law, and every offence against that is an offence against the rights of the civilized world; and if he breaks that law in the case of Turkey, or in any other case, the whole world has a right to call him out and demand his punishment Our rights as a nation are held under the sanction of national law a law which becomes more important from day to daya law which none who profess to agree to, are at liberty to violate. Nor let him imagine, nor let any one imagine, that mere force can subdue the general sentiment of mankind. It is much more likely to extend that sentiment, and to destroy that power which he most desires to establish and secure. The bones of poor John Wickliffe were dug out of his grave seventy years after his death, and burnt, for his heresy, and his ashes were thrown upon a river in Warwickshire. Some prophet of that day said:

"The Avon to the Severn runs,

The Severn to the sea,

And Wickliffe's dust shall spread abroad
Wide as the waters be."

Gentlemen, if the blood of Kossuth is taken by an absolute, unqualified, unjustifiable violation of national law, what will it appease-what will it pacify? It will mingle with the earth-it will mix with the waters of the ocean-the whole civilized world will snuff it in the air, and it will return with awful retribution on the heads of those violators of national law and universal justice. I cannot say when, or in what form; but depend upon it, that if such an act take place, the thrones and principalities and powers must look out for the consequences.

tors.

VIII.-IMPORTANCE OF LITERARY PURSUITS.

A. H. EVERETT.

INDEPENDENCE and liberty, the great political objects of all communities, have been secured to us by our glorious ancesIn these respects, we are only required to preserve and transmit unimpaired to our posterity the inheritance which our fathers bequeathed to us. To the present, and to the following generations, is left the easier task of enriching with arts

IMPORTANCE OF LITERARY PURSUITS.

21

and letters, the proud fabric of our national glory. Our Sparta is indeed a noble one. Let us then do our best for it.

It will belong to your position to take the lead in arts and letters, as in policy, and to give the tone to the literature of the language. Let it be your care and study not to show yourselves unequal to this high calling,-to vindicate the honor of the new world in this generous and friendly competition with the old. You will perhaps be told that literary pursuits will disqualify you for the active business of life. Heed not the idle assertion. Reject it as a mere imagination, inconsistent with principle, unsupported by experience. Point out to those who make it, the illustrious characters who have reaped in every age the highest honors of studious and active exertion. Show them Demosthenes, forging by the light of the midnight lamp those thunderbolts of eloquence which

"Shook the arsenal and fulmined over Greece

To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne."

Ask them if Cicero would have been hailed with rapture as the father of his country, if he had not been its pride and pattern in philosophy and letters. Inquire whether Cæsar, or Frederick, or Bonaparte, or Wellington, or Washington, fought the worse because they knew how to write their own commentaries. Remind them of Franklin, tearing at the same time the lightning from heaven, and the sceptre from the hands of the oppressor. Do they say to you that study will lead you to skepticism? Recall to their memory the venerable names of Bacon, Milton, Newton and Locke. Would they persuade you that devotion to learning will withdraw your steps from the paths of pleasure? Tell them they are mistaken. Tell them that the only true pleasures are those which result from the diligent exercise of all the faculties of body, and mind, and heart, in pursuit of noble ends by noble means. Repeat to them the ancient apologue of the youthful Hercules, in the pride of strength and beauty, giving up generous soul to the worship of virtue. Tell them your choice is also made. Tell them, with the illustrious Roman orator, you would rather be in the wrong with Plato, than in the right with Epicurus. Tell them that a mother in Sparta would have rather seen her son brought home from battle a corpse upon his shield, than dishonored by its loss. Tell them that your mother is America, your battle the warfare of life, your shield the breastplate of Religion.

his

IX.-FREEDOM AND PATRIOTISM.

ORVILLE DEWEY.

GOD has stamped upon our very humanity this impress of freedom. It is the unchartered prerogative of human nature. A soul ceases to be a soul, in proportion as it ceases to be free. Strip it of this, and you strip it of one of its essential and characteristic attributes. It is this that draws the footsteps of the wild Indian to his wide and boundless desert-paths, and makes him prefer them to the gay saloons and soft carpets of sumptuous palaces. It is this that makes it so difficult to bring him within the pale of artificial civilization. Our roving tribes are perishing-a sad and solemn sacrifice upon the altar of their wild freedom. They come among us, and look with childish wonder upon the perfection of our arts, and the splendor of our habitations: they submit with ennui and weariness, for a few days, to our burdensome forms and restraints; and then turn their faces to their forest homes, and resolve to push those homes onward till they sink in the Pacific waves, rather than not be free.

It is thus that every people is attached to its country, just in proportion as it is free. No matter if that country be in the rocky fastnesses of Switzerland, amidst the snows of Tartary, or on the most barren and lonely island-shore; no matter if that country be so poor as to force away its children to other and richer lands, for employment and sustenance; yet when the songs of those free homes chance to fall upon the exile's ear, no soft and ravishing airs that wait upon the timid feastings of Asiatic opulence ever thrilled the heart with such mingled rapture and agony as those simple tones. Sad mementos might they be of poverty and want and toil; yet it was enough that they were mementos of happy freedom.

I have seen my countrymen, and I have been with them a fellow wanderer, in other lands; and little did I see or feel to warrant the apprehension, sometimes expressed, that foreign travel would weaken our patriotic attachments. One sigh for home-home, arose from all hearts. And why, from palaces and courts-why, from galleries of the arts, where the marble softens into life, and painting sheds an almost living presence of beauty around it—why, from the mountain's awful brow, and the lonely valleys and lakes touched

TEACHINGS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

23

with the sunset hues of old romance-why, from those venerable and touching ruins to which our very heart grows― why, from all these scenes, were they looking beyond the swellings of the Atlantic wave, to a dearer and holier spot of earth their own, own country? Doubtless, it was in part because it is their country! But it was also, as every one's experience will testify, because they knew that there was no oppression, no pitiful exaction of petty tyranny; because that there, they knew was no accredited and irresistible religious domination; because that there, they knew, they should not meet the odious soldier at every corner, nor swarms of imploring beggars, the victims of misrule; that there, no curse causeless did fall, and no blight, worse than plague and pestilence, did descend amidst the pure dews of heaven; because, in fine, that there, they knew, was liberty-upon all the green hills, and amidst all the peaceful villages-liberty, the wall of fire around the humblest home; the crown of glory, studded with her ever-blazing stars upon the proudest

mansion!

X-TEACHINGS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

JARED SPARKS.

HAPPY was it for America, happy for the world, that a great name, a guardian genius, presided over her destinies in war, combining more than the virtues of the Roman Fabius and the Theban Epaminondas, and compared with whom, the conquerors of the world, the Alexanders and Cæsars, are but pageants crimsoned with blood and decked with the trophies of slaughter, objects equally of the wonder and the execration of mankind. The hero of America was the con queror only of his country's foes, and the hearts of his countrymen. To the one he was a terror, and in the other he gained an ascendency, supreme, unrivalled, the tribute of admiring gratitude, the reward of a nation's love.

The American armies, compared with the embattled legions of the old world, were small in numbers, but the soul of a whole people centred in the bosom of those more than Spartan bands, and vibrated quickly and keenly with every incident that befell them, whether in their feats of valor, or the acuteness of their sufferings. The country itself was one

wide battle-field, in which not merely the life-blood, but the dearest interests, the sustaining hopes, of every individual, were at stake. It was not a war of pride and ambition between monarchs. in which an island or a province might be the award of success; it was a contest for personal liberty and civil rights, coming down in its principles to the very sanctuary of home and the fireside, and determining for every man the measure of responsibility he should hold over his own condition, possessions and happiness. The spectacle was grand and new, and may well be cited as the most glowing page in the annals of progressive man.

The instructive lesson of history, teaching by example, can nowhere be studied with more profit, or with a better promise, than in this revolutionary period of America; and especially by us, who sit under the tree our fathers have planted, enjoy its shade, and are nourished by its fruits. But little is our merit, or gain, that we applaud their deeds, unless we emulate their virtues. Love of country was in them an absorbing principle, an undivided feeling; not of a fragment, a section, but of the whole country. Union was the arch on which they raised the strong tower of a nation's independence. Let the arm be palsied, that would loosen one stone in the basis of this fair structure, or mar its beauty; the tongue mute, that would dishonor their names, by calculating the value of that which they deemed without price.

They have left us an example already inscribed in the world's memory; an example portentous to the aims of tyranny in every land; an example that will console in all ages the drooping aspirations of oppressed humanity. They have left us a written charter as a legacy, and as a guide to our course. But every day convinces us, that a written charter may become powerless. Ignorance may misinterpret it; ambition may assail, and faction destroy its vital parts; and aspiring knavery may at last sing its requiem on the tomb of departed liberty. It is the spirit which lives; in this is our safety and our hope; the spirit of our fathers; and while this dwells deeply in our remembrance, and its flame is cherished, ever burning, ever pure, on the altar of our hearts; while it incites us to think as they have thought, and do as they have done, the honor and the praise will be ours, to have preserved unimpaired the rich inheritance which they so nobly achieved.