What though the day to us was lost? Upon that deathless page The everlasting charter stands, for every land and age! For man hath broke his felon bonds, and cast them in the dust, And claimed his heritage divine, and justified the trust; While through his rifted prison-bars the hues of freedom pour O'er every nation, race and clime, on every sea and shore, Such glories as the patriarch viewed, when, 'mid the darkest skies, He saw above a ruined world the Bow of Promise rise. BEST POLICY IN REGARD TO NATURALIZATION. 107 BEST POLICY IN REGARD TO NATURALIZATION. BY LEWIS C. LEVIN. EACH hour will behold this tide of foreign emigration rising higher and higher, growing stronger and stronger, rushing bolder and bolder. The past furnishes no test of the future, and the future threatens to transcend all calculations of this formidable evil. View this great subject in any light, and it still flings back upon us the reflected rays of reason, patriotism, and philanthropy. The love of our native land is an innate, holy, and irradicable passion. Distance only strengthens it-time only concentrates the feeling that causes the tear to gush from the eye of the emigrant, as old age peoples by the vivid memory the active present with the happy past. In what land do we behold the foreigner, who denies this passion of the heart? It is nature's most holy decree, nor is it in human power to repeal the law, which is passed on the mother's breast, and confirmed by the father's voice. The best policy of the wise statesman is to model his laws on the holy ordinances of nature. If the heart of the alien is in his native land-if all his dearest thoughts and fondest affections cluster around the altar of his native gods-let us not disturb his enjoyments by placing this burden of new affections on his bosom, through the moral 108 BEST POLICY IN REGARD TO NATURALIZATION. force of an oath of allegiance, and the onerous obligation of political duties that are against his sympathies, and call on him to renounce feelings that he can never expel from his bosom. Let us secure him the privilege, at least, of mourning for his native land, by withholding obligations he cannot discharge either with fidelity, ability, or pleasure. Give him time, sir, to wean himself from his early love. A long list of innumerable duties will engage all his attention during his political novitiate, in addition to those comprised in reforming the errors and prejudices of the nursery, and in creating and forming new opinions, congenial to the vast field which lies spread before him in morals, politics, and life. A due reflection will convince every alien, when his passions are not inflamed by the insidious appeals of senseless demagogues, that his highest position is that of a moral agent in the full enjoyment of all the attributes of civil freedom, preparing the minds and hearts of his children to become faithful, intelligent, and virtuous republicans, born to a right that vindicates itself by the holy ties of omnipotent nature, and which, while God sanctions and consecrates, no man can dispute. THE SCAR OF LEXINGTON. BY H. F. GOULD. WITH cherub smile, the prattling boy, Has thrown aside his favorite toy, And round his tender finger twines Those scattered locks, that, with the flight Of fourscore years, are snowy white; And, as a scar arrests his view, He cries, "Grandpa, what wounded you?" "My child, 'tis five-and-fifty years This very day, this very hour, I saw retire the setting sun While pale and lifeless on the plain "And ere that fight, the first that spoke In thunder to our land, was o'er, Amid the clouds of fire and smoke, I felt my garments wet with gore! "Tis since that dread and wild affray, That trying, dark, eventful day, From this calm April eve so far, I wear upon my cheek the scar. "When thou to manhood shalt be grown, But, should thy country's voice be heard |