disorganizing edict of its convention: bid its members to reassemble and promulgate the decided expressions of your will to remain in the path which alone can conduct you to safety, prosperity, and honor: tell them that, compared to disunion, all other evils are light, because that brings with it an accumulation of all: declare that you will never take the field unless the star-spangled banner of your country shall float over you: that you will not be stigmatized when dead, and dishonored and scorned while you live, as the authors of the first attack on the constitution of your country! 10. Its destroyers you cannot be. You may disturb its peace you may interrupt the course of its prosperity: you may cloud its reputation for stability, but its tranquillity will be restored, its prosperity will return, and the stain upon its national character will be transferred and remain an eternal blot on the memory of those who caused the disorder. 11. May the great Ruler of nations grant, that the signal blessings, with which He has favored ours, may not, by the madness of party or personal ambition, be disregarded and lost; and may His wise providence bring those who have produced this crisis, to see the folly, before they feel the misery, of civil strife; and inspire a returning veneration for that Union which, if we may dare to penetrate His designs, He has chosen as the only means of attaining the high destinies, to which we may reasonably aspire. XLVI.-ADVICE TO A YOUNG LAWYER. JUDGE STORY. 1. WHENE'ER you speak, remember every cause Nor deal with pompous phrase, nor e'er suppose 2. Loose declamation may deceive the crowd, As nought but empty noise, and weak as vain. 3. Begin with dignity; expound with grace Each ground of reasoning in its time and place; But sum the whole in one deep solemn strain, XLVII.-OUR DUTIES TO THE REPUBLIC. JUDGE STORY. 1. THE Old World has already revealed to us, in its unsealed books, the beginning and end of all its own marvellous struggles in the cause of liberty. lovely Greece, "The land of scholars and the nurse of arms," Greece, where Sister Republics, in fair procession, chanted the praises of liberty and the Gods,-where and what is she? For two thousand years the oppressor has ground her to the earth. Her arts are no more. The last sad relics of her temples are but the barracks of a ruthless soldiery. The fragments of her columns and her palaces are in the dust, yet beautiful in ruins. She fell not when the mighty were upon her. Her sons were united at Thermopyla and Marathon; and the tide of her triumph rolled back upon the Hellespont. She was conquered by her own factions. She fell by the hands of her own People. 2. The man of Macedonia did not the work of destruction. It was already done, by her own corruptions, banishments, and dissensions. Rome, republican Rome, whose eagles glanced in the rising and setting sun,—where and what is she? The eternal city yet remains, proud even in her desolation, noble in her decline, venerable in the majesty of religion, and calm as in the composure of death. The malaria has but travelled in the paths worn by her destroyers. More than eighteen centuries have mourned over the loss of her empire. A mortal disease was upon her vitals before Cæsar had crossed the Rubicon; and Brutus did not restore her health by the deep probings of the Senate-chamber. The Goths, and Vandals, and Huns, the swarms of the North, completed only what was already begun at home. Romans betrayed Rome. The Legions were bought and sold; but the People offered the tribute money. 3. 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 to 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 prod ucts, 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 have themselves created? 4. 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 lifeblood 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 onward to the South, has opened to Greece the lessons of her better days. Can it be that America, under such circumstances, can betray herself? Can it be that she is to be added to the catalogue of Republics, the inscription upon whose ruins is THEY WERE, BUT THEY ARE NOT? Forbid it, my countrymen! Forbid it, Heaven! XLVIII.-LOVE OF COUNTRY AND HOME. JAMES MONTGOMERY. 1. THERE is a land, of every land the pride, 2. On Greenland's rocks, o'er rude Kamschatka's plains, When the wild hunter takes his lonely way, His cavern-shelter, and his cottage-home. 3. O'er China's garden-fields and peopled floods, Round Andes' heights, where Winter, from his throne By the gay borders of Bermuda's isles, 4. On Carmel's crest; by Jordan's reverend stream, XLIX. THE ISLE OF LONG AGO. 1. O, A WONDERFUL stream is the river Time, B. F. TAYLOR. |