law, and every offence against that is an offence against the rights of the civilized world; and if he breaks that law in the case of Turkey, or in any other case, the whole world has a right to call him out and demand his punishment Our rights as a nation are held under the sanction of national law a law which becomes more important from day to daya law which none who profess to agree to, are at liberty to violate. Nor let him imagine, nor let any one imagine, that mere force can subdue the general sentiment of mankind. It is much more likely to extend that sentiment, and to destroy that power which he most desires to establish and secure. The bones of poor John Wickliffe were dug out of his grave seventy years after his death, and burnt, for his heresy, and his ashes were thrown upon a river in Warwickshire. Some prophet of that day said: "The Avon to the Severn runs, The Severn to the sea, And Wickliffe's dust shall spread abroad Gentlemen, if the blood of Kossuth is taken by an absolute, unqualified, unjustifiable violation of national law, what will it appease what will it pacify? It will mingle with the earth-it will mix with the waters of the ocean-the whole civilized world will snuff it in the air, and it will return with awful retribution on the heads of those violators of national law and universal justice. I cannot say when, or in what form; but depend upon it, that if such an act take place, the thrones and principalities and powers must look out for the consequences. VIII-IMPORTANCE OF LITERARY PURSUITS. A. H. EVERETT. INDEPENDENCE and liberty, the great political objects of all communities, have been secured to us by our glorious ancestors. In these respects, we are only required to preserve and transmit unimpaired to our posterity the inheritance which our fathers bequeathed to us. To the present, and to the following generations, is left the easier task of enriching with arts IMPORTANCE OF LITERARY PURSUITS. 21 and letters, the proud fabric of our national glory. Our Sparta is indeed a noble one. Let us then do our best for it. It will belong to your position to take the lead in arts and letters, as in policy, and to give the tone to the literature of the language. Let it be your care and study not to show yourselves unequal to this high calling,-to vindicate the honor of the new world in this generous and friendly competition with the old. You will perhaps be told that literary pursuits will disqualify you for the active business of life. Heed not the idle assertion. Reject it as a mere imagination, inconsistent with principle, unsupported by experience. Point out to those who make it, the illustrious characters who have reaped in every age the highest honors of studious aud active exertion. Show them Demosthenes, forging by the light of the midnight lamp those thunderbolts of eloquence which "Shook the arsenal and fulmined over Greece- Ask them if Cicero would have been hailed with rapture as the father of his country, if he had not been its pride and pattern in philosophy and letters. Inquire whether Cæsar, or Frederick, or Bonaparte, or Wellington, or Washington, fought the worse because they knew how to write their own commentaries. Remind them of Franklin, tearing at the same time the lightning from heaven, and the sceptre from the hands of the oppressor. Do they say to you that study will lead you to skepticism? Recall to their memory the venerable names of Bacon, Milton, Newton and Locke. Would they persuade you that devotion to learning will withdraw your steps from the paths of pleasure? Tell them they are mistaken. Tell them that the only true pleasures are those which result from the diligent exercise of all the faculties of body, and mind, and heart, in pursuit of noble ends by noble means. Repeat to them the ancient apologue of the youthful Hercules, in the pride of strength and beauty, giving up his generous soul to the worship of virtue. Tell them your choice is also made. Tell them, with the illustrious Roman orator, you would rather be in the wrong with Plato, than in the right with Epicurus. Tell them that a mother in Sparta would have rather seen her son brought home from battle a corpse upon his shield, than dishonored by its loss. Tell them that your mother is America, your battle the warfare of life, your shield the breastplate of Religion. IX.-FREEDOM AND PATRIOTISM. ORVILLE DEWEY. GOD has stamped upon our very humanity this impress of (freedom. It is the unchartered prerogative of human nature. A soul ceases to be a soul, in proportion as it ceases to be free. Strip it of this, and you strip it of one of its essential and characteristic attributes. It is this that draws the footsteps of the wild Indian to his wide and boundless desert-paths, and makes him prefer them to the gay saloons and soft carpets of sumptuous palaces. It is this that makes it so difficult to bring him within the pale of artificial civilization. Our roving tribes are perishing—a sad and solemn sacrifice upon the altar of their wild freedom. They come among us, and look with childish wonder upon the perfection of our arts, and the splendor of our habitations: they submit with ennui and weariness, for a few days, to our burdensome forms and restraints; and then turn their faces to their forest homes, and resolve to push those homes onward till they sink in the Pacific waves, rather than not be free. It is thus that every people is attached to its country, just in proportion as it is free. No matter if that country be in the rocky fastnesses of Switzerland, amidst the snows of Tartary, or on the most barren and lonely island-shore; no matter if that country be so poor as to force away its children to other and richer lands, for employment and sustenance; yet when the songs of those free homes chance to fall upon the exile's ear, no soft and ravishing airs that wait upon the timid feastings of Asiatic opulence ever thrilled the heart with such mingled rapture and agony as those simple tones. Sad mementos might they be of poverty and want and toil; yet it was enough that they were mementos of happy freedom. I have seen my countrymen, and I have been with them a fellow wanderer, in other lands; and little did I see or feel to warrant the apprehension, sometimes expressed, that foreign travel would weaken our patriotic attachments. One sigh for home-home, arose from all hearts. And why, from palaces and courts-why, from galleries of the arts, where the marble softens into life, and painting sheds an almost living presence of beauty around it—why, from the mountain's awful brow, and the lonely valleys and lakes touched THE PRESENT AGE. 25 XI-THE PRESENT AGE. W. E. CHANNING, THE Present Age. In these brief words what a world of thought is comprehended! what infinite movements! what joys and sorrows! what hope and despair! what faith and doubt! what silent grief and loud lament! what fierce conflicts and subtle schemes of policy! what private and public revolutions! In the period through which many of us have passed, what thrones have been shaken! what hearts have bled! what millions have been butchered by their fellowcreatures! what hopes of philanthropy have been blighted! and at the same time what magnificent enterprises have been achieved! what new provinces won to science and art! what rights and liberties secured to nations! It is a privilege to have lived in an age so stirring, so pregnant, so eventful. It is an age never to be forgotten. Its voice of warning and encouragement is never to die. Its impression on history is indelible. Amidst its events, the American Revolution, the first distinct, solemn assertion of the rights of men, and the French Revolution, that volcanic force which shook the earth to its centre, are never to pass from men's minds. Over this age the night will, indeed, gather more and more as time rolls away; but in that night two forms will appear, Washington and Napoleon, the one a lurid meteor, the other a benign, serene, and undecaying star. Another American name will live in history, your Franklin; and the kite which brought lightning from heaven, will be seen sailing in the clouds by remote posterity, when the city where he dwelt may be known only by its ruins. There is, however, something greater in the age than its greatest men; it is the appearance of a new power in the world, the appearance of the multitude of men on the stage where as yet the few have acted their parts alone. This influence is to endure to the end of time. What more of the present is to survive? Perhaps much, of which we now take no note. The glory of an age is often hidden from itself. Perhaps some word has been spoken in our day which we have not deigned to hear, but which is to grow clearer and louder through all ages. haps some silent thinker among us is at work in his closet whose name is to fill the earth. Perhaps there sleeps in his cradle some reformer who is to move the church, and the Per world, who is to open a new era in history, who is to fire the human soul with new hope and new daring. What else is to survive the age? That which the age has little thought of, but which is living in us all; I mean the soul, the immortal spirit of this all ages are the unfoldings, and it is greater than all. We must not feel, in the contemplation of the vast movements in our own and former times, as if we ourselves were nothing. I repeat it, we are greater than all. We are to survive our age, to comprehend it, and to pronounce its sentence. XII-STATE VETO POWER. JOHN C. CALHOUN, I AM not surprised that, with the idea of a perfect government which the Senator from Massachusetts has formed-a government of an absolute majority, unchecked and unrestrained, operating through a representative body-that he is so much shocked with what he is pleased to call the absurdity of State veto. But let me tell him, that his scheme of a perfect government, beautiful as he conceives it to be, though often tried, has invariably failed, and has always ran, whenever tried, through the same uniform process of faction, corruption, anarchy, and despotism He considers the representative principle as the great modern improvement in legislation, and of itself sufficient to secure liberty. I canno regard it in the light in which he does. Instead of modern, it is of remote origin, and has existed in greater or less perfection, in every free state, from the remotest antiquity. Nor do I consider it as of itself sufficient to secure liberty, though I regard it as one of the indispensable means-the means of securing the people against the tyranny and oppression of their rulers. To secure liberty, another means is still necessary-the means of securing the different portions of society, against the injustice and oppression of each other, which can only be effected by veto, interposition, or nullification, or by whatever name the restraining or negative power of Government may be called. The Senator seems to be enamored with his conception of a consolidated government, and avows himself to be prepared, |