THE AMERICAN FLAG.

79

While many a foreign accent, which our God can

understand,

Is blessing Him for home and bread in this free, fertile

land.

Yes, when upon the eastern coast we sink to happy

rest,

The Day of Independence rolls still onward to the

west,

Till dies on the Pacific shore the shout of jubilee, That woke the morning with its voice along the Atlantic Sea.

O God, look down upon the land which thou hast loved so well,

And grant that in unbroken truth her children still may dwell;

Nor, while the grass grows on the hill and streams flow through the vale,

May they forget their fathers' faith, or in their covenant fail:

Keep, God, the fairest, noblest land that lies beneath

"Our country, our whole country, and our country ever one."

A

37. THE AMERICAN FLAG.

THOUGHTFUL mind, when it sees a nation's flag, sees, not the flag only, but the nation itself; and whatever may be its symbols, its insignia, he reads chiefly in the flag the government, the principles, the truths, the history, which belong to the nation that sets it forth.

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THE AMERICAN FLAG.

When the French tricolor rolls out to the wind, we see France. When the new-found Italian flag is unfurled, we see resurrected Italy. When the other three-cornered Hungarian flag shall be lifted to the wind, we shall see in it the long-buried but never dead principles of Hungarian liberty. When the united. crosses of St. Andrew and St. George on a fiery ground set forth the banner of old England, we see, not the cloth merely; there rises up before the mind the noble aspect of that monarchy, which, more than any other on the globe, has advanced its banner for liberty, law, and national prosperity.

This nation has a banner too; and wherever it streamed abroad, men saw daybreak bursting on their eyes, for the American flag has been the symbol of liberty, and men rejoiced in it. Not another flag on the globe had such an errand, or went forth upon the sea, carrying everywhere, the world around, such hope for the captive and such glorious tidings.

The stars upon it were to the pining nations like the morning stars of God, and the stripes upon it were beams of morning light.

As, at early dawn, the stars stand first, and then it grows light, and then, as the sun advances, that light breaks into banks and streaming lines of color, the glowing red and intense white striving together and ribbing the horizon with bars effulgent, so, on the American flag, stars and beams of many colored light shine out together. And wherever the flag comes, and men behold it, they see in its sacred emblazonry, no rampant lion and fierce eagle, but only LIGHT, and every fold significant of liberty.

The history of this banner is all on one side.

THE AMERICAN FLAG.

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Under it rode Washington and his armies; before it Burgoyne laid down his arms. It waved on the highlands at West Point; it floated over old Fort Montgomery. When Arnold would have surrendered these valuable fortresses and precious legacies, his night was turned into day, and his treachery was driven away, by the beams of light from this starry banner.

It cheered our army, driven from New York, in their solitary pilgrimage through New Jersey. It streamed in light over Valley Forge and Morristown. It crossed the waters rolling with ice at Trenton; and when its stars gleamed in the cold morning with victory, a new day of hope dawned on the despondency of the nation. And when, at length, the long years of war were drawing to a close, underneath the folds of this immortal banner sat Washington while Yorktown surrendered its hosts, and our Revolutionary struggles ended with victory.

Let us then twine each thread of the glorious tissue of our country's flag about our heartstrings; and looking upon our homes and catching the spirit that breathes upon us from the battle-fields of our fathers, let us resolve, come weal or woe, we will, in life and in death, now and forever, stand by the stars and stripes. They have been unfurled from the snows of Canada to the plains of New Orleans, in the halls of the Montezumas and amid the solitude of every sea; and everywhere, as the luminous symbol of resistless and beneficent power, they have led the brave to victory and to glory. They have floated over our cradles; let it be our prayer and our struggle that they shall float over our graves.

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CONSERVATISM IN England.

38.

Two

CONSERVATISM IN ENGLAND.

WO centuries ago, English conservatism, refusing to take the risk of reform, took the more fearful risk of civil war; and then yielding, appalled, as afterwards in the Corn-Law debate, blandly claimed the credit of the result. Like the English Rector who found William Howitt, when a boy, picking gooseberries one Sunday morning "What! what! William, you naughty boy! picking gooseberries on the holy Sabbath!" Then finding the young Quaker went on undismayed, the Rector added, putting his hand into the basket, "Here, my son, here! let me see how they taste."

After thirty-four years, England again asks for an enlargement of the suffrage; but conservatism is the eternal Bourbon, and makes its old stand. "No! no!" says Mr. Robert Lowe, smiling and sneering in Parliament, "England wants no such thing. Most of the people are brutal and ignorant; better disfranchise them altogether. Let well enough alone. Nobody wants the reform."

no

Five months afterwards, in that country where body wants the reform," at the head of a hundred thousand more men than ever met together before in England, while the whole kingdom around him is mustering its vast forces of peaceful protest, stands a leader, well called the future government of England. Raising his voice, in words that inspire the hearts before him, he impeaches conservatism in the name of the non-voting people, as Edmund Burke impeached Warren Hastings in the name of the

CONSERVATISM IN ENGLAND.

833

Commons. He declares the speech of Mr. Lowe utterly revolutionary, and solemnly exclaims, "Workingmen in this hall! I say to you, to all the workingmen of this kingdom, that the accession of Lord Derby to power is a declaration of war against the working-classes."

"We accept it," is the mighty response; and the words, like a bugle-cry, ring out into the night. By sunrise they are pealing and echoing all over England; and the island in which "nobody wants the reform will rock and rock with agitation until the reform is accomplished.

Such is conservatism in England. There is no outrage, no corruption, no injustice, which it did not defend as constitutional and traditional. It continually charged radicalism with desiring ends which its. own obstinacy was producing.

Like Mr. Jones who was introduced into the chamber of Mr. Smith at the crowded country inn - Mr. Smith requested that since there were two to occupy the room, a window should be raised; but Mr. Jones stoutly resisted. He was sure to catch his death, to take an ague, or the toothache, or the lumbago, and the window remained closed. But in the morning, when they awoke, Mr. Jones, half suffocated, exclaimed gaspingly, "There's a great deal of fixed air in this room." "Yes," said Mr. Smith, -"confound you, and you fixed it."

When Sir Samuel Romilly and his friends demanded the repeal of the murderous penal laws, "My Lords," said Lord Ellenborough, "if we suffer this bill to pass, we shall not know whether we are upon our heads or our feet." The truth is, conservatism never