THE BROWNS.

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least, have rolled away since the foundation stone of that wall was laid which was destined to encircle the future mistress of the world. And can we venture to travel backwards through the long vista of years, and absolutely fix the precise day on which this antique era began?

Let chronologists, having in vain exhausted the records of history, the sculptured monuments of antiquity, the inscriptions of triumphal arches, and disinterred coin, come to the pale student of the stars, lay before him the records of the Roman historian, and from these data this seemingly useless devotee to science will follow the earth in all her revolutions round the sun; will pursue the moon in all her multitudinous wanderings, back from century to century, and will finally pronounce that the eclipse of the moon, which quelled the mutiny of the legions under Blæsus in Pannonia, occurred on the 22d day of September, in the year 14 of the Christian era.

THE

70. THE BROWNS.

HE Browns have, within a generation, become illustrious by the pen of Thackeray and the pencil of Doyle; yet notwithstanding the well-merited but late fame which has now fallen upon them, any one at all acquainted with the family must feel that much has to be written and said before the British nation will be properly sensible how much of its greatness it owes to the Browns.

For centuries, in their quiet, dogged, homespun way, they have been subduing the earth in most Eng

lish counties, and leaving their mark in American forests and Australian uplands.

Wherever the fleets and armies of England have won renown, there stalwart sons of the Browns have done yeomen's work. With the yew bow and clothyard shaft at Cressy and Agincourt, with brown bill and pike, under the brave Lord Willoughby; with culverin and demi-culverin, against Spaniards and Dutchmen; with hand grenade and sabre, and musket and bayonet, under Rodney and St. Vincent, Wolfe and Moore, Nelson and Wellington, they have carried their lives in their hands, getting hard knocks and hard work in plenty, which was, on the whole, what they looked for, and the best thing for them, and receiving little praise or pudding, which, indeed, they and most of us are better without.

Talbots and Stanleys, St. Maurs, and such like folk, have led armies and made laws time out of mind; but those noble families would be somewhat astounded, if the accounts ever came to be fairly taken, to find how small their work for England has been by the side of that of the Browns.

These latter, indeed, until the present generation, have rarely been sung by poet, or chronicled by sage; but the world goes bravely on, and the wheel turns, and the wrongs of the Browns, like other wrongs, seem in a fair way to get righted.

The Browns are a fighting family. One may question their wisdom, or wit, or beauty, but about their fight there can be no question. Wherever hard knocks of any kind, visible or invisible, are given, there the Brown who is nearest must shove in his carcass. These carcasses, for the most part, answer

very well to the characteristic propensity; they are a square-headed and snake-necked generation, broad in the shoulder, deep in the chest, and thin in the flank, carrying no lumber. Then for clanship, they are as bad as the Highlanders; it is amazing the belief they have in one another. With them there is nothing like the Browns to the third and fourth generation.

Their family training, too, combined with their turn. for combativeness, makes them eminently quixotic. They can't let anything alone which they think going wrong. They must speak their mind about it, annoying all easy-going folk, and spend their time and money in having a tinker at it, however hopeless the job. It is an impossibility to a Brown to leave the most disreputable lame dog on the other side of a stile.

Most other folk get tired of such work. The old Browns, with red faces, white whiskers, and bald heads, go on believing and fighting to a green old age. They have always a crotchet going, till the old man with the scythe reaps and garners them away troublesome "old boys" as they are.

for

71. NATIONAL GLORY GAINED BY THE WAR OF 1812.

E are asked, What have we gained by the war? We have certainly lost nothing in rights, territory, or honor; nothing for which we ought to have contended. Have we gained nothing by the war? Let any man look at the degraded condition of this country before the war, the scorn of the universe, the contempt of ourselves, and tell me if we have gained.

nothing by the war. What is our present situation? Respectability and character abroad, security and confidence at home. If we have not obtained, in the opinion of some, the full measure of retribution, our character and constitution are placed on a solid basis never to be shaken.

The glory acquired by our gallant tars, by our Jacksons and our Browns on the land- - is that nothing? True, we had our vicissitudes; there were humiliating events which the patriot cannot review without deep regret; but the great account, when it comes to be balanced, will be found vastly in our favor. Is there a man who would obliterate from the pages of our history the brilliant achievements of Jackson, Brown, and Scott, and the host of heroes on land and sea, whom I cannot enumerate? Is there a man who could not desire a participation in the national glory acquired by the war? Yes, national glory, which, however the expression may be condemned by some, must be cherished by every genuine patriot.

Glory such

What do I mean by national glory? as Hull, Jackson, and Perry have acquired. And are gentlemen insensible to their deeds · - to the value of them in animating the country in the hour of peril hereafter? Did the battle of Thermopyla preserve Greece but once? While the Mississippi continues to bear the tributes of the iron mountains and the Alleghanies to her Delta and to the Gulf of Mexico, the eighth of January shall be remembered, and the glory of that day shall stimulate future patriots, and nerve the arms of unborn freemen in driving the presumptuous invader from our country's soil.

Gentlemen may boast of their insensibility to feelings inspired by the contemplation of such events. But I would ask, Does the recollection of Bunker Hill, Saratoga, and Yorktown afford them no pleasure? Every act of noble sacrifice to the country, every instance of patriotic devotion to her cause, has its beneficial influence. A nation's character is the sum of its splendid deeds; they constitute one common patrimony, the nation's inheritance. They awe foreign powers; they arouse and animate our own people.

I love true glory. It is this sentiment which ought to be cherished; and in spite of cavils and sneers, and attempts to put it down, it will finally conduct. this nation to that height to which God and nature have destined it.

72. ENTHUSIASM.

F there be one want of the time imperious beyond another, it is that of earnest men. Literature has had full enough panderers, parasites, and charlatans. The church wants men men as ardent for duty as Alexander for glory in whose sight the games and gauds of the earth vanish before the cause of truth like vapors before the rising sun.

The state, too, can ill afford to substitute officials, partisans, and demagogues for patriots; it wants men with the ability to see and the enthusiasm to feel that policy is duty; who, sinking all selfish and sectional considerations in an all-absorbing love of country, and following in the radiant footprints of our forefathers, boldly venture position, fortune, life, if need be, to