CANTO XV.

XXX.

The time shall come when ship-boys e'en shall scorn

To have Alcides' fable on their lips,

Seas yet unnamed and realms unknown adorn

Your charts, and with their fame your pride eclipse;

Then the bold Argo of all future ships

Shall circumnavigate and circle sheer

Whate'er blue Tethys in her girdle clips,

Victorious rival of the sun's career,

And measure e'en of earth the whole stupendous sphere.

XXXI.

A Genoese knight shall first the idea seize

And, full of faith, the untracked abyss explore.

No raving winds, inhospitable seas,

Thwart planets, dubious calms, or billows' roar,

Nor whatso'er of risk or toil may more

Terrific show or furiously assail,

Shall make that mighty mind of his give o'er

The wonderful adventure, or avail

In close Abyla's bounds his spirit to impale.

XXXII.

'Tis thou, Columbus, in new zones and skies,

That to the wind thy happy sails must raise,

Till fame shall scarce pursue thee with her eyes,

Though she a thousand eyes and wings displays;

Let her of Bacchus and Alcides praise

The savage feats, and do thy glory wrong

With a few whispers tossed to after days;

These shall suffice to make thy memory long

In history's page endure, or some divinest song.

NOAH AND COLUMBUS.

EMMA HART WILLARD, an American teacher and educational writer. Born

at Berlin, Conn., 1787; died, 1870.

Since the time when Noah left the ark to set his foot upon a recovered

world, a landing so sublime as that of Columbus had never occurred.

A GRAND PROPHETIC VISION.

The Rev. ELHANAN WINCHESTER, an American divine. Born at Brookline,

Mass., 1751; died, 1797. From an oration delivered in London,

October 12, 1792, the 300th anniversary of the landing of Columbus

in the New World. The orator, previous to a call to a pastorate in

London, had lived many years in America, being at one time pastor

of a large church in the city of Philadelphia. This oration should

be prized, so to speak, for its "ancient simplicity." It is a relic

of the style used in addresses one hundred years ago.

I have for some years had it upon my mind that if Providence preserved

my life to the close of the third century from the discovery of America

by Columbus, that I would celebrate that great event by a public

discourse upon the occasion.

And although I sincerely wish that some superior genius would take up

the subject and treat it with the attention that it deserves, yet,

conscious as I am of my own inability, I am persuaded that America has

not a warmer friend in the world than myself.

The discovery of America by Columbus was situated, in point of time,

between two great events, which have caused it to be much more noticed,

and have rendered it far more important than it would otherwise have

been. I mean _the art of printing_, which was discovered about the year

1440, and which has been and will be of infinite use to mankind, and

_the Reformation_ from popery, which began about the year 1517, the

effects of which have already been highly beneficial in a political as

well as in a religious point of view, and will continue and increase.

These three great events--_the art of printing_, the discovery of

America, and _the Reformation_--followed each other in quick succession;

and, combined together, have already produced much welfare and happiness

to mankind, and certainly will produce abundance more.

* * * * *

By the discovery of America there was much room given to the inhabitants

of the Old World; an asylum was prepared for the persecuted of all

nations to fly to for safety, and a grand theater was erected where

Liberty might safely lift up her standard, and triumph over all the foes

of freedom. America may be called _the very birthplace of civil and

religious liberty_, which had never been known to mankind until since

the discovery of that country.

But the importance of the discovery will appear greater and greater

every year, and one century to come will improve America far more than

the three centuries past.

The prospect opens; it extends itself upon us. "The wilderness and

solitary place shall rejoice, the desert shall rejoice and blossom as

the rose." I look forward to that glorious era when that vast continent

shall be fully populated with civilized and religious people; when

heavenly wisdom and virtue, and all that can civilize, adorn, and bless

the children of men, shall cover that part of the globe as the waters

cover the seas.

Transported at the thought, I am borne forward to days of distant

renown. In my expanded view, the United States rise in all their ripened

glory before me. I look through and beyond every yet peopled region of

the New World, and behold period still brightening upon period. Where

one contiguous depth of gloomy wilderness now shuts out even the beams

of day, I see new states and empires, new seats of wisdom and knowledge,

new religious domes, spreading around. In places now untrod by any but

savage beasts, or men as savage as they, I hear the voice of happy

labor, and behold beautiful cities rising to view.

Lo, in this happy picture, I behold the native Indian exulting in the

works of peace and civilization; his bloody hatchet he buries deep under

ground, and his murderous knife he turns into a pruning fork, to lop the

tender vine and teach the luxuriant shoot to grow. No more does he form

to himself a heaven after death (according to the poet), in company with

his faithful dog, behind the cloud-topped hill, to enjoy solitary quiet,

far from the haunts of faithless men; but, better instructed by

Christianity, he views his everlasting inheritance--"a house not made

with hands, eternal in the heavens."

Instead of recounting to his offspring, round the blazing fire, the

bloody exploits of their ancestors, and wars of savage death, showing

barbarous exultation over every deed of human woe, methinks I hear him

pouring forth his eulogies of praise, in memory of those who were the

instruments of heaven in raising his tribes from darkness to light, in

giving them the blessings of civilized life, and converting them from

violence and blood to meekness and love.

Behold the whole continent highly cultivated and fertilized, full of

cities, towns, and villages, beautiful and lovely beyond expression. I

hear the praises of my great Creator sung upon the banks of those rivers

unknown to song. Behold the delightful prospect! see the silver and gold

of America employed in the service of the Lord of the whole earth! See

slavery, with all its train of attendant evil, forever abolished! See a

communication opened through the whole continent, from north to south,

and from east to west, through a most fruitful country! Behold the glory

of God extending, and the gospel spreading, through the whole land!

O my native country! though I am far distant from thy peaceful shores,

which probably mine eyes may never more behold, yet I can never forget

thee. May thy great Creator bless thee, and make thee a happy land,

while thy rivers flow and thy mountains endure. And, though He has

spoken nothing plainly in His word concerning thee, yet has he blest

thee abundantly, and given thee good things in possession, and a

prospect of more glorious things in time to come. His name shall be

known, feared, and loved through all thy western regions, and to the

utmost bounds of thy vast extensive continent.

O America! land of liberty, peace, and plenty, in thee I drew my first

breath, in thee all my kindred dwell. I beheld thee in thy lowest state,

crushed down under misfortunes, struggling with poverty, war, and

disgrace. I have lived to behold thee free and independent, rising to

glory and extensive empire, blessed with all the good things of this

life, and a happy prospect of better things to come. I can say, "Lord,

now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen

thy salvation," which thou hast made known to my native land, in the

sight, and to the astonishment, of all the nations of the earth.

I die; but God will surely visit America, and make it a vast flourishing

and extensive empire; will take it under His protection, and bless it

abundantly--but the prospect is too glorious for my pen to describe. I

add no more.

[Illustration: STATUE OF COLUMBUS, IN FAIRMOUNT PARK, PHILADELPHIA.

Presented by Italian Citizens. (See page 281.)]

DE MORTUIS, NIL NISI BONUM.

JUSTIN WINSOR, a celebrated American critical historian. Born,

1831.

No man craves more than Columbus to be judged with all the palliations

demanded of his own age and ours. It would have been well for his memory

if he had died when his master work was done.

* * * * *

His discovery was a blunder; his blunder was a new world; the New World

is his monument.

ON A PORTRAIT OF COLUMBUS.

GEORGE E. WOODBERRY, in the _Century Magazine_, May, 1892. By

permission of the author and the Century Company.

Was this his face, and these the finding eyes

That plucked a new world from the rolling seas?

Who, serving Christ, whom most he sought to please,

Willed his one thought until he saw arise

Man's other home and earthly paradise--

His early vision, when with stalwart knees

He pushed the boat from his young olive trees

And sailed to wrest the secret of the skies?

He on the waters dared to set his feet,

And through believing planted earth's last race.

What faith in man must in our new world beat,

Thinking how once he saw before his face

The west and all the host of stars retreat

Into the silent infinite of space.

GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT.

JOSEPH EMERSON WORCESTER, a celebrated American lexicographer. Born

at Bedford, N. H., 1758; died, 1865.

The discovery of America was the greatest achievement of the kind ever

performed by man; and, considered in connection with its consequences,

it is the greatest event of modern times. It served to wake up the

unprecedented spirit of enterprise; it opened new sources of wealth, and

exerted a powerful influence on commerce by greatly increasing many

important articles of trade, and also by bringing into general use

others before unknown; by leading to the discovery of the rich mines of

this continent, it has caused the quantity of the precious metals in

circulation throughout the world to be exceedingly augmented; it also

gave a new impulse to colonization, and prepared the way for the

advantages of civilized life and the blessings of =Christianity= to be

extended over vast regions which before were the miserable abodes of

barbarism and pagan idolatry.

The man to whose genius and enterprise the world is indebted for this

discovery was Christopher Columbus of Genoa. He conceived that in order

to complete the balance of the terraqueous globe another continent

necessarily existed, which might be reached by sailing to the west from

Europe; but he erroneously connected it with India. Being persuaded of

the truth of his theory, his adventurous spirit made him eager to verify

it by experiment.

THE FATE OF DISCOVERERS.

It is remarkable how few of the eminent men of the discoverers and

conquerors of the New World died in peace. Columbus died broken-hearted;

Roldan and Bobadilla were drowned; Ojeda died in extreme poverty;

Encisco was deposed by his own men; Nicuesa perished miserably by the

cruelty of his party; Balboa was disgracefully beheaded; Narvaez was

imprisoned in a tropical dungeon, and afterward died of hardship; Cortez

was dishonored; Alvarado was destroyed in ambush; Pizarro was murdered,

and his four brothers cut off; Sir Walter Raleigh was beheaded by an

ungrateful king; the noble and adventurous Robert La Salle, the explorer

of the Mississippi Valley, was murdered by his mutinous crew; Sir Martin

Frobisher died of a wound received at Brest; Sir Humphrey Gilbert,

Raleigh's noble half-brother, "as near to God by sea as by land," sank

with the crew of the little Squirrel in the deep green surges of the

North Atlantic; Sir Francis Drake, "the terror of the Spanish Main," and

the explorer of the coast of California, died of disease near Puerto

Bello, in 1595. The frozen wilds of the North hold the bones of many an

intrepid explorer. Franklin and Bellot there sleep their last long

sleep. The bleak snow-clad _tundra_ of the Lena delta saw the last

moments of the gallant De Long. Afric's burning sands have witnessed

many a martyrdom to science and religion. Livingston, Hannington,

Gordon, Jamieson, and Barttelot are golden names on the ghastly roll.

Australia's scrub-oak and blue-gum plains have contributed their quota

of the sad and sudden deaths on the earth-explorers' roll.

Columbus and Columbia.

COLUMBIA.

Hail, Columbia! happy land!

Hail, ye heroes! heaven-born band!

_Joseph Hopkinson_, 1770-1842.

And ne'er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,

While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.

_Robert Treat Paine_, 1772-1811.

Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise.

The queen of the world, and child of the skies!

Thy genius commands thee; with rapture behold

While ages on ages thy splendors unfold.

_Timothy Dwight_, 1752-1817.

COLUMBIA

AMERICAN FUTURITY.

JOHN ADAMS, second President of the United States. Born October 19,

1735; died July 4, 1826.

A prospect into futurity in America is like contemplating the heavens

through the telescopes of Herschel. Objects stupendous in their

magnitudes and motions strike us from all quarters, and fill us with

amazement.

AMERICA THE OLD WORLD.

LOUIS JEAN RODOLOPHE AGASSIZ, the distinguished naturalist. Born in

Motier, near the Lake of Neufchatel, Switzerland, in 1807; died at

Cambridge, Mass., December 14, 1873. From his "Geological

Sketches." By permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.,

Publishers, Boston.

First-born among the continents, though so much later in culture and

civilization than some of more recent birth, America, so far as her

physical history is concerned, has been falsely denominated the _New

World_. Hers was the first dry land lifted out of the waters, hers the

first shore washed by the ocean that enveloped all the earth beside; and

while Europe was represented only by islands rising here and there above

the sea, America already stretched an unbroken line of land from Nova

Scotia to the far West.

DISCOVERY OF THE BIRD OF WASHINGTON.

JOHN JAMES AUDUBON, an American ornithologist. Born in Louisiana

May 4, 1780. Died in New York January, 1851. From his "Adventures

and Discoveries."

My commercial expeditions, rich in attraction for scientific

observation, were attended also with the varied pleasures which delight

a passenger on the waters of the glorious Mississippi. Fresh scenes are

continually disclosed by the frequent windings of the river, as you

speed along its rapid current. Thousands of birds in the adjacent woods

gratify the ear with their sweet mellow notes, or dazzle the sight, as

in their gorgeous attire they flash by. It was while ascending the Upper

Mississippi, during the month of February, 1814, that I first caught

sight of the beautiful Bird of Washington. My delight was extreme. Not

even Herschel, when he discovered the planet which bears his name, could

have experienced more rapturous feelings. Convinced that the bird was

extremely rare, if not altogether unknown, I felt particularly anxious

to learn its species. I next observed it whilst engaged in collecting

cray fish on one of the flats of the Green River, at its junction with

the Ohio, where it is bounded by a range of high cliffs. I felt assured,

by certain indications, that the bird frequented that spot. Seated about

a hundred yards from the foot of the rock, I eagerly awaited its

appearance as it came to visit its nest with food for its young. I was

warned of its approach by the loud hissing of the eaglets, which crawled

to the extremity of the cavity to seize the prey--a fine fish. Presently

the female, always the larger among rapacious birds, arrived, bearing

also a fish. With more shrewd suspicion than her mate, glaring with her

keen eye around, she at once perceived the nest had been discovered.

Immediately dropping her prey, with a loud shriek she communicated the

alarm, when both birds, soaring aloft, kept up a growling to intimidate

the intruders from their suspected design.

[Illustration: From Harper's Weekly. Copyright, 1892, by Harper &

Brothers

PART OF COLUMBUS STATUE, NEW YORK MONUMENT.

(See page 244.)]

Not until two years later was I gratified by the capture of this

magnificent bird. Considering the bird the noblest of its kind, I

dignified it with the great name to which this country owed her

salvation, and which must be imperishable therefore among her people.

Like the eagle, Washington was brave; like it, he was the terror of his

foes, and his fame, extending from pole to pole, resembles the majestic

soarings of the mightiest of the feathered tribe. America, proud of her

Washington, has also reason to be so of her Great Eagle.

ONE VAST WESTERN CONTINENT.

Sir EDWIN ARNOLD, C. S. I., an English poet and journalist. Born,

June 10, 1832.

I reserve as the destiny of these United States the control of all the

lands to the south, of the whole of the South American continent. Petty

troubles will die away, and all will be yours. In South America alone

there is room for 500,000,000 more people. Some day it will have that

many, and all will acknowledge the government at Washington. We in

England will not grudge you this added power. It is rightfully yours.

With the completion of the canal across the Isthmus of Nicaragua you

must have control of it, and of all the surrounding Egypt of the New

World.

THE RISING OF THE WESTERN STAR.

(ANONYMOUS.)

Land of the mighty! through the nations

Thy fame shall live and travel on;

And all succeeding generations

Shall bless the name of Washington.

While year by year new triumphs bringing,

The sons of Freedom shall be singing--

Ever happy, ever free,

Land of light and liberty.

Columbus, on his dauntless mission,

Beheld his lovely isle afar;

Did he not see, in distant vision,

The rising of this western star--

This queen, who now, in state befitting,

Between two ocean floods is sitting?

Ever happy, ever free,

Land of light and liberty.

THE AMERICAN FLAG.

HENRY WARD BEECHER, a distinguished American writer and preacher.

Born in Litchfield, Conn., June 24, 1813; died, March 8, 1887, in

Brooklyn, N. Y. From his "Patriotic Addresses." By permission of

Messrs. Fords, Howard & Hulbert, Publishers, New York.

When a man of thoughtful mind sees a nation's flag, he sees not the flag

only, but the nation itself; and whatever may be its symbols, he reads

chiefly in the flag the government, the principles, the truth, the

history, which belong to the nation which sets it forth. When the French

tricolor rolls out to the wind, we see France. When the newfound

Italian flag is unfurled, we see Italy restored. When the other

three-cornered Hungarian flag shall be lifted to the wind, we shall see

in it the long-buried, but never dead, principles of Hungarian liberty.

When the united crosses of St. Andrew and St. George on a fiery ground

set forth the banner of old England, we see not the cloth merely; there

rises up before the mind the noble aspect of that monarchy which, more

than any other on the globe, has advanced its banner for liberty, law,

and national prosperity. This nation has a banner, too, and wherever it

streamed abroad men saw daybreak bursting on their eyes, for the

American flag has been the symbol of liberty, and men rejoiced in it.

Not another flag on the globe had such an errand, or went forth upon the

seas carrying everywhere, the world around, such hope for the captive

and such glorious tidings. The stars upon it were to the pining nations

like the morning stars of God, and the stripes upon it were beams of

morning light. As at early dawn the stars stand first, and then it grows

light, and then, as the sun advances, that light breaks into banks and

streaming lines of color, the glowing red and intense white striving

together and ribbing the horizon with bars effulgent, so on the American

flag stars and beams of many-colored lights shine out together. And

wherever the flag comes, and men behold it, they see in its sacred

emblazonry no rampant lion and fierce eagle, but only light, and every

fold indicative of liberty. It has been unfurled from the snows of

Canada to the plains of New Orleans; in the halls of the Montezumas and

amid the solitude of every sea; and everywhere, as the luminous symbol

of resistless and beneficent power, it has led the brave to victory and

to glory. It has floated over our cradles; let it be our prayer and our

struggle that it shall float over our graves.

NATIONAL SELF-RESPECT.

NATHANIEL S. S. BEMAN, an American Presbyterian divine. Born in New

Lebanon, N. Y., 1785; died at Carbondale, Ill., August 8, 1871. For

forty years pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, Troy, N. Y.

The western continent has, at different periods, been the subject of

every species of transatlantic abuse. In former days, some of the

naturalists of Europe told us that everything here was constructed upon

a small scale. The frowns of nature were represented as investing the

whole hemisphere we inhabit. It has been asserted that the eternal

storms which are said to beat upon the brows of our mountains, and to

roll the tide of desolation at their bases; the hurricanes which sweep

our vales, and the volcanic fires which issue from a thousand flaming

craters; the thunderbolts which perpetually descend from heaven, and

the earthquakes, whose trepidations are felt to the very center of our

globe, have superinduced a degeneracy through all the productions of

nature. Men have been frightened into intellectual dwarfs, and the

beasts of the forest have not attained more than half their ordinary

growth.

While some of the lines and touches of this picture have been blotted

out by the reversing hand of time, others have been added, which have,

in some respects, carried the conceit still farther. In later days, and,

in some instances, even down to the present period, it has been

published and republished from the enlightened presses of the Old World,

that so strong is the tendency to deterioration on this continent that

the descendants of European ancestors are far inferior to the original

stock from which they sprang. But inferior in what? In national spirit

and patriotic achievement? Let the revolutionary conflict--the opening

scenes at Boston and the catastrophe at Yorktown--furnish the reply. Let

Bennington and Saratoga support their respective claims. Inferior in

enterprise? Let the sail that whitens every ocean, and the commercial

spirit that braves every element and visits every bustling mart, refute

the unfounded aspersion. Inferior in deeds of zeal and valor for the

Church? Let our missionaries in the bosom of our own forest, in the

distant regions of the East, and on the islands of the great Pacific,

answer the question. Inferior in science and letters and the arts? It is

true our nation is young; but we may challenge the world to furnish a

national maturity which, in these respects, will compare with ours.

The character and institutions of this country have already produced a

deep impression upon the world we inhabit. What but our example has

stricken the chains of despotism from the provinces of South

America--giving, by a single impulse, freedom to half a hemisphere? A

Washington here has created a Bolivar there. The flag of independence,

which has waved from the summit of our Alleghany, has now been answered

by a corresponding signal from the heights of the Andes. And the same

spirit, too, that came across the Atlantic wave with the Pilgrims, and

made the rock of Plymouth the corner-stone of freedom, and of this

republic, is traveling back to the East. It has already carried its

influence into the cabinets of princes, and it is at this moment sung by

the Grecian bard and emulated by the Grecian hero.

COLUMBIA--A PROPHECY.

ST. GEORGE BEST. In Kate Field's _Washington_.

Puissant land! where'er I turn my eyes

I see thy banner strewn upon the breeze;

Each past achievement only prophesies

Of triumphs more unheard of. These

Are shadows yet, but time will write thy name

In letters golden as the sun

That blazed upon the sight of those who came

To worship in the temple of the Delphic One.

THE FINAL STAGE.

HENRY HUGH BRACKENRIDGE, a writer and politician. Born near

Campbellton, Scotland, 1748; died, 1816. From his "Rising Glory of

America," a commencement poem.

This is thy praise, America, thy power,

Thou best of climes by science visited,

By freedom blest, and richly stored with all

The luxuries of life! Hail, happy land,

The seat of empire, the abode of kings,

The final stage where time shall introduce

Renowned characters, and glorious works

Of high invention and of wondrous art,

Which not the ravages of time shall waste,

'Till he himself has run his long career!

BRIGHT'S BEATIFIC VISION.

The Right Honorable JOHN BRIGHT, the celebrated English orator and

radical statesman. Born at Greenbank, Rochdale, Lancashire,

November 16, 1811; died, March 27, 1889. From a speech delivered at

Birmingham, England, 1862.

I have another and a far brighter vision before my gaze. It may be but a

vision, but I will cherish it. I see one vast confederation stretching

from the frozen North in unbroken line to the glowing South, and from

the wild billows of the Atlantic westward to the calmer waters of the

Pacific main; and I see one people and one language, and one faith and

one law, and, over all that wide continent, the home of freedom, and a

refuge for the oppressed of every race and every clime.

BROTHERS ACROSS THE SEA.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING, one of the most gifted female poets.

Born near Ledbury, Herefordshire, England, in 1807; died at

Florence, Italy, in June, 1861.

I heard an angel speak last night,

And he said, "Write--

Write a nation's curse for me,

And send it over the western sea."

I faltered, taking up the word:

"Not so, my lord!

If curses must be, choose another

To send thy curse against my brother.

For I am bound by gratitude,

By love and blood,

To brothers of mine across the sea,

Who stretch out kindly hands to me."

"Therefore," the voice said, "shalt thou write

My curse to-night;

From the summits of love a curse is driven,

As lightning is from the tops of heaven."

THE GRANDEUR OF DESTINY.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, an eminent American poet. Born at

Cummington, Mass., November 3, 1794; died, June 12, 1878.

Oh, Mother of a mighty race,

Yet lovely in thy youthful grace!

The elder dames, thy haughty peers,

Admire and hate thy blooming years;

With words of shame

And taunts of scorn they join thy name.

They know not, in their hate and pride,

What virtues with thy children bide;

How true, how good, thy graceful maids

Make bright, like flowers, the valley shades;

What generous men

Spring, like thine oaks, by hill and glen;

What cordial welcomes greet the guest

By the lone rivers of the West;

How faith is kept, and truth revered,

And man is loved, and God is feared,

In woodland homes,

And where the solemn ocean foams.

Oh, fair young Mother! on thy brow

Shall sit a nobler grace than now.

Deep in the brightness of thy skies,

The thronging years in glory rise,

And, as they fleet,

Drop strength and riches at thy feet.

AMERICAN NATIONAL HASTE.

JAMES BRYCE, M. P. Born at Belfast, Ireland, May 10, 1838.

Appointed Regius Professor of Civil Law to the University of

Oxford, England, 1870. From his "American Commonwealth."

Americans seem to live in the future rather than in the present; not

that they fail to work while it is called to-day, but that they see the

country, not merely as it is, but as it will be twenty, fifty, a hundred

years hence, when the seedlings shall have grown to forest trees. Time

seems too brief for what they have to do, and result always to come

short of their desire. One feels as if caught and whirled along in a

foaming stream chafing against its banks, such is the passion of these

men to accomplish in their own lifetimes what in the past it took

centuries to effect. Sometimes, in a moment of pause--for even the

visitor finds himself infected by the all-pervading eagerness--one is

inclined to ask them: "Gentlemen, why in heaven's name this haste? You

have time enough. No enemy threatens you. No volcano will rise from

beneath you. Ages and ages lie before you. Why sacrifice the present to

the future, fancying that you will be happier when your fields teem with

wealth and your cities with people? In Europe we have cities wealthier

and more populous than yours, and we are not happy. You dream of your

posterity; but your posterity will look back to yours as the golden age,

and envy those who first burst into this silent, splendid nature, who

first lifted up their axes upon these tall trees, and lined these waters

with busy wharves. Why, then, seek to complete in a few decades what

the other nations of the world took thousands of years over in the older

continents? Why do rudely and ill things which need to be done well,

seeing that the welfare of your descendants may turn upon them? Why, in

your hurry to subdue and utilize nature, squander her splendid gifts?

Why allow the noxious weeds of Eastern politics to take root in your new

soil, when by a little effort you might keep it pure? Why hasten the

advent of that threatening day when the vacant spaces of the continent

shall all have been filled, and the poverty or discontent of the older

States shall find no outlet? You have opportunities such as mankind has

never had before, and may never have again. Your work is great and

noble; it is done for a future longer and vaster than our conceptions

can embrace. Why not make its outlines and beginnings worthy of these

destinies, the thought of which gilds your hopes and elevates your

purposes?"

[Illustration: VIEW OF THE CONVENT OF SANTA MARIA DE LA RABIDA (HUELVA),

SPAIN, WHERE COLUMBUS TOOK REFUGE.

This convent has been restored and preserved as a National Museum since

1846.

(See pages 17 and 275.)]

AMERICA'S UNPRECEDENTED GROWTH.

EDMUND BURKE, an illustrious orator, statesman, and philanthropist.

Born in Dublin, 1730; died, July 9, 1797. To Burke's eternal credit

and renown be it said, that, had his advice and counsels been

listened to, the causes which produced the American Revolution

would have been removed.

I can not prevail on myself to hurry over this great consideration--the

value of America to England. It is good for us to be here. We stand

where we have an immense view of what is, and what is past. Clouds,

indeed, and darkness, rest upon the future. Let us, however, before we

descend from this noble eminence, reflect that this growth of our

national prosperity has happened within the short period of the life of

man. It has happened within sixty-eight years. There are those alive

whose memory might touch the two extremities. For instance, my Lord

Bathurst might remember all the stages of the progress. He was, in

1704, of an age, at least, to be made to comprehend such things. Suppose

that the angel of this auspicious youth, foreseeing the many virtues

which made him one of the most amiable, as he is one of the most

fortunate, men of his age, had opened to him in vision, that when, in

the fourth generation, the third prince of the house of Brunswick had

sat twelve years on the throne of that nation, which by the happy issue

of moderate and healing councils was to be made Great Britain, he should

see his son, Lord Chancellor of England, turn back the current of

hereditary dignity to its fountain, and raise him to a higher rank of

peerage, whilst he enriched the family with a new one. If amidst these

bright and happy scenes of domestic honor and prosperity that angel

should have drawn up the curtain and unfolded the rising glories of his

country; and, whilst he was gazing with admiration on the then

commercial grandeur of England, the genius should point out to him a

little speck, scarce visible in the mass of the national interest, a

small seminal principle, rather than a formed body, and should tell him,

"Young man, there is America, which at this day serves for little more

than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners; yet

shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that

commerce which now attracts the envy of the world. Whatever England has

been growing to by a progressive increase of improvement, brought in by

varieties of people, by succession of civilizing conquests and

civilizing settlements in a series of 1,700 years, you shall see as much

added to her by America in the course of a single life!" If this state

of his country had been foretold to him, would it not have required all

the sanguine credulity of youth, and all the fervid glow of enthusiasm,

to make him believe it? Fortunate man, he has lived to see it!

Fortunate, indeed, if he live to see nothing to vary the prospect, and

cloud the setting of his day!

AMERICA THE CONTINENT OF THE FUTURE.

EMILIO CASTELAR, one of Spain's most noted orators and statesmen.

His masterly articles on Columbus in the _Century Magazine_ alone

would insure an international reputation. From a speech in the

Spanish Cortes, 1871.

America, and especially Saxon America, with its immense virgin

territories, with its republic, with its equilibrium between stability

and progress, with its harmony between liberty and democracy, is the

continent of the future--the immense continent stretched by God between

the Atlantic and Pacific, where mankind may plant, essay, and resolve

all social problems. Europe has to decide whether she will confound

herself with Asia, placing upon her lands old altars, and upon the

altars old idols, and upon the idols immovable theocracies, and upon the

theocracies despotic empires; or whether she will go by labor, by

liberty, and by the republic, to co-operate with America in the grand

work of universal civilization.

NOBLE CONCEPTIONS.

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING, D. D., a distinguished American Unitarian

divine, and one of the most eloquent writers America has produced.

Born at Newport, R. I., April 7, 1780; died, October 2, 1842. From

an address on "The Annexation of Texas to the United States."

When we look forward to the probable growth of this country; when we

think of the millions of human beings who are to spread over our present

territory; of the career of improvement and glory opened to this new

people; of the impulse which free institutions, if prosperous, may be

expected to give to philosophy, religion, science, literature, and

arts; of the vast field in which the experiment is to be made; of what

the unfettered powers of man may achieve; of the bright page of history

which our fathers have filled, and of the advantages under which their

toils and virtues have placed us for carrying on their work. When we

think of all this, can we help, for a moment, surrendering ourselves to

bright visions of our country's glory, before which all the glories of

the past are to fade away? Is it presumption to say that if just to

ourselves and all nations we shall be felt through this whole continent;

that we shall spread our language, institutions, and civilization

through a wider space than any nation has yet filled with a like

beneficent influence? And are we prepared to barter these hopes, this

sublime moral empire, for conquests by force? Are we prepared to sink to

the level of unprincipled nations; to content ourselves with a vulgar,

guilty greatness; to adopt in our youth maxims and ends which must brand

our future with sordidness, oppression, and shame? Why can not we rise

to noble conceptions of our destiny? Why do we not feel that our work as

a nation is to carry freedom, religion, science, and a nobler form of

human nature over this continent? And why do we not remember that to

diffuse these blessings we must first cherish them in our own borders,

and that whatever deeply and permanently corrupts us will make our

spreading influence a curse, not a blessing, to this New World? It is a

common idea in Europe that we are destined to spread an inferior

civilization over North America; that our absorption in gain and outward

interests mark us out as fated to fall behind the Old World in the

higher improvements of human nature--in the philosophy, the refinements,

the enthusiasm of literature and the arts, which throw a luster round

other countries. I am not prophet enough to read our fate.

THE GRAND SCOPE OF THE COLUMBIAN CELEBRATION.

The Chicago _Inter Ocean_.

The Columbian Exposition should be an exhibition worthy of the fame of

Columbus and of the great republic that has taken root in the New World,

which the Genoese discoverer not only "to Castille and to Aragon gave,"

but to the struggling, the oppressed, the aspiring, and the resolute of

all humanity in all its conditions.

AMERICAN NATIONALITY.

RUFUS CHOATE,, the most eminent advocate of New England. Born at

Essex, Mass., October 1, 1799; died at Halifax, N. S., July 13,

1858. From an Independence Day oration delivered in Boston.

But now there rises colossal the fine sweet spirit of nationality--the

nationality of America. See there the pillar of fire which God has

kindled, and lighted, and moved, for our hosts and our ages. Under such

an influence you ascend above the smoke and stir of this small local

strife; you tread upon the high places of the earth and of history; you

think and feel as an American for America; her power, her eminence, her

consideration, her honor are yours; your competitors, like hers, are

kings; your home, like hers, is the world; your path, like hers, is on

the highway of empires; your charge, her charge, is of generations and

ages; your record, her record, is of treaties, battles, voyages, beneath

all the constellations; her image--one, immortal, golden--rises on your

eye as our western star at evening rises on the traveler from his home;

no lowering cloud, no angry river, no lingering spring, no broken

crevasse, no inundated city or plantation, no tracts of sand, arid and

burning, on that surface, but all blended and softened into one beam of

kindred rays, the image, harbinger, and promise of love, hope, and a

brighter day.

But if you would contemplate nationality as an active virtue, look

around you. Is not our own history one witness and one record of what it

can do? This day, the 4th of July, and all which it stands for--did it

not give us these? This glory of the fields of that war, this eloquence

of that revolution, this one wide sheet of flame, which wrapped tyrant

and tyranny, and swept all that escaped from it away, forever and

forever; the courage to fight, to retreat, to rally, to advance, to

guard the young flag by the young arm and the young heart's blood, to

hold up and hold on till the magnificent consummation crown the

work--were not all these imparted or inspired by this imperial

sentiment.

Look at it! It has kindled us to no aims of conquest. It has involved us

in no entangling alliances. It has kept our neutrality dignified and

just. The victories of peace have been our prized victories. But the

larger and truer grandeur of the nations, for which they are created,

and for which they must one day, before some tribunal, give account,

what a measure of these it has enabled us already to fulfill! It has

lifted us to the throne, and has set on our brow the name of the Great

Republic. It has taught us to demand nothing wrong and to submit to

nothing wrong; it has made our diplomacy sagacious, wary, and

accomplished; it has opened the iron gate of the mountain, and planted

our ensign on the great tranquil sea. It has made the desert to bud and

blossom as the rose; it has quickened to life the giant brood of useful

arts; it has whitened lake and ocean with the sails of a daring, new,

and lawful trade; it has extended to exiles, flying as clouds, the

asylum of our better liberty. It has kept us at rest within our borders;

it has scattered the seeds of liberty, under law and under order,

broadcast; it has seen and helped American feeling to swell into a

fuller flood; from many a field and many a deck, though it seeks not

war, makes not war, and fears not war, it has borne the radiant flag,

all unstained.

THE LOVE OF COUNTRY.

There is a love of country which comes uncalled for, one knows not how.

It comes in with the very air, the eye, the ear, the instinct, the first

beatings of the heart. The faces of brothers and sisters, and the loved

father and mother, the laugh of playmates, the old willow tree and well

and school-house, the bees at work in the spring, the note of the robin

at evening, the lullaby, the cows coming home, the singing-book, the

visits of neighbors, the general training--all things which make

childhood happy, begin it.

And then, as the age of the passions and the age of the reason draw on,

and the love of home, and the sense of security and property under the

law come to life, and as the story goes round, and as the book or the

newspaper relates the less favored lot of other lands, and the public

and private sense of the man is forming and formed, there is a type of

patriotism already. Thus they have imbibed it who stood that charge at

Concord, and they who hung on the deadly retreat, and they who threw up

the hasty and imperfect redoubt at Bunker Hill by night, set on it the

blood-red provincial flag, and passed so calmly with Prescott and Putnam

and Warren through the experiences of the first fire.

To direct this spontaneous sentiment of hearts to our great Union, to

raise it high, to make it broad and deep, to instruct it, to educate it,

is in some things harder, and in some things easier; but it may be, it

must be, done. Our country has her great names; she has her food for

patriotism, for childhood, and for man.--_Ibid._

THE UNITED STATES STEAMSHIP COLUMBIA.

An appropriate addition to the White Squadron of the United States navy

was launched from the Cramps' ship-yard at Philadelphia, July 26, 1892,

and was most appropriately christened the Columbia. The launch was in

every way a success, and was witnessed by many thousand people,

including Secretary Tracy, Vice-President Morton, and others prominent

in the navy and in public life.

This new vessel is designed to be swifter than any other large war

vessel now afloat, and she will have a capacity possessed by no other

war vessel yet built, in that of being able to steam at a ten-knot speed

26,240 miles, or for 109 days, without recoaling. She also possesses

many novel features, the principal of which is the application of triple

screws. She is one of two of the most important ships designed for the

United States navy, her sister ship, No. 13, now being built at the same

yards.

The dimensions of the Columbia are: Length on mean load line, 412 feet;

beam, 58 feet. Her normal draught will be 23 feet; displacement, 7,550

tons; maximum speed, 22 knots an hour; and she will have the enormous

indicated horse-power of 20,000. As to speed, the contractor guarantees

an average speed, in the open sea, under conditions prescribed by the

Navy Department, of twenty-one knots an hour, maintained for four

consecutive hours, during which period the air-pressure in the fire-room

must be kept within a prescribed limit. For every quarter of a knot

developed above the required guaranteed speed the contractor is to

receive a premium of $50,000 over and above the contract price; and for

each quarter of a knot that the vessel may fail of reaching the

guaranteed speed there is to be deducted from the contract price the sum

of $25,000. There seems to be no doubt among the naval experts that she

will meet the conditions as to speed, and this is a great desideratum,

since her chief function is to be to sweep the seas of an enemy's

commerce. To do her work she must be able to overhaul, in an ocean race,

the swiftest transatlantic passenger steamships afloat.

The triple-screw system is a most decided novelty. One of these screws

will be placed amidships, or on the line of the keel, as in ordinary

single-screw vessels, and the two others will be placed about fifteen

feet farther forward and above, one on each side, as is usual in

twin-screw vessels. The twin screws will diverge as they leave the hull,

giving additional room for the uninterrupted motion upon solid water of

all three simultaneously. There is one set of triple expansion engines

for each screw independently, thus allowing numerous combinations of

movements. For ordinary cruising the central screw alone will be used,

giving a speed of about fourteen knots; with the two side-screws alone,

a speed of seventeen knots can be maintained, and with all three screws

at work, at full power, a high speed of from twenty to twenty-two knots

can be got out of the vessel. This arrangement will allow the machinery

to be worked at its most economical number of revolutions at all rates

of the vessel's speed, and each engine can be used independently of the

others in propelling the vessel. The full steam pressure will be 160

pounds. The shafting is made of forged steel, 16-1/2 inches in diameter.

In fact, steel has been used wherever possible, so as to secure the

lightest, in weight, of machinery. There are ten boilers, six of which

are double-ended--that is, with furnaces in each end--21-1/4 feet long

and 15-1/2 feet in diameter. Two others are 18-1/4 feet long and 11-2/3

feet in diameter, and the two others, single-ended, are 8 feet long and

10 feet in diameter. Eight of the largest boilers are set in

watertight compartments.

In appearance the Columbia will closely resemble, when ready for sea, an

ordinary merchantman, the sides being nearly free from projections or

sponsons, which ordinarily appear on vessels of war. She will have two

single masts, but neither of them will have a military top, such as is

now provided upon ordinary war vessels. This plan of her merchantman

appearance is to enable her to get within range of any vessel she may

wish to encounter before her character or purpose is discovered. The

vitals of the ship will be well protected with armor plating and the gun

stations will be shielded against the firing of machine guns. Her

machinery, boilers, magazines, etc., are protected by an armored deck

four inches thick on the slope and 2-1/2 inches thick on the flat. The

space between this deck and the gun-deck is minutely subdivided with

coal-bunkers and storerooms, and in addition to these a coffer-dam, five

feet in width, is worked next to the ship's side for the whole length of

the vessel. In the bunkers the space between the inner and outer skins

of the vessel will be filled with woodite, thus forming a wall five feet

thick against machine gun fire. This filling can also be utilized as

fuel in an emergency. Forward and abaft of the coal bunkers the

coffer-dam will be filled with some water-excluding substance similar to

woodite. In the wake of the four-inch and the machine guns, the ship's

side will be armored with four-inch and two-inch nickel steel plates.

The vessel will carry no big guns, for the reason that the uses for

which she is intended will not require them. Not a gun will be in sight,

and the battery will be abnormally light. There will be four six-inch

breech-loading rifles, mounted in the open, and protected with heavy

shields attached to the gun carriages; eight four-inch breech-loading

rifles; twelve six-pounder, and four one-pounder rapid-firing guns; four

machine or Gatling guns, and six torpedo-launching tubes. Besides these

she has a ram bow. The Columbia is to be completed, ready for service,

by May 19, 1893.

THE FIRST AMERICAN.

ELIZA COOK, a popular English poetess. Born in Southwark, London,

1817.

Land of the West! though passing brief the record of thine age,

Thou hast a name that darkens all on history's wide page.

Let all the blasts of fame ring out--thine shall be loudest far;

Let others boast their satellites--thou hast the planet star.

Thou hast a name whose characters of light shall ne'er depart;

'Tis stamped upon the dullest brain, and warms the coldest heart;

A war-cry fit for any land where freedom's to be won:

Land of the West! it stands alone--it is thy Washington!

COLUMBIA THE MONUMENT OF COLUMBUS.

KINAHAN CORNWALLIS. In "The Song of America and Columbus," 1892.

Queen of the Great Republic of the West,

With shining stars and stripes upon thy breast,

The emblems of our land of liberty,

Thou namesake of Columbus--hail to thee!

* * * * *

No fitter queen could now Columbus crown,

Or voice to all the world his great renown.

His fame in thee personified we see--

The sequel of his grand discovery;

Yea, here, in thee, his monument behold.

Whose splendor dims his golden dreams of old.

And standing by Chicago's inland sea,

The nations of the earth will vie with thee

In twining laurel wreaths for him of yore

Who found the New World in San Salvador.

* * * * *

COLUMBIA! to Columbus give thy hand.

And, as ye on a sea of glory stand,

The world will read anew the story grand

Of thee, COLUMBIA, and Columbus, too--

The matchless epic of the Old and New--

The tale that grows more splendid with the years--

The pride and wonder of the hemispheres.

In vast magnificence it stands alone,

With thee--Columbus greeting--on thy throne.

AMERICAN IDEA.

The Hon. SHELBY M. CULLOM, U. S. Senator from Illinois. In a speech

delivered in Chicago, 1892.

From the altitude of now, from this zenith of history, look out upon the

world. Behold! the American idea is everywhere prominent. The world

itself is preparing to take an American holiday. The wise men, not only

of the Orient, but everywhere, are girding up their loins, and will

follow the star of empire until it rests above this city of

Chicago--this civic Hercules; this miracle of accomplishment; the

throbbing heart of all the teeming life and activity of our American

commonwealth. The people of the world are soon to receive an object

lesson in the stupendous kindergarten we are instituting for their

benefit. Even Chile will be here, and will learn, I trust, something of

Christian forbearance and good-fellowship.

Now, is it possible that monarchy, plutarchy, or any other archy, can

long withstand this curriculum of instruction? No! I repeat, the

American idea is everywhere triumphant. England is a monarchy, to be

sure, but only out of compliment to an impotent and aged Queen. The Czar

of Russia clings to his throne. It is a hen-coop in the maeelstrom! The

crumbling monarchies of the earth are held together only by the force of

arms. Standing armies are encamped without each city. The sword and

bayonet threaten and retard, but the seeds of liberty have been caught

up by the winds of heaven and scattered broadcast throughout the earth.

Tyranny's doom is sounded! The people's millennium is at hand! And

this--this, under God, is the mission of America.

YOUNG AMERICA.

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, a popular American author and lecturer. Born

at Providence, R. I., February 24, 1824; died at West Brighton,

Staten Island, N. Y., August 31, 1892.

I know the flower in your hand fades while you look at it. The dream

that allures you glimmers and is gone. But flower and dream, like youth

itself, are buds and prophecies. For where, without the perfumed

blossoming of the spring orchards all over the hills and among all the

valleys of New England and New York, would the happy harvests of New

York and New England be? And where, without the dreams of the young men

lighting the future with human possibility, would be the deeds of the

old men, dignifying the past with human achievement? How deeply does it

become us to believe this, who are not only young ourselves, but living

with the youth of the youngest nation in history. I congratulate you

that you are young; I congratulate you that you are Americans. Like you,

that country is in its flower, not yet in its fruit, and that flower is

subject to a thousand chances before the fruit is set. Worms may destroy

it, frosts may wither it, fires may blight it, gusts may whirl it away;

but how gorgeously it still hangs blossoming in the garden of time,

while its penetrating perfume floats all round the world, and

intoxicates all other nations with the hope of liberty.

Knowing that the life of every nation, as of each individual, is a

battle, let us remember, also, that the battle is to those who fight

with faith and undespairing devotion. Knowing that nothing is worth

fighting for at all unless God reigns, let us, at least, believe as much

in the goodness of God as we do in the dexterity of the devil. And,

viewing this prodigious spectacle of our country--this hope of humanity,

this young America, _our_ America--taking the sun full in its front, and

making for the future as boldly and blithely as the young David for

Goliath, let us believe with all our hearts, and from that faith shall

spring the fact that David, and not Goliath, is to win the day; and

that, out of the high-hearted dreams of wise and good men about our

country, Time, however invisibly and inscrutably, is, at this moment,

slowly hewing the most colossal and resplendent result in history.

A HIDDEN WORLD.

OLIVE E. DANA, an American journalist. In the _New England

Journal_.

The hidden world lies in the hand of God,

Waiting, like seed, to fall on the sod;

Tranquil its lakes were, and lovely its shores,

While idly each stream o'er the fretting rocks pours.

Its forests are fair and its mines fathomless,

Grand are its mountains in their loftiness;

Its fields wait the plow, and its harbors the ships,

No sail down the blue of the water-way slips.

God keeps in his palm, through centuries dim,

This hid, idle seed. It belongeth to him.

Away in a corner, where God only knows,

The seed when he plants it quickens and grows.

The pale buds unfold as the nations pass by,

The fragrance is grateful, the blooms multiply,

But it is blossom time, this what we see;

Who knows what the fullness of harvest will be.

COLUMBIA THE QUEEN OF THE WORLD.

TIMOTHY DWIGHT, an American divine and scholar. Born at

Northampton, Mass., May 14, 1752; died at New Haven, Conn., January

11, 1817.

Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise,

The queen of the world and the child of the skies.

A DEFINITION OF PATRIOTISM.

T. M. EDDY, an eloquent speaker and profound scholar. Born, 1823;

died, 1874. From an oration delivered on Independence Day.

Patriotism is the love of country. It has ever been recognized among the

cardinal virtues of true men, and he who was destitute of it has been

considered an ingrate. Even among the icy desolations of the far north

we expect to find, and _do_ find, an ardent affection for the land of

nativity, the home of childhood, youth, and age. There is much in our

country to create and foster this sentiment. It is a country of imperial

dimensions, reaching from sea to sea, and almost "from the rivers to the

ends of the earth." None of the empires of old could compare with it in

this regard. It is washed by two great oceans, while its lakes are vast

inland seas. Its rivers are silver lines of beauty and commerce. Its

grand mountain chains are the links of God's forging and welding,

binding together North and South, East and West. It is a land of

glorious memories. It was peopled by the picked men of Europe, who came

hither, "not for wrath, but conscience' sake." Said the younger Winthrop

to his father, "I shall call that my country where I may most glorify

God and enjoy the presence of my dearest friends." And so came godly men

and devoted women, flying from oppressive statutes, where they might

find

Freedom to worship God.

There are spots on the sun, and the microscope reveals flaws in

burnished steel, and so there were spots and flaws in the character of

the early founders of this land; but with them all, our colonial history

is one that stirs the blood and quickens the pulse of him who reads. It

is the land of the free school, the free press, and the free pulpit. It

is impossible to compute the power of this trio. The free schools, open

to rich and poor, bind together the people in educational bonds, and in

the common memories of the recitation-room and the playground; and how

strong _they_ are, you, reader, well know, as some past recollection

tugs at your heart-strings. The free press may not always be altogether

as dignified or elevated as the more highly cultivated may desire, but

it is ever open to complaints of the people; is ever watchful of popular

rights and jealous of class encroachments, and the highest in authority

know that it is above President or Senate. The free pulpit, sustained

not by legally exacted tithes wrung from an unwilling people, but by the

free-will offerings of loving supporters, gathers about it the millions,

inculcates the highest morality, points to brighter worlds, and when

occasion demands will not be silent before political wrongs. Its power,

simply as an educating agency, can scarcely be estimated. In this

country its freedom gives a competition so vigorous that it must remain

in direct popular sympathy. How strong it is, the country saw when its

voice was lifted in the old cry, "Rebellion is as the sin of

witchcraft." Its words started the slumbering, roused the careless, and

called the "sacramental host," as well as the "men of the world, to

arms." These three grand agencies are not rival, but supplementary, each

doing an essential work in public culture.

[Illustration: THE SHIP OF COLUMBUS--THE SANTA MARIA CARAVEL.

(See pages 94, 216, and 282.)]

AMERICA--OPPORTUNITY.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON, a noted American essayist, poet, and

speculative philosopher. Born in Boston, Mass., May 25, 1803; died,

April 27, 1882.

America is another name for opportunity.

THE SEQUEL OF THE DISCOVERY.

There is a Columbia of thought and art and character which is the last

and endless sequel of Columbus' adventure.--_Ibid._

YOUNG AMERICA.

ALEXANDER HILL EVERETT, an American scholar and diplomatist. Born

in Boston, Mass., 1792; died at Canton, China, May, 1847.

Scion of a mighty stock!

Hands of iron--hearts of oak--

Follow with unflinching tread

Where the noble fathers led.

Craft and subtle treachery,

Gallant youth, are not for thee;

Follow thou in words and deeds

Where the God within thee leads.

Honesty, with steady eye,

Truth and pure simplicity,

Love, that gently winneth hearts,

These shall be thy holy arts.

Prudent in the council train,

Dauntless on the battle plain,

Ready at thy country's need

For her glorious cause to bleed.

Where the dews of night distill

Upon Vernon's holy hill,

Where above it gleaming far

Freedom lights her guiding star,

Thither turn the steady eye,

Flashing with a purpose high;

Thither, with devotion meet,

Often turn the pilgrim feet.

Let the noble motto be:

God--the _country_--_liberty_!

Planted on religion's rock,

Thou shalt stand in every shock.

Laugh at danger, far or near;

Spurn at baseness, spurn at fear.

Still, with persevering might,

Speak the truth, and do the right.

So shall peace, a charming guest,

Dove-like in thy bosom rest;

So shall honor's steady blaze

Beam upon thy closing days.

RESPONSIBILITY.

EZRA STILES GANNETT, an American Unitarian divine. Born at

Cambridge, Mass., 1801; died, August 26, 1871. From a patriotic

address delivered in Boston.

The eyes of Europe are upon us; the monarch, from his throne, watches us

with an angry countenance; the peasant turns his gaze on us with joyful

faith; the writers on politics quote our condition as a proof of the

possibility of popular government; the heroes of freedom animate their

followers by reminding them of our success. At no moment of the last

half century has it been so important that we should send up a clear and

strong light which may be seen across the Atlantic. An awful charge of

unfaithfulness to the interests of mankind will be recorded against us

if we suffer this light to be obscured by the mingling vapors of passion

and misrule and sin. But not Europe alone will be influenced by the

character we give to our destiny. The republics of the South have no

other guide toward the establishment of order and freedom than our

example. If this should fail them, the last stay would be torn from

their hope. We are placed under a most solemn obligation, to keep before

them this motive to perseverance in their endeavors to place free

institutions on a sure basis. Shall we leave those wide regions to

despair and anarchy? Better that they had patiently borne a foreign

yoke, though it bowed their necks to the ground.

Citizens of the United States, it has been said of us, with truth, that

we are at the head of the popular party of the world. Shall we be

ashamed of so glorious a rank? or shall we basely desert our place and

throw away our distinction? Forbid it! self-respect, patriotism,

philanthropy. Christians, we believe that God has made us a name and a

praise among the nations. We believe that our religion yields its best

fruit in a free land. Shall we be regardless of our duty as creatures of

the Divine Power and recipients of His goodness? Shall we be indifferent

to the effects which our religion may work in the world? Forbid it! our

gratitude, our faith, our piety. In one way only can we discharge our

duty to the rest of mankind--by the purity and elevation of character

that shall distinguish us as a people. If we sink into luxury, vice, or

moral apathy, our brightness will be lost, our prosperity deprived of

its vital element, and we shall appear disgraced before man, guilty

before God.

ATLANTIC AND PACIFIC.

JAMES A. GARFIELD, American general and statesman; twentieth

President of the United States. Born in Orange, Ohio, November 19,

1831; shot by an assassin, July 2, 1881; died, September 19 in the

same year, at Long Branch, New Jersey. From "Garfield's Words." By

permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Publishers.

The Atlantic is still the great historic sea. Even in its sunken wrecks

might be read the record of modern nations. Who shall say that the

Pacific will not yet become the great historic sea of the future--the

vast amphitheater around which shall sit in majesty and power the two

Americas, Asia, Africa, and the chief colonies of Europe. God forbid

that the waters of our national life should ever settle to the dead

level of a waveless calm. It would be the stagnation of death, the ocean

grave of individual liberty.

GREATEST CONTINUOUS EMPIRE.

The Right Hon. WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE, the noted English statesman

and orator. Born at Liverpool, December 29, 1809. From his "Kin

beyond the Sea."

There is no parallel in all the records of the world to the case of that

prolific British mother who has sent forth her innumerable children over

all the earth to be the founders of half-a-dozen empires. She, with her

progeny, may almost claim to constitute a kind of universal church in

politics. But among these children there is one whose place in the

world's eye and in history is superlative; it is the American Republic.

She is the eldest born. She has, taking the capacity of her land into

view as well as its mere measurement, a natural base for the greatest

continuous empire ever established by man. And it may be well here to

mention what has not always been sufficiently observed, that the

distinction between continuous empire, and empire severed and dispersed

over sea is vital. The development which the Republic has effected has

been unexampled in its rapidity and force. While other countries have

doubled, or at most trebled, their population, she has risen during one

single century of freedom, in round numbers, from two millions to

forty-five. As to riches, it is reasonable to establish, from the

decennial stages of the progress thus far achieved, a series for the

future; and, reckoning upon this basis, I suppose that the very next

census, in the year 1880, will exhibit her to the world as certainly the

wealthiest of all the nations. The huge figure of a thousand millions

sterling, which may be taken roundly as the annual income of the United

Kingdom, has been reached at a surprising rate; a rate which may perhaps

be best expressed by saying that, if we could have started forty or

fifty years ago from zero, at the rate of our recent annual increment,

we should now have reached our present position. But while we have been

advancing with this portentous rapidity, America is passing us by as if

in a canter. Yet even now the work of searching the soil and the bowels

of the territory, and opening out her enterprise throughout its vast

expanse, is in its infancy. The England and the America of the present

are probably the two strongest nations of the world. But there can

hardly be a doubt, as between the America and the England of the future,

that the daughter, at some no very distant time, will, whether fairer or

less fair, be unquestionably yet stronger than the mother.

TYPICAL AMERICAN.

HENRY W. GRADY, the late brilliant editor of the Atlanta

_Constitution_. From an address delivered at the famous New England

dinner in New York.

With the Cavalier once established as a fact in your charming little

books, I shall let him work out his own stratum, as he has always done,

with engaging gallantry, and we will hold no controversy as to his

merits. Why should we? Neither Puritan nor Cavalier long survived as

such. The virtues and traditions of both happily still live for the

inspiration of their sons and the saving of the old fashion. But both

Puritan and Cavalier were lost in the storm of their first revolution,

and the American citizen, supplanting both, and stronger than either,

took possession of the republic bought by their common blood and

fashioned to wisdom, and charged himself with teaching men government

and establishing the voice of the people as the voice of God. Great

types, like valuable plants, are slow to flower and fruit. But from the

union of these colonists, from the straightening of their purposes and

the crossing of their blood, slow perfecting through a century, came he

who stands as the first typical American, the first who comprehended

within himself all the strength and gentleness, all the majesty and

grace of this Republic--Abraham Lincoln. He was the sum of Puritan and

Cavalier, for in his ardent nature were fused the virtues of both, and

in the depths of his great soul the faults of both were lost. He was

greater than Puritan, greater than Cavalier, in that he was American,

and that in his homely form were first gathered the vast and thrilling

forces of this ideal government--charging it with such tremendous

meaning and so elevating it above human suffering that martyrdom, though

infamously aimed, came as a fitting crown to a life consecrated from the

cradle to human liberty. Let us, each cherishing his traditions and

honoring his fathers, build with reverent hands to the type of this

simple but sublime life, in which all types are honored, and in the

common glory we shall win as Americans there will be plenty and to spare

for your forefathers and for mine.

GRATITUDE AND PRIDE.

BENJAMIN HARRISON, American soldier, lawyer, and statesman. Born at

North Bend, Ohio, August 20, 1833. Grandson of General William

Henry Harrison, ninth President of the United States, and himself

President, 1888-1892. From a speech at Sacramento, Cal., 1891.

FELLOW-CITIZENS: This fresh, delightful morning, this vast assemblage of

contented and happy people, this building, dedicated to the uses of

civil government--all things about us tend to inspire our hearts with

pride and with gratitude. Gratitude to that overruling Providence that

turned hither, after the discovery of this continent, the steps of those

who had the capacity to organize a free representative government.

Gratitude to that Providence that has increased the feeble colonies on

an inhospitable coast to these millions of prosperous people, who have

found another sea and populated its sunny shores with a happy and

growing people.

Gratitude to that Providence that led us through civil strife to a glory

and a perfection of unity as a people that was otherwise impossible.

Gratitude that we have to-day a Union of free States without a slave to

stand as a reproach to that immortal declaration upon which our

Government rests.

Pride that our people have achieved so much; that, triumphing over all

the hardships of those early pioneers, who struggled in the face of

discouragement and difficulties more appalling than those that met

Columbus when he turned the prows of his little vessels toward an

unknown shore; that, triumphing over perils of starvation, perils of

savages, perils of sickness, here on the sunny slope of the Pacific they

have established civil institutions and set up the banner of the

imperishable Union.

NATURE SUPERIOR.

Sir FRANCIS BOND HEAD, a popular English writer. Born near

Rochester, Kent, January 1, 1893. Lieutenant-general of Upper

Canada 1836-1838. Died, July 20, 1875.

In both the northern and southern hemispheres of the New World, nature

has not only outlined her works on a larger scale, but has painted the

whole picture with brighter and more costly colors than she used in

delineating and in beautifying the Old World. The heavens of America

appear infinitely higher, the sky is bluer, the air is fresher, the cold

is intenser, the moon looks larger, the stars are brighter, the thunder

is louder, the lightning is vivider, the wind is stronger, the rain is

heavier, the mountains are higher, the rivers longer, the forests

bigger, the plains broader.

AMERICA'S WELCOME.

PATRICK HENRY, a celebrated American orator and patriot. Born at

Studley, Hanover County, Virginia, May 29, 1736; died, June 6,

1799. The author of the celebrated phrase, "Give me liberty or give

me death," in speaking in the Virginia Convention, March, 1775.

Cast your eyes over this extensive country; observe the salubrity of

your climate, the variety and fertility of your soil, and see that soil

intersected in every quarter by bold, navigable streams, flowing to the

east and to the west, as if the finger of Heaven were marking out the

course of your settlements, inviting you to enterprise, and pointing the

way to wealth. You are destined, at some time or other, to become a

great agricultural and commercial people; the only question is, whether

you choose to reach this point by slow gradations, and at some distant

period; lingering on through a long and sickly minority; subjected,

meanwhile, to the machinations, insults, and oppressions, of enemies,

foreign and domestic, without sufficient strength to resist and chastise

them; or whether you choose rather to rush at once, as it were, to the

full enjoyment of those high destinies, and be able to cope,

single-handed, with the proudest oppressor of the Old World. If you

prefer the latter course, as I trust you do, encourage immigration;

encourage the husbandmen, the mechanics, the merchants, of the Old World

to come and settle in this land of promise; make it the home of the

skillful, the industrious, the fortunate, and happy, as well as the

asylum of the distressed; fill up the measure of your population as

speedily as you can, by the means which Heaven hath placed in your

power; and I venture to prophesy there are those now living who will see

this favored land amongst the most powerful on earth; able to take care

of herself, without resorting to that policy, which is always so

dangerous, though sometimes unavoidable, of calling in foreign aid. Yes,

they will see her great in arts and in arms; her golden harvests waving

over fields of immeasurable extent; her commerce penetrating the most

distant seas, and her cannon silencing the vain boasts of those who now

proudly affect to rule the waves.

[Illustration: Nina. Santa Maria. Pinta.

THE FLEET OF COLUMBUS (See pages 216 and 282.)]

But you must have _men_; you can not get along without them; those heavy

forests of valuable timber, under which your lands are growing, must be

cleared away; those vast riches which cover the face of your soil, as

well as those which lie hid in its bosom, are to be developed and

gathered only by the skill and enterprise of men. Do you ask how you are

to get them? Open your doors, and they will come in; the population of

the Old World is full to overflowing; that population is ground, too, by

the oppressions of the governments under which they live. They are

already standing on tiptoe upon their native shores, and looking to your

coasts with a wishful and longing eye; they see here a land blessed

with natural and political advantages which are not equaled by those of

any other country upon earth; a land on which a gracious Providence hath

emptied the horn of abundance; a land over which peace hath now

stretched forth her white wings, and where content and plenty lie down

at every door. They see something still more attractive than all this;

they see a land in which liberty hath taken up her abode; that liberty

whom they had considered as a fabled goddess, existing only in the

fancies of poets; they see her here a real divinity, her altars rising

on every hand throughout these happy States, her glories chanted by

three millions of tongues, and the whole region smiling under her

blessed influence. Let but this our celestial goddess, Liberty, stretch

forth her fair hand toward the people of the Old World, tell them to

come, and bid them welcome, and you will see them pouring in from the

north, from the south, from the east, and from the west; your

wildernesses will be cleared and settled, your deserts will smile, your

ranks will be filled, and you will soon be in a condition to defy the

powers of any adversary.

OUR GREAT TRUST.

GEORGE STILLMAN HILLARD, an eminent American writer, lawyer, and

orator. Born at Machias, Maine, 1808; died, 1879. From an

Independence Day oration.

Our Rome can not fall, and we be innocent. No conqueror will chain us to

the car of his triumph; no countless swarm of Huns and Goths will bury

the memorials and trophies of civilized life beneath a living tide of

barbarism. Our own selfishness, our own neglect, our own passions, and

our own vices will furnish the elements of our destruction. With our own

hands we shall tear down the stately edifice of our glory. We shall die

by self-inflicted wounds.

But we will not talk of themes like these. We will not think of failure,

dishonor, and despair. We will elevate our minds to the contemplation of

our high duties and the great trust committed to us. We will resolve to

lay the foundations of our prosperity on that rock of private virtue

which can not be shaken until the laws of the moral world are reversed.

From our own breasts shall flow the salient springs of national

increase. Then our success, our happiness, our glory, will be as

inevitable as the inferences of mathematics. We may calmly smile at all

the croakings of all the ravens, whether of native or foreign breed.

The whole will not grow weak by the increase of its parts. Our growth

will be like that of the mountain oak, which strikes its roots more

deeply into the soil, and clings to it with a closer grasp, as its lofty

head is exalted and its broad arms stretched out. The loud burst of joy

and gratitude which, on this, the anniversary of our independence, is

breaking from the full hearts of a mighty people, will never cease to be

heard. No chasms of sullen silence will interrupt its course; no

discordant notes of sectional madness mar the general harmony. Year

after year will increase it by tributes from now unpeopled solitudes.

The farthest West shall hear it and rejoice; the Oregon shall swell it

with the voice of its waters; the Rocky Mountains shall fling back the

glad sound from their snowy crests.

ON FREEDOM'S GENEROUS SOIL.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, M. D., the distinguished American author,

wit, and poet. Born in Cambridge, Mass., August 29, 1809.

America is the only place where man is full-grown.

NATIONAL HERITAGE.

The Rev. THOMAS STARR KING, an American Unitarian divine. Born in

New York in 1824; died, 1864. From an address on the "Privileges

and Duties of Patriotism," delivered in November, 1862. By

permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Publishers, Boston.

Suppose that the continent could turn toward you to-morrow at sunrise,

and show to you the whole American area in the short hours of the sun's

advance from Eastport to the Pacific. You would see New England roll

into light from the green plumes of Aroostook to the silver stripe of

the Hudson; westward thence over the Empire State, and over the lakes,

and over the sweet valleys of Pennsylvania, and over the prairies, the

morning blush would run and would waken all the line of the Mississippi;

from the frosts where it rises to the fervid waters in which it pours,

for 3,000 miles it would be visible, fed by rivers that flow from every

mile of the Alleghany slope, and edged by the green embroideries of the

temperate and tropic zones; beyond this line another basin, too--the

Missouri--catching the morning, leads your eye along its western slope

till the Rocky Mountains burst upon the vision, and yet do not bar it;

across its passes we must follow, as the stubborn courage of American

pioneers has forced its way, till again the Sierras and their silver

veins are tinted along the mighty bulwark with the break of day; and

then over to the gold fields of the western slope, and the fatness of

the California soil, and the beautiful valleys of Oregon, and the

stately forests of Washington, the eye is drawn, as the globe turns out

of the night shadow; and when the Pacific waves are crested with

radiance, you have the one blending picture--nay, the reality--of the

American domain. No such soil--so varied by climate, by products, by

mineral riches, by forest and lake, by wild heights and buttresses, and

by opulent plains, yet all bound into unity of configuration and

bordered by both warm and icy seas--no such domain, was ever given to

one people.

And then suppose that you could see in a picture as vast and vivid the

preparation for our inheritance of this land. Columbus, haunted by his

round idea, and setting sail in a sloop, to see Europe sink behind him,

while he was serene in the faith of his dream; the later navigators of

every prominent Christian race who explored the upper coasts; the

Mayflower, with her cargo of sifted acorns from the hardy stock of

British puritanism, and the ship, whose name we know not, that bore to

Virginia the ancestors of Washington; the clearing of the wilderness,

and the dotting of its clearings with the proofs of manly wisdom and

Christian trust; then the gradual interblending of effort and interest

and sympathy into one life--the congress of the whole Atlantic slope--to

resist oppression upon one member; the rally of every State around

Washington and his holy sword, and again the nobler rally around him

when he signed the Constitution, and after that the organization of the

farthest West with North and South, into one polity and communion; when

this was finished, the tremendous energy of free life, under the

stimulus and with the aid of advancing science, in increasing wealth,

subduing the wilds to the bonds of use, multiplying fertile fields and

busy schools and noble work-shops and churches, hallowed by free-will

offerings of prayer; and happy homes, and domes dedicated to the laws of

States that rise by magic from the haunts of the buffalo and deer, all

in less than a long lifetime; and if we could see also how, in achieving

this, the flag which represents all this history is dyed in traditions

of exploits, by land and sea, that have given heroes to American annals

whose names are potent to conjure with, while the world's list of

thinkers in matter is crowded with the names of American inventors, and

the higher rolls of literary merit are not empty of the title of our

"representative men"; if all that the past has done for us, and the

present reveals, could thus stand apparent in one picture, and then if

the promise of the future to the children of our millions under our

common law, and with continental peace, could be caught in one vast

spectral exhibition--the wealth in store, the power, the privilege, the

freedom, the learning, the expansive and varied and mighty unity in

fellowship, almost fulfilling the poet's dream of "the parliament of

man, the federation of the world"--you would exclaim with exultation,

"I, too, am an American!" You would feel that patriotism, next to your

tie to the Divine Love, is the greatest privilege of your life; and you

would devote yourselves, out of inspiration and joy, to the obligations

of patriotism, that this land, so spread, so adorned, so colonized, so

blessed, should be kept forever against all the assaults of traitors,

one in polity, in spirit, and in aim.

SIFTED WHEAT.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. From his "Courtship of Miles Standish,"

IV.

God hath sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat for this planting.

CENTER OF CIVILIZATION.

From _North British Review_.

It is too late to disparage America. Accustomed to look with wonder on

the civilization of the past, upon the unblest glories of Greece and of

Rome, upon mighty empires that have risen but to fall, the English mind

has never fixed itself on the grand phenomenon of a great nation at

school. Viewing America as a forward child that has deserted its home

and abjured its parent, we have ever looked upon her with a callous

heart and with an evil eye, judicially blind to her progress.

But how she has gone on developing the resources of a region teeming

with vegetable life. How she has intrenched herself amid noble

institutions, with temples enshrined in religious toleration, with

universities of private bequest and public organization, with national

and unshackled schools, and with all the improvements which science,

literature, and philanthropy demand from the citizen or from the state.

Supplied from the Old World with its superabundant life, the Anglo-Saxon

tide has been carrying its multiplied population to the West, rushing

onward through impervious forests, leveling their lofty pines and

converting the wilderness into abodes of populous plenty, intelligence,

and taste. Nor is this living flood the destroying scourge which

Providence sometimes lets loose upon our species. It breathes in accents

which are our own; it is instinct with English life; and it bears on its

snowy crest the auroral light of the East, to gild the darkness of the

West with the purple radiance of salvation, of knowledge, and of peace.

Her empire of coal, her kingdom of cotton and of corn, her regions of

gold and of iron, mark out America as the center of civilization, as the

emporium of the world's commerce, as the granary and storehouse out of

which the kingdoms of the East will be clothed and fed; and, we greatly

fear, as the asylum in which our children will take refuge when the

hordes of Asia and the semi-barbarians of Eastern Europe shall again

darken and desolate the West.

Though dauntless in her mien, and colossal in her strength, she displays

upon her banner the star of peace, shedding its radiance upon us. Let us

reciprocate the celestial light, and, strong and peaceful ourselves, we

shall have nothing to fear from her power, but everything to learn from

her example.

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.

Proclaim to all mankind the world's new birth

Of freedom, age on age shall consecrate.

Let war and enmity forever cease,

Let glorious art and commerce banish wrong;

The universal brotherhood of peace

Shall be Columbia's high inspiring song.

[Illustration: 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

anti-slavery 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.

THE SHIP COLUMBIA.

EDWARD G. PORTER. 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 organization 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 _Century_

The rose may bloom for England,

The lily for France unfold;

Ireland may honor the shamrock,

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 the mountain laurel for Maryland

Its royal clusters rear;

And jasmine and magnolia

The crest of the South adorn;

But the wide Republic's emblem

Is the bounteous, golden corn!

EAST AND WEST.

THOMAS BUCHANAN READ, a distinguished American artist and poet.

Born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, 1822; died in New York, May

11, 1872. From his "Emigrant's Song."[60]

Leave the tears to the maiden, the fears to the child, While the future

stands beckoning afar in the wild; For there Freedom, more fair, walks

the primeval land, Where the wild deer all court the caress of her hand.

There the deep forests fall, and the old shadows fly, And the palace and

temple leap into the sky. Oh, the East holds no place where the onward

can rest, And alone there is room in the land of the West!

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 self-government; 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, N. Y.,

October 10, 1872.

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 that it was marked, more distinctly than the present, by

licentious morals and mean ambition. It is only just to infer in favor

of the United States an improvement of morals from their established

progress in knowledge and power; otherwise, the philosophy of society is

misunderstood, and we must change all our courses, and henceforth seek

safety in imbecility, and virtue in superstition and ignorance.

A PROPHETIC UTTERANCE OF COLONIAL DAYS.

SAMUEL SEWELL. Born at Bishopstoke, Hampshire, England, March,

1652. Died at Boston, Mass., January, 1730.

Lift up your heads, O ye Gates of Columbia, and be ye lift up, ye

Everlasting Doors, and the King of Glory shall come in.

NATIONAL INFLUENCE.

JOSEPH STORY, a distinguished American jurist. Born in Marblehead,

Mass., September 18, 1779; died at Cambridge, Mass., September 10,

1845. By permission of Messrs. Little, Brown & Co., Publishers.

When we reflect on what has been, and is, how is it possible not to feel

a profound sense of the responsibilities of this Republic to all future

ages? What vast motives press upon us for lofty efforts! What brilliant

prospects invite our enthusiasm! What solemn warnings at once demand our

vigilance and moderate our confidence! We stand, the latest, and, if we

fail, probably the last, experiment of self-government by the people. We

have begun it under circumstances of the most auspicious nature. We are

in the vigor of youth. Our growth has never been checked by the

oppressions of tyranny. Our constitutions have never been enfeebled by

the vices or luxuries of the Old World. Such as we are, we have been

from the beginning--simple, hardy, intelligent, accustomed to

self-government and self-respect. The Atlantic rolls between us and any

formidable foe. Within our own territory, stretching through many

degrees of latitude and longitude, we have the choice of many products

and many means of independence. The government is mild. The press is

free. Religion is free. Knowledge reaches, or may reach, every home.

What fairer prospect of success could be presented? What means more

adequate to accomplish the sublime end? What more is necessary than for

the people to preserve what they themselves have created? Already has

the age caught the spirit of our institutions. It has already ascended

the Andes, and snuffed the breezes of both oceans. It has infused itself

into the life-blood of Europe, and warmed the sunny plains of France and

the lowlands of Holland. It has touched the philosophy of Germany and

the north, and, moving to the south, has opened to Greece the lessons of

her better days.