coast, both north and south, up to the frozen regions, down to the torrid zone. It is central in that respect. The commerce of the broad Pacific Ocean will centre there. The commerce of Asia will centre there. Follow the same latitude across the country, and it strikes the centre of the valley of the Mississippi. It strikes the Mississippi near the confluence of all the great waters which concentrate in the valley of the Mississippi. It comes to the centre of the valley;--it comes to St. Louis. Follow the prolongation of that central line, and you find it cutting the heart of the great States between the Mississippi River and the Atlantic Ocean, Illinois, Indiana Ohio a part of Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania,--they are all traversed or touched by that great central line.

We own the country, from sea to sea, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and upon a breadth equal to the length of the Mississippi, and embracing the whole temperate zone. Three thousand milks across, and half that breadth, is the magnificent parallelogram of our domain. We can run a national central road through and through, the whole distance, under our flag and under our laws. Military reasons require us to make it; for troops and munitions must go there. Political reasons require us to make it; it will be a chain of union between the Atlantic and Pacific States. Commercial reasons demand it from us; and here I touch a boundless field, dazzling and bewildering the imagination from its vastness and importance. The trade of the Pacific Ocean, of this western coast of North America, and of eastern Asia, will all take its track; and not only for ourselves, but for posterity.

Sir, in no instance has the great Asiatic trade failed to carry the nation or the people which possessed it to the highest pinnacle of wealth and power, and with it, to the highest attainments of letters, art, and science. And so will it continue to be. An American road to India, through the heart of our country will revive upon its line all the wonders of which we have read, and eclipse them. The western wilderness, from the Pacific to the Mississippi, will spring into life under its touch. A long line of cities will grow up. Existing cities will take a new start. The state of the world calls for a new road to India, and it is our destiny to give it--the last and greatest. Let us act up to the greatness of the occasion, and show ourselves worthy of the extraordinary circumstances in which we are placed, by securing, while we can, an American road to India, central and national, for ourselves and our posterity, now and hereafter, for thousands of years to come. T. H. Benton.

LXXVII.

ADDRESS TO POLISH EXILES AT LONDON.

It is eighty-one years since Poland first was quartered by a nefarious act of combined royalty, which the Swiss Tacitus, John Müller, well characterized by saying that "God permitted the act, to show the morality of kings;" and it is twenty-four years since down-trodden Poland made the greatest--not the last--manifestation of her imperishable vitality, which the cabinets of Europe were either too narrow-minded to understand, or too corrupt to appreciate. Eighty-one years of still unretributed crime, and twenty-four years of misery and exile! It is a long time to suffer, and not to despair.

And all along this time, you, proscribed patriots of Poland, were suffering, and did not despair. You stood up before the world, a living statue, with unquenchable life-flame of patriotism streaming through its petrified limbs; you stood up a protest of eternal right against the sway of imperious might; a "Mene Tekel Upharsin," written in letters of burning blood on the walls of overweening despotism. Time, misery, and sorrow have thinned the ranks of your scattered Israel; you have carried your dead to the grave, and those who survive went on to suffer and to hope. Wherever oppressed Freedom reared a banner, you rallied around;--the living statue changed to a fighting hero. Many of yours fell; and, when crime triumphed once more over virtue and right, you resumed the wandering exile's staff and did not despair. Many among you, who were young when they last saw the sun rise over Poland's mountains and plains, have your hair whitened and your strength broken with age, anguish, and misery; but the patriotic heart kept the freshness of its youth; it is young in love for Poland, young in aspirations for freedom, young in hope, and youthfully fresh in determination to break Poland's chains.

What a rich source of noble deeds patriotism must be, that has given you strength to suffer so much and never to despair! You have given a noble example to all of us,--your younger brother in the family of exiles. When the battle of Cannæ was lost, and Hannibal was measuring by bushels the rings of the fallen Roman knights, the Senate of Rome voted thanks to Consul Terentius Varro for "not having despaired of the Commonwealth." Proscribed patriots of Poland! I thank you that you have not despaired of resurrection and of liberty. The time draws nigh when the oppressed nations will call their aggressors to a last account; and the millions of freemen, in the fulness of their right, and their self-conscious strength, will class judgment on arrogant conquerors, privileged murderers, and perjured kings. In that supreme trial, the oppressed nations will stand one for all, and all for one. L. Kossuth.

LXXVIII.

KOSSUTH ON HIS CREDENTIALS.

Let ambitious fools,--let the pigmies who live on the scanty food of personal envy, when the very earth quakes beneath their feet; let even the honest prudence of ordinary household times, measuring eternity with that thimble with which they are wont to measure the bubbles of small party interest, and, taking the dreadful roaring of the ocean for a storm in a water-glass;--let those who believe the weather to be calm, because they have drawn a nightcap over their ears, and, burying their heads in pillows of domestic comfort, do not hear Satan sweeping in a hurricane over the earth; let envy, ambition, blindness, and the pettifogging wisdom of small times,--let all these artistically investigate the question of my official capacity, or the nature of my public authority; let them scrupulously discuss the immense problem whether I still possess, or possess no longer, the title of my once-Governorship; let them ask for credentials, discuss the limits of my commission, as representative of Hungary. I pity all such frog and mouse fighting.

I claim no official capacity,--no public authority, no representation;--boast of no commission, of no written and sealed credentials. I am nothing but what my generous friend, the senator from Michigan, has justly styled me, "a private and banished man." But, in that capacity I have a nobler credential for my mission than all the clerks of the world can write,--the credential that I am a "man;" the credential that I am a "patriot;" the credential that I love with all sacrificing devotion my oppressed fatherland and liberty; the credential that I hate tyrants, and have sworn everlasting hostility to them; the credential that I feel the strength to do good service to the cause of freedom; good service, as perhaps few men can do, because I have the iron will, in this my breast, to serve faithfully devotedly, indefatigably, that noble cause.

I have the credential that I trust to God in heaven, to justice on earth; that I offend no laws, but cling to the protection of the laws. I have the credential of my people's undeniable confidence and its unshaken faith; to my devotion, to my manliness, to my honesty, and to my patriotism; which faith I will honestly answer without ambition, without interest, as faithfully as ever, but more skillfully, because schooled by adversities. And I have the credential of the justice of the cause I plead, and of the wonderful sympathy which, not my person, but that cause, has met, and meets, in two hemispheres. These are my credentials, and nothing else. To whom this is enough, he will help me, so far as the law permits and it is his good pleasure. To whom these credentials are not sufficient, let him look for a better accredited man.

LXXIX.

THE IDES OF MARCH.

To-day is the fourth anniversary of the Revolution in Hungary.

Anniversaries of revolutions are almost always connected with the recollections of some patriot's death,--fallen on that day, like the Spartans at Thermopylæ, martyrs of devotion to their fatherland.

Almost in every country there is some proud cemetery, or some modest tombstone, adorned on such a day by a garland of evergreen,--the pious offering of patriotic tenderness. I passed the last night in a sleepless dream; and my soul wandered on the magnetic wings of the past, home to my beloved, bleeding land. And I saw, in the dead of the night, dark veiled shapes, with the paleness of eternal grief upon their brow--but terrible in the fearless silence of that grief--gliding over the churchyards of Hungary and kneeling down to the head of the graves, and depositing the pious tribute of green and cypress upon them; and, after a short prayer, rising with clenched fists and gnashing teeth, and then stealing away tearless! and silent as they came,--stealing away, because the bloodbounds of my country's murder lurks from every corner on that night, and on this day, and leads to prison those who dare to show a pious remembrance to the beloved. To-day, a smile on the lips of a Magyar is taken for a crime of defiance to tyranny; and a tear in his eye is equivalent to a revolt. And yet I have seen, with the eye of my home-wandering soul, thousands performing the work of patriotic piety.

And I saw more. When the pious offerers stole away, I saw the honored dead half risen from their tombs, looking to the offerings, and whispering gloomily, "Still a cypress, and still no flower of joy! Is there still the chill of winter and the gloom of night over thee, Fatherland? Are we not yet revenged?" And the sky of the east reddened suddenly, and quivered with bloody flames; and from the far, far west, a lightning flashed like a star-spangled stripe, and within its light a young eagle mounted and soared towards the quivering flames of the east; and as he drew near, upon his approaching, the flames changed into a radiant morning sun, and a voice from above was heard in answer to the question of the dead:

"Sleep yet a short while; mine is the revenge. I will make the stars of the west the sun of the east; and when ye next awake, ye will find the flower of joy upon your cold bed." And the dead took the twig of cypress, the sign of resurrection, into their bony hands, and lay down.

Such was the dream of my waking soul. And I prayed; and such was my prayer: "Father, if thou deemest me worthy, take the cup from my people, and give it in their stead to me." And there was a whisper around me like the word "Amen." Such was my dream, half foresight and half prophecy; but resolution all. However, none of those dead whom I saw, fell on the 15th of March. They were victims of the royal perjury which betrayed the 15th of March. The anniversary of our Revolution has not the stain of a single drop of blood. L. Kossuth.

LXXX.

THE SAME CONTINUED.

We, the elect of the nation, sat on that morning busily but quietly, in the legislative hall of old Presburg, and, without any flood of eloquence, passed our laws in short words, that the people shall be free; the burdens of feudalism shall cease; the peasant shall become free proprietor; that equality of duties, equality of rights, shall be the fundamental law; and civil, political, social, and religious liberty shall be the common property of all the people, whatever tongue it may speak, or in whatever church pray; and that a national ministry shall execute these laws, and guard with its responsibility the chartered, ancient independence of our Fatherland.

Two days before, Austria's brave people in Vienna had broken its yoke; and summing up despots in the person of their tool, old Metternich, drove him away; and the Hapsburgs, trembling in their imperial cavern of imperial crimes, trembling, but treacherous, and lying and false, wrote with yard-long letters, the words, "Constitution" and "Free Press" upon Vienna's walls; and the people in joy cheered the inveterate liars, because the people knows no falsehood.

On the 14th, I announced the tidings from Vienna to our Parliament at Presburg. The announcement was swiftly carried by the great democrat, the steam-engine, upon the billows of the Danube, down to old Buda and to young Pesth, and while we, in the House of Representatives, passed the laws of Justice and freedom, the people of Pesth rose in peaceful but majestic manifestation, declaring that the people should be free. At this manifestation all the barriers raised by violence against the laws, fell of themselves. Not a drop of blood was shed. A man who was in prison because he had dared to write a book, was carried home in triumph through the streets. The people armed itself as a National Guard, the windows were illuminated and bon fires burnt, and when these tidings returned back to Presburg, blended with the cheers from Vienna, they warmed the chill of our House of Lords, who readily agreed to the laws we pro posed. And there was rejoicing throughout the land. For the first time for centuries the farmer awoke with the pleasant feeling that his time was now his own--for the first time went out to till his field with the consoling thought that the ninth part of his harvest will not be taken by the landlord, nor the tenth by the bishop. Both had fully resigned their feudal portion, and the air was brightened by the lustre of freedom, and the very soil budding into a blooming paradise. Such is the memory of the 15th of March, 1848. L. Kossuth.

LXXXI.

THE SAME CONTINUED.

One year later, there was blood, but also victory, over the land; the people because free, fought like demi-gods. Seven great victories we had gained in that month of March. On this very day, the remains of the first ten thousand Russians fled over the frontiers of Transylvania, to tell at home how heavily the blow falls from free Hungarian arms. It was in that very month, that one evening I lay down in the bed, whence in the morning Windischgrätz had risen; and from the battle-field I hastened to the Congress at Debreczin, to tell the Representatives of the nation "It is time to declare our national independence, because it is really achieved. The Hapsburgs have not power to contradict it more." Nor had they.

But Russia, having experienced by the test of its first interference, that there was no power on earth caring about the most flagrant violation of the laws of nations, and seeing by the silence of Great Britain and of the United States, that she may dare to violate those laws, our heroes had to meet a fresh force of nearly two hundred thousand Russians. No power cheered our bravely-won independence by diplomatic recognition; not even the United States, though they always professed their principle to be that they recognize every de facto government. We therefore had the right to expect a speedy recognition from the United States. Our struggle rose to European height, but we were left alone to fight for the world; and we had no arms for the new battalions, gathering up in thousands with resolute hearts and empty hands.

The recognition of our independence being withheld, commercial intercourse for procuring arms abroad was impossible,--the gloomy feeling of entire forsakedness spread over our tired ranks, and prepared the field for the secret action of treachery; until the most sacrilegious violation of those common laws of nations was achieved, and. the code of "nature and of nature's God" was drowned in Hungary's blood. And I who on the 15th of March, 1848, saw the principle of full civil and religious liberty triumphing in my native land,--who, on the 15th of March, 1849, saw this freedom consolidated by victories,--one year later, on the 15th of March, 1850, was on my sorrowful way to an Asiatic prison. L. Kossuth.

LXXXII.

THE SAME CONCLUDED.

But wonderful are the ways of Divine Providence. It was again in the month of March, 1851, that the generous interposition of the United States cast the first ray of hope into the dead night of my captivity. And on the 15th of March, 1852, the fourth anniversary of our Revolution, guided by the bounty of Providence, here I stand, in the very heart of your immense Republic; no longer a captive, but free in the land of the free, not only not desponding, but firm in confidence of the future, because raised in spirits by a swelling sympathy in the home of the brave; still a poor, a homeless exile, but not without some power to do good to my country and to the cause of liberty, as my very persecution proves. Such is the history of the 15th of March, in my humble life. Who can tell what will be the character of the next 15th of March?

Nearly two thousand years ago. the first Cæsar found a Brutus on the Ides or 15th of March. May be that the Ides of March, 1853, will see the last of the Cæsars fall under the avenging might of a thousand-handed Brutus--the name of whom is "the people"--inexorable at last after it has been so long generous. The seat of the Cæsars was first in the south, then from the south to the east, from the east to the west, and from the west to the north. That is their last abode. None was lasting yet. Will the last, and worst, prove luckier? No, it will not. While the seat of the Cæsars was tossed around and thrown back to the icy north, a new world became the cradle of a new humanity, where, in spite of the Cæsars the Genius of Freedom raised (let us hope) an everlasting throne. The Cæsar of the north and the Genius of Freedom have not place enough upon this earth for both of them; one must yield and be crushed beneath the heels of the other. Which is it? Which shall yield? America may decide. L. Kossuth.

LXXXIII.

THE MAYFLOWER AND THE PILGRIMS.

Methinks I see it now that one solitary, adventurous vessel, the Mayflower of a forlorn hope, freighted with the prospects of a future state, and bound across the unknown sea. I behold it pursuing, with a thousand misgivings, the uncertain, the tedious voyage. Suns rise and set, and weeks, and months pass, and winter surprises them on the deep, but brings them not the sight of the wished-for shore. I see them now, scantily supplied with provisions, crowded almost to suffocation in their ill-stored prison, delayed by calms, pursuing a circuitous route; and now, driven in fury before the raging tempest, in their scarcely seaworthy vessel. The awful voice of the storm howls through the rigging. The laboring masts seem straining from their base; the dismal sound of the pumps is heard; the ship leaps, as it were, madly from billow to billow; the ocean breaks, and settles with ingulfing floods over the floating deck, and beats with deadening weight, against the staggered vessel. I see them, escaped from these perils, pursuing their all but desperate undertaking, and landed at last, after a five months' passage, on the ice-clad rocks of Plymouth, weak and weary from the voyage, poorly armed, scantily provisioned, depending on the charity of their shipmaster for a draught of beer on board, drinking nothing but water on shore, without shelter, without means, surrounded by hostile tribes.

Shut now the volume of history, and tell me, on any principle of human probability, what shall be the fate of this handful of adventurers. Tell me, man of military science, in how many months were they all swept off by the thirty savage tribes, enumerated within the early limits of New England? Tell me, politician, how long did this shadow of a colony, on which your conventions and treaties had not smiled, languish on the distant coast? Student of history, compare for me the baffled projects, the deserted settlements, the abandoned adventures of other times, and find the parallel of this. Was it the winter's storm, beating upon the houseless heads of women and children? was it hard labor and spare meals? was it disease? was it the tomahawk? was it the deep malady of blighted hope, a ruined enterprise, and a broken heart, aching in its last moments at the recollection of the loved and left, beyond the sea?--was it some, or all of these united, that hurried this forsaken company to their melancholy fate? And is it possible that neither of these causes, that not all combined, were able to blast this bud of lope? Is it possible, that from a beginning so feeble, so frail, so worthy, not so much of admiration as of pity, there has gone forth a progress so steady, a growth so wonderful, a reality so important, a promise yet to be fulfilled so glorious? E. Everett.

LXXXIV.

THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.

After years of fruitless and heart-sick solicitation, after offering, in effect, to this monarchy and to that monarch, the gift of a hemisphere. the great discoverer touches upon a partial success. He succeeds, not in enlisting the sympathy of his countrymen at Genoa and Venice, for a brave brother-sailor,--not in giving a new direction to the spirit of maritime adventure, which had so long prevailed in Portugal,--not in stimulating the commercial thrift of Henry the Seventh, or the pious ambition of the Catholic king. His sorrowful perseverance touches the heart of a noble princess, worthy the throne which she adorned. The New World, which was just escaping the subtle kingcraft of Ferdinand, was saved to Spain by the womanly compassion of Isabella.

It is truly melancholy, however, to contemplate the wretched equipment, for which the most powerful princess of Christendom was ready to pledge her jewels. Floating castles will soon be fitted out to convey the miserable natives of Africa to the golden shores of America; towering galleons will be despatched to bring home the guilty treasures to Spain. But three small vessels, one of which was without a deck, and neither of them, probably, exceeding the capacity of a pilot-boat, and even these impressed into the public service, composed the expedition fitted out under royal patronage, to realize that magnificent conceptions in which the creative mind of Columbus had planted the germs of a new world.

No chapter of romance equals the interest of this expedition. The most fascinating of the works of fiction which have issued from the modern press have, to my taste, no attraction compared with the pages in which the first voyage of Columbus is described by Robertson, and still more by our own Irving and Prescott, the last two enjoying the advantage over the Scottish historian of possessing the lately discovered Journals and letters of Columbus himself. The departure from Palos, where, a few days before, he had begged a morsel of bread and a cup of water for his wayworn child,--his final farewell to the Old World at the Canaries,--his entrance upon the trade winds, which then, for the first time, filled a European sail,--the portentous variation of the needle, never before observed, the fearful course westward and westward, day after day, and night after night, over the unknown ocean, the mutinous and ill-appeased crew; at length, when hope had turned to despair in every heart but one, the tokens of land,--the cloud-banks on the western horizon,--the logs of drift-wood,--the fresh shrub, floating with its leaves and berries,--the flocks of land-birds,--the shoals of fish that inhabit shallow water, the indescribable smell of the shore,--the mysterious presentiment that seems ever to go before a great event, and finally, on that ever-memorable night of the 12th of October, 1492, the moving light seen by the sleepless eye of the great discoverer himself, from the deck of the Santa Maria, and in the morning the real, undoubted land, swelling up from the bosom of the deep, with its plains, and hills, and forests, and rocks, and streams, and strange, new races of men;--these are incidents in which the authentic history of the discovery of our Continent excels the specious wonders of romance, as much as gold excels tinsel, or the sun in the heavens outshines the flickering taper. E. Everett.

LXXXV.

ADAMS AND JEFFERSON.

We dismiss them not to the chambers of forgetfulness and death. What we admired, and prized, and venerated in them, can never be forgotten. I had almost said that they are now beginning to live; to live that life of unimpaired influence, of unclouded fame, of unmingled happiness, for which their talents and services were destined. Such men do not, cannot die. To be cold and breathless; to feel not and speak not; this is not the end of existence to the men who have breathed their spirits into the institutions of their country, who have stamped their characters on the pillars of the age, who have poured their hearts' blood into the channels of the public prosperity. Tell me, ye who tread the sods of yon sacred height, is Warren dead? Can you not still see him, not pale and prostrate, the blood of his gallant heart pouring out of his ghastly wound, but moving resplendent over the field of honors with the rose of heaven upon his cheek, and the fire of liberty in his eye? Tell me, ye who make your pious pilgrimage to the shades of Vernon, is Washington indeed shut up in that cold and narrow house? That which made these men, and men like these, cannot die. The hand that traced the charter of independence is, indeed, motionless; the eloquent lips that sustained it are hushed; but the lofty spirits that conceived, resolved, and maintained it, and which alone, to such men, "make it life to live," these cannot expire;--

"These shall resist the empire of decay,
When time is o'er, and worlds have passed away;
Cold in the dust the perished heart may lie,
But that which warmed it once can never die."

E. Everett.

LXXXVI.

THE INDIAN CHIEF TO THE WHITE SETTLER.

Think of the country for which the Indians fought! Who can blame them? As Philip looked down from his seat on Mount Hope, that glorious eminence, that

----" throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous East, with richest hand,
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,"--

as he looked down, and beheld the lovely scene which spread beneath, at a summer sunset, the distant hill-tops glittering as with fire, the slanting beams streaming across the waters, the broad plains, the island groups, the majestic forest,--could he be blamed, if his heart burned within him, as he beheld it all passing, by no tardy process, from beneath his control, into the hands of the stranger?

As the river chieftains--the lords of the waterfalls and the mountains--ranged this lovely valley, can it be wondered at, if they beheld with bitterness the forest disappearing beneath the settler's axe? the fishing-place disturbed by his saw-mills? Can we not fancy the feelings with which some strong-minded savage, the chief of the Pocomtuck Indians, who should have ascended the summit of the Sugar-loaf Mountain, (rising as it does before us, at this moment, in all its loveliness and grandeur,)--in company with a friendly settler, contemplating the progress already made by the white man, and marking the gigantic strides with which he was advancing into the wilderness, should fold his arms and say "White man, there is eternal war between me and thee! I quit not the land of my fathers, but with my life. In those woods, where I bent my youthful bow; I will still hunt the deer; over yonder waters I will still glide, unrestrained, in my bark canoe. By those dashing waterfalls I will still lay up my winter's store of food; on these fertile meadows I will still plant my corn.

"Stranger, the land is mine! I understand not these paper rights. I gave not my consent, when, as thou sayest, these broad regions were purchased, for a few baubles, of my fathers. They could sell what was theirs; they could sell no more. How could my father sell that which the Great Spirit sent me into the world to live upon? They knew not what they did.

"The stranger came, a timid suppliant,--few and feeble, and asked to lie down on the red man's bear-skin, and warm himself at the red man's fire, and have a little piece of land to raise corn for his women and children; and now he is become strong, and mighty, and bold, and spreads out his parchments over the whole, and says, 'It is mine.'

"Stranger! there is not room for us both. The Great Spirit has not made us to live together. There is poison in the white man's cup; the white man's dog barks at the red man's heels. If I should leave the land of my fathers, whither shall I fly? Shall I go to the south, and dwell among the graves of the Pequots? Shall I wander to the west, the fierce Mohawk,--the man-eater,--is my foe. Shall I fly to the east, the great water is before me. No, stranger; here I have lived, and here will I die; and if here thou abidest, there is eternal war between me and thee.

"Thou hast taught me thy arts of destruction; for that alone I thank thee. And now take heed to thy steps; the red man is thy foe. When thou goest forth by day my bullet shall whistle past thee; when thou liest down by night, my knife is at thy throat. The noonday sun shall not discover thy enemy, and the darkness of midnight shall not protect thy rest. Thou shalt plant in terror, and I will reap in blood; thou shalt sow the earth with corn, and I will strew it with ashes; thou shalt go forth with the sickle, and I will follow after with the scalping-knife; thou shalt build, and I will burn,--till the white man or the Indian perish from the land." E. Everett.

LXXXVII.

THE MEN OF "SEVENTY-SIX."

If we look only at one part of the work of the men of '76 if we see them poring over musty parchments by the midnight lamp, citing the year-books against writs of assistance, disputing themselves hoarse, about this phrase in the charter of Charles the First, and that section in a statute of Edward the Third, we should be disposed to class them with the most bigoted conservatives that ever threw a drag-chain around the limbs of a young and ardent people. But, gracious heavens, look at them again, when the trumpet sounds the hour of resistance; survey the other aspect of their work. See these undaunted patriots, in their obscure caucus gatherings, in their town-meetings, in their provincial assemblies, in their continental congress, breathing defiance to the British Parliament and the British throne. March with their raw militia to the conflict with the trained veterans of the seven years' war. Witness them, a group of colonies, extemporized into a confederacy, entering with a calm self-possession into alliance with the oldest monarchy in Europe; and occupying, as they did, a narrow belt of territory along the coast, plainly peopled, partially cleared, hemmed in by the native savage, by the Alleghenies, by the Ohio, and the Lakes; behold them dilating with the grandeur of the position, radiant in the prospective glories of their career, casting abroad the germs of future independent States, destined, at no distant day, not merely to cover the face of the thirteen British colonies, but to spread over the territories of France and Spain on this continent, over Florida and Louisiana, over New Mexico and California, beyond the Mississippi, beyond the Rocky Mountains,--to unite the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans, the arctic and the torrid zones, in one great network of confederate republican government. Contemplate this, and you will acknowledge the men of Seventy-six to have been the boldest men of progress that the world has ever seen!

These are the men whom the Fourth of July invites us to respect and to imitate;--the James Otises and the Warrens, the Franklins and the Adamses, the Patrick Henrys and the Jeffersons, and him whom I may not name in the plural number, brightest of the bright and purest of the pure,--Washington himself. But let us be sure to imitate them, (or strive to do so) in all their great principles, in both parts of their noble and comprehensive policy. Let us reverence them as they reverenced their predecessors,--not seeking to build up the future on the ruins of all that had gone before, nor yet to bind down the living, breathing, burning present to the mouldering relics of the dead past,--but deducing the rule of a bold and safe progress, from the records of a wise and glorious experience. E. Everett.

LXXXVIII.

THE SAME CONCLUDED.

We live at an era as eventful, in my judgment, as that of '76 though in a different way. We have no foreign yoke to throw off but in the discharge of the duty devolved upon us by Providence, we have to carry the republican independence which our fathers achieved, with all the organized institutions of an enlightened community, institutions of religion, law, education, charity, art, and all the thousand graces of the higher culture, beyond the Missouri, beyond the Sierra Nevada; perhaps, in time around the circuit of the Antilles; perhaps to the archipelagoes of the Central Pacific. The pioneers are on the way. Who can tell how far and fast they will travel? Who, that compares the North America of 1753, but a century ago, and numbering but little over a million of souls of European origin; or still more the North America of 1653, when there was certainly not a fifth part of that number; who that compares this with the North America of 1853, its twenty-two millions of European origin, and its thirty-one States, will venture to assign limits to our growth; will dare to compute the time-table of our railway progress, or lift so much as a corner of the curtain that hides the crowded events of the coming century?

This only we can plainly see; the Old World is rocking to its foundations. From the Gulf of Finland to the Yellow Sea, everything is shaken. The spirit of the age has gone forth to hold his great review, and the kings of the earth are moved to meet him at his coming. The band which holds the great powers of Europe together in one political league, is strained to its utmost tension. The catastrophe may for a while be staved off; but to all appearance they are hurrying to the verge of one of those conflicts which, like those of Pharsalia and Actium, affect the condition of States for twice ten centuries. The Turkish empire, encamped but for four centuries on the frontiers of Europe, and the Chinese monarchy, contemporary with David and Solomon, are alike crumbling.

While these events are passing in the Old World, a tide of emigration, which has no parallel in history is pouring westward, across the Atlantic, and eastward, across the Pacific to our shores. The real political vitality of the world seems moving to the new hemisphere, whose condition and fortune it devolves upon us and our children to mould and regulate.

It is a grand,--let me say, a solemn thought,--well calculated to still the passions of the day and to elevate us above the paltry strife of parties. It teaches us that we are called to the highest, and, I do verily believe, the most momentous trust that ever devolved upon one generation of men. Let us meet it with a corresponding temper and purpose,--with the wisdom of a well-instructed experience, and with the foresight and preparation of a glorious future; not on the narrow platforms of party policy and temporary expediency, but in the broad and comprehensive spirit of Seventy-six. E. Everett.

LXXXIX.

OUR COMMON SCHOOLS.

Sir, it is our common schools which gives the keys of knowledge to the mass of the people. Our common schools are important in the same way as the common air, the common sunshine, the common rain,--invaluable for their commonness. They are the corner-stone of that municipal organization which is the characteristic feature of our social system; they are the fountain of that widespread intelligence which, like a moral life pervades the country.

From the humblest village-school there may go forth a teacher who, like Newton, shall bind his temples with the stars of Orion's belt; with Herschel, light up his cell with the beams of before-undiscovered planets; with Franklin, grasp the lightning. Columbus, fortified with a few sound geographical principles, was, on the deck of his crazy caravel, more truly the monarch of Castile and Aragon, than Ferdinand and Isabella, enthroned beneath the golden vaults of the conquered Alhambra. And Robinson, with the simple training of a rural pastor in England, when he knelt on the shores of Delft Haven, and sent his little flock upon their Gospel errantry beyond the world of waters, exercised an influence over the destinies of the civilized world, which will last to the end of time.

Sir, it is a solemn, a tender, and sacred duty that of education. What, sir, feed a child's body, and let his soul hunger! pamper his limbs and starve his faculties! Plant the earth, cover a thousand hills with your droves of cattle, pursue the fish to their hiding-places in the sea, and spread out your wheatfields across the plain, in order to supply the wants of that body which will soon be as cold and as senseless as the poorest clod, and let the pure spiritual essence within you, with all its glorious capacities for improvement, languish and pine! What! build factories, turn in rivers upon the water-wheels, enchain the imprisoned spirits of steam, to weave a garment for the body, and let the soul remain unadorned and naked! What! send out your vessels to the farthest ocean, and make battle with the monsters of the deep, in order to obtain the means of lighting up your dwellings and workshops, and prolonging the hours of labor for the meat that perisheth, and permit that vital spark which God has kindled, which He has intrusted to our care, to be fanned into a bright and heavenly flame,--permit it, I say, to languish and go out!

What considerate man can enter a school and not reflect with awe, that it is a seminary where immortal minds are training for eternity? What parent but is, at times, weighed down with the thought, that there must be laid the foundations of a building which will stand, when not merely temple and palace, but the perpetual hills and adamantine rocks on which they rest, have melted away!--that a light may there be kindled, which will shine, not merely when every artificial beam is extinguished, but when the affrighted sun has fled away from the heavens! I can add nothing, sir, to this consideration. I will only say, in conclusion, Education,--when we feed that lamp, we perform the highest social duty! If we quench it, I know not where (humanly speaking), for time or for eternity,--"

I know not where is that Promethean heat
That can its light resume! "
E Everett.

XC.

WEBSTER'S GREATEST PARLIAMENTARY EFFORT.

The greatest parliamentary effort made by Mr. Webster, was his second speech on Foot's resolution,--the question at issue being nothing less than this; Is the Constitution of the United States a compact without a common umpire between confederated sovereignties; or is it a government of the people of the United States, sovereign within the sphere of its delegated powers, although reserving a great mass of undelegated rights to the separate State governments and the people? With those who embrace the opinions which Mr. Webster combated in this speech, this is not the time nor the place to engage in an argument; but those who believe that he maintained the true principles of the Constitution, will probably agree, that since that instrument was communicated to the Continental Congress, seventy-two years ago this day by George Washington as President of the Federal Convention, no greater service has been rendered to the country than in the delivery of this speech.

Well do I recollect the occasion and the scene. It was truly what Wellington called the battle of Waterloo, a conflict of giants. I passed an hour and a half with Mr. Webster, at his request, the evening before this great effort; and he went over to me, from a very concise brief, the main topics of the speech which he had prepared for the following day. So calm and unimpassioned was the memorandum, so entirely was he at ease himself that I was tempted to think absurdly enough, that he was not sufficiently aware of the magnitude of the occasion. But I soon perceived that his calmness was the repose of conscious power. He was not only at ease, but sportive and full of anecdote; and as he told the Senate playfully the next day he slept soundly that night on the formidable assault of his gallant and accomplished adversary. So the great Condé slept on the eve of the battle of Rocroi; so Alexander slept on the eve of the battle of Arbela; and so they awoke to deeds of immortal fame.

As I saw him in the evening, (if I may borrow an illustration from his favorite amusement,) he was as unconcerned and as free of spirit, as some here have often seen him, while floating in his fishing boat along a hazy shore, gently rocking on the tranquil tide, dropping his line here and there, with the varying fortune of the sport. The next morning he was like some mighty Admiral, dark and terrible, casting the long shadow of his frowning tiers far over the sea, that seemed to sink beneath him; his broad pendant streaming at the main, the stars and the stripes at the fore, the mizzen, and the peak; and bearing down like a tempest upon his antagonist, with all his canvas strained to the wind and all his thunders roaring from his broadsides. E. Everett.

XCI.

WHAT GOOD WILL THE MONUMENT DO.

I am met with the great objection, What good will the Monument do? I beg leave, sir, to exercise my birthright as a Yankee, and answer this question by asking two or three more, to which, I believe, it will be quite as difficult to furnish a satisfactory reply. I am asked, What good will the monument do? And I ask, What good does anything do? What is good? Does anything do any good? The persons who suggest this objection, of course think that there are some projects and undertakings that do good; and I should therefore like to have the idea of good explained, and analyzed, and run out to its elements.