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staggered vessel. I see them, escaped from these périls, pursúing their all but desperate | undertaking, and landed, at last, after a

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few months' passage, on the ice-clad rocks | of Plymouth,—

weak | and weary | from the voyage, | poorly | ármed, | scantily |

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provisioned, without | shelter, without | méans, surrounded by hostile tribes.

Shut, now, the volume of history, and tell me, on any principle of human probability, what shall be the fate of this handful of ad

vènturers? Tell me, man of military scìence, in how many months

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were they all swept off by the thirty savage tribes enumerated within the early limits of New England. Tell me, politician, how lòng did this shadow of a cólony, on which your conventions and

treaties had not smíled, lànguish on the distant coast? Student of

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history, compare for me the baffled | projects, the desèrted | sèttle

ments, the abandoned | adventures, of òther | times, and find the

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parallel | of this! Was it the winter's stórm, beating upon the houseless heads of women and children? was it hard | labor and spare | méals? was it disease? was it the tómahawk? was it the deep | málady of a blighted | hópe, a rúined | énterprise, and a broken. héart, |áching, in its last | móments, at the recollection of the

loved and left, beyond the séa?-was it some, or all of these united, m SRC

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that hurried this forsaken company to their melancholy fàte? And

is it póssible that néither of these causes, that not all | combíned,

were able to blást | this bud | of hópe! Is it possible that from a

beginning so feèble, so frail, so wórthy not so much of admirátion

as of pity, there has gone forth a progress | so steady, a growth | so

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wonderful, an expansion | so àmple, a reality | so important, a

67. NATIONS AND HUMANITY.-Geo. W. Curtis.

It was not his olive valleys and orange groves which made the Greece of the Greek, it was not for his apple orchards or potato fields that the farmer of New England and New York left his plough in the furrow and marched to Bunker Hill, to Bennington, to Saratoga. A man's country is not a certain area of land, but it is a principle; and patriotism is loyalty to that principle. The secret sanctification of the soil and symbol of a country is the idea which they represent; and this idea the patriot worships through the name and the symbol.

So with passionate heroism, of which tradition is never weary of tenderly telling, Arnold von Winkelried gathers into his bosom the sheaf of foreign spears. So, Nathan Hale, disdaining no service that duty demands, perishes untimely with no other friend than God and the satisfied sense of duty. So, through all history from the beginning, a noble army of martyrs has fought fiercely, and fallen bravely, for that unseen mistress, their country. So, through all history to the end, that army must still march, and fight, and fall.

But countries and families are but nurseries and influences. A man is a father, a brother, a German, a Roman, an American; but beneath all these relations, he is a man. The end of his human destiny is not to be the best German, or the best Roman, or the best father; but the best man he can be.

History shows us that the association of men in various nations is made subservient to the gradual advance of the whole human race; and that all nations work together toward one grand result. So, to the philosophic eye, the race is but a vast caravan forever moving, but seeming often to encamp for centuries at some green oasis of ease, where lux

ury lures away heroism, as soft Capua enervated the hosts. of Hannibal.

But still the march proceeds,- slowly, slowly over mountains, through valleys, along plains, marking its course with monumental splendors, with wars, plagues, crimes, advancing still, decorated with all the pomp of nature, lit by the constellations, cheered by the future, warned by the past. In that vast march, the van forgets the rear; the individual is lost; and yet the multitude is but many individuals. The man faints, and falls, and dies, and is forgotten; but still mankind moves on, still worlds revolve, and the will of God is done in earth and heaven.

We of America, with our soil sanctified and our symbol glorified by the great ideas of liberty and religion,— love of freedom and love of God,—are in the foremost vanguard of this great caravan of humanity. To us rulers look, and learn justice, while they tremble; to us the nations look, and learn to hope, while they rejoice. Our heritage is all the love and heroism of liberty in the past; and all the great of the Old World are our teachers.

Our faith is in God and the Right; and God himself is, we believe, our Guide and Leader. Though darkness sometimes shadows our national sky, though confusion comes from error, and success breeds corruption, yet will the storm pass in God's good time, and in clearer sky and purer atmosphere our national life grow stronger and nobler, sanctified more and more, consecrated to God and liberty by the martyrs who fall in the strife for the just and true.

And so, with our individual hearts strong in love for our principles, strong in faith in our God, shall the nation leave to coming generations a heritage of freedom, and law, and religion, and truth, more glorious than the world has known before; and our American banner be planted first and highest on heights as yet unwon in the great march of humanity.

68. AN APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE.-John Bright.

Our opponents have charged us with being the promoters of a dangerous excitement. They have the effrontery to say that I am the friend of public disorder. I am one of the people. Surely, if there be one thing in a free country more clear than another, it is that any one of the people may speak openly to the people. If I speak to the people of their rights, and indicate to them the way to secure them,—if I speak of their danger to the monopolists of power,- — am I not a wise counselor, both to the people and to their rulers?

Suppose I stood at the foot of Vesuvius, or Ætna, and, seeing a hamlet or a homestead planted on its slope, I said to the dwellers in that hamlet, or in that homestead, "You see that vapor which ascends from the summit of the mountain: that vapor may become a dense, black smoke, that will obscure the sky. You see the trickling of lava from the crevices in the side of the mountain: that trickling of lava may become a river of fire. You hear that muttering in the bowels of the mountain: that muttering may become a bellowing thunder, the voice of a violent convulsion, that may shake half a continent. You know that at your feet is the grave of great cities, for which there is no resurrection, as histories tell us that dynasties and aristocracies have passed away, and their names have been known no more forever."

If I say this to the dwellers upon the slope of the mountain, and if there comes hereafter a catastrophe which makes the world to shudder, am I responsible for that catastrophe? I did not build the mountain, or fill it with explosive materials. I merely warned the men that were in danger. So, now, it is not I who am stimulating men to the violent pursuit of their acknowledged constitutional rights.

The class which has hitherto ruled in this country has

failed miserably. It revels in power and wealth, whilst at its feet, a terrible peril for its future, lies the multitude which it has neglected. If a class has failed, let us try the nation.

That is our faith, that is our purpose, that is our cry. Let us try the nation. This it is which has called together these countless numbers of the people to demand a change; and from these gatherings, sublime in their vastness and their resolution, I think I see, as it were, above the hilltops of time, the glimmerings of the dawn of a better and a nobler day for the country and for the people that I love so well.

DIGNIFIED AND GRAVE.

220. Predominating time slow; pitch low; force moderate (§ 116), effusive (§ 112) and expulsive (§§ 115, 119); stress median (§ 102) and in strong passages terminal (§ 101); quality orotund (§ 135).

69. GALILEO GALILEI.-Edward Everett.*

(P) There is much | in every way | in the city | of Florence | to excite the curiósity, | kindle | the imagination, and gratify | the taste; but among all | its fascinations, | addressed to the sénse, the mémory, and the heart, there was none to which I more frequently gave a meditative | hóur, | during a year's | résidence, | than to the

spot where Galileo | Galilêi | sleeps | beneath the marble | floor | of

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Santa Cròce; no building on which I gazed with greater | réverence |

and

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than I did upon that modest | mansion at Arcêtri; villa once and príson, in which that venerable | sage, | by the command of the In8 C prone

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quisition, passed the sad | clòsing years of his life.

Of all the wonders | of ancient | and modern | árt, statues | and paintings, jewels | and manuscripts, the admiration | and delight | of áges, there was nothing I beheld with more affectionate | áwe |

than that poor | little spy-glass, through which the human eye first | *This Selection belongs in § 219.