hatchet, sat down under the tree of peace with its spreading branches, and brightened the chain of friendship, we have nearly exhausted their flowers of rhetoric. But the imagery prompted by internal emotion, and not by the visible world, the eloquence of condensed thought and pointed expression, the eloquence of a diction extremely limited in its forms, but nervous and direct, the eloquence of truth unadorned and of justice undisguised, these are often found in Indian speeches, and constitute their chief characteristic.

It should, moreover, be said for the Indians, that, like the Carthaginians, their history has been written by their enemies. The tales of their wrongs and their achievements may have been told by the warrior-chiefs to stimulate the courage and perpetuate the revenge of their children, but they were traces in the sand; they perished in a day, and their memory is gone.

EXERCISE LXVIII.

THE SPIRIT OF NEW ENGLAND.

It has been apprehended by some, that the fame of New England will fade before the increasing glories of the more powerful sister states. But the apprehension is unfounded. She must ever form an important member of the Union. She must ever sparkle a brilliant star in the constellation of the confederated states, as long as she preserves her religious, civil and literary character, her indefatigable industry, and her commercial enterprise. For in what consist the greatness and respectability of a nation? Most assuredly, not in the numerical superiority of its inhabitants, or in the extent of its territory. If that were the case, China and India would be more powerful than Europe.

But the greatness and respectability of a nation consist in the virtue, and vigor, and talents of its citizens. Rome, which sprang from the humblest origin, by her admirable institutions, and steady valor, and free spirit, subdued and overawed the world. Athens and Sparta, both small states, but glorying in freedom and indepen

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dence, repulsed and defeated the numerous armies of the Great King; and Alexander, with thirty thousand Grecians, subjugated the various and extensive provinces of Asia.

What enabled the land of our fathers, in a late contest, with very inferior numbers, successfully to resist almost all Europe combined against her, under the auspices of one of the ablest generals that any age has ever produced? The freedom of her constitution, and that spirit which freedom never fails to inspire, aided by her commercial wealth, and the navy which protects it. And while these shall remain unimpaired, the conquest of Western Europe, by the arms of the northern powers, will prove an idle dream. It never can be realized, while superiority of civilization shall continue in favor of the opponent.

What constitutes a state?

Not high-raised battlements, or labored mound,
Thick wall, or moated gate;

Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned,
Not bays and broad-armed ports,

Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride;
Nor starred and spangled courts,

Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride.
No. Men, high-minded men,

With powers as far above dull brutes endued,
In forest, brake or den,

As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude;
Men, who their duties know,

But know their rights, and knowing dare maintain,
Prevent the long-aimed blow,

And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain;
These constitute a state.

EXERCISE LXIX.

INTEMPERANCE.

THE legitimate and inevitable consequence of intemperance is to wither every plant of virtue, and dry up every stream of goodness in the human heart. Of all vices, it is the most ruinous in its consequences. It is

the prolific mother of crime; the fertile source of disease, misery, and death. It completely effaces from the soul all sentiments of right and wrong; all parental, fraternal, and sisterly affection; all sense of shame; all regard for man; all fear of God. It paralyzes the limbs, that they cannot move; deadens the ear, that it cannot hear; blinds the eye, that it cannot see; hardens the heart, that it cannot feel. It converts a man first into a brute, and next into a fiend. Like the fabled hydra, it is a monster of a hundred heads; like Briareus, of a hundred hands. Its effects are like those of the fabled river of Andalusia, which withers up every plant it touches, and in whose stream no fish can live. Its victims are bound in the chains of a slavery perpetual and unremitted. Like Ixion, they are lashed to a wheel whose revolution is eternal. Like Sisyphus, they are laboring to roll to the top of a hill a rock that is perpetually recoiling upon them. Like Tantalus, they are forever surrounded by waters they cannot drink, and fruits they cannot taste. Like Prometheus, they are chained, not to a Caucasian rock, where the vulture will feed upon the liver for a brief period, but to the rock of death, where Conscience will ever feed upon the soul.

And who is there that cannot point to some one, in the circle of his acquaintance, possessed of rare intellectual gifts, and who once gave fair promise of future eminence and renown, who has fallen a victim to this terrible vice? Unhappy man! For him, the valley of Tempe, the garlands of Helicon, and the laurels that bloom on the brow of Parnassus, have now no charms. His fancy wanders no more to the banks of the Mæander, or the cool Cephisus. He no longer delights to sit beneath the pines of Frascati, or meditate in the quiet groves of Pythagoras. The glorious communions he once held with the departed spirits of other times have gone forever gone! The blind old bard of Greece, and he of Mantua, whose silver verse so oft enraptured his youthful fancy, have ceased their ange' visits; and instead, have come the desolate bosom, the throes and tossings of horror and hopelessness, the undying worm and the unquenchable fire of drunkenness !

EXERCISE LXX.

PROGRESS OF LIBERTY.

It is as certain as the concurring testimony of nature and revelation can make it, that the Almighty Father designs to render this earth, at last, the happy abode of nations and of men dwelling together in peace and love. To doubt the progress of humanity is, to me, the same as to doubt the Divine power, and wisdom, and goodness. To say that liberty can be utterly overthrown, and the just rights of man forever trampled in the dust, strikes upon my ears as nothing short of infidelity and impiety. But if we believe that the cause of humanity, as such, the world over, is to be promoted, why should we doubt that its progress here will be as rapid as elsewhere?

With all our faults, and all our misfortunes, it is still a truth which ought never to be overlooked, and which it would be as audacious to deny as it is ungrateful to forget, that no government ever invented has worked so well as that wonderful and beautiful system which the framers of the Constitution of the American Union contrived, and successfully recommended to the states and people-preserving, as it does, the local sovereignty of the several members of the confederacy, while, for purposes common to them all, it consolidates them into one compact and vigorous empire. It has proved itself admirably adapted to collect and concentrate the moral and physical force of the nation against a foreign enemy; and recent events have most gloriously shown the selfsustaining energy which remains even in the smallest states of the confederacy.

Occasional jars, and interferences, and perplexities, and threatening dangers, arise, but they belong to human things, and nowhere, beneath the sun, can we rationally expect entirely to avoid them. Yes, my fellow-countrymen, let Faith and Hope be the pillars of our patriotism, as of our piety. The blessings we'enjoy, as citizens of this free land, will assuredly descend, with a tide of ever increasing depth and width, to our posterity. When we look into the past, we see the hand of God laying the foundations of the temple of our liberties,

and when we look into the future, the depths of its boundless wstas are irradiated by the assurance that He will never permit the weakness or the wickedness of man to overthrow it.

EXERCISE LXXI.

EVENTS OF THE REVOLUTION.

TIE military events of the Revolution, which necessarily occupy so much of its history, are not less honorable to the actors, nor less fruitful in the evidences they afford of large design and ability of character. But these we need not recount. They live in the memory of all; we have heard them from the lips of those who saw and suffered; they are inscribed on imperishable monuments; the very hills and plains around us tell of achievements which can never die; and the day will come, when the traveller, who has gazed and pondered. at Marathon and Waterloo, will linger on the mount where Prescott fought and Warren fell, and say - Here is the field where man has struggled in his most daring conflicts; here is the field where liberty poured out her noblest blood, and won her brightest and most enduring laurels.

Happy was it for America, happy for the world, that a great name, a guardian genius, presided over her destinies in war, combining more than the virtues of the Roman Fabius and the Theban Epaminondas, and compared with whom, the conquerors of the world, the Alexanders and Cæsars, are but pageants crimsoned with blood and decked with the trophies of slaughter, objects equally of the wonder and the execration of mankind. The hero of America was the conqueror only of his country's foes, and the hearts of his countrymen. To the one he was a terror, and in the other he gained an ascendency supreme, unrivalled, the tribute of admiring gratitude, the reward of a nation's love.