How did she come out of the chaos of the dark ages, after a thousand years of internecine war? Did she come out with two or three confederacies? Gentlemen, she counted more than three hundred independent principalities, as they called themselves, but all lying at the mercy of the nearest despot and the strongest army.

I presume not to look into that dark abyss. I turn from it with the same horror, a thousand-fold increased, that I felt when in my youth I was surprised on the black and calcined edge of the crater of Vesuvius, when the sides of the mountain were already quivering with the convulsive throes of an approaching eruption. To attempt to give form and outline, to measure the force, to calculate the direction of the molten elements, boiling and bellowing in the fiery gulf below, and just ready to be let loose by the hand of God on this pathway of destruction, would be as unavailing and presumptuous in the political as it is in the natural world. One thing, however, I think, is certain. We talk of the separation of these states, assuming that they would still remain the states which they now are, but I think it is certain as demonstration, that their ancient sacred boundaries, founded, in many cases, not at all on features of physical geography, running, as they do, in open defiance of the mountains and rivers, drawn without the slightest regard to military defence, as if it were the design of Providence that we should be bound together, not by material barriers, but by the cords of love, — boundaries resting on charters, on prescription and agreement, and rendered at last sacred by the constitution and union of the United States, —I think it is certain that some of those boundaries would fall the first sacrifice to a separation of the Union. Do you suppose, sir, that thirty-one states, when the constitutional ties which now bind them are broken, and when this new scramble for separate power shall begin, are going to pay strict regard to those unseen and mystical intrenchments within which stout little Rhode Island which, in comparison with some other states, is rather a cornfield or a flower-garden than a state-lies as safely fortified as your own imperial New York, which holds the Hudson in the hollow of her hand, and extends her colossal limbs from the lakes to the ocean? When the Union is dissolved, do you think that

holy constitutional spell will remain unbroken which prevents your powerful neighbor, Pennsylvania, enthroned upon the Alleghanies, with the broad Susquehanna for her sparkling cincture, and the twin tributaries of the Ohio for the silver fillets of her temples, from raising so much as a finger against gallant little Delaware, which nestles securely within the fringes of the gorgeous robe of her queenly sister?

THE JUDICIARY.-W. E. Channing.

THERE is one branch of government which we hold in high veneration, which we account an unspeakable blessing. We refer to the judiciary. From this tribunal, as from a sacred oracle, go forth the responses of justice.

To us there is nothing in the whole fabric of civil institutions so interesting and imposing as this impartial and authoritative exposition of the principles of moral legislation. The administration of justice in this country, where the judge, without a guard, without a soldier, without pomp, decides upon the dearest interests of the citizen, trusting chiefly to the moral sentiment of the community for the execution of his decrees, is the most beautiful and encouraging aspect under which our government can be viewed. We repeat it, there is nothing in public affairs so venerable as the voice of justice speaking through her delegated ministers, reaching and subduing the high as well as the low, setting a defence around the splendid mansion of wealth and the lowly hut of poverty, repressing wrong, vindicating innocence, humbling the oppressor, and publishing the rights of human nature to every human being.

We confess that we often turn with pain and humiliation from the hall of Congress, where we see the legislator forgetting the majesty of his function, forgetting his relation to a vast and growing community, and sacrificing to his party or to himself the public weal; and it comforts us to turn to the court of justice, where the dispenser of the laws, shutting his ear against all solicitations of friendship or interest, dissolving, for a time, every private tie, forgetting public opinion, and withstanding public feeling, asks only

what is RIGHT. To our courts, the resorts and refuge of weakness and innocence, we look with hope and joy. We boast, with a virtuous pride, that no breath of corruption has as yet tainted their pure air. To this department we cannot ascribe too much importance. Over this we cannot watch too jealously. Every encroachment on its independence we should resent and repel, as the chief wrong our country can sustain. Woe, woe to the impious hand which would shake this most sacred and precious column of the social edifice!

AN APPEAL FOR UNION.-J. McDowell.

GIVE us but a part of that devotion which glowed in the heart of the younger Pitt, and of our own elder Adams, who, in the midst of their agonies, forgot not the countries they had lived for, but mingled with the spasms of their dying hour a last and imploring appeal to the Parent of all mercies, that he would remember, in eternal blessings, the land of their birth, give us their devotion,

give us that of the young enthusiast of Paris, who, listening to Mirabeau in one of his surpassing vindications of human rights, and seeing him fall from his stand, dying, as a physician proclaimed, for the want of blood, rushed to the spot, and, as he bent over the expiring man, bared his arm for the lancet, and cried again and again, with impassioned voice, "Here, take it, — O, take it from me! let me die, so that Mirabeau and the liberties of my country may not perish!" Give us something only of such a love of country, and we are safe, forever safe; the troubles which shadow over and oppress us now will pass away like a summer cloud; the fatal element of all our discord will be removed from among us.

It is said, sir, that at some dark hour of our Revolutionary contest, when army after army had been lost, when, dispirited, beaten, wretched, the heart of the boldest and faithfullest died within them, and all, for an instant, seemed conquered, except the unconquerable soul of our father-chief, —it is said that at that moment, rising above all the auguries around him, and buoyed up by

the inspiration of his immortal work for all the trials it could bring, he aroused anew the sunken spirit of his associates by this confident and daring declaration: "Strip me (said he) of the dejected and suffering remnant of my army, take from me all that I have left, leave me but a banner, give me but the means to plant it upon the mountains of West Augusta, and I will yet draw around me the men who shall lift up their bleeding country from the dust, and set her free! Give to me, who am a son and representative of the same West Augusta, — give to me as a banner the propitious measure I have endeavored to support, help me to plant it upon this mountain-top of our national power, and the land of Washington, undivided and unbroken, will be our land, and the land of our children's children forever! So help me to do this at this hour, and, generations hence, some future son of the South, standing where I stand, in the midst of our legitimate successors, will bless, and praise, and thank God that he, too, can say of them, as I of you, and of all around me, These, these are my brethren, and, O, THIS, THIS TOO, IS MY COUNTRY !

ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF LEXINGTON.-E. H. Kellogg.

BORNE away by emotions not to be repressed, we can scarcely do more than felicitate you on your good fortune. Happy men! you have in your veins the blood, and in your keeping the graves, of the first martyrs to the great cause. Their glorious slumbers bless this quiet vale. But that cause poured its tide of blessings. over a wider field than Concord,-- on other heads than those of their children. In the full and abounding fruition of those blessings, we appear here, to-day, to join you in paying homage to the spot and the memory of those whose deaths hallow it. The same filial piety that leads you to observe the day brings us here to join you. Indeed, sir, you can hardly appropriate the glorious lineage exclusively to yourselves. Opportunity did not serve our ancestors all alike. But your fathers did not raise the battle-shout on that morning in firmer or fiercer tones than it was echoed back from

the hearts of our fathers, resident in other and more distant parts of the state. All hearts leaped alike to the field, though all hands did not close with the foe in the fight. Sir, these fields of Concord and Lexington expand, as I am contemplating them, to the full dimensions of Massachusetts. The hearts of all her sons, seventy-five years ago, beat responsive to those in Concord. And so, I must be allowed to believe, does the chord that you strike here to-day vibrate throughout the same wide limits. Whether we live on that cape that stretches her mighty arm so far into the sea, or within the charmed circle of Faneuil Hall's influence, or whether we live in the great central county, or in the velvet vale of the queen of New England waters, or breathe the air of my own dear mountain land, - however distant our abodes, we would this day bow with you around this early altar of our country's freedom, with equal gratitude to those who consecrated it, and to God who so abundantly blessed their cause.

The great volume of history does not present an instance of more noble services in behalf of other states than that of Massachusetts affords. The fight we celebrate was not begun for Concord, but the country. It was but a few short months after the event before the last foot of the invaders left our state forever, But did Massachusetts halt on her borders, when she found her own soil free? No! For seven long years, wherever the front of battle lowered darkest, there was she found in numbers and in spirit in the foremost ranks of the Revolutionary army. Around the Green Mountain lakes, on the banks of the Hudson, the Delaware or the Susquehanna, on the plains of Virginia or the savannas of the South, on whatever part of our country the power of England descended, there she bared her breast to the shock. When the country found itself incapable of exertion, almost incapable of defence, under the old confederation of independent states, she waived her state pride, and contributed the wisdom of her Kings, her Gerrys, her Gorhams, and Strongs, to the establishment of the present political fabric the wonder of the world. Under that Union she has exhibited the same patriotism with which she led the states through the weary way of the Revolution.