order to refinement, it is not able to continually surpass itself. We see the present, plainly, distinctly, with all its coarse outlines, its rough inequalities, its dark blots, and its glaring deformities. We hear all its tumultuous sounds and jarring discords. We see and hear the past, through a distance which reduces all its inequalities to a plane, mellows all its shades into a pleasing hue, and subdues even its hoarsest voices into har mony.

3. In our own case, the prejudice is less erroneous than in most others. The revolutionary age was truly a heroic one. Its exigencies called forth the genius, and the talents, and the vir tues of society, and they ripened amid the hardships of a long and severe trial. But there were selfishness, and vice, and factions, then, as now, although comparatively subdued and repressed. You have only to consult impartial history, to learn that neither public faith, nor public loyalty, nor private virtue, culminated at that period in our own country; while a mere glance at the literature, or at the stage, or at the politics of any Europe'an country, in any previous age, reveals the fact that it was marked, more distinctly than the present, by licentious morals and mean ambition.

4. It is only just to infer in favor of the United States an improvement of morals from their established progress in knowledge and power; otherwise, the philosophy of society is misunderstood, and we must change all our courses, and henceforth seek safety in imbecility, and virtue in superstition and ignorance. What shall be the test of the national morals! Shall it be the eccentricity of crimes? Certainly not; for then we must compare the criminal eccentricity of to-day with that of yesterday. The result of the comparison would be only this, that the crimes of society change with changing circumstances.

5. Loyalty to the state is a public virtue. Was it ever deepertoned or more universal than it is now? I know there are ebullitions of passion and discontent, sometimes breaking out into disorder and violence; but was faction ever more effectually disarmed and harmless than it is now?-There is a loyalty that springs from the affection that we bear to our native soil. This we have as strong as any people. But it is not the soil alone, nor yet the soil beneath our feet and the skies over our heads,

that constitute our country. It is its freedom, equality, justice, greatness, and glory. Who among us is so low as to be insensible of an interest in them? Four hundred thousand natives of other lands every year voluntarily renounce their own sovereigns, and swear felty to our own. Who has ever known an Amĕrican to transfer his allegiance permanently to a foreign power? 6. The spirit of the laws, in any country, is a true index to the morals of a people, just in proportion to the power they exercise in making them. Who complains here or elsewhere, that crime or immorality blots our statute-books with licentious effactments? The character of a country's magistrates, legisla tors, and captains, chosen by a people, reflects their own. It is true that in the earnest canvassing which so frequently recurring elections require, suspicion often follows the magistrate, and scandal follows in the footsteps of the statesman. Yet, when his course has been finished, what magistrate has left a name tarnished by corruption, or what statesman has left an act or an opinion so erroneous that decent charity can not excuse, though it may disapprove? What chieftain ever tempered military triumph with so much moderation as he who, when he had placed our standard on the battlements of the capital of Mexico, not only received an offer of supreme authority from the conquered nation, but declined it?

7. The manners of a nation are the outward form of its inner life. Where is woman held in so chivalrous respect, and where does she deserve that eminence better? Where is property more safe, commercial honor better sustained, or human life more sacred? Moderation 3 a virtue in private and in public life. Has not the great increase of private wealth manifested itself chiefly in widening the circle of education and elevating the standard of popular intelligence? With forces which, if combined and directed by ambition, would subjugate this continent at once, we have made only two very short wars-the one confessedly a war of defence, and the other ended by paying for a peace and for a domain already fully conquered.

8. Where lies the secret of the increase of virtue which has thus been established? I think it will be found in the entire emancipation of the consciences of men from either direct or indirect control by established ecclesiastical or political systems.

Religious classes, like political parties, have been left to compete in the great work of moral education, and to entitle themselves to the confidence and affection of society, by the purity of thei faith and of their morals.

9. I am well aware that some, who may be willing to adopt the general conclusions of this argument, will object that it is not altogether sustained by the action of the government itself, however true it may be that it is sustained by the great action of society. I can not enter a field where truth is to be sought among the disputations of passion and prejudice. I may say, however, in reply first, that the governments of the United States, although more perfect than any other, and although they embrace the great ideas of the age more fully than any other, arc, nevertheless, like all other governments, founded on compromises of some abstract truths and of some natural rights.

10. As government is impressed by its constitution, so it must necessarily act. This may suffice to explain the phenomenon complained of. But it is true, also, that no government ever did altogether act out, purely and for a long period, all the virtnes of its original constitution. Hence it is that we are so well told by Bolingbroke,' that every nation must perpetually renew its constitution or perish. Hence, moreover, it is a great excellence of our system, that sovereignty resides, not in congress and the president, nor yet in the governments of the States, but in the people of the United States. If the sovereign be just and firm and uncorrupted, the governments can always be brought back from any aberrations, and even the constitutions themselves, if in any degree imperfect, can be amended. This great idea of the sovereignty of the people over their government glimmers in the British system, while it fills our own with a broad and glowing light.

SEWAPD.

'HENRY ST. JOHN VISCOUNT BOLINGBROKE, an orator, statesman, and philosophical essayist, was born at Battersea, in Surrey, England, in 1672. He was educated at Eaton and Oxford. ST. JOHN entered parliament in 1701, and was successively seeretary of war and secretary of state. He was elevated to the peerage in 1712. Unfortunately, none of the speeches delivered by him in either house have been preserved, though they are reported to have been very brilliant. He died in 1751, and a complete edition of his works, in five volumes, appeared soon after.

WILLIAM H. SEWARD, son of Dr. SAMUEL S. SEWARD, of Florida, Orange county, New York, was born in that village on the 16th of May, 1801. He entered Union College in 1816. After completing his course with distinguished honor, he studied law at New York with JOHN ANTHON, and afterward with JOHN DUER and OGDEN HOFFMAN. Soon after his admission to the bar he commenced practice in Auburn, New York, where he married in 1824. He rose rapidly to distinction in his profession. In 1828 he first took a prominent part in politics, when he labored for the reëlection of JOHN QUINCY ADAMS to the presidency. He became a member of the State Senate in 1830, where he remained for four years. He made a tour in Europe, of a few months, in 1833, during which he wrote a series of letters, which were published in the "Albany Evening Journal." He was elected governor of the State by the whig party in 1838; reëlected in 1840; but in 1842, declining a renomination, retired to the practice of his profession. He was chosen United States senator in 1849, by a large majority; and, on the expiration of his term in 1855, he was reëlected to the same body. In 1853 an edition of his works was published in New York, in three octavo volumes, containing his speeches in the State and national Senate, and be fore popular assemblies, with his messages as governor, his forensic arguments, miscellaneous addresses, letters from Europe, and selections from his public correspondence. His writings and speeches are models of correct composition; their grammatical construction, rhetorical finish, and accurate arrangement, rendering them well-nigh faultless. Though not remarkable for oratory, his classic style, his perfect self-control, his truthful manner, his uncommon sense, and his thorough knowledge of the leading questions of the day, command the attention and admiration of the hearer.

171. SELECT PASSAGES IN PROSE.

I. OUR COMMON SCHOOLS. EVERETT.

THEY give the keys of knowledge to the mass of the people. I think it may with truth be said, that the branches of knowledge taught in our common schools, when taught in a finished, masterly manner,-reading-in which I include the spelling of our language-a firm, sightly, legible handwriting, and the ele mental rules of arithmetic,—are of greater value than all the rest which is taught at school. I am far from saying that nothing else can be taught at our district schools; but the young person who brings these from school, can himself, in his winter evenings, range over the entire field of useful knowledge. Our common schools are important in the same way as the common air, the common sunshine, the common rain,-invaluable for their commonness. They are the corner-stone of that municipal organization which is the characteristic feature of our social system; they are the fountain of that wide-spread intelligence, which, like a moral life, pervades the country. From the hum

blest village school there may go forth a teacher who, like Newton,' shall bind his temples with the stars of Ori'on's' belt,-with Herschel, light up his cell with the beams of before undiscovered planets, with Franklin,' grasp the lightning.

1

NEWTON, See p. 174, note 2.- O rl' on, a southern constellation containing seventy-eight stars. WILLIAM HERSCHEL, a distinguished astronomer, was born at Hanover, on the 15th of November, 1738. Educated as a musician, he came to England in 1757, and immediately established himself as a teacher of music. In 1766 he obtained the situation of organist at Halifax, and soon after a more lucrative appointment in Bath, where he was very successful as a teacher of music, and a director of the public concerts. While at Halifax he acquired a considerable knowledge of mathematics, and studied astronomy. Anxious to see the wonderful celestial phenomena disclosed by the telescope, and, fortunately for science, being unable to buy one, he resolved to construct one with his own hands. In 1774 he completed a five-feet Newtonian reflector, with which he could see the satellites of Jupiter and the ring of Saturn; but, not being contented with this instrument, he afterward constructed several hundred, both Newtonian and Gregorian, 80 of which were twenty feet telescopes. In 1781 he discovered the new planet Uranus. After this first of his numerous and brilliant discoveries, GEORGE III. enabled him, by the grant of a salary, to devote the whole of his time to astronomy. Sir WILLIAM HERSCHEL was elected an honorary member of most of the scientific institutions in Europe and America; received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws in 1786; and in 1820 was elected the first president of the Astronomical Society. He died on the 25th of August, 1822. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, an eminent American moralist, statesman, and philosopher, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, 6th January, 1706. The early incidents of his life are, happily, too familiar to require details. He left Boston for Philadelphia at seventeen, in 1723; visited England the following year, where he worked at his trade, as printer; and returned to Philadelphia in 1726. He there established himself as public printer, purchased the "Pennsylvania Gazette," which he virtually projected in 1729; married in 1730; assisted in founding the Philadelphia Library in 1731; the next year published his almanac; was chosen, in 1736, clerk of the General Assembly; became deputy-postmaster at Philadelphia in 1737; in 1752 demonstrated his theory of the identity of lightning with electricity; was sent to England as an agent by the Assembly in 1757; received the degree of Doctor of Laws from the universities of Edinburgh and Oxford, and returned to America in 1762. Two years after he returned to England as a colonial agent; returned again to Philadelphia in 1775; signed the Declaration of Independence in Congress; went ambassador to France in the same year; returned, after signing the treaty of peace in 1785, to America, when he was made president of the Commonwealth