8. A vast amount of talent we have at command, if it can be united and combined. Our newspapers often show it, our periodicals show it. It is a remarkable fact, that our periodical literature, the only kind which this country has really patronized, has ever been unrivaled by any nation on earth. The State Papers of the Revolution did almost if not quite as much for us as our soldiery. The best diplomatists of Europe have confessed their power, and paid us the tribute; and sure I am, that in this respect we have not degenerated. 9. With the same strength that we develop our national resources, we must develop the moral and intellectual energies among us. There is great danger that such a busy, practical people, will forget that they have hearts and souls. There is danger, too, that such a moving, journeying people, will lose their attachment to home; their love for the rocks, and hills, and valleys, that their eyes first saw. Home, home, home, is the sentiment that we need to cherish. Our country must be our idol, if idols we have. 10. Next to the preservation of liberty, is the preservation of the Union; and this, in a territory so vast, can only be effected by an interchange of feelings, by intercommunications, by forming friends, and making visits, all over our wide domain. We must know and understand each other, in order to love each other. 11. We must see with our own eyes what a glorious heritage our fathers have bequeathed us, before we can appreciate its value. Dangers threaten us, above all other people; and such dangers as only high patriotism and pure affection can overcome. We have not achieved our independence yet. Washington and his compatriots gave us freedom. 12. Our own industry has liberated us from a servile dependence upon foreign skill and foreign artisans, and now we want a literary freedom; the independence to think, write, and criticise for ourselves; not driving our scholars abroad to acquire a reputation at home, and then reflecting at home the light of foreign glow-worms from abroad. We want local attachments too; then a national pride, a just sense of our own importance. 13. Another duty we have laid on our hands; and that is, to elevate and refine public feeling, by associations, by lectures, by lyceums, and in every practicable manner; so as to give society a tone and a character, and so as to combat the physical and lower tendencies of the day. There is an atmosphere encompassing every circle, either light or lurid, just in proportion to the splendor of the minds that sparkle within it. There is a sympathetic link in the chain of social intercourse, that vibrates well or ill, whenever it is touched. 14. The tone of a whole society may be compared to the winds that float through an Æolian harp. If but a summer breeze play upon its strings, it is like the melodious notes that sprang from Memnon's statue," when touched by the rays of the morning sun. But if the rude and gusty storm run roughly over the cords, it flings off notes harsh and discordSee, then, the duty of the American. But tune society, and it will pour forth melodies from a thousand strings. ant. LESSON LIII. OUR COUNTRY. PABODIE. 1. OUR COUNTRY! 'tis a glorious land! With broad arms stretched from shore to shore, The proud Pacific chafes her strand, She hears the dark Atlantic roar; Enameled with her loveliest dyes. 2. Rich prairies, decked with flowers of gold, a Folian (e-ō le-an ;) pertaining to 'olus, the god of the winds. b Mem'non's statue; a colossal statue in Thebes, which is said to have sent forth joyful sounds when the sun rose, but mournful ones when it set. Broad lakes her azure heaven behold, Go sweeping onward, dark and deep, 3. And cradled mid her clustering hills, And calm content and peace 4. Great God! we thank thee for this home, Still may her flowers untrampled spring, LESSON LIV. UNION, LIBERTY. [The reader may scan the following piece of poetry, and tell to what kind of verse it belongs, and to what form. See Construction of Verse, p. 68.] 1. HAIL, our country's | natal | morn, Hail, our spreading | kindred | born, While, this day in festal throng, Millions swell the patriot song, 2. Who would sever freedom's shrine ? b Dear to me the South's fair land, 3. By our altars, pure and free, By our common parent tongue, By our hopes, bright, buoyant, young, We will still be one. 4. Fathers! have ye bled in vain? "Union, Liberty." Jubilee; a public festivity. b Shrine: a case or box as for relics. LESSON LV. LAKES AND THE OCEAN. MELLEN. 1. THERE is ever a contrast between the smaller lakes and the great ocean. You can rarely, if ever, look upon the sea, when it is not heaving with the coming on, with the height or with the dying of the tempest. There is always agitation within its mighty bosom. You see something at work there that tells of perpetual unrest; of a power within that cannot be still. The subsiding thunder of the storm that has passed away, is but the deep prelusive music of another. 2. But go in midsummer to the lake, embosomed among the hills, and gaze upon it when all the elements are in slumber, and I know not that you will find in nature a more beautiful picture of repose. There is no heaving billow there; no crested wave breaking in foam upon the shore; no sound of departed storm, murmuring like some vast imprisoned spirit at its temporary subjection. 3. But you see there a surface, silent as death, and as placid. The water lies spread before you, a perfect mirror; and you see wooded summit and lofty vale, forest and field-tree and tower, cloud and sky, all gazing into its profound, as though enchanted with the loveliness of their own reflection. You see the beautiful and the grand mingling their wonders in solitude, and you feel how much more exquisite is the display when it is perfected in the hour and home of Nature's quietness. 4. Then, if you stand upon bank or shore at sunset, when its hundred hues are playing on the sky, and see the new heaven created in the depths below you, and witness its mockery of splendor, its fading colors and dying beams, till star begins to answer star in the dark water, surely you are beholding something that Nature presents only in such hallowed spots in her empire; something of beauty and grandeur that she can never offer by the "vasty deep;" something, be it devel |