negative, no tongue may attempt to depict the disappointment and despair which will go along with the announcement as it spreads through distant lands. It will be America, after fifty years' experience, giving in her adhesion to the doctrine that man was not made for self-government. It will be freedom herself proclaiming that freedom is a chimera; Liberty ringing her own knell, all over the globe. And, when the citizens or subjects of the governments which are to succeed this Union shall visit Europe, and see, in some land now struggling to cast off its fetters, the lacerated and lifeless form of Liberty laid prostrate under the iron heel of Depotism, let them remember that the blow which destroyed her was inflicted by their own country.

THE POWER OF HEROIC EXAMPLE.

We must not forget the specific and invaluable influence exerted on the spirit of a people by those examples of signal heroism and chivalrous self-devotion for which a magnanimous war gives occasion, and which it exalts, as peace cannot before men's minds.

Such examples become great powers in civilization. Eloquence delights to rehearse and impress them. The songs of a nation repeat their story, and make their triumph sound again through the silver cymbals of speech. Legends prolong and art commemorates them. Language itself takes new images from them; and words that are themselves "half-battles," are suddenly born at their recital. The very household life is exalted; and the humblest man feels his position higher, and expresses his sense of it in a more dauntless bearing, as he sees that heroism still lives in the world; that men of his own race and stuff, perhaps of his own neighborhood even, have faced so calmly such vast perils.

And by and by we shall see more clearly than now we can, the great influence thus exerted on our own national career. When at last from the thunder and flame on the top of the mount the nation comes, as come it will, with its very face shining from the heat and the splendor which it there has encountered, then shall it appear as it cannot before, that no

life hath been more productive than that which closed before its prime, sprinkling with blood the stony steeps of this ascent! Then shall it appear that the delicate hands which have changed silk gloves for iron gauntlets have swept thereby the chords which vibrate into answers that distant ages still shall hear! Yea, then shall it appear that never yet was forum reared, or senate chamber builded to be the fit and equal theatre for eloquence so thrilling and so majestic as that imperial eloquence of great deeds which shook the soul of the whole people from the thundering bluffs this side of Leesburg! Better than new Californias every year are such examples to a nation that would be noble! Its very language and life must be lost before their force shall have ceased to inspire it.

AMERICAN NATIONALITY.

By the side of all antagonisms, higher than they, stronger than they, there rises colossal the fine sweet spirit of nationality, the nationality of America! See there the pillar of fire which God has kindled and lifted and moved for our hosts and our ages. Gaze on that, worship that, worship the highest in that. Between that light and our eyes a cloud for a time may seem to gather; chariots, armed men on foot, the troops of kings may march on us, and our fears may make us for a moment turn from it; a sea may spread before us, and waves seem to hedge us up; dark idolatries may alienate some hearts for a season from that worship; revolt, rebellion, may break out in the camp, and the waters of our springs may run bitter to the taste and mock it; between us and that Canaan a great river may seem to be rolling; but beneath that high guidance our way is onward, ever onward; those waters shall part, and stand on either hand in heaps; that idolatry shall repent; that rebellion shall be crushed; that stream shall be sweetened; that overflowing river shall be passed on foot dryshod, in harvest time; and from that promised land of flocks, fields tents, mountains, coasts, and ships, from north and south, and east and west, there shall swell one cry yet, of victory, peace, and thanksgiving!

INFLUENCE OF REVOLUTIONS.

Think nationality first as a spring of feeling, as a motive to exertion, as blessing your country, and as reacting on you. Think of it as it fills your mind and quickens your heart, and as it fills the mind and quickens the heart of millions around you. Instantly, under such an influence, you ascend above the smoke and stir of this small local strife; you tread upon the high places of the earth and of history; you think and feel as an American for America; her power, her eminence, her consideration, her honor, are yours; your competitors, like hers, are kings; your home, like hers, is the world; your path, like hers, is on the highway of empires; our charge, her charge, is of generations and ages; your record, her record, is of treaties, battles, voyages, beneath all the constellations; her image, one, immortal, golden, rises on your eye as our western star at evening rises on the traveller from his home; no lowering cloud, no angry river, no lingering spring, no broken crevasse, no inundated city or plantation, no tracts of sand, arid and burning, on that surface, but all blended and softened into one beam of kindred rays, the image, harbinger, and promiser of love, hope, and a brighter day!

But if you would contemplate nationality as an active virtue, look around you. Is not our own history one witness and one record of what it can do? This day and all which it it stands for,-did it not give us these? This glory of the fields of that war, this eloquence of that revolution, this one wide sheet of flame which wrapped tyrant and tyranny and swept all that escaped from it away, forever and forever; the courage to fight, to retreat, to rally, to advance, to guard the young flag by the young arm and the young heart's blood, to hold up and hold on till the magnificent consummation crowned the work, were not all these imparted or inspired by this imperial sentiment?

THE NATIONAL ENSIGN.

Sir, I must detain you no longer. I have said enough, and more than enough, to manifest the spirit in which this flag is

now committed to your charge. It is the national ensign, pure and simple; dearer to all our hearts at this moment, as we lift it to the gale, and see no other sign of hope upon the storm-cloud which rolls and rattles above it, save that which is reflected from its own radiant hues; dearer, a thousandfold dearer to us all, than ever it was before, while gilded by the sunshine of pro-perity, and playing with the zephyrs of peace. It will speak for itself far more eloquently than I can speak for it.

Behold it!

Listen to it! Every star has a tongue; every stripe is articulate. There is no language or speech where their voices are not heard. There's magic in the web of it. It has an answer for every question of duty. It has a solution for every doubt and perplexity. It has a word of good cheer for every hour of gloom or of despondency.

Behold it! Listen to it! It speaks of earlier and of later struggles. It speaks of victories, and sometimes of reverses, on the sea and on the land. It speaks of patriots and heroes among the living and the dead: and of him, the first and greatest of them all, around whose consecrated ashes this unnatural and abhorrent strife has so long been raging—“the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not." But before all and above all other associations and memorieswhether of glorious men, or glorious deeds, or glorious places —its voice is ever of Union and Liberty, of the Constitution and the Laws.

THE PERPETUITY OF THE UNION.

Give up the Union? NEVER! The Union shall endure, and its praises shall be heard when its friends and its foes, those who support, and those who assail, those who bare their bosoms in its defence, and those who aim their daggers at its heart, shall all sleep in the dust together. Its name shall be heard with veneration amid the roar of the Pacific's waves, away upon the river of the North and East where liberty is divided from monarchy, and be wafted in gentle breezes upon the Rio Grande. It shall rustle in the harvest and wave in

the standing corn, on the extended prairies of the West, and be heard in the bleating folds and lowing herds upon a thousand hills. It shall be with those who delve in mines, and shall hum in the manufactories of New England, and in the cotton-gins of the South. It shall be proclaimed by the Stars and Stripes in every sea of earth, as the American Union, one and indivisible; upon the great thoroughfares, wherever steam drives, and engines throb and shriek, its greatness and perpetuity shall be hailed with gladness. It shall be lisped in the earliest words, and ring in the merry voices of childhood, and swell to Heaven upon the song of maidens. It shall live in the stern resolve of manhood, and rise to the mercyseat upon woman's gentle availing prayer. Holy men shall invoke its perpetuity at the altars of religion, and it shall be whispered in the last accents of expiring age.

OUR HEROIC DEAD.

There is a history in almost our every home which will never be written; but the memory of kindred has it embalmed forever. The representatives of the pride and hope of uncounted households, departing will return no more. The shaft of the archer, attracted by the shining mark, numbers them among his fallen. And, beyond the Atlantic slope, every battle-field has drunk the blood of our sons. Officers and enlisted men have vied with each other in deeds of valor. This flag, whose standard-bearer, shot down in battle, tossed it from his dying hand nerved by undying patriotism, has been caught by the comrade, who in his turn has closed his eyes for the last time upon its starry folds as another hero-martyr clasped the splintered staff and rescued the symbol at once of country and of their blood-bought fame.

How can fleeting words of human praise gild the record of their glory? Our eyes suffused with tears, and blood retreating to the heart, stirred with unwonted thrill, speak with the eloquence of nature, uttered but unexpressed. From the din of the battle, they have passed to the peace of eternity. Farewell! warrior, citizen, patriot, lover, friend; whether in the humbler ranks or bearing the sword of official power, whether