NEW songs for new-born days! OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. A.D. 1881. Every step in the history of political liberty is a sally of the human mind into the untried future, and has the interest of genius. Law is not law, if it violates the principles of eternal justice. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this Government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved-I do not expect the house to fall-but I do expect it will cease to be divided. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. A.D. 1858. O ye uncrowned but kingly kings! BERKELEY AIKEN. A.D. 1864. Much has been said, of late, about the necessity of maintaining a proper "nationality" in American Letters; but what this nationality is, or what is to be gained by it, has never been distinctly understood. . . . But of the need of that nationality which defends our own literature, sustains our own men of letters, and depends upon our own resources, there cannot be the shadow of a doubt. LITERATURE OF THE REPUBLIC. PART III. 1835-1860. George Bancroft. BORN in Worcester, Mass., 1800. AMERICAN LIBERTY ENLIGHTENING THE WORLD. [History of the United States of America, from the Discovery of the Continent. The Author's Last Revision. 1882-85.] I NSTITUTIONS may crumble and governments fall, but it is only that they may renew a better youth. The petals of the flower wither, that fruit may form. The desire of perfection, springing always from moral power, rules even the sword, and escapes unharmed from the field of carnage; giving to battles all that they can have of lustre, and to warriors their only glory; surviving martyrdoms, and safe amid the wreck of states. On the banks of the stream of time, not a monument has been raised to a hero or a nation but tells the tale and renews the hope of improvement. Each people that has disappeared, every institution that has passed away, has been a step in the ladder by which humanity ascends toward the perfecting of its nature. And how has it always added to the just judgments of the past the discoveries of successive ages! The generations that hand the torch of truth along the lines of time themselves become dust and ashes; but the light still increases its ever burning flame, and is fed more and more 3 plenteously with consecrated oil. How is progress manifest in religion, from the gross symbols of Egypt and the East to the philosophy of Greece, from the fetichism of the savage to the polytheism of Rome; from the multiplied forms of ancient superstition and the lovely representations of deities in stone, to the clear conception of the unity of divine power and the idea of the presence of God in the soul! How has mind, in its inquisitive freedom, taught man to employ the elements as mechanics do their tools, and already, in part at least, made him the master and possessor of nature! How has knowledge not only been. increased, but diffused! How has morality been constantly tending to subdue the supremacy of brute force, to refine passion, to enrich literature with the varied forms of pure thought and delicate feeling! How has social life been improved, and every variety of toil in the field and in the workshop been ennobled by the willing industry of free men! How has humanity been growing conscious of its unity and watchful of its own development, till public opinion, bursting the bonds of nationality, knows itself to be the combined intelligence of the world, in its movement on the tide of thought from generation to generation ! From the intelligence that had been slowly ripening in the mind of cultivated humanity sprung the American revolution, which organized social union through the establishment of personal freedom, and emancipated the nations from all authority not flowing from themselves. In the old civilization of Europe, power moved from a superior to inferiors and subjects; a priesthood transmitted a common faith, from which it would tolerate no dissent; the government esteemed itself, by compact or by divine right, invested with sovereignty, dispensing protection and demanding allegiance. But a new principle, far mightier than the church and state of the middle ages, was forcing itself into activity. Successions of increasing culture had conquered for mankind the idea of the freedom of the individual; the creative, but long latent, energy that resides in the collective reason was next to be revealed. From this the state was to emerge, like the fabled spirit of beauty and love out of the foam of the ever troubled ocean. It was the office of America to substitute for hereditary privilege the natural equality of man; for the irresponsible authority of a sovereign, a government emanating from the concord of opinion; and, as she moved forward in her high career, the multitudes of every clime gazed toward her example with hopes of untold happiness, and all the nations of the earth learned the way to be renewed. The American revolution, essaying to unfold the principles which organized its events, and bound to keep faith with the ashes of its heroes, was most radical in its character, yet achieved with such benign |