believe, to grapple the people of all the States to this Constitution for ages to come.

2. We have a great, popular, constitutional government, guarded by law and by judicature, and defended by the affections of the people. No monarchical throne presses these States together. They live and stand upon a government popular in its form, representative in its character, founded upon principles of equality, and so constructed, we hope, as to last forever.

3. In all its history it has been beneficent. It has trodden down no man's liberty, it has crushed no State. Its daily respiration is liberty, and patriotism. Its youthful veins are full of enterprise; courage, and honorable love of glory and renown. Large before, the country has now, by recent events, become vastly larger. This republic now extends, with a vast breadth, across the whole continent. The two great seas of the world wash the one and the other shore. We realize on a mighty scale the beautiful description of the ornamental edging of the bucklers of Achilles:

"Now the broad shield complete, the artist crowned
With his last hand, and poured the ocean round.
In living silver seemed the waves to roll,

And beat the buckler's verge and bound the whole."

ایم را

DANIEL WEBSTER.

12. DUTIES OF AMERICAN CITIZENS.

1. We have indulged in gratifying recollections of the past, in the prosperity and pleasures of the present, and in high hopes for the future. But let us remember that we have duties and obligations to perform, corresponding to the blessings which we enjoy.

2. Let us remember the trust, the sacred trust, attaching to the rich inheritance which we have received from our fathers. Let us feel our personal responsibility, to

the full extent of our power and influence, for the preservation of the principles of civil and religious liberty. And let us remember that it is only religion, and morals, and knowledge, that can make men respectable and happy, under any form of government.

3. Let us hold fast the great truth, that communities are responsible, as well as individuals; that no government is respectable, which is not just; that without unspotted purity of public faith, without sacred public principle, fidelity, and honor, no mere forms of government, no machinery of laws, can give dignity to political society. In our day and generation let us seek to raise and improve the moral sentiment, so that we may look, not for a degraded, but for an elevated and improved future.

4. And when both we and our children shall have been consigned to the house appointed for all living, may love of country and pride of country glow with equal fervor among those to whom our names and our blood shall have descended.

5. And then, when honored and decrepit age shall lean against the base of this monument, and troops of ingenuous youth shall be gathered round it, and when the one shall speak to the other of its objects, the purposes of its construction, and the great and glorious events with which it is connected, there shall rise from every youthful breast the ejaculation, "Thank God, I— I also-am an American!"

DANIEL WEBSTER.

13. LABOR.

1. Lábor is heaven's great ordinance for human improvement. Let not the great ordinance be broken down. What do I say? It is broken down; and has been broken down for àges. Let it, then, be built again; hère, if anywhere, on the shores of a new world—of a new civilization.

2. But hów, it may be asked, is it broken down? Do not men tóil? it may be sáid. They do, indeed, tòil; but they too génerally dó, because they mùst. Many submit to it, as to, in some sórt, a degrading necèssity; and they desire nothing so much on earth as an escape from it. This way of thinking is the heritage of the absurd and unjust feudal system, under which serfs lábored, and gentlemen spent their lives in fighting and feasting. It is time that this opprobrium of toil were done away.

3. Ashamed to toil! Ashamed of thy dingy wórkshop and dusty lábor-field; of thy hard hand, scarred with service more honorable than that of war; of thy soiled and weather-stained garments, on which mother Nature has embroidered míst, sún and rain, fire and steamher own heraldic honors!

4. Ashamed of those tokens and titles, and envious of the flaunting robes of imbecile idleness and vanity! It is treason to Nature; it is impiety to Heaven: it is breaking Heaven's great ordinance. Tóil-tóil-either of the brain, of the heart, or of the hand-is the only trúe manhood, the only true nobility!

ORVILLE DEWEY.

14. THE FUTURE OF AMERICA.

1. It cannot be denied, but by those who would dispute against the sun, that with America, and in America, a néw èra commences in human affairs. This éra is distinguished by free representative governments, by entire religious liberty, by improved systems of national intercourse, by a newly awakened and an unconquerable spirit of free inquiry, and by a diffusion of knowledge through the community, such as has been before altogether unknown and unheard of.

2. América, América, our country, our own dear and

native land, is inseparably connected, fast bound up, in fórtune and by fáte, with these great interests. If they fall, wé fall with them; if they stand, it will be because we have upheld them.

3. Let us contémplate, then, this connection which binds the prosperity of others to our own; and let us manfully discharge all the dúties which it impòses. If we cherish the virtues and the principles of our fáthers, Heaven will assist us to carry on the work of human liberty and human happiness.

4. Auspicious ómens chèer us. Great examples are before us. Our own firinament now shines brightly upon our path. Washington is in the clear upper skỳ. Those other stars have now joined the American constellation; they circle round their cénter, and the heavens beam with new light. Beneath this illuminátion, let us walk the course of life, and at its clóse devoutly commend our beloved coúntry, the common parent of us áll, to the Divine Benignity.

DANIEL WEBSTER.

15. PATRIOTISM.

1. Bereft of patriotism, the heart of a nation will be cold and cramped and sordid; the arts will have no enduring impulse, and commerce no invigorating soul; society will degenerate, and the mean and vicious will triumph. Patriotism is not a wild and glittering passion, but a glorious reality. The virtue that gave to Paganism its dazzling luster, to Barbarism its redeeming trait, to Christianity its heroic form, is not dead. It still lives to console, to sanctify humanity. It has its altar in every clime; its worship and festivities.

2. On the heathered hills of Scotland, the sword of Wallace is yet a bright tradition. The genius of France, in the brilliant literature of the day, pays its high

homage to the piety and heroism of the young Maid of Orleans. In her new Senate-hall, England bids her sculptor place, among the effigies of her greatest sons, the images of Hampden and of Russell. In the gay and graceful capital of Belgium, the daring hand of Geefs has reared a monument full of glorious meaning to the three hundred martyrs of the revolution.

3. By the soft blue waters of Lake Lucerne stands the chapel of William Tell. On the anniversary of his revolt and victory, across those waters, as they glitter in the July sun, skim the light boats of the allied cantons, from the prows hang the banners of the republic, and as they near the sacred spot, the daughters of Lucerne chant the hymns of their old poetic land. Then bursts forth the glad Te Deum, and Heaven again hears the voice of that wild chivalry of the mountains, which five centuries since pierced the white eagle of Vienna, and flung it bleeding on the rocks of Uri.

T. F. MEAGHER.

16. THE FOURTH OF JULY.

1. On the Fourth of July, 1776, the representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, declared that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States. This declaration, made by most patriotic and resolute men, trusting in the justice of their cause, and the protection of Providence and yet not without deep solicitude and anxiety has stood for seventy-five years, and still stands.

2. It was sealed in blood. It has met dangers and overcome them; it has had enemies, and it has conquered them; it has had detractors, and it has abashed them all; it has had doubting friends, but it has cleared all doubts away; and now, to-day, raising its august form higher than the clouds, twenty millions of people