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brought nearer together; commerce is quickened; markets are opened; property, wherever touched by these lines, is changed, as by a magic rod, into new values; and the great current of travel, like that stream of classic fable, or one of the rivers of our own California, hurries in a channel of golden sand.

The roads, together with the laws of ancient Rome, are now better remembered than her victories. The Flaminian and Appian ways, once trod by returning proconsuls and tributary kings, still remain as beneficent representatives of her departed grandeur. Under God, the road and the schoolmaster are the two chief agents of human improvement. The education begun by the schoolmaster is expanded, liberalized, and completed, by intercourse with the world; and this intercourse finds new opportu nities and inducements in every road that is built.

Our country has already done much in this regard. Through a remarkable line of steam communications, chiefly by railroad, its whole population is now, or will be soon, brought close to the borders of Iowa. The cities of the southern seaboard-Charleston, Savannah, and Mobile-are already stretching their lines in this direction; while the traveler from all the principal points of the northern seaboard - from Portland, Boston, Providence, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington— now passes without impediment to this remote region, traversing a territory of unexampled resources, at once a magazine and a granary, the largest coal-field, and at the same time the largest corn-field of the known globe,-winding his way among churches and school-houses, among forests and gardens, by villages, towns, and cities, along the sea, along rivers and lakes, with a speed which may recall the gallop of the ghostly horseman in the ballad:

"Fled past on right and left how fast

Each forest, grove, and bower!
On right and left fled past how fast
Each city, town, and tower!

Tramp! tramp! along the land they speed,
Splash! splash! along the sea!"

On the banks of the Mississippi he is now arrested. The proposed road in Iowa will bear the adventurer yet further, to the banks of the Missouri; and this distant giant stream, mightiest of the earth, leaping from its sources in the Rocky Mountains, will be clasped with the Atlantic in the same iron bracelet. In all this I see not only further opportunities for commerce, but a new extension to civilization, and increased strength to our national Union.

SUMNER.

THE OREGON SETTLEMENT.

XXVIII. — THE OREGON SETTLEMENT.

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Ir would seem that the white race alone received the divine command to subdue and replenish the earth; for it is the only race that has obeyed it- the only one that hunts out new and distant lands, and even a new world, to subdue and replenish. Starting from western Asia, taking Europe for their field, and the sun for their guide, and leaving the Mongolians behind, they arrived, after many ages, on the shores of the Atlantic, which they lit up with the lights of science and religion, and adorned with the useful and the elegant arts. Three and a half centuries ago, this race, in obedience to the great command, arrived in the New World, and found new lands to subdue and replenish. Even four-score years ago the philosophic Burke was considered a rash man because he said the English colonists would top the Alleghanies, and descend into the valley of the Mississippi, and occupy without parchment, if the crown refused to make grants of land. What was considered a rash declaration eighty years ago, is old history in our young country at this day.

I cannot repine, sir, that this capitol has replaced the wigwam, this Christian people replaced the savages, white matrons the red squaws, and that such men as Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson, have taken the place of Powhatan, Opechonecanough, and other red men, however respectable they may have been as savages.

Sir, the apparition of the van of the Caucasian race, rising upon the Oriental nations in the east, after having left them on the west, and after having completed the circumnavigation of the globe, must wake up and animate the torpid body of old Asia. Our position and policy will commend us to their hospitable reception; political considerations will aid the action of social and commercial influences. Pressed upon by the great powers of Europe, the same that press upon us, they must in our approach see the advent of friends, not of foes; of benefactors, not of invaders.

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The moral and intellectual superiority of the white race will do the rest; and thus the youngest people and the newest land will become the reviver and the regenerator of the oldest. It is in this point of view, and as acting upon the social, political, and religious condition of Asia, and giving a new point of departure to her ancient civilization, that I look upon the settlement of the Columbia River by the van of the Caucasian race as the most momentous human event in the history of man since his dispersion over the face of the earth.

T. H. BENTON.

PART EIGHTH. THE STAGE.

I. THE CONSPIRATORS OF PALERMO.

MONTALBA, GUIDO, PROCIDA, RAIMOND.

Procida. Welcome, my brave associates! We can share The wolf's wild freedom here. The oppressor's haunt Is not 'midst rocks and caverns. - Art thou here, With thy deep wrongs and resolute despair, Childless Montalba?

Montalba (advancing). He is at thy side. Call on that desolate father, in the hour When his revenge is nigh.

Pro. Art thou, too, here,

Guido, the exile from thy mountain home?
Guido. Even so. I stood

Last night before my own ancestral towers,
An unknown outcast, while the tempest beat
On my bare head what recked it? There was joy
Within, and revelry. They little deemed

Who heard their melodies. But there are vows
Known to the mountain-echoes. Pro'cida!

Call on the outcast when revenge is nigh.

Pro. I knew a young Sicilian, one whose heart
Should be all fire. On that most guilty day,
When, with our martyred Con'radin, the flower
Of the land's knighthood perished, he of whom
I speak, a weeping boy,

Stood by the scaffold, with extended arms,
Calling upon his father, whose last look
Turned full on him its parting agony.
Doth he remember still that bitter hour?
Gui. He bears a sheathless sword!

Call on the orphan when revenge is nigh.

Pro. Our band shows gallantly-but there are men Who should be with us now, had they not dared

In some wild moment of festivity

To give their full hearts way, and breathe a wish

188

THE CONSPIRATORS OF PALERMO.

For freedom!-But have they not
Brothers or sons amongst us?

Gui. Look on me!

I have a brother, a young, high-souled boy,
His doom is sealed

With theirs of whom you spoke; and I have knelt-
Ay, scorn me not! 't was for his life- I knelt
E'en at the viceroy's feet, and he put on
That heartless laugh of cold malignity

We know so well, and spurned me. But the stain
Of shame like this takes blood to wash it off,
*And thus it shall be canceled! Call on me,
When the stern moment of revenge is nigh.
Pro. I call upon thee now!

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The majesty of yon pure Heaven, whose eye
Is on our hearts, whose righteous arm befriends
The arm that strikes for freedom; speak! decree
The fate of our oppressors.

Mont. Let them fall

When dreaming least of peril! Hide the sword
With a thick veil of myrtle, and in halls

Of banqueting, where the full wine-cup shines
Red in the festal torch-light; meet we there,
And bid them welcome to the feast of death.
Raimond. Must innocence and guilt

Perish alike?

Mont. Who talks of innocence ?

When hath their hand been stayed for innocence ?
Let them all perish!- Heaven will choose its own.
Let them all perish! And if one be found

Amid our band, to stay the avenging steel

For pity or remorse, or boyish love,

Then be his doom as theirs!- Why gaze ye thus?
Brethren, what means your silence?

Gui. Be it so !

If one amongst us stay the avenging steel
For love or pity, be his doom as theirs!
Pledge we our faith to this!

Rai. Our faith to this!

No! I but dreamed I heard it!

Can it be?

My countrymen, my father! Is it thus

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That freedom should be won?-Awake! Awake
To loftier thoughts!-Lift up, exultingly,

On the crowned heights, and to the sweeping winds,

189

Your glorious banner!

Let your trumpet's blast
Call aloud,

Make the tombs thrill with echoes!

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Proclaim from all your hills, the land shall bear
The stranger's yeke no longer! What is he
Who carries on his practiced lip a smile,
Beneath his vest a dagger, which but waits

Till the heart bounds with joy, to still its beatings?
That which our nature's instinct doth recoil from,
And our blood curdle at, -

--

ay, yours and mine, A murderer!-Heard ye?-Shall that name with ours Go down to after days?-, friends! a cause

Like that for which we rise hath made bright names
Of the elder time as rallying-words to men,
Sounds full of might and immortality!

And shall not ours be such?

Mont. Fond dreamer, peace!

Fame! What is fame? Will our unconscious dust
Start into thrilling rapture from the graye,

At the vain breath of praise?-I tell thee, youth,

Our souls are parched with agonizing thirst,

Which must be quenched, though death were in the draught: We must have vengeance, for our foes have left

No other joy unblighted.

Pre.

my son,

The time is past før such high dreams as thine.

Thou know'st not whom we deal with. Knightly faith,

And chivalrous* honor, are but things whereon

They cast disdainful pity. We must meet

Falsehood with wiles, and

Rai. Procida, know,

insult with revenge.

I shrink from crime alone. ●, if my voice
Might yet have power amongst you, I would say,
Associates, leaders, be avenged! but yet

As knights, as warriors!

Mont. "Peace! have we not borne

The indelible taint of con'tumely and chains?
We are not knights and warriors. Our bright crests
Have been defiled and trampled to the earth.
Boy! we are slaves-and our revenge shall be
Deep as a slave's disgrace.

Rai. Why, then, farewell;

I leave you to your counsels. He that still

The ch in chivalry, chivalrous, &c., has the sound of sh

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