of civil liberty in the heart of the British empire beat warm and full in the bosom of our fathers, the sobriety, the firmness, and the dignity with which the cause of free principles struggled into existence here, constantly found encouragement and countenance from the sons of liberty there? Who does not remember that when the Pilgrims went over the sea, the prayers of the faithful British confessors, in all the quarters of their dispersion, went over with them; while their aching eyes were strained, till the star of hope should go up in the western skies? And who will ever forget that in that eventful struggle which severed this mighty empire from the British crown, there was not heard, throughout our continent in arms, a voice which spoke louder for the rights of America, than that of Burke or of Chatham, within the walls of the British parliament, and at the foot of the British throne? No, for myself, I can truly say, that after my native land, I feel a tenderness and a reverence for that of my fathers. The pride I take in my own country makes me respect that from which we are sprung. In touching the soil of England, I seem to return like a descendant to the old family seat; to come back to the abode of an aged, the tomb of a departed, parent. I acknowledge this great consanguinity of nations. The sound of my native language, beyond the sea, is a music to my ear, beyond the richest strains of Tuscan softness, or Castilian majesty. I am not yet in a land of strangers, while surrounded by the manners, the habits, the forms in which I have been brought up. I wander delighted through a thousand scenes, which the historians, the poets, have made familiar to us, of which the names are interwoven with our earliest associations. I tread with reverence the spots where I can retrace the footsteps of our suffering fathers; the pleasant land of their birth has a claim on my heart. It seems to me a classic, y a, a holy land, rich in the memories of the great and good; the martyrs of liberty, the exiled heralds of truth; and richer as the parent of this land of promise in the west. I am not I need not say I am not the pane gyrist of England. I am not dazzled by her riches, nor awed by her power. The sceptre, the mitre, and the coronet, stars, garters and blue ribbons, seem to me poor things for great men to contend for. Nor is my admiration awakened by her armies, mustered for the battles of Europe; her navies, overshadowing the ocean; nor her empire, grasping the furthest east. It is these, and the price of guilt and blood by which they are maintained, which are the cause why no friend of liberty can salute her with undivided affections. But it is the refuge of free principles, though often persecuted; the school of religious liberty, the more precious for the struggles to which it has been called; the tombs of those who have reflected honor on all who speak the English tongue; it is the birthplace of our fathers, the home of the pilgrims; it is these which I love and venerate in England. I should feel ashamed of an enthusiasm for Italy and Greece, did I not also feel it for a land like this. In an American it would seem to me degenerate and ungrateful, to hang with passion upon the traces of Homer and Virgil, and follow without emotion the nearer and plainer footsteps of Shakspeare and Milton; and I should think him cold in his love for his native land, who felt no melting in his heart for that other native land, which holds the ashes of his forefathers. EXERCISE XLII. HISTORY. THE instructive lesson of history, teaching by example, can nowhere be studied with more profit, or with a better promise, than in the revolutionary period of America; and especially by us, who sit under the tree our fathers have planted, enjoy its shade, and are nourished by its fruits. But little is our merit, or gain, that we applaud their deeds, unless we emulate their virtues. Love of country was in them an absorbing principle, an undivided feeling; not of a fragment, a section, but of the whole country. Union was the arch on which they raised the strong tower of a nation's independ nce. Let the arm be palsied that would loosen one stone in the basis of this fair structure, or mar its beauty; the tongue mute that would dishonor their names, by calculating the value of that which they deemed without price. They have left us an example already inscribed in the world's memory; an example portentous to the aims of tyranny in every land; an example that will console in all ages the drooping aspirations of oppressed humanity. They have left us a written charter, as a legacy, and as a guide to our course. But every day convinces us that a written charter may become powerless. Ignorance may misinterpret it; ambition may assail, and faction destroy its vital parts; and aspiring knavery may at last sing its requiem on the tomb of departed liberty. It is the spirit which lives; in this is our safety and our hope, the spirit of our fathers; and while this dwells deeply in our remembrance, and its flame is cherished, ever burning, ever pure, on the altar of our hearts; while it incites us to think as they have thought, and to do as they have done, the honor and the praise will be ours, to have preserved unimpaired the rich inheritance which they so nobly achieved. EXERCISE XLIII. INDIVIDUAL ENERGY AND ACTION. mechan THE principle of individual intelligence, ingenuity, and resolution, pervading the people of New England, is covering the land with its monuments and trophies. In every form in which skill can combine with labor, ism, in the infinite applications of science and processes of art, in patient researches into nature, and in all departments of mental activity; in solitary adventure, or in associated companies, religious, moral, political, or financial, directing the resources of multitudes with the accuracy and efficiency of a single intelligence and will, it is working incalculable effects. - It turns barrenness into fertility, straightens the winding and crooked paths, smooths down every rugged obstacle, accelerates speed, reduces cost, multiplies business, creates wealth, draws useless rivers from their ancient beds into navigable and secure artificial_channels, awakens the hum of inventive, animated, and wellrewarded industry, along the banks of every descending stream, opens with its touch the bosom of the earth to give forth its mineral treasures, converts the ice of our northern lakes into a most welcome article of world-wide commerce, and sinking its quarries into the bare and desolate mountains, manipulates the shapeless granite into forms of architectural grace and beauty, and spreads them in classic colonnades and lofty structures along the streets of distant cities. Sons of New England! your ancestors relied on the power of their own arms; upon their own ingenuity, skill, personal industry and enterprise. They never looked, for the chief blessings of life, to the government. They did not expect that freedom, prosperity, or happiness, were to be secured to their posterity by legisla tion, or any form of political administration; but they planted the seed which was to bear the precious fruits, in the awakened, enlightened, and invigorated mental energies of their descendants. For this, they provided their system of universal education; and, if you would be worthy of your ancestry, you must do likewise. • Look not to legislation, or to official patronage, or to any public resources or aids, to make yourselves or your children prosperous, powerful and happy. But trust to your and their energy of character, and enlightened minds, and persevering enterprise and industry. Cherish these traits, and they will work out in the future the same results as in the past. The earth will everywhere blossom beneath you. You will be sure of exerting your rightful influence in every community. You will be placed beyond the reach of injustice and oppression. Rash and weak counsels may involve the foreign relations of the confederacy; short-sighted or perverse legislation may do its worst to embarrass your interests; but if you resolutely apply your own resources of industry, skill and enterprise, to circumstances as they rise, you will be able to turn them to your advantage, and the great essential of democratic sovereignty will be guarantied to you, the pursuit and attainment of individual happiness and prosperity. EXERCISE XLIV. AN APPEAL IN BEHALF OF CLINTON. ENVY has sometimes denied the paramount me: it of Clinton in the great enterprise of the Erie Canal. But the question is not whether he first made the suggestion of a navigable communication between the lakes and the Hudson. It is a fact of historic certainty, that the adoption, the prosecution, and the accomplishment of that gigantic undertaking, were owing mainly to his convincing statements, his vast influence, and indomitable perseverance. What other man was there then, or has there been since, who would have accomplished the same? Who that has watched the course of events in New York, and the fluctuations of party legislation on this very subject—the canal — but may well question, whether, without the agency just named, it would to this day have been begun? To Clinton, then, as an honored instrument in higher hands, be the praise awarded! Let him Citizens of this imperial state, whose numerical power the canal has doubled, and whose wealth it has augmented in a ratio that defies estimation, cherish and perpetuate his name! You enjoy the rich fruits which his foresight anticipated, and his toils secured. rest no longer in an undistinguished grave. True, a name like Clinton's cannot die! It is written on that long, deep line with which he channelled the broad bosom of his native state: it is heard at every watery stair, as the floating burden sinks or rises with the gushing stream; It is borne on each of the thousand boats that make the long inland voyage; and it shines entwined with Fulton's, on all the steam-towed fleets of barges which sweep, in almost continuous train, the surface of the Hudson. But these are the traces of his own hand. It is your duty and privilege to record it too. Engrave it, then, in ever-during stone. Embody your sense of his merits in the massive pile. From the loftiest height of beautiful Greenwood let the structure rise, a beacon at once to the city and the sea. Severe in beauty and grand in proportions, it should be emblem |