I have faith, therefore, in the Future; and when, at the close of this half-century, which so comparatively few of us are to see, the account shall again be taken, and the question be asked, What has New York done since 1850? I have faith that the answer will be given in a city still advancing in population, wealth, morals, and knowledge,-in a city free, and deserving, by her virtues, her benevolent institutions, her schools, her courts, and her temples, to continue free, and still part and parcel of this great and glorious Union, which may God preserve till Time shall be no more!

CHARLES KING.

THE DESTINY OF OUR REPUBLIC.

LET no one accuse me of seeing wild visions and dreaming impossible dreams. I am only stating what may be done, and what will be done. We may most shamefully betray the trust reposed in us,-we may most miserably defeat the fond hopes entertained of us. We may become the scorn of tyrants and the jest of slaves. From our fate, oppression may assume a bolder front of insolence, and its victims sink into a darker despair.

In that event, how unspeakable will be our disgrace,—with what weight of mountains will the infamy lie upon our souls! The gulf of our ruin will be as deep, as the elevation we might have attained is high. How wilt thou fall from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! Our beloved country with ashes for beauty, the golden cord of our union broken, its scattered fragments presenting every form of misrule, from the wildest anarchy to the most ruthless despotism, our "soil drenched with fraternal blood," the life of man stripped of its grace and dignity, the prizes of honor gone, and virtue divorced from half its encouragements and supports,—these are gloomy pictures, which I would not invite your imaginations to dwell upon, but only to glance at, for the sake of the warning lessons we may draw from them.

Remember that we can have none of those consolations which sustain the patriot who mourns over the undeserved misfortunes of his country. Our Rome cannot fall, and we be innocent.

No conqueror will chain us to the car of his triumph; no countless swarm of Huns and Goths will bury the memorials and trophies of civilized life beneath a living tide of barbarism. Our own selfishness, our own neglect, our own passions, and our own vices will furnish the elements of our destruction. With our own hands we shall tear down the stately edifice of our glory. We shall die of self-inflicted wounds.

But we will not talk of themes like these. We will not think of failure, dishonor, and despair. We will elevate our minds to the contemplation of our high duties, and the great trust committed to us. We will resolve to lay the foundations of our prosperity on that rock of private virtue, which cannot be shaken until the laws of the moral world are reversed. From our own breasts shall flow the salient springs of national increase. Then our success, our happiness, our glory, will be as inevitable as the inferences of mathematics. We may calmly smile at all the croakings of all the ravens, whether of native or foreign breed.

The whole will not grow weak, by the increase of its parts. Our growth will be like that of the mountain-oak, which strikes its roots more deeply into the soil, and clings to it with a closer grasp, as its lofty head is exalted, and its broad arms stretched out. The loud burst of joy and gratitude, which on this, the anniversary of our Independence, is breaking from the full hearts of a mighty people, will never cease to be heard. No chasms of sullen silence will interrupt its course, no discordant notes of sectional madness mar the general harmony. Year after year will increase it, by tributes from unpeopled solitudes. The farthest West shall hear it, and rejoice; the Oregon shall swell it with the voice of its waters; the Rocky Mountains shall fling back the glad sound from their snowy crests.

GEORGE STILLMAN HILLARD.

A HAPPY COUNTRY.

(By permission, from the "North Carolina Speaker" of Alfred Williams & Co., Raleigh, North Carolina.)

IN the allotments of Providence we have been placed in a pleasant and beautiful country,-a country washed on either

hand by the waters of the circling seas, and teeming with all the elements of prosperity and power. This glorious country, this chosen seat of science and of art, this happy and peculiar residence of civil and religious liberty, has been won for us by the constancy and courage of our ancestors; it is the birthplace of blood and battle and prolonged disaster; and it is ours to defend, ours to enjoy, and ours to transmit in untarnished splendor to posterity.

We can only do this by looking back and drawing wisdom from that fountain of sacred and mighty memories which gushes from the rock upon which our government is based, and by looking forward and anticipating what our children and our children's children will expect at our hands when they shall have reached the shores of existence.

The republics that have gone before speak to us from amid the long dark sleep of ages, and warn us to shun those breakers of licentiousness, anarchy, and violence, over which they went down in the fathomless chambers of ruin and oblivion. If we will listen with reverence to the warnings which they utter; if we will profit by the teachings of our ancestors; if we will seek for the old paths, and, when we find them, walk in them; if we will put from us everything which tends to foster frivolity and pride; if, as a people, we will cherish and cultivate towards each other a spirit of kindness, forbearance, and generosity; if the States will be satisfied with those powers which belong to them, and if the General Government will perform the duties its framers intended it should perform; if we will labor to disseminate the blessings of education and the lights of religion and morality among all the people; above all, if every citizen in the Republic, from the President in his palace to the day-laborer in his cottage, will execute the laws where it is his duty to execute them, and submit to the laws where it is his duty to submit ; and if he will enshrine all the virtues in his heart, as he may do, and ought to do, and wear his titles as he now wears them, only on his brow, then may we proudly and confidently hope that the renown and the glory which burst in splendor from the darkness of the Revolution shall never die.

Then the nations, as they rise and fall, and all the generations yet to be, as they come up and sweep onward to the shores of

the untrodden world, may behold no land more free, more prosperous, or more glorious than this, our own beloved, independent Anierica.

WILLIAM WOODS HOLDEN.

OUR COUNTRY.-PRACTICAL HINTS FROM GENERAL SHERMAN'S SCRAP-BOOK.

(By permission, edited for the "Patriotic Reader.")

OUR LANGUAGE AND LAW TO BE SUPREME.

(Two extracts from Speech at Banquet of Knights of St. Patrick, St. Louis, Missouri, March 17, 1884.)

WE have had our War of Independence, we have had wars of conquest with Mexico and the Indians, and, the hardest of all, we have had a war with ourselves, to maintain our glorious Union of States, the Palladium of Liberty for the whole world. As one of the means to guard this Union, we must preserve the Anglo-Saxon language, the best medium of expression yet invented by man. It is the language of Shakespeare, Milton, and Burns; it is the language in which Burke, Sheridan, Grattan, Curran, and O'Connell pleaded for the common rights of Irishmen; the same in which our Irving, Webster, Clay, and Lincoln made their impress on the minds and hearts of the whole human race. This is the work of peace; but "peace hath her victories, no less renowned than war."

The amount of labor done in "Our Country" in the last century is simply herculean. But increase of population, wealth, and physical resources does not necessarily imply strength and progress, unless attended by a corresponding advance in intellectual and moral qualities. There is no doubt of the existence of too much crime, which should command universal attention, if we intend to make our country what it should be, not only free, but safe to life and property. I am convinced that our people are quite as good as their fathers; but the telegraph collects from the four quarters of the globe everything that is exciting, every morning; whereas our fathers only heard of the murders and robberies in their immediate neighborhood. I do

hope and pray that our judges and lawyers, without endangering the innocent, will make punishment follow crime so sharp as to rob mobs and vigilance committees of their pretence to interfere, thereby bringing disgrace on our country, if not on civilization itself.

NO MORE WEST TO HUNT FOR OR TO HUNT IN.

In my day, and within my memory, more than one hundred thousand miles of railroad have been built, over which steamcars travel in a single day more than a horse-wagon used to do in a month. The country is literally gridironed with railroads, so that every valley and gulch is accessible to the emigrant, without the tedious delay of even ten years ago. The old trappers and hunters that used to rendezvous at St. Louis find their occupations gone, and most of them have departed for the happy hunting-ground of the Indians; and the Indian finds himself corralled, transformed into a good Christian, or, if he still yearns to satisfy his native instincts, he must join some perambulating circus.

It is reported of Mr. Horace Greeley that to an applicant for place he said, "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country." At the beginning of this century, Ohio and Kentucky were the "Far West." As late as 1836, General Jackson, one of the most keen, shrewd, and penetrating observers, advised his old Indian enemies, for whom he had a friendship, to emigrate to their present territory west of Arkansas, where they "would never be disturbed by white settlers." But now the West is obliterated, and our country is divided, like a great army, into a right, centre, and left,—the Atlantic, Mississippi, and the Pacific States. Thus organized, we are admirably prepared for the battle of life, which is defined, by highest authority, "to go forth, increase, multiply, and replenish the earth,”—not to kill and lay waste, but to bring out of the mountains their hidden treasures, to shape them to the use of man, to build up bright and cheerful homes for the families yet to come. There has been a tendency, of late years, for our people to gather into cities and towns, so that lands are cheaper in Maryland, Virginia, and in St. Louis County, Missouri, than thirty years ago, and the average wages of a clerk or shopkeeper