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4. Cleon sees no charms in Nature,-in a daisy, I: Cleon hears no anthems ringing in the sea and sky.

Nature sings to me forever,-earnest listener I :

State for state, with all attendants, who would change? Not I.

CII. THE PROBLEM FOR THE UNITED STATES.
REV. HENRY A. BOARDMAN.

1. THIS Union cannot expire as the snow melts from the rock, or a star disappears from the firmament. When it falls, the crash will be heard in all lands. Wherever the winds of Heaven go, that will go, bearing sorrow and dismay to millions of stricken hearts; for the subversion of this Government will render the cause of Constitutional Liberty hopeless throughout the world. What Nation can govern itself, if this Nation cannot? What encouragement will any People have to establish liberal institutions for themselves, if ours fail? Providence has laid upon us the responsibility and the honor of solving that problem in which all coming generations of men have a profound interest,—whether the true ends of Government can be secured by a popular representative system.

2. In the munificence of his goodness, He put us in possession of our heritage, by a series of interpositions scarcely less signal than those which conducted the Hebrews to Canaan; and He has, up to this period, withheld from us no immunities or resources which might facilitate an auspicious result. Never before was a People so advantageously situated for working out this great problem in favor of human liberty; and it is important for us to understand that the world so regards it.

3. If, in the frenzy of our base sectional jealousies, we dig the grave of the Union, and thus decide this question in the negative, no tongue may attempt to depict the disappointment and despair which will go along with the announcement, as it spreads through distant lands. It will be America, after fifty years' experience, giving in her

adhesion to the doctrine that man was not made for selfgovernment. It will be Freedom herself proclaiming that Freedom is a chimera: Liberty ringing her own knell, all over the globe.

4. And, when the citizens or subjects of the Governments which are to succeed this Union shall visit Europe, and see, in some land now struggling to cast off its fetters, the lacerated and lifeless form of Liberty laid prostrate under the iron heel of Despotism, let them remember that the blow which destroyed her was inflicted by their own country.

"So the struck Eagle, stretched upon the plain,
No more through rolling clouds to soar again,
Viewed his own feather on the fatal dart,
And winged the shaft that quivered in his heart.
Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel
He nursed the pinion which impelled the steel;
While the same plumage that had warmed his nest
Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast."

CIII. THE AMERICAN EXPERIMENT OF SELF-GOVERNMENT. EDWARD EVERETT.

1. WE are summoned to new energy and zeal by the high nature of the experiment we are appointed in Providence to make, and the grandeur of the theatre on which it is to be performed. At a moment of deep and general agitation in the Old World, it pleased Heaven to open this last refuge of humanity. The attempt has begun and is going on, far from foreign corruption, on the broadest scale, and under the most benignant prospects; and it certainly rests with us to solve the great problem in human society, -to settle, and that forever, the momentous question,whether mankind can be trusted with a purely popular system of Government?

2. One might almost think, without extravagance, that the departed wise and good, of all places and times, are looking down from their happy seats to witness what shall

now be done by us- —that they who lavished their treasures and their blood of old,-who spake and wrote, who labored, fought and perished, in the one great cause of Freedom and Truth,—are now hanging, from their orbs on high, over the last solemn experiment of humanity.

3. As I have wandered over the spots once the scene of their labors, and mused among the prostrate columns of their senate-houses and forums, I have seemed almost to hear a voice from the tombs of departed ages, from the sepulchres of the Nations which died before the sight. They exhort us, they adjure us, to be faithful to our trust. They implore us, by the long trials of struggling humanity: by the blessed memory of the departed: by the dear faith which has been plighted by pure hands to the holy cause of truth and man: by the awful secrets of the prison-house, where the sons of freedom have been immured: by the noble heads which have been brought to the block: by the wrecks of time, by the eloquent ruins of Nations, they conjure us not to quench the light which is rising on the world. Greece cries to us by the convulsed lips of her poisoned, dying Demosthenes; and Rome pleads with us in the mute persuasion of her mangled Tully.

CIV. THE SHIP OF STATE.

REV. WM. P. LUNT.

1. BREAK up the Union of these States, because there are acknowledged evils in our system? Is it so easy a matter, then, to make everything in the actual world conform exactly to the ideal pattern we have conceived, in our minds, of absolute right? Suppose the fatal blow were struck, and the bonds which fasten together these States were severed, would the evils and mischiefs that would be experienced by those who are actually members of this vast Republican Community be all that would ensue? Certainly not. We are connected with the several Nations

and Races of the world as no other People has ever been connected.

ed.

2. We have opened our doors, and invited emigration to our soil from all lands. Our invitation has been acceptThousands have come at our bidding. Thousands more are on the way. Other thousands still are standing a-tiptoe on the shores of the Old World, eager to find a passage to the land where bread may be had for labor, and where man is treated as man. In our political family almost all Nations are represented. The several varieties

of the race are here subjected to a social fusion, out of which Providence designs to form a new man."

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3. We are in this way teaching the world a great lesson, -namely, that men of different languages, habits, manners and creeds, can live together, and vote together, and, if not pray and worship together, yet in near vicinity, and do all in peace, and be, for certain purposes at least, one People. And is not this lesson of some value to the world, especially if we can teach it not by theory merely, but through a successful example? Has not this lesson, thus conveyed, some connection with the world's progress towards that far-off period to which the human mind looks for the fulfilment of its vision of a perfect social state? It may safely be asserted that this Union could not be dissolved without disarranging and convulsing every part of the globe.

4. Not in the indulgence of a vain confidence did our fathers build the Ship of State, and launch it upon the waters. We will exclaim, in the noble words of one of our poets:

'Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!

Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,

Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

We know what Master laid thy keel,

What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,

What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,—
"T is of the wave and not the rock:
"T is but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by the gale!
In spite of rock and tempest roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!

Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee.
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o'er our fears,

Are all with thee,-
-are all with thee!"

CV.-IN THE MINES.

1. LEAVE the sluice and "tom " untended, Shadows darken on the river :

In the cañon day is ended,

Far above the red rays quiver:

Lay aside the bar and spade,

Let the pick-axe cease from drifting,
See how much the claim has paid

Where the gold dust has been sifting.

2. Tell no tales of wizard charm

In the myths of ages olden,
When the sorcerer's potent arm
Turned all earthly things to golden:

Pick and spade are magic rods

In the brawny hands of miners:
Mightier than the ancient gods,
Laboring men are true diviners.

3. Gather round the blazing fire

In the deepening darkness gleaming,
While the red tongues leaping, higher,
Seem like banners upward streaming:
Stretched around the fiery coals,

Lulled into luxurious dreaming,
Half-a-dozen hungry souls

Watch the iron kettle steaming.

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