BY

CCLII.

AMERICAN NATIONALITY.

Y the side of all antagonisms, higher than they, stronger than they, there rises colossal the fine sweet spirit of nationality, the nationality of America! See there the pillar of fire which God has kindled and lifted and moved for our hosts and our ages. Gaze on that, worship that, worship the highest in that. Between that light and our eyes a cloud for a time may seem to gather; chariots, armed, men on foot, the troops of kings may march on us, and our fears may make us for a moment turn from it; a sea may spread before us, and waves seem to hedge us up; dark idolatries may alienate some hearts for a season from that worship; revolt, rebellion, may break out in the camp, and the waters of our springs may run bitter to the taste and mock it; between us and that Canaan a great river may seem to be rolling; but beneath that high guidance our way is onward, ever onward; those waters shall part, and stand on either hand in heaps; that idolatry shall repent; that rebellion shall be crushed; that stream shall be sweetened; that overflowing river shall be passed on foot dryshod, in harvest time; and from that promised land of flocks, fields, tents, mountains, coasts, and ships, from north and south, and east and west, there shall swell one cry yet, of victory, peace, and thanksgiving! R. Choate

CCLIII.

THE SAME CONTINUED.

THINK of this nationality first as a state of consciousness, as a spring of feeling, as a motive to exertion, as blessing your country, and as reacting on you. Think of it as it fills your mind and quickens your heart, and as it fills the mind and quickens the heart of millions around you. Instantly, under such an influence, you ascend above the smoke and stir of this small local strife; you tread upon the high places of the earth and of history; you think and feel as an American for America; her power, her eminence, her consideration, her honor, are yours; your competitors, like hers, are kings; your home, like hers, is

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the world; your path, like hers, is on the highway of empires; our charge, her charge, is of generations and ages; your record, her record, is of treaties, battles, voyages, beneath all the constellations; her image, one, immortal, golden, rises on your eye as our western star at evening rises on the traveller from his home; no lowering cloud, no angry river, no lingering spring, no broken crevasse, no inundated city or plantation, no tracts of sand, arid and burning, on that surface, but all blended and softened into one beam of kindred rays, the image, harbinger, and promiser of love, hope, and a brighter day!

But if you would contemplate nationality as an active virtue, look around you. Is not our own history one witness and one record of what it can do? This day and all which it stands for,

did it not give us these? This glory of the fields of that war, this eloquence of that revolution, this one wide sheet of flame which wrapped tyrant and tyranny and swept all that escaped from it away, forever and forever; the courage to fight, to retreat, to rally, to advance, to guard the young flag by the young arm and the young heart's blood, to hold up and hold on till the magnificent consummation crowned the work, were not all these imparted or inspired by this imperial sentiment?

Has it not here begun the master-work of man, the creation of a national life? Did it not call out that prodigious development of wisdom, the wisdom of constructiveness which illustrated the years after the war, and the framing and adopting of the Constitution? Has it not, in general, contributed to the administering of that government wisely and well since?

R. Choate.

CCLIV.

THE SAME CONCLUDED.

LOOK at it! It has kindled us to no aims of conquest. It

has involved us in no entangling alliances. It has kept our neutrality dignified and just. The victories of peace have been our prized victories. But the larger and truer grandeur of the nations, for which they are created, and for which they must one day, before some tribunal, give an account, what a measure of these it has enabled us already to fulfil! It has lifted us to the

throne, and has set on our brow the name of the Great Republic. It has taught us to demand nothing wrong, and to submit to nothing wrong; it has made our diplomacy sagacious, wary, accomplished; it has opened the iron gate of the mountain, and planted our ensign on the great, tranquil sea.

It has made the desert to bud and blossom as the rose; it has quickened to life the giant brood of useful arts; it has whitened lake and ocean with the sails of a daring, new, and lawful trade; it has extended to exiles, flying as clouds, the asylum of our better liberty.

It has kept us at rest within all our borders; it has repressed without blood the intemperance of local insubordination; it has scattered the seeds of liberty, under law and under order, broadcast; it has seen and helped American feeling to swell into a fuller flood; from many a field and many a deck, though it seeks not war, makes not war, and fears not war, it has borne the radiant flag, all unstained; it has opened our age of lettered glory; it has opened and honored the age of the industry of the people!

R. Choate.

SIR

CCLV.

THE NATIONAL ENSIGN.

IR, I must detain you no longer. I have said enough, and more than enough, to manifest the spirit in which this flag is now committed to your charge. It is the national ensign, pure and simple; dearer to all our hearts at this moment, as we lift it to the gale, and see no other sign of hope upon the storm-cloud which rolls and rattles above it, save that which is reflected from its own radiant hues; dearer, a thousand-fold dearer to us all, than ever it was before, while gilded by the sunshine of prosperity, and playing with the zephyrs of peace. It will speak for itself far more eloquently than I can speak for it.

Behold it! Listen to it! Every star has a tongue; every stripe is articulate. There is no language or speech where their voices are not heard. There's magic in the web of it. It has an answer for every question of duty. It has a solution for every doubt and perplexity. It has a word of good cheer for every hour of gloom or of despondency.

Behold it! Listen to it! It speaks of earlier and of later struggles. It speaks of victories, and sometimes of reverses, on the sea and on the land. It speaks of patriots and heroes among the living and the dead: and of him, the first and greatest of them all, around whose consecrated ashes this unnatural and abhorrent strife has so long been raging desolation standing where it ought not." above all other associations and memories men, or glorious deeds, or glorious places Union and Liberty, of the Constitution and the Laws.

"the abomination of But before all and - whether of glorious its voice is ever of

Behold it! Listen to it! Let it tell the story of its birth to these gallant volunteers, as they march beneath its folds by day, or repose beneath its sentinel stars by night. Let it recall to them the strange, eventful history of its rise and progress; let it rehearse to them the wondrous tale of its trials and its triumphs, in peace as well as in war; and, whatever else may happen to it or to them, it will never be surrendered to rebels; never be ignominiously struck to treason; nor be prostituted to any unworthy or unchristian purpose of revenge, depredation, or rapine. And may a merciful God cover the head of each one of its brave defenders in the hour of battle. R. C. Winthrop.

A

CCLVI.

AN APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE.

PARLIAMENT like our Parliament has numbers enough, and just enough of the semblance of representation, to make it safe to do almost anything it likes against the true interests of the nation. This Parliament of landowners and rich men either were wholly ignorant of, or they wholly despised, the national opinion which has been exhibited during the last three or four months; and they resisted the Reform Bill with a pertinacity never exceeded, with an amount of intrigue, with an amount of unfairness to the Government, which they durst not for a single night have attempted if they had ever felt any real responsibility to the English nation. And now they resist up to this moment, and for aught I know they may possibly resist when they meet at the beginning of February, until the discontent which is now

so general shall become universal, and that which is now only a great exhibition of opinion, may become necessarily and inevitably a great and menacing exhibition of force.

And those opponents of ours

many of them in the Parliament openly, and many of them secretly in the Press charge us with being the promoters of a dangerous excitement. They say that we are the source of the danger which threatens; and they even have the effrontery to charge me with being a friend of public disorder. I am one of the people. Surely, if there be one thing in a free country more clear than another, it is that any one of the people may speak openly to the people. If I speak to the people of their rights, and indicate to them the way to secure them; if I speak to the monopolists of power, of their danger, am I not a wise counselor both to the people and to their rulers?

Suppose that, standing at the foot of Vesuvius or Ætna, I saw a hamlet or a homestead situated upon its slope, and I said to the dwellers in that hamlet or homestead, "You see that vapor which ascends from the summit of the mountain. That vapor may become a dense black smoke that will obscure the sky. You see that trickling of lava from a crevice or fissure on the side of the mountain. That trickling of lava may become a river of fire. You hear that muttering in the bowels of the mountain. That muttering may become a bellowing thunder,

the voice of a convulsion that may shake half a continent. You know that at your feet is the grave in which lie buried great cities for which there is no resurrection, as histories tell us that dynasties and aristocracies have passed away, and their names have been known no more forever."

If I say this to the dwellers upon the slope of that mountain, and if there comes hereafter a catastrophe which makes the world to shudder, am I responsible for that catastrophe? I did not build the mountain, or fill it with explosive materials. I merely warned the men who were in danger. So, now, it is not I who am stimulating men to the violent pursuit of their acknowledged and constitutional rights.

The class which has hitherto ruled this country has failed miserably. It revels in power and wealth, whilst at its feet a terrible peril for its future lies the multitude which it has