boyhood grew up in the midst of the contest with Great Britain. The first great political truth that reached his heart was, that all men are free and equal; the first great fact that beamed on his understanding was, his country's independence.

The strife, as it increased, came near the shades of his upland residence. As a boy of thirteen he witnessed the scenes of horror that accompany civil war; and when but a year older, with an elder brother, he shouldered his musket, and went forth to strike a blow for his country. Joyous era for America and for humanity! But for him, the orphan boy, the events were full of agony and grief!

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At the very time when Washington was pledging his own and future generations to the support of the popular institutions which were to be the light of the human race, at the time when the institutions of the Old World were rocking to their centre, and the mighty fabric that had come down from the middle ages was falling in,-- the adventurous Jackson, in the radiant glory and boundless hope and confident intrepidity of twenty-one, plunged into the wilderness, crossed the great mountain-barrier that divides the western waters from the Atlantic, followed the paths of the early hunters and fugitives, and, not content with the nearer neighborhood to his parent state, went still further and further to the west, till he found his home in the most beautiful region on the Cumberland.

On all great occasions, Jackson's influence was deferred to. When Jefferson had acquired for the country the whole of Louisiana, and there seemed some hesitancy on the part of Spain to acknowledge our possession, the services of Jackson were solicited by the national administration, and were not called into full exercise only from the peaceful termination of the incidents that occasioned the summons. In the long series of aggressions on the freedom of the seas and the rights of the American flag, Jackson was on the side of his country and the new maritime code of republicanism. In his inland home, where the roar of the breakers was never heard, and the mariner was never seen, he resented the continued aggression on our commerce and on our sailors.

A pupil of the wilderness, his heart was with the pioneers of American life towards the setting sun. No American statesman has ever embraced within his affections a scheme so liberal for the emigrants as that of Jackson. He longed to secure to them, not preëmption rights only, but more than preemption rights. He longed to invite labor to take possession of the unoccupied fields without money and without price, with no obligation except the perpetual devotion of itself by allegiance to its country. Under the beneficent influence of his opinions, the sons of misfortune, the children of adventure, find their way to the uncultivated west. There, in some wilderness glade, or in the thick forest of the fertile plain, or where the prairies most sparkle with flowers, they, like the wild bee which sets them the example of industry, may choose their home, mark the extent of their possessions by driving stakes or blazing trees, shelter their log-cabins with the boughs and turf, and teach the virgin soil to yield itself to the ploughshare. Theirs shall be the soil, theirs the beautiful farms which they teach to be productive. Come, children of sorrow! you on whom the Old World frowns, crowd fearlessly. to the forests; plant your homes in confidence, for the country watches over you; your children grow around you as hostages, and the wilderness, at your bidding, surrenders its grandeur of useless luxuriance to the beauty and loveliness of culture.

The portions of country that suffered most severely from a system of legislation which, in its extreme character, as it then existed, is now universally acknowledged to have been unequal and unjust, were less tranquil; and, rallying on the doctrines of freedom, which made our government a limited one, they saw in the oppressive acts an assumption of power which was nugatory, because it was exercised, as they held, without authority from the people. The contest that ensued was the most momentous in our annals. The greatest minds of America engaged in the discussion. Eloquence never achieved sublimer triumphs in the American senate than on those occasions. The country became deeply divided, and the antagonist elements were arrayed against each other under forms of clashing authority, menacing civil war; the freedom of

the several states was invoked against the power of the United States; and, under the organization of a state in convention, the reserved rights of the people were summoned to display their energy, and balance the authority and neutralize the legislation of the central government. The states were agitated with prolonged excitement; the friends of freedom throughout the world looked on with divided sympathies, praying that the Union of the States might be perpetual, and also that the commerce of the world might be free.

Fortunately for the country, and fortunately for mankind, Andrew Jackson was at the helm of state, the representative of the principles that were to allay excitement, and to restore the hopes of peace and freedom. By nature, by impulse, by education, by conviction, a friend to personal freedom, -- by education, political sympathies, and the fixed habit of his mind, a friend to the rights of the states, — unwilling that the liberty of the states should be trampled under foot, unwilling that the constitution should lose its vigor or be impaired, he rallied for the constitution, and in its name he published to the world, "THE UNION, IT MUST BE PRESERVED!" The words were a spell to hush evil passion and to remove oppression. Under his guiding influence the favored interests, which had struggled to perpetuate unjust legislation, yielded to the voice of moderation and reform, and every mind that had for a moment contemplated a rupture of the states discarded it forever. The whole influence of the past was invoked in favor of the constitution; from the council-chambers of the fathers who moulded our institutions, from the hall where American independence was declared, the clear, loud cry was uttered, “The Union, it must be preserved." From every battle-field of the Revolution, -from Lexington and Bunker Hill, from Saratoga and Yorktown, from the fields of Eutaw, from the cane-brakes that sheltered the men of Marion, the repeated, long-prolonged echoes came up, “The Union, it must be preserved!" From every valley in our land, from every cabin on the pleasant mountain-sides, from the ships at our wharves, from the tents of the hunter in our westernmost prairies, from the living minds of the living mil

lions of American freemen, from the thickly-coming glories of futurity, the shout went up like the sound of many waters, "The Union, it must be preserved!"

Behold the warrior and statesman, his work well done, retired to the Hermitage, to hold converse with his forests, to cultivate his farm, to gather around him hospitably his friends! Who was like HIM? He was still the loadstar of the American people. His fervid thoughts, frankly uttered, still spread the flame of patriotism through the American breast; his counsels were still listened to with reverence; and, almost alone among statesmen, he in his retirement was in harmony with every onward movement of his time. His prevailing influence assisted to sway a neighboring nation to desire to share our institutions; his ear heard the footsteps of the coming millions that are to gladden our western shores, and his eye discerned in the dim distance the whitening sails that are to enliven the waters of the Pacific with the social sounds of our successful commerce.

Age had whitened his locks, and dimmed his eye, and spread around him the infirmities and venerable emblems of many years of toilsome service; but his heart beat as warmly as in his youth, and his courage was as firm as it had ever been in the day of battle. But, while his affections were still for his friends and his country, his thoughts were already in a better world. That exalted mind, which in active life had always had unity of perception and will, which in action had never faltered from doubt, and which in counsel had always reverted to first principles and general laws, now gave itself up to communing with the Infinite. He was a believer, from feeling, from experience, from conviction. shadow of scepticism ever dimmed the lustre of his mind. philosopher, will you smile to know that Andrew Jackson perused reverently his Psalter and Prayer-Book and Bible? Know that Andrew Jackson had faith in the eternity of truth, in the imperishable power of popular freedom, in the destinies of humanity, in the virtues and capacity of the people, in his country's institutions, in the being and over-ruling providence of a merciful and everliving God.

Not a

Proud

The last moment of his life on earth is at hand. It is the Sabbath of the Lord; the brightness and beauty of the summer clothe the fields around him; nature is in her glory; - but the sublimest spectacle on that day, on earth, was the victory of his unblenching spirit over death itself! In life, his career had been like the blaze of the sun in the fierceness of its noonday glory; his death was lovely as the mildest sunset of a summer's evening, when the sun goes down in tranquil beauty without a cloud!

SUFFERINGS AND DESTINY OF THE PILGRIMS. E. Everett.

METHINKS I see it now, that one solitary, adventurous vessel, the Mayflower of a forlorn hope, freighted with the prospects of a future state, and bound across the unknown sea. I behold it pursuing, with a thousand misgivings, the uncertain, the tedious voyage. Suns rise and set, and weeks and months pass, and winter surprises them on the deep, but brings them not the sight of the wished-for shore. I see them now, scantily supplied with provisions, crowded almost to suffocation in their ill-stored prison, delayed by calms, pursuing a circuitous route; and now driven in fury before the raging tempest, on the high and giddy wave. The awful voice of the storm howls through the rigging; the laboring masts seem straining from their base; the dismal sound of the pumps is heard; the ship leaps, as it were, madly from billow to billow; the ocean breaks, and settles with ingulfing floods over the floating deck, and beats, with deadening, shivering weight, against the staggered vessel. I see them, escaped from these perils, pursuing their all but desperate undertaking, and landed, at last, after a few months' passage, on the ice-clad rocks of Plymouth, weak and weary from the voyage, poorly armed, scantily provisioned, without shelter, without means, 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 adventurers? Tell me, man of military science, in how many months were they all swept off by the thirty savage tribes enumer