Sacramento in the dialect of State Sovereignty, tell him that he had better smother his breath in the muddiest of its waters.

"Our Union is river, lake, ocean, and sky;

Man breaks not the medal when God cuts the die."

The Constitution of the United States is stereotyped in granite ranges and river grooves. God has cut into the die the branches of the Chesapeake, the windings of the Delaware, the Potomac, and the Shenandoah, the trendings of the Alleghanies, and the mighty armlets of the Mississippi, that State lines and customs of latitude shall be overruled. It is as if the one word "America," and the constructive motto, E Pluribus Unum, "from many, one," were stamped in letters for a telescope to discern at the distance of the moon, on the whole land, from the Rocky Mountains to the Hudson.

THOMAS STARR KING.

7. INDIVIDUAL PURITY THE HOPE OF THE STATE.

IF there be on earth one nation more than another whose institutions must draw their life-blood from the individual purity of its citizens, that nation is our own. In our country, where almost every man, however humble, bears to the omnipotent ballot-box his full portion of the sovereignty, where at regular periods the ministers of authority who went forth to rule, return, to be ruled, and lay down their dignities at the feet of the monarch-multitude, where, in short, public sentiment is the absolute lever that moves the political world, the purity of the people is the rock of political safety.

We may boast, if we please, of our exalted privileges, and fondly imagine that they will be eternal; but whenever those vices shall abound which undeniably tend to debasement, steeping the poor and ignorant still lower in poverty and ignorance, and thereby destroying that wholesome mental equality which can alone sustain a self-ruling people, it will be found, by woful experience, that our happy system of government, the best ever designed for the intelligent and good, is the very worst to be intrusted to the degraded and the vicious. The great majority will then become, indeed, a many-headed monster, to be tamed and led at will. The tremendous power of suffrage, like the strength of the eyeless Nazarine, so far from being their protection, will but serve to pull down upon their heads the temple their ancestors reared for them.

Demagogues will find it an easy task to delude those who have deluded themselves; and the freedom of the people will finally be buried in the grave of their virtues. National greatness may survive. Splendid talents and brilliant victories may fling their delusive lustre abroad. These can illumine the darkness that hangs around the throne of the despot; but their light will be like the baleful flame that hovers over decaying humanity, and tells of the corruption that festers beneath. The immortal spirit will have gone; and along our shores, and among our hills, hallowed by the uncoffined bones of the patriot, even there, in the ears of their degenerate descendants, shall ring the knell of departed Liberty.

CHARLES SPRAGUE.

SINCERITY AND TRUTH.

SINCERITY and pure truth in every age

still

pass current.

MONTAIGNE.

8. CHRISTIANITY AS A POLITICAL

FORCE.

THE influence of Christianity upon the political condition of mankind, though silent and almost imperceptible, has been one of the most powerful instruments of its amelioration. The principles and rules of practical conduct which it prescribes; the doctrine of the natural equality of men, with a common origin, a common responsibility, and a common fate; the lessons of humility, gentleness, and forbearance which it teaches, are as much at war with political as they are with all moral injustice, oppression, and wrong.

During century after century, excepting for brief intervals, the world too often saw the system marred by the fiercest intolerance and the grossest deprivation. It has been made the confederate of monarchs in carrying out schemes of oppression and fraud. Under its banner armed multitudes have been banded together, and led on by martial prelate to wars of desolation and revenge. Perpetrators of the blackest crimes have purchased immunity from punishment.

But nearly two thousand years have passed away, and no trace is left of the millions who, under the influence of bad passions, have dishonored its holy precepts, or of the far smaller number who, in seasons of general deprivation, have drunk its current of living water on the solitary mountain, or in the living rock. Its simple maxims, outliving them all, are silently working out a greater revolution than any which the world has yet seen; and long as the period may seem since its doctrines were first announced, it is almost imperceptible when regarded as one of the divisions of that time which is of endless duration.

To use the language of an eloquent and philosophical writer, "The movements of Providence are not restricted to narrow bounds. It is not anxious, to-day, to deduce the consequences of the premises it laid down yesterday. It may defer this for ages, till the fulness of time has come. Its logic will not be less conclusive for reasoning slowly. Providence moves through time, as the gods of Rome moved through space. It makes a step, and years have rolled away. How long a time, how many circumstances intervened before the regeneration of the moral powers of man by Christianity exercised its great, its legitimate function upon his social condition! Yet who can doubt or mistake its power?

JOHN A. Dix.

9. REVERENCE FOR LAW.

By efforts of patriotism alone can this great and growing Republic be preserved. Happy is that country, and only that country, where the laws are not only just and equal, but supreme and irresistible; where selfish interests and disorderly passions are curbed by an arm to which they must submit.

We look back with horror and affright to the dark and troubled ages, when a gloomy and cruel superstition tyrannized over the peoples of Europe; dreaded alike by kings and people, by governments and individuals; before which the law had no force, justice no respect, and mercy no influence.

The sublime principles of morality, the kind and endearing charities, the true and rational reverence for a bountiful Creator, which are the elements and life of our religion, were trampled down, in the reckless career of ambition,

pride, and lust of power. Nor was it much better when the arm of the warrior and the sharpness of his sword determined every question of right, and held the weak in bondage to the strong; when the revengeful feuds of the great involved in one common ruin themselves and their humblest vassals.

But those disastrous days are gone, never to return. There is no power but law, which is the power of all; and those who administer it are the masters, the ministers of all.

JOSEPH HOPKINSON (Author of "Hail Columbia ").

10. THE IDEAL CITIZEN.

EXTRACT from "Civics."

THE ideal citizen is the man who believes that all men are brothers, and the nation is merely an extension of his family, to be loved, respected, and cared for accordingly. Such a man attends personally to all civic duties with which he deems himself charged. Those which are within his own control he would no more trust to his inferiors than he would leave the education of his children to kitchen servants. The public demands upon his time, thought, and money, come upon him suddenly, and often they find him ill-prepared; but he nerves himself to the inevitable, knowing that in the village, State, and nation, any mistake or neglect upon his part must impose a penalty, sooner or later, upon those whom he loves.

The ideal citizen is "good for all demands" justly made upon him; never shirks work, or assumes that what he neglects to attend to will be made right by his fellowcitizens. He knows how, in civic affairs, to apply the