Page images
PDF
EPUB

The dastardly fear of the world governs you. Awed by its menaces, you conceal your sentiments, appear in disguise, and act in guilty conformity to principles not your own, and that, too, in the most solemn moment, and when engaged in an act which exposes you to death.

But if it be rashness to accept, how passing rashness is it, in a sinner, to give a challenge? Does it become him, whose life is measured out by crimes, to be extreme to mark, and punctilious to resent, whatever is amiss in others? Must the duellist, who now, disdaining to forgive, so imperiously demands satisfaction to the uttermost-must this man, himself trembling at the recollection of his offences, presently appear a suppliant before the mercy-seat of God? Imagine this, and the case is not imaginary, and you cannot conceive an instance of greater inconsistency or of more presumptuous arrogance. Wherefore, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath; for vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the LORD.

THE UNIVERSAL EMPIRE OF DEATH.-D. S. DOGGETT.

CONTEMPLATE for a moment the nature of that event which puts the limit to human life, whether conditionally or otherwise. And, here, we cannot forbear a reflection, upon the universality of this awful curse. It has smitten with blasting and mildew every earthly object. The whole assemblage of living beings, originally designed to luxuriate in the vigor, and to sparkle in the glories of uninterrupted existence, is doomed to die. The glow-worm must extinguish his little spark in the night of death. The myriads of insects that crawl upon the earth, or float upon the atmospheric wave, must die. Quadrupeds, fishes, fowls, must die. Vegetation must die. And, last of all, man himself must die: and the world, instead of being a living temple, animated and adorned with harmonious orders of rejoicing creatures, must become their common vortex, one vast sepulchre, the tomb of all that hath life. Here, death reigns in dark and dismal

753481 A

dignity, from age to age, and from pole to pole. In all probability, ours is the only spot over which his dread dominion extends. In other places, existence, beyond a doubt, yet glitters in primeval beauty. The angel of death has never visited their heathful abodes, to pour his vial on the air, to scatter over them the seeds of consumption, and to wake from their happy population the wail of lamentation and of woe. Here we breathe the infected atmosphere of a loathsome hospital, and while we witness the havoc which appals us, we expire in our turn.

ADDRESS AT GETTYSBURG.-LINCOLN.

FOURSCORE and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation—or any nation so conceived and so dedicated—can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting-place of those who have given their lives that that nation might live.

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or to detract. The world will very little note, nor long remember, what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work that they have thus far so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us; that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

GLORIOUS NEW ENGLAND.-S. S. PRENTISS.

GLORIOUS New England! thou art still true to thy ancient fame, and worthy of thy ancestral honors. We, thy children, have assembled in this far distant land to celebrate thy birthday. A thousand fond associations throng upon us, roused by the spirit of the hour. On thy pleasant valleys rest, like sweet dews of morning, the gentle recollections of our early life; around thy hills and mountains cling, like gathering mists, the mighty memories of the Revolution; and far away in the horizon of thy past gleam, like thy own bright northern lights, the awful virtues of our pilgrim sires! But while we devote this day to the remembrance of our native land, we forget not that in which our happy lot is cast. We exult in the reflection, that though we count by thousands the miles which separate us from our birth-place, still our country is the same. We are no exiles meeting upon the banks of a foreign river, to swell its waters with our home-sick tears. Here floats the same banner which rustled above our boyish heads, except that its mighty folds are wider, and its glittering stars increased in number.

The sons of New England are found in every state of the broad republic! In the East, the South, and the unbounded West, their blood mingles freely with every kindred current. We have but changed our chamber in the paternal mansion; in all its rooms we are at home, and all who inhabit it are our brothers. To us the Union has but one domestic hearth; its household gods are all the same. Upon us, then, peculiarly devolves the duty of feeding the fires upon that kindly hearth; of guarding with pious care those sacred household gods.

We cannot do with less than the whole Union; to us it admits of no division. In the veins of our children flows Northern and Southern blood; how shall it be separated?—who shall put asunder the best affections of the heart, the noblest instincts of our nature? We love the land of our adoption: so do we that of our birth. Let us ever be true to both; and always exert ourselves in maintaining the unity of our country, the integrity of the republic.

Accursed, then, be the hand put forth to loosen the golden. cord of union! thrice accursed the traitorous lips which shall propose its severance!

But no! the Union cannot be dissolved; its fortunes are too brilliant to be marred; its destinies too powerful to be resisted. Here will be their greatest triumph, their most mighty devélopment.

And when, a century hence, this Crescent City shall have filled her golden horns;-when within her broad-armed port shall be gathered the products of the industry of a hundred millions of freemen;-when galleries of art and halls of learning shall have made classic this mart of trade;-then may the sons of the Pilgrims, still wandering from the bleak hills of the North, stand up on the banks of the Great River, and exclaim, with mingled pride and wonder,-Lo! this is our country;when did the world ever behold so rich and magnificent a cityso great and glorious a republic!

PATRIOTISM A CHRISTIAN VIRTUE.-HUNTINGTON. PATRIOTISM, that is, when it is a principle, and not a mere blind instinct of the blood, is an outgrowth and a part of the faith and honor of the Almighty. Analyze it, and you will see it so. For patriotism is only disinterested devotion to the justice, the power, the protection, the right, embodied, after a certain fashion and degree, in the state and its subjects. It is not attachment to the parchment of a constitution, to the letter of an instrument, to the visible insignia of authority, to a strip of painted cloth at a masthead, to a mass of legal precedents and traditions, nor always to the person of the sovereign. It is not a personal interest in the people of the nation, for the most of one's fellow-citizens are unknown, and the few that are met may awaken no special regard. Instituted ideas,-as justice, power, protection, organized into a national government, and lifted up for the defence of the country, are what inspire an intelligent

loyalty, and the same ideas have their perfect embodiment in the person of God. On the other hand, religion, veneration for the Creator, involves a consistent regard for the welfare of great bodies of his family. By the laws of the human nature he has fashioned, this will mount to enthusiasm, as our relations to any one body grow intimate, or look back to an antiquity, or own a history of common sufferings. Less elevated elements may intermix. But whichever you take first, the feeling for the state, or for the God of states, the other clings to it, and comes logically with it.

THE INTEMPERATE HUSBAND.-SPRAGUE.

It is, my friends, in the degradation of a husband by intemperance, where she who has ventured everything feels that all is lost. Who shall protect her when the husband of her choice insults and oppresses her? What shall delight her, when she shrinks from the sight of his face and trembles at the sound of his voice? The hearth is indeed dark that he has made desolate. There, through the dull midnight hour, her griefs are whispered to herself; her bruised heart bleeds in secret. There, while the cruel author of her distress is drowned in distant revelry, she holds her solitary vigil, waiting yet dreading his return, that is only to wring from her by unkindness tears even more scalding than those she sheds over his transgression.

[ocr errors]

To fling a deeper gloom across the present, memory turns back and broods upon the past. The joys of other days come over her, as if only to mock her grieved and weary spirit. She recalls the ardent lover, whose graces won her from the home of her infancy; the enraptured father, who bent with such delight over his new-born children; and she asks if this can be the same— this sunken being, who has now nothing for her but the sot's disgusting brutality; nothing for those abashed and trembling. children but the sot's disgusting example.

Can we wonder that, amid these agonizing moments, the tender cords of violated affection should snap asunder? that the

« PreviousContinue »