Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

Aroused with pain, my listless eyes
The various spoil scarce wander o'er ·
Then straight they hail a sage's prize
In what seemed infant toys before:
This herb was one the glorious Swede
Had given a garden's wealth to find;
That stone had hardened round a weed
The earliest deluge left behind.

3. Fit stores for science Discontent

Had passed unheeding on the wild ;
And Nature had her wonders lent
As things of gladness to the child!
Thus, through the present, Sorrow goes,
And sees its barren self alone;
While healing in the leaflet grows,

And Time blooms back within the stone.
O, Thou, so prodigal of good,

Whose wisdom with delight is clad,
How clear should be to Gratitude

The golden duty- to be glad!

SIR E. BULWER LYTTON.

CC.

PECULIARITY OF AMERICAN LIBERTY.

1. THis inheritance which we enjoy to-day is not only an inheritance of liberty, but of our own peculiar American liberty. Liberty has existed in other times, in other countries, and in other forms. There has been a Grecian liberty, bold and powerful, full of spirit, eloquence, and fire; a liberty which produced multitudes of great men, and has transmitted one immortal name, the name of Demosthenes, to posterity. But still it was a liberty of disconnected states, sometimes united, indeed, by temporary leagues and confederacies, but often involved in wars between themselves. The sword of Sparta turned its sharpest edge against Athens, enslaved her and devastated Greece; and, in her turn, Sparta was compelled to bend before the power of Thebes. And let it ever be remembered - especially let the truth sink deep into all American minds- that it was the want of union among her several states which finally gave the mastery of all Greece to Philip of Mac'edon.EI

2. And there has also been a Roman liberty, a proud, ambitious, domineering spirit, professing free and popular principles in Rome itself; but, even in the best days of the republic, ready

* See Linnæus, in Explanatory Index.

to carry slavery and chains into her provinces, and through every country over which her eagles could be borne. What was the liberty of Spain, or Gaul, or Germany, or Britain, in the days of Rome? Did true constitutional liberty then exist? As the Roman empire declined, her provinces, not instructed in the principles of free, popular government, one after another declined also; and, when Rome herself fell in the end, all fell together.

3. I have said that our inheritance is an inheritance of American liberty. That liberty is characteristic, peculiar, and altogether our own. Nothing like it existed in former times, nor was known in the most enlightened states of antiquity; while with us its principles have become interwoven into the minds of individual men, connected with our daily opinions and our daily habits, until it is, if I may so say, an element of social as well as of political life; and the consequence is, that to whatever region an American citizen carries himself, he takes with him, fully developed in his own understanding and experience, our American principles and opinions; and becomes ready at once, in coöperation with others, to apply them to the formation of new govern

:nents.

4. What has Germany done, learned Germany, fuller of ancient lore than all the world besides? What has Italy done? What have they done who dwell on the spot where Cicero lived? They have not the power of self-government which a common town-meeting with us possesses. Yes, I say that those persons who have gone from our town-meetings to dig gold in California are more fit to make a republican government than any body of men in Germany or Italy, because they have learned this one great lesson—that there is no security without law, and that, under the circumstances in which they are placed, where there is no military authority to cut their throats, there is no sovereign will but the will of the majority; that, therefore, if they remain, they must submit to that will. And this I believe to be strictly

true.

WEBSTER.

CCI.

THE SOULS OF BOOKS.

1. SIT here and muse! - it is an antique room,
High-roofed, with casements through whose purple pane
Unwilling daylight steals amidst the gloom,
Shy as a fearful stranger. -There they reign

(In loftier pomp than waking life had known),
The Kings of Thought! -not crowned until the grave. –

When Agamemnon* sinks into the tomb,

The beggar Homer mounts the monarch's throne!

2. Ye ever-living and imperial souls,

Who rule us from the page in which ye breathe!
What had we been, had Cadmust never taught
The art that fixes into form the thought,-

Had Plato never spoken from his cell,

Or his high harp blind Homer never strung?.

Kinder all earth hath grown since genial Shakspeare sung!

3. Lo! in their books, as from their graves, they rise,

Angels, that, side by side, upon our way,

Walk with and warn us!
And they, the movers of the world, so still!
From them how many a youthful Tully caught
The zest and ardor of the eager Bar;

Hark! the world so loud,

By them each restless wing has been unfurled,
And their ghosts urge each rival's rushing car!
They made yon Preacher zealous for the truth;
They made yon Poet wistful for the star;
Gave Age its pastime, fired the cheek of Youth,
The unseen sires of all our beings are.

4. All books grow homilies by time; they are
Temples, at once, and landmarks. In them, we,
Who, but for them, upon that inch of ground
We call "THE PRESENT," from the cell could see
No daylight trembling on the dungeon bar,
Turn, as we list, the globe's great axle round,
Traverse all space, and number every star,
And feel the Near less household than the Far!
There is no past, so long as Books shall live!
Rise up, ye walls, with gardens blooming o'er!
Ope but that page-lo! Babylon once more!

5. Books make the Past our heritage and home;
And is this all? No; by each prophet-sage
No; by the herald souls that Greece and Rome
Sent forth, like hymns, to greet the Morning Star
That rose on Bethlehem-by thy golden page,
Melodious Plato- by thy solemn dreams,
World-wearied Tully!—and, above ye all,
By THIS, the Everlasting Monument

Of God to mortals, on whose front the beams
Flash glory-breathing day, our lights they are
To the dark bourn beyond; in them are sent
The types of truths whose life is the To-COME;
In them soars up the Adam from the fall;

Celebrated in Homer's Iliad.
Who introduced the Greek alphabet.

The Bible

§ A bound, a limit

In them the Future as the Past is given -
Even in our death they bid us hail our birth;
Unfold these pages, and behold the Heaven,
Without one grave-stone left upon the Earth!

SIR E. BULWER LYTTON.

CCII.

WHAT LABOR HAS DONE FOR THE WEST.

1. HE, alone, who has traversed these regions, day after day, in the freshness, indeed, but in the silence and solitude of nature, -almost appalled by a sense of loneliness and insignificance, amid these wonders of creative power,- -can justly appreciate the efforts of man in subduing and reclaiming the prairie and the forest, and preparing them for those scenes of improvement and cultivation which cheer the eye and gladden the heart of the traveller; and, above all, of the traveller who preceded the march of civilization, and now follows it in its glorious progress. Never has human industry achieved a prouder triumph than in this conflict between nature and man. As in the ex'odus from Eden, he has been "sent forth to till the ground;" and in the "sweat of his face" has he thus far fulfilled his mission. And a proud one it was; ay, and yet is; for, though it has done much, it has still much to do. It began at the beach of Jamestown, and the rock of Plymouth, where its first labors were broken by no sound but the surges of the Atlantic; and they will finish only when the last echo of the woodman's axe shall mingle with the surges of the Pacific.

2. Do not these miracles of enterprise resemble the fictions of an Eastern imagination, rather than the sober realities of human experience? Do they not speak to us in trumpet-tones of the value and dignity of labor? for by labor have they been wrought -persevering, unyielding, triumphant labor! There is no lesson more important to be taught to our young countrymen than that which is taught by this great characteristic feature of American history, the immense conquest which man has achieved over the world of matter that opposed his progress, and the scanty resources he brought to the work. His own exertions, and the axe and the plough, have accomplished this mighty task; always, indeed, with toil and exposure, and sometimes under circumstances of privation and suffering before which the stoutest resolution might give away.

3. And how would this great work, of subduing nature and preparing the forest for the residence of man, have been accom plished in the older regions of the globe, so long the theatre of

human exertions? The answer describes by a single trait the marked difference between the condition of agricultural labor in the Eastern and in the Western hemisphere; between the laborer for others and the laborer for himself. He who runs may read it in the history of our whole progress, individual and national. The forest has fallen before those who established their habitations in its dark recesses dark till their toil made way for the light of Heaven to shine upon them. They labored themselves, and for themselves. No taskmaster directed their labors, and no speculator garnered the profits. And thus exertion was stimulated by the most powerful motives which can operate upon human nature-by the necessity of present subsistence, and the hope, the certainty, I should say, of future competence and comfort; and, therefore it is, that, upon the immense domain from Lake Erie almost to the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, a vig orous, intelligent, and enterprising people have fixed their residence, and by their own labor, and for their own advantage, have prepared it for all the purposes of civilized life.

4. And the time within which this has been done is not the least extraordinary feature in this great national migration — a migration going forth to invade the forest, and to fulfil the first command of the Creator, " to replenish the earth and subdue it," and not, as in the history of human conquest, to lay waste and destroy, having before it fertile and flourishing regions, and behind it ruin and desolation. The man yet lives who was living when almost the first tree fell before the pioneer's stroke in this magnificent region; and the man is now living who will live to see it contain one hundred millions of people. I have myself known it for half a century, and in that space- - long, indeed, in the life of man, but brief in the life of communities region of the North-west, marked with its distinct boundaries upon the map of nature by the Lakes, the Mississippi, and the Ohio, has risen from infancy to manhood, from weakness to strength, from a population of a few thousands to five millions of people of freemen, owning the soil they occupy, and which they won by their industry, and will defend by their blood.

[ocr errors]

our own

5. Where, in the long annals of the human race, can you find such an augmentation of the resources and numbers of a country, gained in so short a period, and under such circumstances of trial in its progress, and of prosperity in its issue? And may we not well say, that the mighty agent which has built up this monument of productive power deserves the gratitude and the fostering care of the American people? And that agent is Labor, and our duty is to elevate it in the scale of employment; to show what it has done, and is doing, and is destined, I trust, yet to do.

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »