is invisible, and, even when effective, seems as transient as the wind that raised the cloud? It is yet free and indestructible; can as little be bound in chains as the aspiring flame; and, when once generated, takes eternity for its guardian. We are the children and the heirs of the past, with which, as with the future, we are indissolubly linked together; and he that truly has sympathy with every thing belonging to man will, with his toils for posterity, blend affection for the times that are gone by, and seek to live in the vast life of the ages. It is by thankfully recognising those ages as a part of the great existence in which we share, that history wins power to move the soul; she comes to us with tidings of that which for us still lives, of that which has become the life of our life; she embalms and preserves for us the life-blood not of master-spirits only, but of generations of the race.

And because the idea of improvement belongs to that of continuous being, history is, of all pursuits, the most cheering; it throws a halo of delight and hope even over the sorrows of humanity, and finds promises of joy among the ruins of empires and the graves of nations; it sees the footsteps of Providential Intelligence everywhere, and hears the gentle tones of his voice in the hour of tranquillity. Nor God alone in the still calm we find;

He mounts the storm and walks upon the wind. Institutions may crumble and governments fall, but it is only that they may renew a better youth, and mount upwards like the eagle: the petals of the flower wither, that fruit may form. The desire of perfection, springing always from moral power, rules even the sword, and escapes unharmed from the field of carnage; giving to battles all that they can have of lustre, and to warriors their only glory; surviving martyrdoms, and safe amid the wreck of states. On the banks of the stream of time, not a monument has been raised to a hero or a nation, but tells the tale and renews the hope of improvement. Each people that has disappeared, every institution that has passed away. has been but a step in the ladder by which humanity ascends towards the perfecting of its nature.

And how has it always been advancing, to the just judg ments of the past adding the discoveries of successive ages! The generations that hand the torch of truth along the lines of time themselves become dust and ashes; but the light still increases its ever burning flame, and is fed more and more plenteously with consecrated oil. How is progress manifest in religion, from the gross symbols of the East to the sublime philosophy of Greece, from the fetichism of the savage to the polytheism of Rome; from the multiplied forms of ancient superstition, and the lovely representations of deities in stone, to the clear conception of the unity of divine power, and the idea of the presence of God in the soul! How has mind, in its inquisitive freedom, taught man to employ the elements as mechanics do their tools, and already, in part at least, made him the master and possessor of nature! How has knowledge not only been increased, but diffused! How has morality been constantly tending to subdue the supremacy of brute force, to refine passion, to enrich literature with the varied forms of pure thought and delicate feeling! How has social life been improved, and every variety of toil in the field and in the workshop been ennobled by the willing industry of free men! How has humanity been growing conscious of its unity and watchful of its own development, till public opinion, bursting the bonds of nationality, knows itself to be the spirit of the world, in its movement on the tide of thought from generation to generation!

From the intelligence that had been slowly ripening in the mind of cultivated humanity sprung the American Revolution, which was designed to organize social union through the establishment of personal freedom, and thus emancipate the nations from all authority not flowing from themselves. In the old civilization of Europe, power moved from a superior to inferiors and subjects; a priesthood transmitted a common faith, from which it would tolerate no dissent; the government esteemed itself, by compact or by divine right, invested with sovereignty, dispensing protection and demanding allegiance. But a new principle, far mightier than the church and state of the middle ages, was forcing

itself into activity. Successions of increasing culture and heroes in the world of thought had conquered for mankind the idea of the freedom of the individual; the creative, but long latent, energy that resides in the collective reason was next to be revealed. From this the state was to emerge, like the fabled spirit of beauty and love out of the foam of the ever troubled ocean. It was the office of America to substitute for hereditary privilege the natural equality of man; for the irresponsible authority of a sovereign, a dependent government emanating from the concord of opinion; and, as she moved forward in her high career, the multitudes of every clime gazed towards her example with hopes of untold happiness, and all the nations of the earth sighed to be renewed.

The American Revolution, of which I write the history, essaying to unfold the principles which organized its events, and bound to keep faith with the ashes of its heroes, was most radical in its character, yet achieved with such benign tranquillity that even conservatism hesitated to censure. A civil war armed men of the same ancestry against each other, yet for the advancement of the principles of everlasting peace and universal brotherhood. A new plebeian democracy took its place by the side of the proudest empires. Religion was disenthralled from civil institutions; thought obtained for itself free utterance by speech and by the press; industry was commissioned to follow the bent of its own genius; the system of commercial restrictions between states was reprobated and shattered; and the oceans were enfranchised for every peaceful keel. International law was humanized and softened; and a new, milder, and more just maritime code was concerted and enforced. The trade in slaves was branded and restrained. The language of Bacon and Milton, of Chatham and Washington, became so diffused, that in every zone, and almost in every longitude, childhood lisps the English as its mother tongue. The equality of all men was declared; personal freedom secured in its complete individuality; and common consent recognised as the only just origin of fundamental laws: so that in thirteen separate states, with ample territory for creating

more, the inhabitants of each formed their own political institutions. By the side of the principle of the freedom of the individual and the freedom of the separate states, the noblest work of human intellect was consummated in a federative union; and that union put away every motive to its destruction, by insuring to each successive generation the right to better its constitution, according to the increasing intelligence of the living people.

Astonishing deeds, throughout the world, attended these changes armies fought in the wilderness for rule over the solitudes which were to be the future dwelling-place of millions; navies hunted each other through every sea, engaging in battle now near the region of icebergs, now within the tropics; inventive art was summoned to make war more destructive, and to signalize sieges by new miracles of ability and daring; Africa was, in part, appropriated by rival nations of white men; and, in Asia, an adventurous company of British traders planted themselves masters in the empire of the Great Mogul.

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For America, the period abounded in new forms of virtue and greatness. Fidelity to principle pervaded the masses; an unorganized people, of their own free will, suspended commerce by universal assent; poverty rejected bribes. Heroism, greater than that of chivalry, burst into action from lowly men; citizens, with their families, fled from their homes and wealth in towns, rather than yield to oppression. Battalions sprung up in a night from spontaneous patriotism; where eminent statesmen hesitated, the instinctive action of the multitude revealed the counsels of magnanimity; youth and genius gave up life freely for the liberties of mankind. A nation without union, without magazines and arsenals, without a treasury, without credit, without government, fought successfully against the whole strength and wealth of Great Britain: an army of veteran soldiers capitulated to insurgent husbandmen.

The world could not watch with indifference the spectaele. The oldest aristocracy of France, the proudest nobles of Poland, the bravest hearts of Germany, sent their representatives to act as the peers of plebeians, to die gloriously,

or to live beloved, as the champions of humanity and freedom; Russia and the northern nations shielded the young republic by an armed neutrality; while the Catholic and feudal monarchies of France and Spain, children of the middle age, were wonderfully swayed to open the gates of futurity to the new empire of democracy: so that, in human affairs, God never showed more visibly his gracious providence and love.

Yet the thirteen colonies, in whom was involved the futurity of our race, were feeble settlements in the wilderness, scattered along the coast of a continent, little connected with each other, little heeded by their metropolis, almost unknown to the world; they were bound together only as British America, that part of the western hemisphere which the English mind had appropriated. England was the mother of its language, the home of its traditions, the source of its laws, and the land on which its affections centred. And yet it was an offset from England, rather than an integral part of it; an empire of itself, free from nobility and prelacy; not only Protestant, but by a vast majority dissenting from the church of England; attracting the commoners and plebeian sects of the parent country, and rendered cosmopolitan by recruits from the nations of the European continent. By the benignity of the law, the natives of other lands were received as citizens; and political liberty, as a birthright, was the talisman that harmoniously blended all differences, and inspired a new public life, dearer than their native tongue, their memories, and their kindred. Dutch, French, Swede, and German renounced their nationality, to claim the rights of English

men.

The extent of those rights, as held by the colonists, had never been precisely ascertained. Of all the forms of civil government of which they had ever heard or read, no one appeared to them so well calculated to preserve liberty, and to secure all the most valuable advantages of civil society, as the English; and of this happy constitution of the mother country, which it was usual to represent, and almost to adore, as designed to approach perfection, they held