But the light of the human soul flies swifter than the light of the sun, and outshines its meridian blaze. It can embrace not only the sun of our system, but all suns and galaxies of suns; aye! the soul is capable of knowing and of enjoying Him who created the suns themselves; and when these starry lustres that now glorify the firmament shall wax dim, and fade away like a wasted taper, the light of the soul shall still remain; nor time, nor cloud, nor any power but its own perversity, shall ever quench its brightness. Again I would say, that whenever a human soul is born into the world, God stands over it and pronounces the same sublime fiat, "Let there be light!" And may the time soon come, when all human governments shall cooperate with the divine government in carrying this benediction and baptism into fulfillment.

MEN OF PRINCIPLE.

Sometimes, in unfamiliar countries, the traveller finds himself shrouded in fog and the way so hidden, the features of the country so singularly changed from the reality, that he cannot safely move. But if some friendly mountain side lets him ascend a few hundred feet above, he finds himself suddenly in a clear atmosphere with a blue sky and a shining sun. Below him the smaller objects that misled and bewildered him lie hidden; before him stand out, salient and clear, the leading ridges and great outlines of the country which point out to him the right way, and show him where he may reach a place of security and repose for the night, and he goes on his journey confidently. And so it is with those men who devote their lives, unflinchingly and singly, to the public good-to the maintenance of principles and the advocacy of great reforms. They live in a pure atmosphere. And such ought also to be the character of the men whom we elevate to our high places. Raised into that upper air, and charged with the general safety, they are expected to be impersonal; they are expected to see over and beyond the personal ambitions and individual interests which of necessity influence men acting individually; their horizon is universal, and they see broadly defined the great principles which lead a

nation continuously on to a settled prosperity and a sure glory. And as a condition of our material safety we should see to it that only such men are put in such places—men capable of receiving a conviction and realizing a necessity-men able to comprehend the spirit of the age and the country in which we live, and fearless in working up to it.

LIMIT TO HUMAN DOMINION.

God has given the land to man, but the sea He has reserved to Himse'f. "The sea is His, and He made it." He has given man "no inheritance in it; no, not so much as to set his foot on." If he enters its domain, he enters it as a pilgrim and a stranger. He may pass over it, but he can have no abiding place upon it. He cannot build his house, nor so much as pitch his tent within it. He cannot mark it with his lines, nor subdue it to his uses, nor rear his monuments upon it. It steadfastly refuses to own him as its lord and master. Its depths do not tremble at his coming. Its waters flee not when he appeareth. All the strength of all his generations is to it as a feather before the whirlwind; and all the noise of his commerce, and all the thunder of his navies, it can hush in a moment within the silence of its impenetrable abysses. Whole armies have gone down into that unfathomable darkness, and not a floating bubble marks the place of their disappearing. If all the populations of the world, from the beginning of time, were cast into its depths, the smooth surface of its oblivion would close over them in an hour; and if all the cities of the earth, and all the structures and monuments ever reared by man, were heaped together over that grave for a tombstone, it would not break the surface of the deep, or lift back their memory to the light of the sun and the breath of the upper air. The sea would roll its billows in derision, a thousand fathoms deep, above the topmost stone of that mighty sepulchre. The patient earth submits to the rule of man, and the mountains bow their rocky heads before the hammer of his power and the blast of his terrible enginery. But God alone controls the mighty

sea.

THE CITY OF OUR LIBERTY.

But now that our service of commemoration is ended, let us go hence and meditate on all that it has taught us. You see how long the holy and beautiful city of our liberty and our power has been in building, and by how many hands, and at what cost. You see the towering and steadfast height to which it has gone up, and how its turrets and spires gleam in the rising and setting sun. You stand among the graves of some-your townsmen, your fathers by blood, whose names you bear, whose portraits hang up in your homes, of whose memory you are justly proud-who helped in their day to sink those walls deep in their beds, where neither frost nor earthquake might heave them,—to raise aloft those great arches of stone,-to send up those turrets and spires into the sky. It was theirs to build; remember it is yours, under Providence, to keep the city, to keep it from the sword of the invader, to keep it from licentiousness and crime and irreligion, and all that would make it unsafe or unfit to live in, to keep it from the fires of faction, of civil strife, of party spirit, that might burn up in a day the slow work of a thousand years of glory. Happy, if we shall so perform our duty that they who centuries hence shall dwell among our graves may be able to remember, on some such day as this, in one common service of grateful commemoration, their fathers of the first and the second age of America, those who through martyrdom and tempest and battle sought liberty, and made her their own, and those whom neither ease nor luxury, nor the fear of man, nor the worship of man, could prevail on to barter her away!

THE AMBITION OF WEBSTER.

Mr. Webster was an ambitious man. He desired the highest office in the gift of the people. But on this subject, as on all others, there was no concealment in his nature. And ambition is not a weakness unless it be disproportioned to the capacity. To have more ambition than ability is to be at once weak and unhappy. With him it was a noble passion, because it rested upon noble powers. He was a man cast in a heroic

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mould. His thoughts, his wishes, his passions, his aspirations, were all on a grander scale than those of other men. ercised capacity is always a source of rusting discontent. The height to which men may rise is in proportion to the upward force of their genius, and they will never be calm till they have attained their predestined elevation. Lord Bacon says, "As in nature things move violently to their place and calmly in their place, so virtue in ambition is violent, in authority, settled and calm." Mr. Webster had a giant's brain and a giant's heart, and he wanted a giant's work. He found repose in those strong conflicts and great duties which crush the weak and madden the sensitive. He thought that, if he were elevated to the highest place, he should so administer the government as to make the country honored abroad, and great and happy at home. He thought, too, that he could do something to make us more truly one people. This, above everything else, was his ambition. And we, who know him better than others, felt that it was a prophetic ambition, and we honored and trusted him accordingly.

CALIFORNIA.

It is a trite saying, that we live in an age of great events. Nothing can be more true. But the greatest of all events of the present age is at hand. It needs not the gift of prophecy to predict that the course of the world's trade is destined soon to be changed. But a few years can elapse before the commerce of Asia and the islands of the Pacific, instead of pursuing the ocean track, by way of Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope, or even taking the shorter route of the Isthmus of Darien, or the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, will enter the Golden Gate of California, and deposit its riches in our own city. Hence, on bars of iron, and propelled by steam, it will ascend the mountains and traverse the desert; and having again reached the confines of civilization, will be distributed, through a thousand channels, to every portion of the Union, and of Europe. New York will then become what London now is the great central point of exchange, the heart of trade, the force of whose contraction and expansion will be felt

throughout every artery of the commercial world; and San Francisco will then stand the second city of America. Is this visionary? Twenty years will determine.

The world is interested in our success; for a fresh field is opened to its commerce, and a new avenue to the civilization and progress of the human race. Let us, then, endeavor to realize the hopes of Americans, and the expectations of the world. Let us not only be united amongst ourselves, for our own local welfare, but let us strive to cement the common bonds of brotherhood of the whole Union. In our relations to the Federal Government, let us know no South, no North, no East, no West. Wherever American Liberty flourishes, let that be our common country! Wherever the American banner waves, let that be our home!

THE CLASSICS.

He who studies English literature without the lights of classical learning, loses half the charms of its sentiments and style, of its force and feelings, of its delicate touches, of its delightful allusions, of its illustrative associations. Who that reads the poetry of Gray, does not feel that it is the refinement of classical taste which gives such inexpressible vividness and transparency to his diction? Who that reads the concentrated sense and melodious versification of Dryden and Pope, does not perceive in them the disciples of the old school, whose genius was inflamed by the heroic verse, the terse satire, and the playful wit of antiquity? Who that meditates over the strains of Milton does not feel that he drank deep at

that the fires of his magnificent mind were lighted by coals from ancient altars?

It is no exaggeration to declare, that he who proposes to abolish classical studies, proposes to render, in a great measure, inert and unedifying the mass of English literature for three centuries; to rob us of the glory of the past, and much of the instruction of future ages; to blind us to excellencies which