haust, and no genius can transcend. Genus, therefore, to ask in freedom, and in a right direction, must be of faith, and love, and hope: of the faith which can reverence and can trust; of the love which can receive and give; of the hope which faith and love sustain, which gleams cheeringly over the path of humanity, and which, by large sympathy, has large wisdom. These are the principles which connect us with the universe of highest thought and of most enduring beauty. It is by faith that poetry, as well as devotion, soars above this dull earth; that imagination breaks through its clouds, breathes a purer air, and lives in a softer light. It is love that gives the poet the whole heart of man; and it is by love that he speaks to the whole heart of man for ever. Hope, which is but our ideal future, lives even in our most prosaic experience, and is a needful solace to our daily toils. We can then but ill spare it from our poetic dreams. We can but ill endure, among so many sad realities, to rob anticipation of its pleasant visions. In speaking thus, I would not imply that life can be always sunshine. By no means. Its afflictions are many; they are universal, they are inevitable. Because they are so, life can afford to lose none of its alleviations. Much that belongs merely to the present it must of necessity lose. Wretched it is, indeed, if it must likewise resign the future. Much will be carried from us, as our years decline, which years that come never can restore. Hours there are, brief, happy hours, in experience, which may not be forgotten, but are no more to be renewed. They can be but once, and the effort to repeat is to destroy them. They go to the past as a dream; they are no more, except that now and then their shadows mock us through the mist of days. Pure enjoyments and bright expectances the most meager souls have known some time in their existence; and the most meager souls, in feeling that they shall never know them again, are capable of deep regret. They are as a melody when the lute is broken; they are as a tale the minstrel tells-and dies. The inanimate universe itself seems to undergo the changes of our own spirits, and to sympathize with the transitions of our own experience. The stars, it is true, rise as brightly in the heavens, the flowers spring as lovely from the earth, the woodlands bloom as freshly as before; but, O, the glory and the joy within, the fancy and the hope which made the stars more beautiful, and the flowers more graceful, and the woods more elysian, and the birds more musical, will not last with passing suns, nor come back again with returning seasons! I do not decry this characteristic of our nature. I do not decry the genius which has affinity with it, and appeals to it. A high and solemn melancholy is the sighing of our immortality; it is the struggle of a divine aspiration with our earthly imperfections. The capacity of sorrow belongs to our grandeur; and the loftiest of our race are those who have had the profoundest grief, because they have had the profoundest sympathies. There is a sadness which is an attribute of our spiritual humanity; and it is only when this spiritual humanity is dormant that misery approaches the limitation of simple physical suffering or physical want. To be happy as moral and intellectual beings, we must feel the joy which has its center in the soul; from that center springs also the anguish which testifies our exaltation. This very sorrow of ours is one of the strongest reasons why nothing should dissociate the soul from principles which are not dependent on externals, but which, when suns grow dim, will come out into brighter revelation! Ex. CCXIX.-THE INDIAN. EDWARD EVERETT. 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 Or where the gorgeous east, with richest hand, as he looked down, and beheld the lovely scene which spread beneath at a summer sun-set,-the distant hill-tops blazing with gold, 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 water-falls 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,-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 an 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 water-falls 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 parchment 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 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 bul let shall whistle past thee; when thou liest down by night, my knife is at thy throat. The noon-day sun shall not dis cover thy enemy; and the darkness of midnight shall not protect thy rest. Thou shall 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." Ex. CCXX.-THE LIBERTY OF AMERICANS IN THEIR OWN KEEPING. HILLARD. LET no one accuse me of seeing wild visions, and dreaming impossible dreams. I am only stating what may be done, not what will be done. We may most shamefully betray the trust reposed in us,--we may most miserably defeat the fond hopes entertained of us. We may become the scorn of tyrants and the jest of slaves. From our fate, oppression may assume a bolder front of insolence, and its victims sink into a darker despair. In that event, how unspeakable will be our disgrace,—with what weight of mountains will the infamy lie upon our souls! -The gulf of our ruin will be as deep as the elevation we might have attained is high.--How wilt thou fall from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! Our beloved country with ashes for beauty, the golden cord of our union broken, its scattered fragments presenting every form of misrule, from the wildest anarchy to the most ruthless despotism, our 66 soil drenched with fraternal blood," the life of man stripped of its grace and dignity, the prizes of honor gone, and virtue divorced from half its encouragements and supports:-these are gloomy pictures, which I would not invite your imaginations to dwell upon, but only to glance at, for the sake of the warning lessons we may draw from them. Remember that we can have none of those consolations which sustain the patriot, who mourns over the misfortunes of his country. Our Rome can not fall, and we be innocent. No conqueror will chain us to the car of his triumphs;-no countless swarms 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 things like these. We will not think of failure, dishonor, and despair. On this day we will not admit the possibility of being untrue to our fathers and ourselves. 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 foundation 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 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 is on this day breaking from the full hearts of a mighty people, will never cease to be heard. No chasm of sullen silence will interrupt its course; no discordant notes of sectional madness, will mar the general harmony.-Year after year will increase it, by tributes from now unpeopled solitudes. The furthest West shall hear it, and rejoice. The Oregon shall swell with the voice of its waters :-the Rocky Mountains shall fling back the glad sound from their snowy crests. Ex. CCXXI.-THE LAUNCHING OF THE SHIP. ALL is finished! and at length Has come the bridal day Of beauty and of strength. To-day the vessel shall be launched! With fleecy clouds the sky is blanched, Slowly, in all his splendors dight, The great sun rises to behold the sight. LONGFELLOW |