LAFAYETTE'S VISIT TO AMERICA.-S. S. PRENTISS.

IN 1824, on Sunday, a single ship furled her snowy sails in the harbor of New York. Scarcely had her prow touched the shore, when a murmur was heard among the multitude, which gradually deepened into a mighty shout, and that shout was a shout of joy. Again and again were the heavens rent with the inspiring sound. Nor did it cease; for the loud strain was carried from city to city, and from state to state, till not a tongue was silent throughout this wide republic, from the lisping infant to the tremulous old man. All were united in one wild shout of gratulation. The voices of more than ten millions of freemen gushed up towards the sky, and broke the stillness of its silent depths. But one note and but one tone went to form this acclamation. Up in those pure regions clearly and sweetly did it sound-" Honor to Lafayette! Welcome to the nation's guest!" It was Lafayette, the war-worn veteran, whose arrival upon our shores had caused this wide-spread, this universal joy. He came among us to behold the independence and the freedom which his young arm had so well assisted in achieving; and never before did eye behold, or heart of man conceive, such homage paid to virtue.

His whole stay amongst us was a continued triumph. Every day's march was an ovation. The United States became for months one great festive hall. People forgot the usual occupations of life, and crowded to behold the benefactor of mankind. The iron-hearted, gray-haired veterans of the revolution thronged around him, to touch his hand, to behold his face, and to call down Heaven's benison upon their old companion in arms. Lisping infancy and garrulous age, beauty, talents, wealth, and power, all for a while forsook their usual pursuits, and united to pay a willing tribute of gratitude and welcome to the nation's guest. The name of Lafayette was upon every lip, and wherever was his name, there too was an invocation for blessings on his head. What were the triumphs of the classic ages, compared with this unbought love and homage of a mighty people? Take them in Rome's best days, when the invincible generals of the

Eternal City returned from their foreign conquests with captive. kings bound to their chariot wheels, and the spoils of nations in their train-followed by their stern and bearded warriors, and surrounded by the interminable multitudes of the seven-hilled city shouting a fierce welcome home--what was such a triumph, compared with that of Lafayette?

Not a single city, but a whole nation rising as one man, and greeting him with an affectionate embrace. One single day of such spontaneous homage were worth whole years of courtly adulation; one hour might well reward a man for a whole life of danger and of toil. Then, too, the joy with which he must have viewed the prosperity of the people for whom he had so heroically struggled to behold the nation which he had left a little child now grown up in the full proportions of lusty manhood-to see the tender sapling, which he had left with hardly shade enough to cover its own roots, now waxing into the sturdy and unwedgeable oak, beneath whose grateful umbrage the oppressed of all nations find shelter and protection. That oak still grows on in its majestic strength, and wider and wider still extend its mighty branches. But the hand that watered and nourished it while yet a tender plant is now cold; the heart that watched with strong affection its early growth has ceased to beat.

IMPRESSMENT OF AMERICAN SAILORS.-CLAY.

IF Great Britain desires a mark, by which she can know her own subjects, let her give them an ear-mark. The colors that float from the mast-head should be the credentials of our seamen. There is no safety to us, and the gentlemen have shown it, but in the rule that all who sail under the flag (not being enemies), are protected by the flag. It is impossible that this country should ever abandon the gallant tars, who have won for us such splendid trophies. Let me suppose that the Genius of Columbia should visit one of them in his oppressor's prison, and attempt to reconcile him to his forlorn and wretched condition. She

would say to him, in the language of gentlemen on the other side: "Great Britain intends you no harm; she did not mean to impress you, but one of her own subjects; having taken you by mistake, I will remonstrate, and try to prevail upon her, by peaceable means, to release you, but I cannot, my son, fight for you." If he did not consider this mere mockery, the poor tar would address her judgment and say, "You owe me, my country, protection; I owe you, in return, obedience. I am no British subject, I am a native of old Massachusetts, where live my aged father, my wife, my children. I have faithfully discharged my duty. Will you refuse to do yours?" Appealing to her passions, he would continue: "I lost this eye in fighting under Truxtun, with the Insurgente; I got this scar before Tripoli; I broke this leg on board the Constitution, when the Guerriere struck." If she remained still unmoved, he would break out, in the accents of mingled distress and despair :

"Hard, hard is my fate! once I freedom enjoyed,

Was as happy as happy could be!

Oh! how hard is my fate, how galling these chains !"

I will not imagine the dreadful catastrophe to which he would be driven by an abandonment of him to his oppressor. It will not be, it cannot be, that his country will refuse him protection.

TOLERANT CHISTIANITY THE LAW OF THE LAND. WEBSTER.

GENERAL principles and public policy are sometimes established by constitutional provisions, sometimes by legislative enactments, sometimes by judicial decisions, and sometimes by general consent. But how, or when it may be established, there is nothing that we look for with more certainty than this general principle, that Christianity is part of the law of the land. This was the case among the Puritans of England, the Episcopalians of the Southern States, the Pennsylvania Quakers, the Baptists, the mass of the followers of Whitfield and Wesley,

and the Presbyterians-all-all brought and all adopted this great truth-and all have sustained it. And where there is any religious sentiment amongst men at all, this sentiment incorporates itself with the law. Everything declares it! The massive Cathedral of the Catholic; the Episcopalian Church, with its lofty spire pointing heavenward; the plain temple of the Quaker; the log-church of the hardy pioneer of the wilderness; the mementos and memorials around and about us-the graveyards their tombstones and epitaphs-their silent vaults --their mouldering contents-all attest it. The dead prove as well as the living! The generation that is gone before speak to it, and pronounce it from the tomb! We feel it! All, all proclaim that Christianity-general, tolerant ChristianityChristianity independent of sects and parties-that Christianity to which the sword and the faggot are unknown-general, tolerant Christianity, is the law of the land!

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THE TRUE SECRET OF ORATORY.-WEBSTER.

WHEN public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great interests are at stake and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable in speech, further than it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness are the qualities which produce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire after it,—they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied contrivances of speech, shock and dis

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gust men when their own lives, aad the fate of their wives, their children, and their country hang on the decision of the hour. Then, words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then, patriotism is eloquent; then, self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic he high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward to his object,this, this is eloquence; or rather it is something greater and higher than all eloquence,—it is action, noble, sublime, godlike action!

THE SOPHISTRY OF INFIDELS.-HALL.

THE infidels of the present day are the first sophists who have presumed to innovate in the very substance of morals. The disputes on moral questions hitherto agitated among philosophers have respected the grounds of duty, not the nature of duty itself; or they have been merely metaphysical, and related to the history of moral sentiments in the mind, the sources and principles from which they were most easily deduced; they never turned on the quality of those dispositions and actions which were to be denominated virtuous. In the firm persuasion that the love and fear of the Supreme Being, the sacred observation of promises and oaths, reverence to magistrates, obedience to parents, gratitude to benefactors, conjugal fidelity, and parental tenderness were primary virtues, and the chief support of every commonwealth, they were unanimous. The curse denounced upon such as remove ancient landmarks, upon those who call good evil, and evil good, put light for darkness, and darkness for light, who employ their faculties to subvert the eternal distinctions of right and wrong, and thus to poison the streams of virtue at their source, falls with accumulated weight on the advocates of modern infidelity, and on them alone.