It is not the North, with her thousand villages, and her harvest-home, with her frontiers of the lake and the ocean.

2. It is not the West, with her forest-sea and her inlandisles, with her luxuriant expanses, clothed in the verdant corn, with her beautiful Ohio, and her majestic Missouri. Nor is it yet the South, opulent in the mimic snow of the cotton, in the rich plantations of the rustling cane, and in the golden robes of the rice-field. What are these but the sister families of one greater, better, holier family, our country? I come not here to speak the dialect, or to give the counsels of the patriot

statesman.

3. I come, a patriot-scholar, to vindicate the rights, and to plead for the interests of American literature. And be assured, that we cannot, as patriot-scholars, think too highly of that country, or sacrifice too much for her. And let us never forget, let us rather remember with a religious awe, that the union of these States is as indispensable to our literature, as it is to our national independence and civil liberties, to our prosperity, happiness, and improvement.

4. If, indeed, we desire to behold a literature like that, which has sculptured, with such energy of expression, which has painted so faithfully and vividly, the crimes, the vices, the follies of ancient and modern Europe; if we desire that our land should furnish for the orator and the novelist, for the painter and the poet, age after age, the wild and romantic scenery of war; the glittering march of armies, and the revelry of the camp; the shrieks and blasphemies, and all the horrors of the battle field; the desolation of the harvest, and the burning cottage; the storm, the sack, and the ruin of cities; if we desire to unchain the furious passions of jealousy and selfishness, of hatred, revenge and amb tion, those ions, that now sleep harmless in their den; if we desire that the lake, the river, the ocean, should blush with the blood of brothers; that the winds should waft from the land to the sea, from the sea to the land, the roar and the smoke of battle; that the very mountain tops should become altars for the sac rifice of brothers; if we desire that these, and such as these,

the elements, to an incredible extent, of the literature of the old world, should be the elements of our literature; then, but then only, let us hurl from its pedestal the majestic statue of our union, and scatter its fragments over all our land,

5. But, if we covet for our country the noblest, purest, Loveliest literature the world has ever seen, such a literature as shall honor God, and bless mankind; a literature, whose smiles might play upon an angel's face, whose tears "would not stain an angel's cheek;" then let us cling to the union of these States, with a patriot's love, with a scholar's enthusiasm, with a Christian's hope. In her heavenly character, as a holocaust self-sacrificed to God; at the height of her glory, as the ornament of a free, educated, peaceful, Christian people, American literature will find that the intellectual spirit is her very tree of life, and that union is her garden of paradise.

LESSON CI.

THE OBJECT OF ASTRONOMY.

1. THE study of astronomy must have been coeval with the existence of man; for there is no rational being, who has for the first time lifted his eyes to the nocturnal sky, and beheld the moon walking in brightness amid the planetary orbs and the hosts of stars, but must have been struck with admiration and wonder at the splendid scene, and excited to inquiries into the nature and destination of those far distant orbs. Compared with the splendor, the amplitude, the august motions, and the ideas of infinity which the celestial vault presents, the most resplendent terrestrial scenes sink into inanity, and appear unworthy of being set in competition. with the glories of the sky.

2. When on a clear autumnal evening, after sunset, we take a serious and attentive view of the celestial canopy; when we behold the moon displaying her brilliant crescent in the west

a Holocaust; a whole burnt offering.

ern sky; the evening star gilding the shades of night; the planets moving in their several orbs; the stars, one after another, emerging from the blue ethereal, and gradually lighting up the firmament, till it appears all over spangled with a brilliant assemblage of shining orbs; and, particularly, when we behold one cluster of stars gradually descending below the western horizon, and other clusters emerging from the east, and ascending, in unison, the canopy of heaven: when we contemplate the whole celestial vault, with all the shining orbs it contains, moving in silent grandeur, like one vast concave sphere, around this lower world, and the place on which we stand; such a scene naturally leads a reflecting mind to such inquiries as these: Whence come those stars which are ascending from the east? Whither have those gone which have disappeared in the west?

3. What becomes of the stars during the day, which are seen in the night? Is the motion which appears in the celestial vault real, or does a motion in the earth itself cause this appearance? What are those immense numbers of shining orbs which appear in every part of the sky? Are they mere studs or tapers fixed in the arch of heaven, or are they bodies of an immense size and splendor? Do they shine with borrowed light, or with their own native luster? Are they placed only a few miles above the region of the clouds, or at immense distances, beyond the range of human comprehension? Can their distance be ascertained? Can their bulk be computed? By what laws are their motions regulated? and what purposes are they destined to subserve in the great plan of the universe? These, and similar questions, it is the great object of astronomy to resolve, so far as the human mind has been enabled to prosecute the path of discovery.

27

LESSON CII.

NUMBER AND MAGNITUDE OF THE STARS.

DICK.

1. If we extend our views from the solar system to the starry heavens, we have to penetrate, in our imagination, a space which the swiftest ball that was ever projected, though in perpetual motion, would not traverse in ten hundred thou sand years. In those trackless regions of immensity, we behold an assemblage of resplendent globes, similar to the sun in size and in glory, and, doubtless, accompanied with a retinue of worlds, revolving, like our own, around their attractive influence. The immense distance at which the nearest stars are known to be placed, proves that they are bodies of a prodigious size, not inferior to our own sun, and that they shine, not by reflected rays, but by their own native light.

2. But bodies encircled with such refulgent splendor would be of little use in the economy of Jehovah's empire, unless surrounding worlds were cheered by their benign influence, and enlightened by their beams. Every star is, therefore, with good reason, concluded to be a sun, no less spacious than ours, surrounded by a host of planetary globes which revolve around it as a center, and derive from it light, and heat, and comfort.

3. Nearly a thousand of these luminaries may be seen in a clear winter night, by the naked eye; so that a mass of matter equal to a thousand solar systems, or to thirteen hundred and twenty millions of globes of the size of the earth, may be perceived by every common observer, in the canopy of heavBut all the celestial orbs which are perceived by the unassisted sight, do not form the eighty thousandth part of those which may be descried by the help of optical instru

en.

ments.

4. The telescope has enabled us to descry, in certain spaces of the heavens, thousands of stars, where the naked eye could scarcely discern twenty. The late celebrated astronomer, Dr. Herschel, has informed us, that, in the most crowded parts of

the Milky-way, when exploring that region with his best glasses, he has had fields of view which contained no less than 588 stars, and these were continued for many minutes; so that "in one quarter of an hour's time there passed nc less than one hundred and sixteen thousand stars through the field of view of his telescope."

5. It has been computed that nearly one hundred millions of stars might be perceived by the most perfect instruments, were all the regions of the sky thoroughly explored. And yet all this vast assemblage of suns and worlds, when compared with what lies beyond the utmost boundaries of human vision, in the immeasurable spaces of creation, may be no more than the smallest particle of vapor to the immense ocean. Immeasurable regions of space lie beyond the utmost limits of mortal view, into which even imagination itself can scarcely penetrate, and which are, doubtless, replenished with the operations of Divine wisdom and omnipotence.

6. For it cannot be supposed that a being so diminutive as man, whose stature scarcely exceeds six feet; who vanishes from the sight at the distance of a league; whose whole habitation is invisible from the nearest star; whose powers of vision are so imperfect, and whose mental faculties are so limited; it cannot be supposed that man, who "dwells in tabernacles of clay, who is crushed before the moth," and chained down, by the force of gravitation, to the surface of a small planet, should be able to descry the utmost boundaries of the empire of Him who fills immensity, and dwells in "light unapproachable."

7. That portion of his dominions, however, which lies within the range of our view, presents such a scene of magnificence and grandeur, as must fill the mind of every reflecting person with astonishment and reverence, and constrain him to exclaim, "Great is our Lord, and of great power; his understanding is infinite." "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him!"