by offers of impunity; when new modes of trial were instituted for the ruin of the accused, where the charge carried with it the horrors of conviction; when a despotic government was established in a neighboring province, and its limits extended to every point of our frontiers; we little imagined that anything could be added to this black catalogue of unprovoked injuries; but we have unhappily been deceived; and the late measures of the British ministry fully convince us, that their object is the reduction of these colonies to slavery and ruin. Richard Henry Lee. 1 SEC. XLVII. A TWO-FOLD PEACE. There is a two-fold peace. 2 The first is negative. 3 It is relief from disquiet and corroding care: it is repose after conflict and storms. But there is another and a 4 higher peace, to which this is but the prelude : a peace of God which passeth understanding ;" and properly called 5 "the kingdom of God within us." This state is anything but negative. It is the highest and most strenuous action 6 of the soul; but an entirely harmonious action, in which all our powers and affections are blended in a beautiful proportion, and sustain and perfect one another. It is more 7 than silence after storms; it is as the concord of all melodious sounds. Has the reader never known a season, when, in the fullest flow of thought and feeling, in the universal action of the soul, an inward calm, profound as 8 midnight silence, yet bright as the still summer noon, full of joy, but unbroken by one throb of tumultuous passion, has breathed through his spirit, and given him a glimpse 9 and presage of the serenity of a happier world? This Of this character is the peace of religion. It is a conscious harmony with God and the creation: an alliance of love 10 with all beings: a sympathy with all that is pure and happy: a surrender of every separate will and interest: a participation of the spirit and life of the universe: an entire concord of purpose with its Infinite Original. 11 is peace, and the true happiness of man; and we think that human nature has never lost sight of this its great 12 end. It has always sighed for a repose, in which energy of thought and will might be tempered with an all-pervading 13 tranquillity. We seem to discover aspirations after this good, a dim consciousness of it, in all ages of the world. We think we see it in those systems of Oriental and 14 Grecian philosophy, which proposed as the consummation of present virtue a release from all disquiet, and an intimate union and harmony with the divine mind. We even think, that we trace this consciousness, this aspiration, in the works of ancient art which time has spared us; in 15 which the sculptor, aiming to embody his deepest thoughts of human perfection, has joined with the fullness of life and strength, a repose, which breathes into the spectator 16 an admiration as calm as it is exalted. Man, we believe, never loses the sentiment of his true good. There are yearnings, sighings, which he does not himself comprehend; which break forth alike in his prosperous and 17 adverse seasons; which betray a deep, indestructible faith in a good he has not found; and which, in proportion as they grow distinct, rise to God, and concentrate the soul on him, as at once his life and rest: the fountain at once of energy and repose. Channing. SEC. XLVIII. TRUST IN GOD COMMENDED AND ENJOINED. No man can serve two masters, for either he will 1 hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold 2 to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon. Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, 3 what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your 4 body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat; and the body more than raiment? Behold the 5 fowls of the air; for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth 6 them ? Are ye not much better than they? 7 Which of you, by taking thought, can add one cubit unto his stature? 8 And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the 9 lilies of the field, how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these? Where10 fore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore, take no thought, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed; for after 11 all these things do the Gentiles seek; and your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of these things; but seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take, 12 therefore, no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall 13 take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Sentence 3d.-This sentence should have been connected by punctuation with the fourth: forming a semi-interrogative, with a double compact construction between the parts: the declarative containing the first, and the definite interrogative, the second proposition. Sentence 5th and 9th.-These shorld, in my opinion, be treated as semi-interrogatives: the interrogative, in both cases, indirect. 1 A voice within us speaks the startling word: Thick, clustering orbs, and this our fair domain, Dana SEC. L. VIRTUE AND PIETY ARE CONFORMITY TO NATURE. 1 I find myself existing upon a little spot, surrounded ? every way by an immense unknown expansion. Where am I? what sort of a place do I inhabit? Is it exactly accommodated, in every instance, to my convenience? is 3 there no excess of cold, none of heat, to offend me? am I never annoyed by animals either of my own kind, or a different? is every thing subservient to me, as though I had 4 ordered all myself? No; nothing like it; the farthest 5 from it possible. The world appears not then originally 6 made for the private convenience of me alone? It does not 7 But is it not possible so to accommodate it, by my own 8 particular industry? If to accommodate man and beast, heaven and earth, if this be beyond me, it is not possible. 9 What consequence then follows? Can there be any other 10 than this: if I seek an interest of my own detached from that of others, I seek an interest which is chimerical, 11 and can have no existence? How then must I determine? 12 Have I no interest at all? If I have not, I am a fool for 13 staying here: 't is a smoky house; and the sooner out of 14 it the better. But why no interest? Can I be contented 15 with none, but one separate and detached? is a social interest joined with others such an absurdity as not to be admitted? The bee, the beaver, and the tribes of herding 16 animals, are enough to convince me that the thing is, 17 somewhere at least, possible. How then am I assured, 18 that it is not equally true of man! Admit it, and what fol lows? If so, then honor and justice are my interest: 19 then the whole train of moral virtues are my interest; without some portion of which, not even thieves can maintain society. 20 But farther still: I stop not here; I pursue this social interest, as far as I can trace my several relations. I pass 21 from my own flock, my own neighborhood, my own nation, to the whole race of mankind, as dispersed throughout the earth. Am I not related to them all by the mutual aids of 22 commerce: by the general intercourse of arts and letters: by that common nature, of which we all participate? 23 Again: I must have food and clothing. 24 Without a proper genial warmth, I must instantly perish. Am I not related in this view to the very earth itself: to the distant 25 sun from whose beams I derive vigor; to that stupendous course and order of the infinite host of heaven, by which the times and seasons ever uniformly pass on Were this 26 order once confounded, I could not probably survive a moment: so absolutely do I depend on this common welfare.. 27 What then have I to do but to enlarge virtue into piety? Not only honor and justice, and what I owe to man is my 28 interest, but gratitude also; acquiescence; resignation; adoration; and all I owe to this great polity, and its greater Governor, our common parent. But if all these moral and divine habits be my interest, I need not, surely, seek for a better; I have an interest 29 compatible with the spot on which I live; I have an interest which may exist, without altering the plan of Providence; without mending or marring the general order of events. I can hear whatever happens with manlike magnanimity; can be contented and fully happy in the 30 good which I possess; and can pass through this turbid, this fickle, this fleeting period, without bewailings, or envyings, or murmurings or complaints. Harris SEC. LI. THE EMPLOYMENT OF INFORMERS DESTRUCTIVE TO PRIVATE HAPPINESS. L A mercenary informer knows no distinction. Under such a system, the obnoxious people are slaves, not only to the government, but they live at the mercy of 2 every individual; they are at once the slaves of the whole community, and of every part of it; and the worst and most unmerciful men are those on whose goodness they must depend. 3 : In this situation men not only shrink from the frowns of a stern magistrate, but they are obliged to fly from their 4 very species. The seeds of destruction are sown in civil 5 intercourse in social habitudes. The blood of wholesome 6 kindred is infected. Their tables and beds are surrounded with snares. All the means given by Providence 7 to make life safe and comfortable, are perverted into instruments of terror and torment. This species of universal subserviency, that makes the very servant, who waits behind your chair, the arbiter of your life and fortune, has 8 such a tendency to degrade and abase mankind, and to deprive them of that assured and liberal state of mind, which alone can make us what we ought to be, that I vow to God I would sooner bring myself to put a man to immediate death for opinions I dislike, and so to get rid of the mar and his opinions at once, than to fret him with a feverish being, tainted with the jail-distemper of a contagiou servitude to keep him above ground, an animated mas of putrefaction; corrupted himself, and corrupting all abou him. Burke. SEC. LII. THE SPIRIT OF INDEPENDENCE. 1 Thy spirit, Independence, let me share. 2 Thy steps I'll follow with my bosom bare; Smollet. 1 SEC. LIII. THE SURVIVORS OF THE BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL. Venerable men! you have come down to us from a for2 mer generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives, that you might behold this joyous day. You are 3 now, where you stood, fifty years ago, this very hour, with your brothers, and your neighbors, shoulder to shoulder, in 4 the strife of your country. But, alas! you are not all here! time and the sword have thinned your ranks. Prescott, Putnam, Stark, Brooks, Read, Pomeroy, Bridge! our 5 eyes seek for you in vain amidst this broken band; you are |