private, captain, surgeon, or chaplain, for all these in the heavy fight have passed away, Hail! and Farewell! Each hero must sleep serenely on the field where he fell in a cause "sacred to liberty and the rights of mankind."

HONOR TO OUR HEROES.

The heart swells with unwonted emotion when we remember our sons and brothers, whose constant valor has sustained on the field, during nearly three years of war, the cause of our country, of civilization and liberty. The muse herself demands the lapse of silent years to soften, by the influences of time, her too keen and poignant realization of the scenes of war, the pathos, the heroism, the fierce joy, the grief of battle. But during the ages to come, she will brood over their memory. Into the hearts of her consecrated ones will breathe the inspirations of lofty and undying beauty, sublimity, and truth, in all the glowing forms of speech, of literature and plastic art. By the homely traditions of the fireside, by the headstones in the churchyard consecrated to those whose forms repose far off in rude graves by the Rappahannock, or sleep beneath the sea, embalmed in the memories of succeeding generations of parents and children, the heroic dead will live on in immortal youth.

POLITICAL MORALITY.

Remember that the greatness of our country is not in its achievement, but in its promise, a promise which cannot be fulfilled without that sovereign moral sense, without a sensitive national conscience. If it were a question of the mere daily pleasure of living, the gratification of taste, opportunity of access to the great intellectual and æsthetic results of human genius, and whatever embellishes human life, no man could hesitate for a moment between the fulness of foreign lands in these respects, and the conspicuous poverty of our own. What have we done? We have subdued and settled a vast domain. We have made every inland river turn a mill, and wherever, on the dim rim of the globe, there is a harbor, we have lighted

it with an American sail. We have bound the Atlantic to the Mississippi, so that we drift from the sea to the prairie upon a cloud of vapor; and we are stretching one hand across the continent to fulfil the hope of Columbus in a shorter way to Cathay, and with the other we are grasping under the sea to c'asp there the hand of the old continent, that so the throbbing of the ocean may not toss us further apart, but be as the beating of one common pulse of the world.

Yet these are the results common to all national enterprise, and different with us only in degree, not in kind. These are but the tools with which to shape a destiny. Commercial prosperity is only a curse, if it be not subservient to moral and intellectual progress; and our prosperity will conquer us, if we do not conquer our prosperity.

OUR COUNTRY'S GREATEST GLORY.

The true glory of a nation is in an intelligent, honest, industrious Christian people. The civilization of a people depends on their individual character; and a constitution which is not the outgrowth of this character is not worth the parchment on which it is written. You look in vain in the past for a single instance where the people have preserved their liberties after their individual character was lost.

The true glory of a nation is in the living temple of a loyal, industrious, and upright people. The busy click of machinery, the merry ring of the anvil, the lowing of peaceful herds, and the song of the harvest-home, are sweeter music than pæans of departed glory, or songs of triumph in war. The vine-clad co'tage of the hill-side, the cabin of the woodsman, and the rural home of the farmer, are the true citadels of any country. There is a dignity in honest toil which belongs not to the display of wealth or the luxury of fashion. The man who drives the plough, or swings his axe in the forest, or with cunning fingers plies the tools of his craft, is as truly the servant of his country as the statesman in the senate or the soldier in battle. The safety of a nation depends not alone on the wisdom of its statesmen, or the bravery of its generals. The

tongue of eloquence never saved a nation tottering to its fall; the sword of a warrior never stayed its destruction.

Would you see the image of true glory, I would show you villages where the crown and glory of the people was in Christian schools, where the voice of prayer goes heaven-ward, where the people have that most priceless gift, faith in God.

LOVE OF COUNTRY.

Next to the worship of the Father of us all, the deepest and grandest of human emotions is the love of the land that gave us birth. It is an enlargement and exaltation of all the tenderest and strongest sympathies of kindred and of home. In all centuries and climes it has lived, and defied chains and dungeons and racks to crush it. It has strewed the earth with its monuments, and has shed undying lustre on a thousand fields on which it has battled. Through the night of ages, Thermopyla glows like some mountain peak on which the morning sun has risen, because twenty-three hundred years ago, this hallowing passion touched its mural precipices and its crowning crags. It is easy, however, to be patriotic, in piping times of peace, and in the sunny hour of prosperity. It is national sorrow—it is war, with its attendant perils and horrors, that tests this passion, and winnows from the masses those who, with all their love of life, still love their country more. We honor commerce with its busy marts, and the workshop with its patient toil and exhaustless ingenuity, but still we would be unfaithful to the truth of history did we not confess that the most heroic champions of human freedom and the most illustrious apostles of its principles have come from the broad fields of agriculture. There seems to be something in the scenes of nature, in her wild and beautiful landsca es, in her cascades and cataracts, and waving woodlands, and in the pure and exhilarating airs of her hills and mountains, that umbraces the fetters which man would rivet upon the spirit of his fellow-man. It was at the handles of the plow, and amid the breathing odors of its newly-opened furrows, that the character of Cincinnatus was formed, expanded, and matured. It

was not in the city full, but in the deep gorges and upon the snow-clad summits of the Alps-—amid the eagles and the thunders, that William Tell laid the foundations of those altars to human liberty against which the surging tides of European despotism have beaten for centuries, but thank God, have beaten in vain.

LOYALTY TO LIBERTY OUR ONLY HOPE.

The love of country is the gift of God-it cannot dwell in homes of sin, it has no abi ling place in saloons of vice or dens of infamy, it belongs not to infidel c'ubs or fanatical conventions, they would tear down the sacred edifice which they have never loved; they are impatient for change, for in the seething caldron of rebellion they are brought to the surface. With nothing to lose, they have no fear of the days of terror; their only dread is in the majesty of the law. The love of country belongs to a God-fearing people; it is seen in the purity of private life, in the privacy of Christian homes, in the devotions of the closet, in the manliness of Christian character. The church is its nursing mother. Loyalty to God and to her institutions is her first and last lesson; it is the earnest cry of her loyal children" that peace and happine-s, truth and justice, religion and piety, may be established among us for all generations." The love of country belongs to loyal men. The power of selfgovernment depends upon a loyal people.

The protection of the nation depends not on the wisdom of its senators, not on the vigilance of its police, not on the strong arm of standing armies: but the loyalty of a united people. Other nations have equalled us in all the arts of civilization, in discoveries, in science, in skill, and in invention: they have kept even step with us and often surpassed us in philosophy and literature; they have been brave in war and wise in council; they have clustered round their homes all tl at art can lavish of beauty-but ripe scholarship, cunning in art, or skill in invention never gave to the people a constitution. This is the outgrowth of a manly spirit of loyalty. It teaches men duty-a right manly word for right manly men.

OUR GREAT INHERITANCE.

We have the greatest country on the face of the earth. Let not our minds be so distracted by mere party strife and confusion that we shall see our government fall to pieces before our eyes, and sacrifice our country to our party, instead of being ready at all times to sacrifice our party to our country. After we become the slave of party, we dare not, in the presence of any danger to the country, turn our backs to our parties, and say that we have a country that demands our services, and to it we will give them. Are we now unable to do this? Have we lost this spirit? has it gone from among us?

Providence has given this great country to us. Our wise and valiant forefathers gave us liberty and established a government for us. Let us take care of it-take care of the Constitution and the Union. That is all we require. We have before us the prospect of a glory unknown to other nations— a prospect in which our land will become the glory of the earth. Neither Rome nor any of the great empires of antiquity or of mo lern times can compare with what we shall be at no distant day. We are now thirty millions strong, yet we have been but eighty years in existence as a free nation. From the year 1776 down to the present time, God Almighty has blessed us above all other people and all other nations. Where shall we be thirty years hence if such prosperity attend us? A great nation of one hundred million souls, with not enough then to develop all our resources. Every man free to think, free to speak, free to act, free to work. What must this mighty freedom produce with this mighty concurrence of hearts, of heads, of hands! What navies, what armies, what cities!

FREE HOMES FOR FREE MEN.

I would provide in our land policy for securing homesteads to actual settlers; and whatever bounties the government should grant to the old soldiers, I would have made in money