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name of liberty a by-word? And can you regret that we should exert ourselves to the utmost to redeem our glorious land and her institutions from just reproach, and, by illustrious acts of mercy and justice, place ourselves once more in the van of Human Progress and Advancement?

Finally, we ask all true friends of liberty, of impartial, universal liberty, to be firm and steadfast. The little handful of voters who, in 1840, wearied of compromising expediency and despairing of anti-slavery action by pro-slavery parties, raised anew the standard of the Declaration, and manfully resolved to vote right then and vote for freedom, has already swelled to a GREAT PARTY, strong enough, numerically, to decide the issue of any national contest, and stronger far in the power of its pure and elevating principles. And if these principles be sound, which we doubt not, and if the question of slavery be, as we verily believe it is, the GREAT QUESTION of our day and nation, it is a libel upon the intelligence, the patriotism, and the virtue of the American people to say that there is no hope that a majority will not array themselves under our banner. Let it not be said that we are factious or impracticable. We adhere to our views because we believe them to be sound, practicable, and vitally important. We have already said that we are ready to prove our devotion to our principles by coöperation with either of the other two great American Parties which will openly and honestly, in State and National Conventions, avow our doctrines and adopt our measures, until slavery shall be overthrown. We do not, indeed, expect any such adoption and avowal by either of those parties, because we are well aware that they fear more, at present, from the loss of slaveholding support than from the loss of anti-slavery coöperation. But we can be satisfied with nothing less, for we will compromise no longer, and therefore must of necessity maintain our separate organization, as the true Democratic Party of the country, and trust our cause to the patronage of the people and the blessing of God!

Carry then, friends of freedom and free labor, your principles to the ballot box. Let no difficulties discourage, no dangers daunt, no delays dishearten you. Your solemn vow that slavery must perish is registered in heaven. Renew that vow! Think of the martyrs of truth and freedom; think of the millions of the enslaved; think of the other millions. of the oppressed and degraded free; and renew that vow! Be not tempted from the path of political duty. Vote for no man, act with no party politically connected with the supporters of slavery. Vote for no man, act with no party unwilling to adopt and carry out the principles which we have set forth in this address. To compromise for any partial or temporary advantage is ruin to our cause. To act with any party, or

to vote for the candidates of any party, which recognizes the friends and supporters of slavery as members in full standing, because in particular places or under particular circumstances it may make large professions of anti-slavery zeal, is to commit political suicide. Unswerving fidelity to our principles; unalterable determination to carry those principles to the ballot-box at every election; inflexible and unanimous support of those, and only those, who are true to those principles, are the conditions of our ultimate triumph. Let these conditions be fulfilled, and our triumph is certain. The indications of its coming multiply on every hand. The clarion trump of freedom breaks already the gloomy silence of slavery in Kentucky, and its echoes are heard throughout the land. A spirit of inquiry and of action is awakened everywhere. The assemblage of the convention whose voice we utter is itself an auspicious omen. Gathered from the North and the South, and the East and West, we here unite our counsels and consolidate our action. We are resolved to go forward knowing that our cause is just, trusting in God. We ask you to go forward with us, invoking His blessing who sent His Son to redeem mankind. With Him are the issues of all events. He can and He will disappoint all the devices of oppression. He can, and we trust He will, make our instrumentality efficient for the redemption of our land from slavery, and for the fulfilment of our fathers' pledge in behalf of freedom, before Him and before the world.

Samuel Francis Smith.

BORN in Boston, Mass., 1808.

AMERICA.

[Composed in 1832, and first Sung in public at the Park Street Church, Boston, on July Fourth of that year.]

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I love thy rocks and rills,
Thy woods and templed hills;
My heart with rapture thrills
Like that above.

Let music swell the breeze,
And ring from all the trees,
Sweet freedom's song;

Let mortal tongues awake,
Let all that breathe partake,
Let rocks their silence break,
The sound prolong.

Our fathers' God, to thee,
Author of liberty,

To thee I sing;

Long may our land be bright
With freedom's holy light;
Protect us by thy might,
Great God our King.

George Stillman Hillard.

BORN in Machias, Me., 1808. DIED in Boston, Mass., 1879.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF VENICE.

[Six Months in Italy. 1853.]

No city exerts so strong a spell over the imagination as Venice. The

book of Rome has many more pages, but no one chapter like that of Venice. The history of Venice is full of dramatic interest, and poets of all nations have found it a fruitful storehouse of plot, incident, and character. Without doubt, it had its fair proportion of prosaic tranquillity and its monotonous tracts of uneventful happiness, but these are unheeded in the splendor of its picturesque and salient points; its conquests, its revolutions, its conspiracies, and its judicial murders. Shakespeare makes us familiar with its name, at an age when names are but sounds, and the forms with which he has peopled it are the first ever to greet the mind's eye when we approach it. Shylock stills darkens the Rialto with his frown; the lordly form of Othello yet stalks across the piazza of St. Mark's, and every veil that flutters in the breeze shrouds the roguish black eyes of Jessica. Pictures and engravings introduce us to its peculiar architecture, and we come into its presence with an image in our thoughts, and are not unprepared for what we see. Venice never

takes us by surprise. We are always forewarned and forearmed, and thus its unique character never has quite a fair chance with us.

The whole scene, under the brilliant light of a noonday sun, is full of movement and color. As soon as the steamer has dropped anchor at the entrance of the Grand Canal, a little fleet of gondolas crowds round her, and we are charmed to find them looking exactly as we expected. As they receive the passengers, they dart off in the most easy and graceful manner possible, their steel prows flashing in the sun, and their keels. tracing a line of pearl upon the bright green water. In time our own turn comes, and, as we are borne along the Grand Canal, the attention is every moment attracted by the splendid show on either side. The long wave which the prow turns over is dashed against a wall of marblefronted palaces, the names of which, carelessly mentioned by the gondolier, awaken trails of golden memories in the mind. The breadth of the "silent highway" allows the sun to lie in broad, rich masses upon this imposing gallery of architectural pictures, and to produce those happy accidents of light and shade which the artist loves. High in the air arise the domes and spires of the numerous churches with which wealth and devotion have crowded the islands of Venice, the bells of which are ever filling the air with their streams of undulating music. Everything is dreamlike and unsubstantia!-a fairy pageant floating upon the waters; a city of cloudland rather than of the earth. The gondola itself, in which the traveller reclines, contributes to weave the spell in which his thoughts and senses are involved. No form of locomotion ever gratified so well the two warring tendencies of the human soul, the love of movement and the love of repose. There is no noise, no fatigue, no danger, no dust. It is managed with such skill and so little apparent effort, that it really seems to glide and turn by its own will.

So far, the picture is all in light. But it is not without its shadows. A nearer view of the palaces which seem so beautiful in the distance reveals the decaying fortunes of their possessors. An indescribable but unmistakable air of careless neglect and unresisted dilapidation is everywhere too plainly visible. Indeed, many of these stately structures are occupied as hotels and lodging-houses; their spacious apartments cut up by shabby wooden partitions, and pervaded by an aspect of tawdry finery and mouldering splendor. On diverging from the Grand Canal, to the right or left, a change comes over the spirit of the scene. Instead of a broad highway of liquid chrysoprase, we find ourselves upon a narrow and muddy ditch. The sun is excluded by the height and proximity of the houses, and for the same reason there are no points of view for anything to be seen to advantage. All that meets the eye speaks of discomfort, dampness, and poverty. Slime, sea-weed, and mould cling to the walls. Water in small quantities is nothing if it be not pure. A foun

tain in the garden is beautiful, but the same quantity of water lying stagnant in one's cellar is an eyesore. The wave that dashes against a ship is glorious, but when it creeps into the hold through a defective seam it is a noisome intruder. Venice wants the gilding presence of sunshine. In a long rain it must be the most dispiriting of places. So when we leave the sun we part with our best friend. The black, cold shadow under which the gondola creeps falls also upon the spirit. The ideal Venice—the superb bridegroom of the sea, clasped by the jewelled arms of his enamored bride-disappears, and we have only a warmer Amsterdam. The reflection, too, forces itself upon us that Venice at all times was a city for the few and not for the many. Its nobles were lodged more royally than kings, but the common people must always have been thrust into holes, close in summer, cold in winter, and damp at all times.

In external Venice there are but three things to be seen; the sea, the sky, and architecture. There are no gardens, no wide spaces over which the eye may range; no landscapes, properly so called. There are no slopes, no gradations, no blending of curved lines. What is not horizontal is perpendicular: where the plane of the sea ends, the plumb-line of the facade begins. It is only by climbing some tower or spire, and looking down, that we can see things massed and grouped together. The streets are such passages as would naturally be found in a city where there were no vehicles, and where every foot of earth is precious. They are like lateral shafts cut through a quarry of stone. In walking through them, the houses on either hand can be touched. The mode of life on the first

floor is easily visible, and many agreeable domestic pictures may be observed by a not too fastidious eye. These streets, intersected by the smaller canals, are joined together by bridges of stone, and frequently expand into small courts, in the middle of which is generally found a well, with a parapet or covering of stone, often curiously carved. Here, at certain seasons of the day, the people of the neighborhood collect together to draw water, gossip, and make love; and here the manners and life which are peculiar to Venice may be studied to advantage. Goethe complains of the dirt which he found in the streets. Time and the Austrians have remedied that defect, and they are now quite clean. But nowhere else have I heard the human voice so loud. Whether this arises from the absence of all other sounds, or whether these high and narrow streets multiply and reverberate every tone, I cannot say, but everybody seems to be putting forth the utmost capacity of his lungs. I recall a sturdy seller of vegetables in Shylock's Rialto-which is not the bridge so called, but a square near it-whose voice was like the voice of three, and who seemed to take as much pleasure in his explosive cries as a boy in beating his first drum.

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