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NATIVE LAND.

FROM THE NEW YORK MIRROR.

How deep and abiding in the human heart, is the love of native land. Civilized or savage, man feels the same strong, unalterable devotion to the soil and clime which gave him birth, and though it be in the icy north, or amid the sands of the tropics, he clings to it as the kindest and brightest spot of God's earth. No time nor distance can efface the impression, and whether he be through life a dweller in the place of his nativity, or from infancy an exile or wanderer in strange lands, his heart will yearn towards and long for his native land.

The sentiment is universal as the human race. Other lands than our own may lure us with brighter skies and more varied scenes, for a time. We may eat the bread and drink the waters or wines of foreign climes, and be merry even in the house of the stranger; but when the novelty of change is past, and the banquet of excitement palls, the memory of the first home-hearth, the native land, breaks in upon the heart with a light, mellow and rich as the glow of the setting sum

mer sun.

God has written this holy love in the heart of man for wise and beautiful purposes. Without it, man would be a rover

and robber, having neither society, civilization, government nor country. To-day, he would pitch his tent and dig a grave in the desert; to-morrow, his home would be in the wilderness. Wherever there was most to tempt the passions of his nature, thither would he go, building his hearth without care for the future, and leaving it without thought or regret for the past. To him, history, associations, and old landmarks would have no charm ;-like Cain, he would be an outcast and wanderer in the earth.

But there are none such; every man feels irresistibly drawn towards his native land, wherever he may be. Towards that spot he turns his eyes, as the Hebrew does towards the East, the Moslem towards his Mecca, and the Magian towards the Sun. It fills his day visions and his night dreams—his prayers, his memories, and his hopes. It makes him a patriot, a martyr, a friend, and a fellow-loying, civilized man. God bless the native land!

UNION.

THE blood that flowed at Lexington, and crimsoned bright Champlain,

Streams still along the Southern Gulf, and by the lakes of

Maine;

It flows in veins that swell above Pacific's golden sand,

And throbs in hearts that love and grieve by the dark Atlantic's strand.

It binds in one vast brotherhood the trapper of the West, With men whose cities glass themselves in Erie's classic

breast

st;

And those to whom September brings the fireside's social

hours,

With those who see December's brow enwreathed with gorgeous flowers.

From where Columbia laughs to meet the smiling western

wave,

To where Potomac sighs beside the patriot hero's grave;
And from the steaming everglades to Huron's lordly flood,
The glory of a nation's Past thrills through a kindred blood!

Say, can the South sell out her share in Bunker's gory

height,

Or can the North give up her boast of Yorktown's closing

fight?

Can ye divide with equal hand a heritage of graves,

Or rend in twain the starry flag that o'er them proudly waves?

Can ye casts lots for Vernon's soil, or chaffer 'mid the gloom That hangs its solemn folds about your common Father's tomb?

Or could you meet around his grave as fratricidal foes,
And wake your burning curses o'er his pure and calm repose ?

YE DARE NOT! is the Alleghanian thunder-toned decree : 'Tis echoed where Nevada guards the blue and tranquil sea; Where tropic waves delighted clasp our flowery Southern shore,

And where, through frowning mountain gates, Nebraska's waters roar !

THE PRESERVATION OF THE UNION.

BY DANIEL WEBSTER.

I PROFESS, Sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the preservation of our Federal Union.

It is to that Union

we owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that Union we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That Union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues, in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign influences, these great interests immediately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings; and although our country has stretched out wider and wider, and our population spread further and further, they have not outran its protection, or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, social, personal happiness. I have not allowed myself, Sir, to look beyond the Union, to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty, when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to see whether,

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