Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

THE NEW OLYMPIAD.

MORTON MCMICHAEL.

BUT, Mr. President, on a new continent, under a new dispensation, and a new polity-professors of a purer creed, possessors of a surer heritage-we have to-day commemorated a new Olympiad. From all parts of a republic, mightier in its infancy than Athens in its prime, there have crowded earnest candidates for the honors, valiant strugglers for the prizes you have had to bestow. Nor have the statue and temple been wanting. Beneath the dome of your capitol we have marked the placid dignity of our Pater Patriæ, whose deeds and whose virtues shall survive in the affections of distant generations, when the old mythology, father-god and all, with all its vanities and vices, has sunk into utter oblivion. From the foot of a neighboring eminence, we have gazed on the simple column which crowns the spot consecrated by the blood of the primitive martyrs of American freedom-a column which, simple though it be, is dearer in the associations which cluster around it, than any hoary pile, no matter how venerable in its antiquity, nobler than any modern trophy,

"Built with the riches of a spoiled world."

And, Mr. President, whatever of pride the cultivated Greek may have felt in contemplating the master-piece of Grecian skill-whatever of reverence the pious Greek may have felt in contemplating the master deity of the Grecian Pantheon-we, who are now assembled from the north and the south, from the east and the west, have felt a loftier pride, a holier reverence than ever Olympian statue or Olympian temple inspired, as, filled with the solemn memories of the past, and jubilant hopes of the future, we have stood before the marble form of our own Washington, or beside the granite monument that records the story of Bunker Hill.

From "Speech at Boston, before U. S. Agricultural Society," 1854.

THE PRESERVATION OF THE UNION.

EDWARD EVERETT.

SHALL we permit this curiously compacted body politic, the nicest adjustment of human wisdom, to go to pieces? Will we blast this beautiful symmetric form; paralyze this powerful arm of public strength; smite with imbecility this great National Intellect? Where, sir, O where, will be the flag of the United States? Where our rapidly. increasing influence in the family of nations? Already they are rejoicing in our divisions. The last foreign journal which I have read, dwells upon our political condition as something that "will

compel us to keep the peace with the powers of Europe," and that means, to take the law from them in our international relations.

I meant to have spoken of the wreck of that magnificent and mutually-beneficial commercial intercourse which now exists between the producing and manufacturing states;-of the hostile tariffs in time of peace and the habitually-recurring border wars, by which it will be annihilated. I meant to have said a word of the Navy of the United States; and the rich inheritance of its common glories. Shall we give up this? The memory of our Fathers-of those happy days when the men of the North and South stood together for the country, on hardfought fields; when the South sent her Washington to Massachusetts, and New England sent her Greene to Carolina-is all this forgotten? "Is all the counsel that we two have shared;" all the joint labors to found this great Republic ;-is this "all forgot?" and will we permit this last great experiment of Confederate Republicanism, to become a proverb and a by-word to the Nations? No, fellow-citizens-no, a thousand times no! This glorious Union shall not perish! Precious legacy of our Fathers, it shall go down, honored and cherished, to our children. Generations unborn shall enjoy its privileges as we have done; and if we leave them poor in all besides, we will transmit to them the boundless wealth of its blessings!

From "Speech at Faneuil Hall," 1859.

THE SONS OF GEORGIA.

BISHOP ELLIOT.

For the first time in her history, may Georgia now look for a native population—a population born upon her soil and loving her because they call her mother. Not that those who have emigrated into her do not love her many of her most faithful and devoted public servants come within this category-but nothing can replace the peculiar feeling which man sucks in with his mother's milk for the spot where first he breathed the air of Heaven. Those who have come into her may feel themselves identified with her, so that her interest is their interest, but, strive as they may, they cannot acquire that enthusiastic love-made up of moral sentiment and youthful association-which springs out of an identity as well of lineage, as of pursuit. The Greeks expressed this feeling when they gloried in being "autozooves," sons of the soil, and felt that a stain upon their country was a stain upon a mother's reputation, and a reproach to her an insult that went to their hearts as to the hearts of children. This is what Georgia, for years to come, should especially cultivate-this feeling of homebred affection—the saying of her sons, "This is my own, my native land," and not only say.

ing it, but living it in thought and word and action. It has been impossible for her hitherto to have possessed it in her length and breadth, but now she may, and now she will, and it must give her an impulse that shall show her sister States that she is "as a giant awaking out of sleep." Let her sons but lock their shields together, and nothing can impede her progress to greatness!

From "Address before the Georgia Historical Society," 1844.

THE SCULPTOR'S ART.

HENRY REED.

WHAT has been done by one branch of art for the memory of Washington, is shown by the standard portrait of him by Stuart, but for the purest sublimities which art can teach, we turn to the more ideal and imaginative work of the sculptor. I remember having seen Greenough's statue of Washington, as it is placed facing the Capitol, for the first time in the early morn of a bright spring day. There was no trivial noise-no intrusive criticism to disturb the solemn impression it is fitted to give. The eye seemed to reject all sensations save what came from the unclouded sky and from the spotless marble-a harmony rather than a contrast, and the things of earth had no part in it. In that ideal portraiture the moral of the character--the history of the life in its marvellous integrity and with its perfect consummation, was visible-the one hand laying down, as if at his country's feet, the sheathed sword, and the other pointing to the sky. There was nothing between the finger of that uplifted arm and the highest heavens; and as the imagination of the spectator was thus carried upward, you could not but feel that no cloud of mortal passion had ever dimmed the glory of the character here idealized in marble, and that that soul had risen above the strife of self-will and the tumult of human frailties, into the serene atmosphere of duty and of Christian heroism. Thus is it that the sculptor's genius has its triumph; and casting away the self-hurtful temper of narrow and disputatious criticism, we may render thoughtful gratitude to the moral beauty and power of art.

From "Address before Philadelphia Art Union," 1849.

THE GREAT MOUNTAINS.

JOHN RUSKIN.

INFERIOR hills ordinarily interrupt, in some degree, the richness of the valleys at their feet; the gray downs of southern England, and treeless côteaux of central France, and gray swells of Scottish moor, whatever peculiar charm they may possess in themselves, are at least

destitute of those which belong to the woods and fields of the Lowlands. But the great mountains lift the lowlands on their sides. Let the reader imagine, first, the appearance of the most varied plain of some richly cultivated country; let him imagine it dark with graceful woods, and soft with deepest pastures; let him fill the space of it, to the utmost horizon, with innumerable and changeful incidents of scenery and life; leading pleasant streamlets through its meadows, strewing clusters of cottages beside their banks, tracing sweet footpaths through its avenues, and animating its fields with happy flocks, and slow wandering spots of cattle; and when he has wearied himself with endless imagining, and left no space without some loveliness of its own, let him conceive all this great plain, with its infinite treasures of natural beauty and happy human life, gathered up in God's hands from one edge of the horizon to the other, like a woven garment; and shaken into deep falling folds, as the robes droop from a king's shoulders; all its bright rivers leaping into cataracts along the hollows of its fall, and all its forests rearing themselves aslant against its slopes, as a rider rears himself back when his horse plunges; and all its villages nestling themselves into the new windings of its glens; and all its pastures thrown into steep waves of greensward, dashed with dew along the edges of their folds, and sweeping down into endless slopes, with a cloud here and there lying quietly, half on the grass, half in the air; and he will have as yet, in all this lifted world, only the foundation of one of the great Alps. And whatever is lovely in the lowland scenery becomes lovelier in this change: the trees which grew heavily and stiffly from the level line of plain assume strange curves of strength and grace as they bend themselves against the mountain side; they breathe more freely, and toss their branches more carelessly as each climbs higher, looking to the clear light above the topmost leaves of its brother tree; the flowers which on the arable plain fell before the plough, now find out for themselves unapproachable places, where year by year they gather into happier fellowship, and fear no evil; and the streams which in the level land crept in dark eddies by unwholesome banks, now move in showers of silver, and are clothed with rainbows, and bring health and life wherever the glance of their waves can reach.

From "Modern Painters."

THE STUDENT'S DUTIES.

JAMES WALKER, D. D.

school of the

In that pre

THE spirits of the sainted dead, who consecrated this prophets to Christ and the Church, hover over us now. sence remember what you owe to your parents and friends, whose affections and pride, whose very life, are bound up with the hope of your

well-doing. Remember what you owe to your country. If there is not wisdom enough, if there is not moderation enough, in the educated classes, to restrain the heats of party,—the violence, the inconsideration, the injustice on all sides,-our best hopes are in imminent peril. What is wanted is, not that a man should be indifferent to the evils in the country, but that he should deal with them in the spirit of one who loves his country. Remember what you owe to God. All the distinctions of birth, and wealth, and intellect will pass away: what will endure for ever of your labors here, is the earnest purpose to fulfil the high vocation of the Christian scholar. "This also we humbly and earnestly beg, that human things may not prejudice such as are divine; neither that from the unlocking of the gates of sense, and the kindling of a greater natural light, anything of incredulity, or intellectual night, may arise in our minds towards divine mysteries. But rather, that by our mind, thoroughly cleansed and purged from fancy and vanities, and yet subject and perfectly given up to the Divine Oracles, there may be given unto faith the things that are faith's."

From "Inaugural Address at Harvard.”

CALVERT AND THE MARYLAND CHARTER.

WILLIAM GEORGE READ.

FROM Jamestown, Calvert turned towards the unoccupied territory, which borders the majestic Chesapeake, to the north of the Potomac. The enterprise of Smith and others had already partially explored it, and disclosed its extent, fertility, and beauty. No European settlement had as yet been established there; and the rights of the British crown, as recognised in the international law of Europe, to countries occupied only by savages, had been revested by the cancelling of the old Virginia charter. State policy, therefore, as well as regard for Calvert, whose moderation and sincerity seem to have conciliated universal esteem, dictated compliance with his petition for a grant; of which the terms were left to be adjusted by himself. The charter of Maryland, the undoubted production of his pen, is the fair and lasting monument of his wisdom and his virtues. His military exploit may be lost in the blinding blaze of England's martial glory; his sacrifices to conviction may be merged in those of her myriad martyrs; but his charter shall endure on our statute book, so long as the blue firmament of the American flag shall sparkle with the brilliant beams of the Maryland star! From "An Oration on the Anniversary of the Settlement of Maryland," 1842.

5 *

« AnteriorContinuar »