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THE EXAMPLE OF AMERICA.

There, by God's finger graven

Is our eternal creed,

Drawn from the liturgy of heaven,
In Freedom's hour of need.

Escaped from that dread curse
That lowered o'er Ebal's brow,
Threatening with stern and dark reverse
The shrine at which we bow,
Oh! shun with pious awe
Corruption's least approach,
Nor on that sacred fount of law
Let aught profane encroach.

Round Gerizim's fair hill
Where first our Union rose,
In peace and glory clustered still, .
Our growing tribes repose.
There may our children rest,

Till Time himself shall die;
Still with that heavenly presence blest,
Our ARK OF LIBERTY.

Ex. CXXXI.—THE EXAMPLE OF AMERICA.

207

FRANCIS JEFFREY.

How absurd are the sophisms and predictions by which the advocates of existing abuses have, at all times, endeavored to create a jealousy and apprehension of reform! You can not touch the most corrupt and imbecile government without involving society in disorders at once frightful and contemptible, and reducing all things to the level of an insecure, and ignoble, and bloody equality! Such are the reasonings by which we are now to be persuaded that liberty is incompatible with private happiness or national prosperity. To these we need not now answer in words, or by reference to past and questionable examples; but we put them down

* Afterwards Lord Jeffrey; a brilliant British essayist and reviewer.

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at once, and trample them contemptuously to the earth, by a short appeal to the existence and condition of America! What is the country of the universe, I would now ask, in which property is most sacred, or industry most sure of its reward? Where is the authority of law most omnipotent? Where are intelligence and wealth most widely diffused, and most rapidly progressive? Where, but in America ?-in America, who laid the foundation of her Republican Constitution in a violent radical sanguinary Revolution; America, with her fundamental Democracy, made more unmanageable, and apparently more hazardous, by being broken up into ĺ do not know how many confederated and independent Democracies; America, with universal suffrage, and yearly elections, with a free and unlicensed press, without an established Priesthood, an hereditary Nobility or a permanent Executive, with all that is combustible, in short, and pregnant with danger on the hypothesis of Tyranny, and without one of the checks or safeguards by which alone, they contend, the benefits or the very being of society can be maintained!

There is something at once audacious and ridiculous in maintaining such doctrines, in the face of such experience. Nor can anything be founded on the novelty of these institutions, or the pretence that they have not yet been fairly put to their trial. America has gone on prospering under them for forty years, and has exhibited a picture of uninterrupted, rapid, unprecedented advances in wealth, population, intelligence and concord; while all the arbitrary governments of the Old World have been overrun with bankruptcies, conspiracies, rebellions and revolutions; and are at this moment trembling in the consciousness of their insecurity, and vainly endeavoring to repress irrepressible discontents by confede rated violence and terror.

Ex. CXXXII.—THE SHIP OF STATE.

H. W. LONGFELLOW.

SAIL on, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity, with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,

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BUNKER HILL MONUMENT.

Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

We know what Master laid thy keel,

What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope;
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were forged the anchors of thy hope!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,-
"Tis of the wave, and not the rock;
"Tis but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by the gale!
In spite of rock and tempest roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee.
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o'er our fears,
Are all with thee, are all with thee!

209

CXXXIII.-BUNKER HILL MONUMENT.

From an Address delivered at the laying of its corner-stone, June 17, 1825.

DANIEL WEBSTER.

WE come, as Americans, to mark a spot which must ever be dear to us and our posterity. We wish that whosoever in all coming time shall turn his eye hither, may behold that the place is not undistinguished where the first great battle of the Revolution was fought. We wish that this structure may proclaim the magnitude and importance of that event to every class and every age. We wish that infancy may learn the purpose of its erection from maternal lips, and that weary and withered age may behold it and be solaced by the recollections which it suggests. We wish that labor may look up here, and be proud in the midst of its toil. We wish that in those days of disaster which, as they come upon all nations, must be expected to come upon us also, desponding patriotism may turn its eyes hitherward, and be assured that the foundations of our national power still stand strong. We wish that this column, rising toward Heaven among the pointed spires of so many tem

ples dedicated to God, may contribute also to produce, in all minds, a pious feeling of dependence and gratitude. We wish, finally, that the last object on the sight of him who leaves his native shore, and the first to gladden his who revisits it, may be something which shall remind him of the liberty and the glory of his country. Let it rise till it meet the sun in its coming; let the earliest light of the morning gild it, and parting day linger and play on its summit.

We hold still among us some of those who were active agents in the scenes of 1775, and who are now here from every quarter of New England, to visit once more, and under circumstances so affecting, this renowned theatre of their courage and patriotism.

Venerable men! you have come down to us from a former generation. You are now where you stood, fifty years ago this very hour, with your brothers and your neighbors, shoulder to shoulder, in the strife for your country. Behold, how altered! You hear now no roar of hostile cannon, you see no mixed volumes of smoke and flame rising from burning Charlestown. The ground strewed with the dead and the dying; the impetuous charge, the steady and successful repulse; the loud call to repeated assault; the summoning of all that is manly to repeated resistance; a thousand bosoms freely and fearlessly bared in an instant to whatever of terror there may be in war and death;—all these you have witnessed, but you witness them no more. All is peace. The heights of yonder metropolis, its towers and roofs, which you then saw filled with wives and children and countrymen in distress and terror, and looking with unutterable emotions for the issue of the combat, have presented you to-day with the sight of its whole happy population, come out to welcome and greet you with a universal jubilee. All is peace; and God has granted you the sight of your country's happiness ere you slumber in the grave forever. He has allowed you to behold and to partake the reward of your patriotic toils; and he has allowed us, your sons and countrymen, to meet you here, and in the name of the present generation, in the name of your country, in the name of liberty to thank you! May the Father of all mercies smile upon your remaining years, and bless them! And when you shall here have exchanged your embraces; when you shall once more have pressed the hands which have been so often extended to give succor in adversity, or grasped in the exult

ODE FOR THE FOURTH OF JULY.

211

ation of victory; then look abroad into this lovely land which your young valor defended, and mark the happiness with which it is filled; yea, look abroad into the whole earth, and see what a name you have contributed to give to your country, and what a praise you have added to freedom, and then rejoice in the sympathy and gratitude which beam upon your last days from the improved condition of mankind.

Ex. CXXXIV.-ODE FOR THE FOURTH OF JULY.

CHARLES SPRAGUE.

To the sages who spoke, to the heroes who bled,
To the day and the deed, strike the harp-strings of glory!
Let the song of the ransomed remember the dead,
And the tongue of the eloquent hallow the story.
O'er the bones of the bold

Be that story long told,

And on Fame's golden tablets their triumphs unrolled, Who on Freedom's green hills Freedom's banner unfurled, And the beacon-fire raised that gave light to the world.

They are gone-mighty men! and they sleep in their fame;
Shall we ever forget them? Oh, never! no, never!
Let our sons learn from us to embalm each great name,
And the anthem send down-Independence forever!
Wake, wake, heart and tongue!

Keep the theme ever young;

Let their deeds through the long line of ages be sung, Who on Freedom's green hills Freedom's banner unfurled, And the beacon-fire raised that gave light to the world.

Ex. CXXXV.-PARTING ADDRESS TO LA FAYETTE, SEPTEMBER 7th, 1825.*

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 'GENERAL: The ship is now prepared for your reception, and equipped for sea. From the moment of her departure

* We hope that no American student is ignorant of the debt of gratitude

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