our water-courses, and behold with his own eyes our immense and unsurpassed resources. There is every indication that it will be the glory of the Forty-third Congress to initiate a system for the improvement of our great rivers, that will meet that crying want of the country, cheap and safe transportation. And considering all the wondrous advantages vouchsafed to us as a people, we are, with grateful hearts, ready to exclaim: Great God, we thank thee for this home This bounteous birthland of the free; Extract from Speech before Alumni Association, University of Indiana, 1871, on the "Progress of Our Country." NOR in the midst of this material development - the rush after wealth by our people — have they neglected wholly a taste for the fine arts, which is the highest expression of the human mind, as it is filled and moved by the love of all that is beautiful in the widest sense of the term, and which invariably forms the crowning chaplet of the most advanced civilization. We have every reason to believe that it will fulfil its proper mission upon our continent, in the production of monuments that will rival in excellence all that human genius has been able to accomplish elsewhere. Our brief past sufficiently indicates this. In historical painting, the works of West, Trumbull, Copley, and Alston rank with the most successful efforts of European artists. In portraiture, Stewart, and lately Elliott, and many others have left us delineations of the "human face divine" that come up to all that can be required in that department. Nor will the productions of our modern landscape-painters suffer in comparison with any that the pencil of Claude or Turner has left to the world. In our own Church we have one of the greatest landscape-painters, whether of the old or the modern His "Heart of the Andes" and "Falls of Niagara " seem literal translations of nature as she appears in all her transcendent beauty and sublimity. They are scarcely pictures, but rather nature herself as seen through the eyes of her most devoted worshipers. We have also our Hogarths and our Wilkies. The graphic outlines of Darley; the humorous and natural productions of Mount, as seen in the " Bargaining for a Horse," or those inimitable pictures "The Jolly Flatboatmen," "The Stump Speaker," and "The County Election," by our great Missouri artist, Bingham, assure us that our social and political characteristics, as daily and annually exhibited, will not be lost in the lapse of time for want of an art record to render them full justice. And in sculpture we can boast such names as Crawford, Rogers, Palmer, Powers, Mills, Stone, McDonald, Ream, Hosmer, and others, whose wonderful productions equally assure us that, in the progress of the age, this branch of the fine arts will neither fail to keep pace with the diffusion of knowledge and education amongst the masses of the people, nor discredit the high standard of culture, refinement, and civilization towards which we are rapidly tending. masters. 66 Not only have our people made rapid strides in art and invention, and added to the improvement of education and to the volume of literature and science, but they have also contributed to the moral worth of mankind, and the advancement of a higher civilization. No people in the world. have ever stood so high in the scale of elevated life as the American people. There is no official position that the native-born citizen is not eligible to fill, and no opportunity that is not afforded to the adopted citizen. The Government knows no distinction of ranks or classes. In obedience to the law the millionaire stands side by side with the husbandman, the craftsman, and the artisan, no distinction being known but that which God has made. Not only are the millions of our people sharing blessings and opportunities never before afforded to any other people upon earth, but, in the greater amplitude of the enlightened and divine sentiment in the race, woman is now being lifted higher in the scale of civilization, higher in the intellectual, social, moral, and civil walks of life than ever before in all the ages of the past. The great statesman and the enlightened reformer have already learned that civilization is measured by the position accorded to woman in nations and society. And if the state would be elevated, if society would advance, then woman must take rank side by side with man-he her brother, and she his sister-he the master, she the mistress-the one complementing the other in personality and in duty throughout all the intricate. relations of life. The wise father will accord to his daughter all the general advantages of education afforded to his son. The true government will open to her all the avenues of learning, and labor, and industry that she is fitted to fill, and that will promote her respectability and happiness; and will permit her to go forth into the great battle of life, free and untrammeled, to do whatever her genius and energy can accomplish, consistently with the purity and dignity of her sex. Letter to the Mississippi River Improvement Convention, held in St. Louis, October 26, 27, and 28, 1881. [From the Columbia (Mo.) Statesman, Nov. 4, 1881.] COLUMBIA, Mo., Oct. 24, 1881. TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER IMPROVEMENT CONVENTION, ST. LOUIS. Dear Sir: I have been appointed by Governor Crittenden a delegate-atlarge to the Convention over which you preside, but I may not be able to attend on account of the delicacy of my health, and therefore I beg leave to present through you to the Convention this communication. Forty-five years ago I was a delegate from Boone County to a convention held in the City of St. Louis, on the 20th day of April, 1836, for the promotion of internal improvements within the State of Missouri. This was the first convention ever held in the State for this object, and, so far as I have knowledge, the first convention of the kind ever held west of the Mississippi River. The following were the delegates from the County of Boone: R. W. Morris, William Hunter, John W. Keiser, Dr. James W. Moss, D. M. Hickman, John B. Gordon, James S. Rollins, and Granville Branham ; and of these I am the only survivor. The following gentlemen were the delegates from the County and City of St. Louis Edward Tracy, John O'Fallon, Archibald Gamble, M. Lewis Clark, Henry Walton, Henry Von Phul, William Ayres, J. B. Grant, Samuel Merry, Joseph C. Laveille, Thornton Grimsley, Lewellyn Brown, George K. McGunnegle, and Pierre Chouteau; and of these M. Lewis Clark, now of Louisville, Ky., is the only one living. Of all the members comprising that body, so far as I can ascertain, there are not more than four or five remaining.* At that time the Honorable John F. Darby was Mayor of the city, and aided largely in dispensing its generous hospitality. He lives to a green old age, an historic wonder, abounding with pleasant recollections, observations, and anecdotes of the city from the time it was a small French village to the present day. Since this letter was written, the last of the living delegates from St. Louis, Merriweather Lewis Clark, died at Frankfort, Ky., October 28, 1881, aged 77 years. He was a son of William Clark, who in 1804-5, with Merriweather Lewis, 289 explored the headwaters of the Missouri River, and the Rocky Mountains, and who from 1810 to 1821 was Governor of the Territory of Missouri.- Editor Statesman. Great changes have occurred since the holding of that convention in the City of St. Louis, which contained at that time a population not exceeding 10,000 souls, the State itself having a population of about 250,000. Missouri was at that time a frontier State. The country between the western border of the State and the Rocky Mountains, and which now comprises the Indian Territory, the great States of Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado, was regarded as a sandy and sterile desert. The States of Iowa and Minnesota, and the great section lying west of them, stretching beyond the Rocky Mountains, extending to the mouth of the Columbia River, and embracing Oregon and Washington Territories, were almost wholly uninhabited save by hostile Indians, vast herds of buffaloes, and other wild game that roamed over the plains and through the mountains. It was only now and then that the puff of the steamboat was heard upon our rivers, and the shrill whistle of the locomotive had never yet startled the denizens of the forest in this almost boundless valley. Since that time the empire of Texas has been added as a State of the American Union. New Mexico, Arizona, and California with its 700 miles of coast upon the Pacific Ocean, not to speak of the still remoter Territory of Alaska, have since been added to the domain of the United States. In the proceedings of the convention above referred to, I had the honor to introduce a resolution asking the appointment of a committee to memorialize Congress for a donation of public lands to be appropriated, under the authority of the Legislature of Missouri, to the objects of internal improvement contemplated by the convention. This resolution was unanimously adopted. The Honorable Hamilton R. Gamble, Edward Bates, and myself were appointed on this committee; and so far as I know, or now remember, this was the first memorial ever presented to Congress asking a grant of land to aid in promoting objects of internal improvement in the Mississippi Valley; and allow me to say, with becoming modesty, that I have stuck to this text with unflinching fidelity from that day to this! It would be an interesting and illimitable theme to point out what has been accomplished in this direction in the way of population, development, and progress in the western half of our country during these forty-five years. To do so would far exceed the appropriate limits of a letter like this. Let the imagination of intelligent minds fill in the gap, and be amazed at the wonderful growth and grandeur of our country. So much for reminiscences. Allow me to say, according to my poor view and judging of the future by the past, with the increased intelligence and enterprise of the people, the impulse to public improvements which science has given by the application of steam and electricity in every department of human labor and industry: in the art of navigation, in the building of railroads and telegraph lines, in leveling and tunneling the mountains, in improving and utilizing every species |