look in men for completeness, and shall content ourselves with their social and delegated quality.

WRITERS.

Nature will be reported. All things are engaged in writing their history. The planet, the pebble goes attended by its shadow. The rolling rock leaves its scratches on the mountain; the river its channel in the soil; the animal its bones in the stratum; the f rn and leaf, their modest epitaph in the coal. The falling drop makes its sculpture in the sand or the stone. Not a foot steps in the snow or along the ground, but prints in characters more or less lasting, a map of its march. Every act of man inscribes itself in the memories of its fellows, and in his own manners and face. The air is full of sounds; the sky, of tokens; the ground is all memoranda and signatures; and every object covered over with hints, which speak to the intelligent.

In nature this self registration is incessant, and the narrative is the print of the seal. It neither exceeds nor comes short of the fact. But nature strives upward, and, in man, the report is something more than print of the seal. It is a new and finer form of the original. The record is alive, as that which is recorded is alive. In man, the memory is a kind of looking-glass, which, having received the images of surrounding objects, is touched with life, and disposes them in a new order. Man loves to communicate. Men were born to write.

Society has no graver interest than the well-being of the literary class. And it is not to be denied that men are cordial in their recognition and welcome of intellectual accomplishments.

The world is young; the former great men call to us affectionately. The secret of genius is to suffer no fiction to exist for us; to realize all that we know; in the high refinement of modern life, in arts, in sciences, in books, in men, to exact good faith, reality, and a purpose; and first, last, midst, and without end, to honor every truth by use.

ORATORS.

Oratory does not unfold all its powers, in the midst of peace and general prosperity. Great questions must agitate men's minds; deep passions must be awakened; vast expectations excited. It was so with the two great orators of antiquity. They did not live in the palmy state of their respective republics. Liberty was about to make her last struggle, and these men appeared as her chosen champions. They triumphed in her triumphs. Their most heroic efforts were made to avert her fall, and their sublimest strains poured out at her bier. They lived with the daily consciousness that on their single arm hung interests, often too mighty for computation. The same Providence, which raised them up to give the world assurance of the power and perfection of oratory, poured into their hearts the fire, the enthusiasm, the un yielding devotion to their purpose which compels success. Liberty they might not save, but they could immortalize her ruin. The resistless progress of an invader or a tyrant they might not be able to stay; but they could mingle the withering and undying flames of their eloquence even with his triumphs, and thus consign him, at the very moment of his proudest success, scathed and blackened, to the scorn and execration of mankind.

We meet with no modern orators who seem contented with nothing short of perfection; who shrink from no toil; and who at length, after incredible pains, have succeeded in enshrining their conceptions in forms so exquisite, that criticism is disarmed, and universal admiration is compelled.

LAFAYETTE.

There are few men whose history partakes so largely of the spirit of romance and chivalry as that of Lafayette. At the age of nineteen years he left his country and espoused the cause of the American colonies. His motive for this conduct must have been one of the noblest that ever actuated the heart of man. He was in possession of large estates, allied to the highest orders of French nobility, surrounded by friends and

relatives, with prospects of future distinction and favor as fair as ever opened to the ardent view of aspiring ambitious youth. Yet he left his friends, his country, his prospects of distinction, to assist a nation in its struggle for freedom, and at a time too, when the prospects of that country's success were dark, disheartening, and almost hopeless. He fought for that country, he fed and clothed her armies, he imparted of his wealth to her poor. He saw her purposes accomplished, and her government established on the principles of liberty. He refused all compensation for his services. He returned to his native land, and engaged in contests for liberty there. He was imprisoned by a foreign government, suffered every indignity and every cruelty that could be inflicted, and lived, after his release, almost an exile, on the spot where he was born. More than forty years after he first embarked in the cause of American liberty he returned to see once more his few surviving companions in arms, and was met by the grateful salutations of the whole nation. It is not possible to reflect on these facts without feeling our admiration excited to a degree that almost borders on reverence.

WASHINGTON.

Homer rose in the dawn of Greek culture, Virgil flourished in the court of Augustus, Dante ushered in the birth of the new European civilization, Copernicus was reared in a Polish cloister, Shakespeare was trained in the green room of the theatre, Milton was formed while the elements of English thought and life were fermenting towards a great political and moral revolution, Newton under the profligacy of the restoration. Ages may elapse before any country will produce a man like these, as two centuries have passed since the last mentioned of them were born. But if it is really a matter of reproach to the United States, that in the comparatively short period of their existence as a people, they have not added another name to the illustrious list (which is equally true of all the other nations of. the earth,) they may proudly boast of one example of life and character, one career of disinterested service, one model of public virtue, the type of human excellence, of which all the

countries and all the ages may be searched in vain for the parallel. I need not on this day I need not-speak the peerless name. It is stamped on your hearts, it glistens in your eyes, it is written on every page of your history, on the battle-fields of the Revolution, on the monuments of your fathers, on the portals of your Capitols. It is heard in every breeze that whispers over the fields of independent America. And he was all our own. He grew upon the soil of America; he was nurtured at her bosom. She loved and trusted him in his youth; she honored and revered him in his age; and though she did not wait for death to canonize his name, his precious memory, with each succeeding year, has sunk more deeply into the hearts of his countrymen.

HOME AND SCHOOL INFLUENCE ESPECIALLY NECESSARY IN TIME OF WAR.

The grand march of humanity stops not in its course even for war. From the cradle to the coffin, the crowding columns move on with lock-step through the successive stages of life. Childhood cannot halt in its progress for returning peace to afford leisure for education. On into the years-to manhood, to citizenship, to destiny-it rushes, whether learning lights its path and guides its steps, or ignorance involves it in error and conducts it headlong into vice. And if in peace the school is needful to rear our children to an intelligent and virtuous manhood, how much greater the need when war, with its inseparable barbarism, is drifting the nation from its onward course of peaceful civilization, back to the old realms of darkness and brute force.

High and heroic aims mitigate the evils which necessarily attend an appeal to arms. To say nothing of the physical health and prowess that camp life and military discipline 'develops, the love of country and love of liberty rise again from mere holiday sentiments to the grandeur and power of national passions, and the Union, made doubly precious by the blood which its maintenance may cost, attains a strength that

no mortal force can shake or destroy. History grows heroic again, and humanity itself is inspired and glorified with fresh vindication of its God-given rights and duties, in a new incarnation and triumph of the principles of Constitutional and Republican liberty.

But with all this, the barbarisms of war are too palpable and terrific to be forgotten or disregarded, and the wise and patriotic statesman will find in them a more urgent reason for fostering those civilizing agencies which nourish the growing intelligence and virtue of the people. Against the ideas and vices engendered in the camps, and amidst the battle-fields, must be raised still higher the bulwarks of virtuous habits and beliefs, in the children yet at home. We need the utmost stretch of home and school influence to save society and the state from the terrible dominations of military ideas and military forces, always so dangerous to civil liberty and free government.

THE PROBLEM FOR THE UNITED STATES.

The Union cannot expire as the snow melts from the rock, or a star disappears from the firmament. When it falls the crash will be heard in all lands. Wherever the winds of heaven go, that will go, bearing sorrow and dismay to millions of striken hearts; for the subversion of this Government will render the cause of constitutional liberty hopeless throughout the world. What nation can govern itself, if this nation cannot? What encouragement will any people have to establish liberal institutions for themselves, if ours fail? Providence has laid upon us the responsibility and the honor of solving that problem in which all coming generations of men have a profound interest-whether the true ends of government can be secured by a popular representative system. Never before was a people so advantageously situated for working out this great problem in favor of human liberty; and it is important for us to understand that the world so regards it.

If, in the frenzy of our base sectional jealousies, we dig the grave of the Union, and thus decide this question in the