A YOUTHFUL LAND. JAMES OTIS, a celebrated American orator and patriot. Born at West Barnstable, Mass., February 5, 1725. Killed by lightning at Andover, Mass., May, 1783. England may as well dam up the waters of the Nile with bulrushes as to fetter the step of Freedom, more proud and firm in this youthful land than where she treads the sequestered glens of Scotland or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of Switzerland. We plunged into the wave with the great charter of freedom in our teeth because the faggot and torch were behind us. We have waked this new world from its savage lethargy; forests have been prostrated in our path, towns and cities have grown up suddenly as the flowers of the tropics, and the fires in our autumnal woods are scarcely more rapid than the increase of our wealth and population. THE COLUMBIAN CHORUS. Prof. John Knowles Paine of Harvard University has completed the music of his Columbian march and chorus, to be performed on the occasion of the dedication of the Exposition buildings, October 21, 1892, to write which he was especially commissioned by the Exposition management. Prof. Paine has provided these original words for the choral ending of his composition: All hail and welcome, nations of the earth! Columbia's greeting comes from every State. Let glorious art and commerce banish wrong; Shall be Columbia's high inspiring song. THE LANDING OF COLUMBUS. From the celebrated picture by John Vanderlyn, in the Rotunda of the Capitol at Washington, D. C. (See page 310.) 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 |