A WELCOME TO LAFAYETTE.

BY EDWARD EVERETT.

DURING the visit of Lafayette the corner-stone of the monument was laid at Bunker Hill, the scene of one of the first and most celebrated battles of the Revolutionary War, fought June 17, 1775. This is a brief extract from an oration delivered by Mr. Everett at Cambridge in 1824.

1. WITH the present year will be completed the halfcentury from that most important era in human history, the commencement of our Revolutionary War.

A few still survive among us to reap the rich fruits of their labors and suffering, and one has yielded himself to the united voice of a people, and returned in his age to receive the gratitude of the nation to whom he devoted his youth.

2. It is recorded on the pages of American history that when this friend of our country applied to our commissioners at Paris, in 1776, for a passage to America, they were obliged to answer him that they possessed not the means nor the credit for providing a single vessel in all the ports of France.

"Then," exclaimed the youthful hero, "I will provide my own"; and it is a literal fact that when all America was too poor to offer him so much as a passage to our

shores, he left, in his tender youth, the bosom of home, of happiness, of wealth, of rank, to plunge in the dust and blood of our struggle.

3. Welcome, friend of our fathers, to our shores! Happy are our eyes that behold those venerable features. Enjoy a triumph such as never monarch enjoyed, — the assurance that throughout America there is not a bosom. which does not beat with joy and gratitude at your name. Welcome, thrice welcome, to our shores; and whithersoever throughout the limits of the continent your course shall take you, the ear that hears you shall bless you, the eye that sees you shall bear witness to you, and every tongue exclaim, with heartfelt joy, "Welcome, welcome, Lafayette!"

THE NATIONAL FLAG.

BY CHARLES SUMNER.

CHARLES SUMNER was one of our most prominent American statesmen. He was born in Boston, Mass., January, 1811, was graduated at Harvard, and then studied and practised law.

In 1845 he delivered the Fourth of July oration at Boston with so much eloquence and force that he gained high rank as an orator. Five years later he was elected to the United States Senate, and held that position until his death, in 1873.

Although there were many who disagreed with his views, they never questioned his honor and integrity. His speeches were

finished and scholarly, and always impressed his audience with his power and sincerity. He was a great and good man, and gained the respect of the whole country.

1. THERE is the national flag! He must be cold indeed who can look upon its folds rippling in the breeze without pride of country. If he be in a foreign land, the flag is companionship and country itself with all its endearments.

Who, as he sees it, can think of a state merely? Whose eyes, once fastened upon its radiant trophies, can fail to recognize the image of the whole nation?

It has been called a floating piece of poetry, and yet I know not if it have an intrinsic beauty beyond other ensigns. Its highest beauty is in what it symbolizes. It is because it represents all that all gaze at it with delight and reverence.

2. It is a piece of bunting lifted in the air, but it

speaks sublimely, and every part has a voice. Its stripes. of alternate red and white proclaim the original union of thirteen states to maintain the Declaration of Independence. Its stars of white on a field of blue proclaim that union of states constituting our national constellation, which receives a new star with every new state.

The two together signify union, past and present. The very colors have a language which was officially recognized by our fathers. White is for purity, red for valor, blue for justice; and all together, bunting, stripes, stars, and colors blazing in the sky, make the flag of our country to be cherished by all our hearts, to be upheld by all our hands.

Bright flag at yonder tapering mast,
Fling out your field of azure blue;
Let star and stripe be westward cast,

And point as Freedom's eagle flew !
Strain home! O lithe and quivering spars!
Point home, my country's flag of stars!

N. P. WILLIS.

1. ALFRED TENNYSON was born in Somersby, England, on the sixth day of August, 1809. His father was the village rector, and there, in the white rectory house among the hills and beneath leafy elms, came the tiny babe who was destined to become the greatest poet of his age.

His mother was a gentle lady with a lively imagination, so kind-hearted that the bad boys of the village used sometimes to beat their dogs under her window in order to be bribed to leave off.

2. There were twelve children in the Tennyson family, and they lived in a little world of their own. The seven