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that they had risen from the field of conquest to a glory as bright and as durable as the stars, how few that continue long to interest mankind!

The victory of yesterday is reversed by the defeat of to-day; the star of military glory, rising like a meteor, like a meteor has fallen; disgrace and disaster hang on the heels of conquest and renown; victor and vanquished presently pass away to oblivion, and the world holds on its course, with the loss only of so many lives, and so much treasure.

But if this is frequently, or generally, the fortune of military achievements, it is not always so. There are enterprises, military as well as civil, that sometimes check the current of events, give a new turn to human affairs, and transmit their consequences through ages. We see their importance in their results, and call them great, because great things follow. There have been battles which have fixed the fate of nations. These come down to us in history with a solid and permanent influence, not created by a display of glittering armour, the rush of adverse battalions, the sinking and rising of pennons, the flight, the pursuit, and the victory; but by their effect in advancing or retarding human knowledge, in overthrowing or establishing despotism, in extending or destroying human happiness.

When the traveller pauses on the plains of Marathon, what are the emotions which strongly agitate his breast? what is that glorious recollection that thrills through his frame, and suffuses his eyes? Not, I imagine, that Grecian skill and Grecian valour were here most signally displayed; but that Greece herself was saved. It is because to this spot, and to the event which has rendered it immortal, he refers all the succeeding glories of the republic. It is because, if that day had gone otherwise, Greece had perished.

It is because he perceives that her philosophers and orators, her poets and painters, her sculptors and architects, her government and free institutions, point backward to Marathon, and that their future existence seems to have been suspended on the contingency, whether the Persian or Grecian banner should wave victorious in the beams of that day's setting sun.

And, as his imagination kindles at the retrospect, he is transported back to the interesting moment; he counts the fearful odds of the contending hosts; his interest for the result overwhelms him; he trembles as if it were still uncertain, and seems to doubt whether he may consider Socrates and Plato, Demosthenes, Sophocles, and Phidias as secure, yet, to himself and to the world.

"If we conquer," said the Athenian commander, on the morning of that decisive day," If we conquer, we shall make Athens the greatest city of Greece." A prophecy how well fulfilled! "if God prosper us," might have been the more appropriate language of our fathers, when they landed upon this rock,-" if God prosper us, we shall here begin a work that shall last for ages; we shall plant here a new society, in the principles of the fullest liberty, and the purest religion; we shall subdue this wilderness which is before us; we shall fill this region of the great continent, which stretches almost from pole to pole, with civilization and Christianity; the temples of the true God shall rise where now ascends the smoke of idolatrous sacrifice; fields and gardens, the flowers of summer, and the waving and golden harvests of autumn, shall extend over a thousand hills, and stretch along a thousand valleys, never yet, since the creation, reclaimed to the use of civilized man.

We shall whiten this coast with the canvass of a prosperous commerce; we shall stud the long and winding shore with a hundred cities. That which we sow in weakness shall be raised in strength. From our sincere, but houseless worship, there shall spring splendid temples to record God's goodness; from the simplicity of our social union, there shall arise wise and politic constitutions of government, full of the liberty which we ourselves bring and breathe; from our zeal for learning, institutions shall spring, which shall scatter the light of knowledge throughout the land, and, in time, paying back what they have borrowed, shall contribute their part to the great aggregate of human knowledge; and our descendants, through all generations, shall look back to this spot, and this hour, with unabated affection and regard."

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LESSON XLVI.

Obligations to the Pilgrims.-WHELPley.

LET us go back to the rock, where the Pilgrims first stood, and look abroad upon this wide and happy land, so full of their lineal or adopted sons, and repeat the question, to whom do we owe it, that "the wilderness has thus been turned into a fruitful field, and the desert has become as the garden of the Lord?" To whom do we owe it, under an all-wise Providence, that this nation, so miraculously born, is now contributing with such effect to the welfare of the human family, by aiding the march of mental and moral improvement, and giving an example to the nations of what it is to be pious, intelligent, and free?

To whom do we owe it, that with us the great ends of the social compact are accomplished to a degree of perfection never before realized; that the union of public power and private liberty is here exhibited in a harmony so singular and perfect, as to allow the might of political combination to rest upon the basis of individual virtue, and to call into exercise, by the very freedom which such a union gives, all the powers that contribute to national prosperity ?

To whom do we owe it, that the pure and powerful light of the gospel is now shed abroad over these countries, and is rapidly gaining upon the darkness of the western world; that the importance of religion to the temporal welfare of men, and to the permanence of wise institutions is here beginning to be felt in its just measure;-that the influence of a divine revelation is not here, as in almost every other section of christendom, wrested to purposes of worldly ambition ;-that the holy Bible is not sealed from the eyes of those for whom it was intended; and the best charities and noblest powers of the soul degraded by the terrors of a dark and artful superstition?

To whom do we owe it, that in this favoured land the gospel of the grace of God has best displayed its power to bless humanity, by uniting the anticipations of a better world with the highest interests and pursuits of this ;

by carrying its merciful influence into the very business and bosoms of men ;-by making the ignorant wise and the miserable happy;-by breaking the fetters of the slave, and teaching "the babe and the suckling" those simple and sublime truths, which give to life its dignity and virtue, and fill immortality with hope?

To whom do we owe all this? Doubtless to the Plymouth Pilgrims!-Happily did one of those fearless exiles exclaim, in view of all that was past, and of the blessing, and honour, and glory that was yet to come, "God hath sifted three kingdoms, that he might gather the choice grain, and plant it in the wilderness !"

LESSON XLVII.

Song of the Pilgrims.-UPHAM.

THE breeze has swelled the whitening sail,
The blue waves curl beneath the gale,
And, bounding with the wave and wind,
We leave Old England's shores behind :-
Leave behind our native shore,
Homes, and all we loved before."

The deep may dash, the winds may blow,
The storm spread out its wings of wo,
Till sailors' eyes can see a shroud,
Hung in the folds of every cloud;
Still, as long as life shall last,

From that shore we'll speed us fast.

For we would rather never be,
Than dwell where mind cannot be free,
But bows beneath a despot's rod
Even where it seeks to worship God.
Blasts of heaven, onward sweep!
Bear us o'er the troubled deep!

O, see what wonders meet our eyes!
Another land, and other skies!

Columbian hills have met our view!
Adieu! Old England's shores, adieu !
Here, at length, our feet shall rest,
Hearts be free, and homes be blest.

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As long as yonder firs shall spread
Their green arms o'er the mountain's head,-
As long as yonder cliffs shall stand,
Where join the ocean and the land,—
Shall those cliffs and mountains be
Proud retreats for liberty.

Now to the King of kings we'll raise
The pæan loud of sacred praise,

More loud than sounds the swelling breeze,
More loud than speak the rolling seas!
Happier lands have met our view!
England's shores, adieu! adieu!

LESSON XLVIII.

The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers.-MRS. HEMANS

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And the heavy night hung dark,

The hills and waters o'er,

When a band of Exiles moor'd their bark
On the wild New-England shore.

Not as the Conqueror comes,

They, the true-hearted, came;

Not with the roll of the stirring drums,-
And the trumpet that sings of Fame :-

Not as the Flying come,

In silence and in fear

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