through the cloud of oppression, lighting to honor all | who noblý dare to "do or die.". Where then can we better look | for all that is worthy of honest ambition, than to Scotland? FORTY-THIRD LESSON. THE QUEEN OF FRANCE.-. It is now sixteen or seventeen years | since I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere | she just began to move in-glittering like the morning star; full of life, and splendor, and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what a heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation | and that fall! Little did I dream that when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidotef against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters heaped upon her-in a nation of gallant men; in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords | must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look | that threatened her with insult. Section 2. But the age of chivalry§ | is gone. That of sophisters,|| economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty¶ to rank and sex, that proud sub * Dauphiness, a female relative of the King of France, who, by law. is entitled to succeed him or become a queen after his death. Antidote, remedy. Cavaliers, knights, gallant and noble men. Chivalry, knighthood, the dignity of a knight. Sophisters, artful, deceptive reasoners. Loyalty, fidelity, regard, usually it signifies fidelity to the king. mission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise-is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor, which felt a stain like a wound; which inspired courage, whilst it mitigated ferocity; which ennobled whatever it touched; and under which vice itself | lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness. FORTY-FOURTH LESSON. NATIONAL GLORY.- -Clay. Section 1. WE are asked, what have we gained by the war? I have shown that we have lost nothing | in rights, territory, or honor; nothing | for which we ought to have contended, according to the principles of the gentlemen | on the other side, or according to our own. Have we gained nothing by the war? Let any man look at the degraded condition of this country before the war, the scorn of the universe, the contempt of ourselves, and tell me | if we have gained nothing by the war. What is our present situation? Respectability and character abroad, security and confidence at home. If we have not obtained, in the opinion of some, the full measure of retribution, our character and constitution | are placed on a solid basis,* never to be shaken. The glory acquired by our gallant tars, by our Jacksons and our Browns on the land-is that nothing? True, we had our vicissitudes: there were humiliating events | which the patriot cannot review | without deep regret-but the great account, when it comes to be balanced, will be found vastly in our favor. Is there a man | who would obliterate | from the proud pages of our history | the brilliant achievements of Jackson, Brown, and Scott, and the host of heroes | on land and sea, whom I cannot enumerate? Is there a man | who could not Basis foundation desire a participation | in the national glory acquired by the war? Yes, national glory, which, however the expression may be condemned by some, must be cherished by every genuine patriot. Section 2. What do I mean | by national glory? Glory such as Hull, Jackson, and Perry | have acquired. And are gentlemen insensible to their deeds-to the value of them | in animating the country in the hour of peril hereafter? Did the battle of Thermopyla preserve Greece but once? Whilst the Mississippi | continues to bear the tributes of the Iron Mountains and the Alleghanies | to her Delta and to the Gulf of Mexico, the eighth of January | shall be remembered, and the glory of that day | shall stimulate future patriots, and nerve the arms of unborn freemen | in driving the presumptuous invader | from our country's soil. Gentlemen may boast of their insensibility to feelings inspired by the contemplation of such events. But I would ask, does the recollection of Bunker's Hill, Saratoga, and Yorktown, afford them no pleasure? Every act of noble sacrifice to the country, every instance of patriotic devotion to her cause, has its beneficial influence. A nation's character | is the sum of its splendid deeds; they constitute one common patrimony,† the nation's inheritance. They awe foreign powers--they arouse and animate our own people. I love true glory. It is this sentiment which ought to be cherished; and, in spite of cavils, and sneers, and attempts to put it down, it will finally conduct this nation to that height | to which God | and nature | have destined it. FORTY-FIFTH LESSON. THE NECESSITY OF UNION.-Webster. Section 1. I PROFESS, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept | steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the preservation of our federal union. It is to that union | we *Insensibility, want of feeling, indifference. † Patrimony, an estate derived from a father or other ancestor. Federal union, [here] signifies the union of the United States. owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that union | that we are chiefly indebted | for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That union we reached, only by the discipline of our virtues, in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin | in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign* influences, these great interests | immediately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth | with newness of life. Every year of its duration | has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility | and its blessings; and | although our territory has stretched out, wider and wider, and our population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its protection, or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, social, and personal happiness. I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the union, to see what might lie hidden | in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty, when the bonds that unite us together | shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself | to hang over the precipice of disunion, to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor | in the affairs of this government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how the Union should be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it shall be broken up and destroyed Section 2. God grant, that While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that | I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that, in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise. on my vision never may be opened | what lies behind. When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining | on the broken and dishonored fragments | of a once glorious union; on states dissevered,† discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil§ feuds,|| or drenched, it may be, in fraternal¶ blood! Let their *Benign, kind, generous. ↑ Dissevered, divided. * Belligerent, carrying on war. Civil, being in our own country. last feeble and lingering glance, rather, behold the gorgeous* ensignt of the republic, now known and honored | throughont the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming | in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured-bearing | for its motto, no such miserable interrogatory as-What is all this worth? Nor those other words of delusion and folly-liberty first, and union afterwards, but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment dear to every true American heart-LIBERTY AND UNION, NOY AND FOR EVER, ONE AND INSEPA RABLE! FORTY-SIXTH LESSON. THE IMPORTANCE OF PRESERVING OUR FORM OF GOVERN- SIR, in our endeavors to maintain our existing forms of government, we are acting not for ourselves alone, but for the great cause of constitutional liberty | all over the globe. We are trustees, holding a sacred treasure, in which all the lovers of freedom have a stake. Not only in revolutionized France, where there are no longer subjects, where the monarch can no longer say, he is the state; not only in reformed England, where our principles, our institutions, our practice of free government are now daily quoted and commended; but in the depths of Germany, and among the desolate fields, and the still smoking ashes of Poland, prayers are uttered | for the preservation of our union | and happiness. We are surrounded, sir, by a cloud of witnesses. The gaze of the sons of liberty, everywhere, is upon us, anxiously, intently, upon us. It may see us fall in the struggle for our constitution | and govern ment, but heaven forbid | that it should see us recreant. * Gorgeous, splendid Ensign, flag Inseparable, that cannot be separated |