that ambition is worthy only of "arch-angel ruined." To make one conqueror's reputation, at least one hundred thousand bounding, joyous, sentient beings must be transformed into writhing and hideous fragments, must perish untimely by deaths of agony and horror, leaving half a million widows and orphans to bewail their loss in anguish and destitution. This is too mighty, too awful a price to be paid for the fame of any hero, from Nimrod to Wellington. True fame demands no such sacrifices of others; it requires us to be reckless of the outward well-being of but one. It exacts no hecatomb of victims for each triumphal pile; for the more who covet and seek it, the easier and more abundant is the success of each and all. With souls of the celestial temper, each human life might be a triumph, which angels would lean from the skies delighted to witness and admire. Ex. CCXIV.-AMERICA. C. M. CLAY. I MAY be an enthusiast; but I can not but give utterance to the conceptions of my own mind. When I look upon the special developments of European civilization; when I contemplate the growing freedom of the cities, and the middle class which had sprung up between the pretenders to divine rule on the one hand, and the abject serf on the other; when I consider the Reformation, and the invention of the press, and see, on the southern shore of the continent, an humble individual, amidst untold difficulties and repeated defeats, pursuing the mysterious suggestions which the mighty deep poured unceasingly upon his troubled spirit, till, at last, with great and irrepressible energy of soul, he discovered that there lay in the far western ocean a continent open for the infusion of those elementary principles of liberty which were dwarfed in European soil,-I have conceived that the hand of destiny was there! When I saw the immigration of the Pilgrims from the chalky shores of England, in the night fleeing from their native home, so dramatically and ably pictured by Mr. Webster in his celebrated oration,-when father, mother, brother, wife, sister, lover, were all lost, by those melancholy wanderers "stifling," in the language of one who is immortal in the conception, "the mighty hunger of the heart,” and land ing amidst cold, and poverty, and death, upon the rude rocks of Plymouth,-I have ventured to think the will of Deity was there! When I have remembered the Revolution of '76;—the seven years' war-three millions of men in arms against the most powerful nation in history, and vindicating their independence,-I have thought that their sufferings and death were not in vain! When I have gone and seen the forsaken hearth-stone,-looked in upon the battle-field, upon the dying and the dead,-heard the agonizing cry, "Water, for the sake of God! water!" seeing the dissolution of this being,— pale lips pressing in death the yet loved images of wife, sister, lover, I will not deem all these in vain! I can not regard this great continent, reaching from the Atlantic to the far Pacific, and from the St. John's to the Rio del Norté, a barbarian people of third-rate civilization. Like the Roman who looked back upon the glory of his ancestors, in woe exclaiming, "Great Scipio's ghost complains that we are slow, And Pompey's shade walks unavenged among us," the great dead hover around me ;-Lawrence, "Don't give up the ship!"-Henry, "Give me liberty or give me death!" -Adams, "Survive or perish, I am for the declaration !"Allen, "In the name of the living God, I come!" Come, then, thou Eternal! who dwellest not in temples made with hands, but who, in the city's crowd, or by the far forest stream, revealest thyself to the earnest seeker after the true and right, inspire my heart; give me undying courage to pursue the promptings of my spirit, and, whether I shall be called in the shades of life to look upon as sweet and kind and lovely faces as now, or, shut in by sorrow and night, horrid visions shall gloom upon me in my dying hour-O! MY COUNTRY, MAYEST THOU YET BE FREE. Ex. CCXV.-NORTHERN LABORERS. C. C. NAYLOR. THE gentleman has misconceived the spirit and tendency of northern institutions. He is ignorant of northern character. He has forgotten the history of his country. Preach insurrection to the northern laborers! Who are the north ern laborers? The history of your country is their history. The renown of your country is their renown. The brightness of their doings is emblazoned on its every page. Blot from your annals the deeds and the doings of northern laborers, and the history of your country presents but a universal blank. Who was he that disarmed the thunderer; wrested from his grasp the bolts of Jove; calmed the troubled ocean; became the central sun of the philosophical system of his age, shedding his brightness and effulgence on the whole civilized world; whom the great and mighty of the earth delighted to honor; who participated in the achievement of your independence; prominently assisted in molding your free institutions, and the beneficial effects of whose wisdom will be felt to the last moment of "recorded time ?" Who, I ask, was he? A northern laborer, a Yankee tallow-chandler's son, a printer's runaway boy! And who, let me ask the honorable gentleman, who was he that, in the days of our Revolution, led forth a northern army, -yes, an army of northern laborers,--and aided the chivalry of South Carolina in their defense against British aggression, drove the spoilers from their firesides, and redeemed her fair fields from foreign invaders? Who was he? A northern laborer, a Rhode Island blacksmith,-the gallant General Greene, who left his hammer and his forge, and went forth conquering and to conquer in the battle for our independence! And will you preach insurrection to men like these? Our country is full of the achievements of northern laborers! Where are Concord, and Lexington, and Princeton, and Trenton, and Saratoga, and Bunker Hill, but in the north? And what has shed an imperishable renown on the never-dying names of those hallowed spots, but the blood and the struggles, the high daring and patriotism, and sublime courage, of northern laborers? The whole north is an everlasting monument of the freedom, virtue, intelligence, and indomitable independence of northern laborers! Go, preach insurrection to men like these! The fortitude of the men of the north, under intense suffering for liberty's sake, has been almost godlike! History has so recorded it. Who comprised that gallant army, that, without food, without pay, shelterless, shoeless, penniless, and almost naked, in that dreadful winter, the midnight of our Revolution,-whose wanderings could be traced by their blood-tracks in the snow, whom no arts could seduce, no ap peal lead astray, no sufferings disaffect, but who, true to their country and its holy cause, continued to fight the good fight of liberty, until it finally triumphed? Who were these men? Why, northern laborers! Ex. CCXVI.—THE BATTLE-FIELD. ONCE this soft turf, this rivulet's sands, Ah! never shall the land forget How gushed the life-blood of her brave,- Now all is calm, and fresh, and still; And bell of wandering kine, are heard. No solemn host goes trailing by BRYANT. The black-mouthed gun and staggering wain; Men start not at the battle-cry ;— O, be it never heard again! Soon rested those who fought, but thou, A friendless warfare! lingering long Yet nerve thy spirit to the proof, The timid good may stand aloof, The sage may frown,-yet faint thou not! Nor heed the shaft too surely cast, Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again; Yea, though thou die upon the dust, When those who helped thee flee in fear,— Like those who fell in battle here. Another hand thy sword shall wield, Ex. CCXVII-EARLY RISIN G. "Early to bed, and early to rise, Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” DOW, JR. MY HEARERS: The text I have chosen for my present discourse is most beautifully homely; but it contains the keen kernels of truth, without husk or chaff. All the brute creation close their peepers at the setting of the sun, save such as see best in the dark; and whose deeds are evil: why should man be an exception since he is not an owl, nor a bat, that sleeps through the day for the want of properly adapted optics! I see no reason, under the planet of Jupiter, why you should not go to bed as soon as evening empties her soot-bag upon the earth, and get out of it at the first blush of morn. Even ten hours sleep, would do you no harm, after you got used to it; and I know that most of you are able to bear almost twice the quantity without a grunt. My dear friends, look at that man-the early riser. The rose of health blooms upon his cheek; his eye sparkles with the glow and fire of youth; his step is as elastic as though his legs were set with wire spiral-springs, and his body composed of India rubber. He is strong, too; aye, stronger than last |