SOVEREIGN OF THE ASCENDANT. CHARLES PHILLIPS, an Irish barrister. Born at Sligo, about 1788. He practiced with success in criminal cases in London, and gained a wide reputation by his speeches, the style of which is rather florid. He was for many years a commissioner of the insolvent debtors' court in London. Died in 1859. Search creation round, where can you find a country that presents so sublime a view, so interesting an anticipation? Who shall say for what purpose mysterious Providence may not have designed her? Who shall say that when in its follies, or its crimes, the Old World may have buried all the pride of its power, and all the pomp of its civilization, human nature may not find its destined renovation in the New! When its temples and its trophies shall have moldered into dust; when the glories of its name shall be but the legend of tradition, and the light of its achievements live only in song, philosophy will revive again in the sky of her Franklin, and glory rekindle at the urn of her Washington. Is this the vision of romantic fancy? Is it even improbable? I appeal to History! Tell me, thou reverend chronicler of the grave, can all the illusions of ambition realized, can all the wealth of a universal commerce, can all the achievements of successful heroism, or all the establishments of this world's wisdom secure to empire the permanency of its possessions? Alas, Troy thought so once; yet the land of Priam lives only in song. Thebes thought so once; yet her hundred gates have crumbled, and her very tombs are but as the dust they were vainly intended to commemorate. So thought Palmyra; where is she? So thought the countries of Demosthenes and the Spartan; yet Leonidas is trampled by the timid slave, and Athens insulted by the servile, mindless, and enervate Ottoman. In his hurried march, Time has but looked at their imagined immortality, and all its vanities, from the palace to the tomb, have, with their ruins, erased the very impression of his footsteps. The days of their glory are as if they had never been; and the island that was then a speck, rude and neglected, in the barren ocean, now rivals the ubiquity of their commerce, the glory of their arms, the fame of their philosophy, the eloquence of their senate, and the inspiration of their bards. Who shall say, then, contemplating the past, that England, proud and potent as she appears, may not one day be what Athens is, and the young America yet soar to be what Athens was. Who shall say, when the European column shall have moldered, and the night of barbarism obscured its very ruins, that that mighty continent may not emerge from the horizon, to rule, for its time, sovereign of the ascendant. LAND OF LIBERTY. WENDELL PHILLIPS, "the silver-tongued orator of America," and antislavery reformer. Born in Boston, Mass., November 29, 1811; died, February 2, 1884. The Carpathian Mountains may shelter tyrants. The slopes of Germany may bear up a race more familiar with the Greek text than the Greek phalanx. For aught I know, the wave of Russian rule may sweep so far westward as to fill once more with miniature despots the robber castles of the Rhine. But of this I am sure: God piled the Rocky Mountains as the ramparts of freedom. He scooped the Valley of the Mississippi as the cradle of free States. He poured Niagara as the anthem of free men. EDWARD G. PORTER. THE SHIP COLUMBIA. In an article entitled "The Ship Columbia and the Discovery of Oregon," in the New England Magazine, June, 1892. Few ships, if any, in our merchant marine, since the organ ization of the republic, have acquired such distinction as the Columbia. By two noteworthy achievements, 100 years ago, she attracted the attention of the commercial world and rendered a service to the United States unparalleled in our history. She was the first American vessel to carry the stars and stripes around the globe; and, by her discovery of "the great river of the West," to which her name was given, she furnished us with the title to our possession of that magnificent domain which to-day is represented by the flourishing young States of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. The famous ship was well-known and much talked about at the time, but her records have mostly disappeared, and there is very little knowledge at present concerning her. COLUMBIA'S EMBLEM. EDNA DEAN PROCTOR. In September Centur The rose may bloom for England, Scotland her thistle bold; But the shield of the great Republic, The glory of the West, Shall bear a stalk of the tasseled corn Of all our wealth the best. The arbutus and the golden-rod The heart of the North may cheer; And jasmine and magnolia The crest of the South adorn; EAST AND WEST. THOMAS BUCHANAN READ, a distinguished American artist and poet. Leave the tears to the maiden, the fears to the child, Oh, the East holds no place where the onward can rest, THE PRIMITIVE PITCH. The Rev. MYRON W. REED, a distinguished American clergyman of Denver, Colo. From an address delivered in 1892. The best thing we can do for the world is to take care of America. Keep our country up to the primitive pitch. In front of my old home, in another city, is the largest elm in the county. It never talked, it never went, about doing good. It stood there and made shade for an acre of children, and a shelter for all the birds that came. It stood there and preached strength in the air by wide-flung branches, and strength in the earth by as many and as long roots as limbs. It stood, one fearful night, the charge of a cyclone, and was serene in the March morning. It proclaimed what an elm could be. It set tree-planters to planting elms. So America preaches, man capable of selfgovernment; preaches over the sea, a republic is safer than any kingdom. Men have outgrown kings. We shall remember Walt Whitman, if only for a line, "O America! we build for you because you build for the world." MORAL PROGRESS. WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD, an eminent American statesman. Born at Florida, Orange County, N. Y., May 16, 1801; died at Auburn, A kind of reverence is paid by all nations to antiquity. There is no one that does not trace its lineage from the gods, or from those who were especially favored by the gods. Every people has had its age of gold, or Augustine age, or historic age-an age, alas! forever passed. These prejudices are not altogether unwholesome. Although they produce a conviction of declining virtue, which is unfavorable to generous emulation, yet a people at once ignorant and irreverential would necessarily become licentious. Nevertheless, such prejudices ought to be modified. It is untrue that in the period of a nation's rise from disorder to refinement it is not able to continually surpass itself. We see the present, plainly, distinctly, with all its coarse outlines, its rough inequalities, its dark blots, and its glaring deformities. We hear all its tumultuous sounds and jarring discords. We see and hear the past through a distance which reduces all its inequalities to a plane, mellows all its shades into a pleasing hue, and subdues even its hoarsest voices into harmony. In our own case, the prejudice is less erroneous than in most others. The Revolutionary age was truly a heroic one. Its exigencies called forth the genius, and the talents, and the virtues of society, and they ripened amid the hardships of a long and severe trial. But there were selfishness and vice and factions then as now, although comparatively subdued and repressed. You have only to consult impartial history to learn that neither public faith, nor public loyalty, nor private virtue, culminated at that period in our own country; while a mere glance at the literature, or at the stage, or at the politics of any European country, in any previous age, reveals the fact |