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50. THE PROBLEM FOR THE UNITED STATES. — Rev. Henry A. Boardman.

Tins Union cannot expire as the snow melts from the rock, or a star disappears from the firmament. When it falls, the crash will be heard in all lands. Wherever the winds of Heaven go, that will go, bear. ing sorrow and dismay to millions of stricken hearts; for the subver sion of this Government will render the cause of Constitutional Liberty hopeless throughout the world. What Nation can govern itself, if this Nation cannot? What encouragement will any People have to estab lish liberal institutions for themselves, if ours fail? Providence has laid upon us the responsibility and the honor of solving that problem in which all coming generations of men have a profound interest, whether the true ends of Government can be secured by a popular representative system. In the munificence of His goodness, He put us in possession of our heritage, by a series of interpositions scarcely less signal than those which conducted the Hebrews to Canaan; and He has, up to this period, withheld from us no immunities or resources which might facilitate an auspicious result. Never before was a People so advantageously situated for working out this great problem in favor of human liberty; and it is important for us to understand that the world so regards it.

If, in the frenzy of our base sectional jealousies, we dig the grave of the Union, and thus decide this question in the negative, no tongue may attempt to depict the disappointment and despair which will go along with the announcement, as it spreads through distant lands. It will be America, after fifty years' experience, giving in her adhesion to the doctrine that man was not made for self-government. It will be Freedom herself proclaiming that Freedom is a chimera; Liberty ringing her own knell, all over the globe. And, when the citizens or subjects of the Governments which are to succeed this Union shall visit Europe, and see, in some land now struggling to cast off its fetters, the lacerated and lifeless form of Liberty laid prostrate under the iron heel of Despotism, let them remember that the blow which destroyed her was inflicted by their own country.

"So the struck Eagle, stretched upon the plain,
No more through rolling clouds to soar again,
Viewed his own feather on the fatal dart,
And winged the shaft that quivered in his heart.
Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel
He nursed the pinion which impelled the steel;
While the same plumage that had warmed his nest
Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast."

51. THE AMERICAN EXPERIMENT OF SELF-GOVERNMENT.

Eduard Everett.

WE are summoned to new energy and zeal by the high nature of the experiment we are appointed in Providence to make, and the grandeur of the theatre on which it is to be performed. At a moment of deep and general agitation in the Old World, it pleased Heaven to open this last refuge of humanity. The attempt has begun and is

going on, far from foreign corruption, on the broadest scale, and under the most benignant prospects; and it certainly rests with us to sclve the great problem in human society, to settle, and that forever, the momentous question, whether mankind can be trusted with a purely popular system of Government?

One might almost think, without extravagance, that the departed wise and good, of all places and times, are looking down from their happy scats to witness what shall now bone by us that they who lavished their treasures and their blood, of old,-who spake and wrote, who labored, fought and perished, in the one great cause of Freedom and Truth, -are now hanging, from their orbs on high, over the last solemn experiment of humanity. As I have wandered over the spots once the scene of their labors, and mused among the prostrate columns of their senate-houses and forums, I have seemed almost to hear a voice from the tombs of departed ages, from the sepulchres of the Nations which died before the sight. They exhort us, they adjure us, to be faithful to our trust. They implore us, by the long trials of struggling humanity; by the blessed memory of the departed; by the dear faith which has been plighted by pure hands to the holy cause of truth and man; by the awful secrets of the prison-house, where the sons of freedom have been immured; by the noble heads which have been brought to the block; by the wrecks of time, by the eloquent ruins of Nations, — they conjure us not to quench the light which is rising on the world. Greece cries to us by the convulsed lips or her poisoned, dying Demosthenes; and Rome pleads with us in the mute persuasion of her mangled Tully.

52. THE SHIP OF STATE. — Rev. Wm. P. Lunt.

BREAK up the Union of these States, because there are acknowledged evils in our system? Is it so easy a matter, then, to make everything in the actual world conform exactly to the ideal pattern we have conceived, in our minds, of absolute right? Suppose the fatal blow were struck, and the bonds which fasten together these States were severed, would the evils and mischiefs that would be experienced by those who are actually members of this vast Republican Community be all that would ensue? Certainly not. We are connected with the several Nations and Races of the world as no other People has ever been connected. We have opened our doors, and invited emigration to our soil from all lands. Our invitation has been accepted. Thousands have come at our bidding. Thousands more are on the way. Other thousands still are standing a-tiptoe on the shores of the Old World, eager to find a passage to the land where bread may be had for laber, and where man is treated as man. In our political family almost all Nations are represented. The several varieties of the race are here subjected to a social fusion, out of which Providence designs to form "new man."

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We are in this way teaching the world a great lesson, — namely

that men of different languages, habits, manners and creeds, can live together, and vote together, and, if not pray and worship together, yet in near vicinity, and do all in peace, and be, for certain purposes at least, one People. And is not this lesson of some value to the world, especially if we can teach it not by theory merely, but through a successful example? Has not this lesson, thus conveyed, some connection with the world's progress towards that far-off period to which the Enman mind looks for the fulfilment of its vision of a perfect social state? It may safely be asserted that this Union could not be dissolved without disarranging and convulsing every part of the globe. Not in the indulgence of a vain confidence did our fathers build the Ship of State, and launch it upon the waters. We will exclaim, in the ucble words of one of our poets: *

"Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what Master laid thy keel;
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!-
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,·
"T is of the wave and not the rock;
"T is but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by the gale!
In spite of rock and tempest roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!

Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee.

Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,

Our faith triumphant o'er our fears,

Are all with thee, are all with thee!"

53. ART.-Charles Sprague.

WHEN, from the sacred garden driven,
Man fled before his Maker's wrath,

An angel left her place in Heaven,

And crossed the wanderer's sunless path.
"T was Art! sweet Art! New radiance broke
Where her light foot flew o'er the ground;
And thus with scraph voice she spoke,
"The curse a blessing shall be found."

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She led him through the trackless wild,
Where noontide sunbeam never blazed;
The thistle shrank, the harvest smiled,
And Nature gladdened as she gazed.

*H. W. Longfellow.

Earth's thousand tribes of living things,
At Art's command, to him are given,
The village grows, the city springs,

And point their spires of faith to Heaven
He rends the oak, and bids it ride,

To guard the shores its beauty graced;
He smites the rock,- upheaved in pride,
See towers of strength and domes of taste;
Earth's teeming caves their wealth reveal,
Fire bears his banner on the wave,
He bids the mortal poison heal,

And leaps triumphant o'er the grave.

He plucks the pearls that stud the deep,
Admiring Beauty's lap to fill;
He breaks the stubborn marble's sleep,
And mocks his own Creator's skill.
With thoughts that fill his glowing soul,
He bids the ore illume the page,
And, proudly scorning Time's control,
Commerces with an unborn age.

In fields of air he writes his name,

And treads the chambers of the sky,
He reads the stars, and grasps the flame
That quivers round the Throne on high
In war renowned, in peace sublime,

He moves in greatness and in grace;
His power, subduing space and time,

Links realm to realm, and race to race.

54. THE PILOT.

- Thomas Haynes Bayly. Born, 1797; died, 1839

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O, PILOT' 't is a fearful night,—there's danger on the deep;
I'll come and pace the deck with thec, I do not dare to sleep.
Go down the sailor cried, go down; this is no place for thee:
Fear not; but trust in Providence, wherever thou mayst be

Ah! pilot, dangers often met we all are apt to slight,
And thou hast known these raging waves but to subdue their migh
It is not apathy, he cried, that gives this strength to me:
Fear not but trust in Providence, wherever thou mayst be.

Ou such a night the sea engulfed my father's lifeless form;
My only brother's boat went down in just so wild a storm •
And such, perhaps, may be my fate; but still I say to thee,
Fear not; lut trust in Providence, wherever thou mayst be.

55. DEATH TYPIFIED BY WINTER.- James Thomson. Born, 1700; died, 1748

"T is done! - dread WINTER spreads his latest glooms, And reigns tremendous o'er the conquered year.

How dead the vegetable kingdom lies!

How dub the tuneful!

Horror wide extends

His desolate domain. Behold, fond man!

See here thy pictured life: pass some few years,
Thy flowering Spring, thy Summer's ardent strength,
Thy sober Autumn fading into age,

And pale concluding Winter comes, at last,
And shuts the scene. Ah! whither now are fled
Those dreams of greatness? those unsolid hopes
Of happiness? those longings after fame?
Those restless cares? those busy bustling days?
Those gay-spent, festive nights? those veering thoughts
Lost between good and ill, that shared thy life?
All now are vanished! VIRTUE sole survives,
Immortal, never-failing friend of man,
His guide to happiness on high. And see!
'Tis come, the glorious morn! the second birth
Of Heaven and Earth! Awakening Nature hears
The new-creating word, and starts to life,
In every heightened form, from pain and death
Forever free. The great eternal scheme
Involving all, and in a perfect whole
Uniting, as the prospect wider spreads,
To Reason's eye refined clears up apace.
Ye vainly wise! ye blind presumptuous! now,
Confounded in the dust, adore that POWER
And WISDOM oft arraigned: see now the cause,
Why unassuming Worth in secret lived,
And died neglected: why the good man's share
In life was gall and bitterness of soul:
Why the lone widow and her orphans pined,
In starving solitude; while Luxury,
In palaces, lay straining her low thought,
To form unreal wants: why Heaven-born Truth.
And Moderation fair, wore the red marks
Of Superstition's scourge: why licensed Pain
That cruel spoiler, that embosomed foe,
Embittered all our bliss. Ye good distressed,
Ye noble few! who here unbending stand
Beneath life's pressure, yet bear up a while,
And what your bounded view, which only saw
A little part, deemed Evil, is no more!
The storms of WINTRY TIME will quickly pass,
And one unbounded SPRING encircle all

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