light. It is associated and blended with all our reflections on those things which are near and dear to us. If we think of the independence of our country, we think of him whose efforts were so prominent in achieving it; if we think of the Constitution which is over us, we think of him who did so much to estab lish it, and whose administration of its powers is acknowledged to be a model for his successors. If we think of glory in the field, of wisdom in the cabi. net, of the purest patriotism, of the highest integrity, public and private, of morals without a stain, of religious feelings without intolerance, and without extravagance, the august figure of Washington presents itself as the personation of all these ideas.

Daniel Webster, New Hampshire, 1782-1852.

40. The Power of a Word.

On words, on quibbles, if you please to call distinctions so, rest the axes of the intellectual world. A winged word has stuck ineradicably in a million hearts, and envenomed every hour throughout their pulsation. On a winged word hath hung the destiny of nations. On a winged word hath human wisdom been willing to cast the immortal soul, and to leave it dependent for all its future happiness. It is because a word is unsusceptible of explanation, or because they who employed it were impatient of any, that enormous evils have prevailed, not only against our common sense, but against our common humanity.

W. S. Landor, England, 1775-1864.

41. Happiness in Memory.

Mankind are always better for having been once happy; so that if you make them happy now, you make them so, twenty years hence, through the memory of it. Childhood, passed with a mixture of rational indulgence, under fond and wise parents, diffuses over the whole of life a coloring of calm pleasure, and, even in extreme old age, is the last remembrance that time can erase from the mind of man. No enjoyment, however inconsiderable, is confined to the present moment. A man is the happier through life for having once made an agreeable tour, or lived for any length of time among a pleasant people, or enjoyed any considerable interval of innocent pleasure; and it is more probably the recollection of their past joys that contributes to render the aged so inattentive to the scenes passing around them, and carries them back to a world that is past, and scenes that can never be again restored.

Sydney Smith, England, 1771-1845.

42. The Diffusion of Knowledge. Through an agency all unknown to Antiquity, knowl. edge of every kind has become general and permanent. It can no longer be confined to a select circle. It cannot be crushed by tyranny, or lost by neglect. It is immortal as the soul from which it proceeds. This alone renders all relapse into barbarism impossible,

while it affords an unquestionable distinction between ancient and modern times. The Press, watchful with more than the hundred eyes of Argus, strong with more than the hundred arms of Briareus, not only guards all the conquests of civilization, but leads the way to future triumphs. Through its untiring energies, the meditation of the closet, or the utterance of the human voice, which else would die away within the precincts of a narrow room, is prolonged to the most distant nations and times, with winged words circling the globe. We admire the genius of Demosthenes, Sophocles, Plato, and Phidias; but the printing-press is a higher gift to man than the eloquence, the drama, the philosophy and the art of Greece.

Charles Sumner, Mass., 1811-1874.

43. Books.

Science, art, literature, philosophy,—all that man has done, the experience that has been bought with the sufferings of a hundred generations,-all have been garnered up for us in the world of books. There, among realities, in a "substantial world," we move with the crowned kings of thought. There our minds have a free range, our hearts a free utterance. Reason is confined within none of the partitions which trammel it in life. The hard granite of conventionalism melts away as a thin mist. We call things by their right names. Our lips give not the lie to our hearts. We bend the knee only to the great

and good. We despise only the despicable, we honor only the honorable. In that world no divinity hedges a king, no accident of rank or fashion ennobles a dunce or shields a knave.

E. P. Whipple, Mass., 1819-.

44. Erroneous Action.

It is pity that, commonly, more care is had, yea, and that among very wise men, to find out rather a cunning man for their horse, than a cunning man for their children. They say nay in word, but do so in deed. For to the one they will gladly give a stipend of two hundred crowns by year, and loth to offer to the other two hundred shillings. God, that sitteth in heaven, laugheth their choice to scorn, and rewardeth their liberality as it should; for He suffereth them to have a tame and well-ordered horse, but wild and unfortunate children; and, therefore, in the end, they find more pleasure in their horse than comfort in their children.

R. Ascham, England, 1515-1568.

45. Intelligence.

Education, to accomplish the ends of good government, should be universally diffused. Open the doors of the school-house to all the children of the land. Let no man have the excuse of poverty for not educating his own offspring. Place the means of education within his reach, and if they remain in ignorance, be it his own reproach. If one object of the expenditure

of revenue be protection against crime, you could not devise a better or cheaper means of obtaining it. Other nations spend their money in providing means for its detection and punishment, but it is for the principles of our government to provide for its never occurring. The one acts by coercion, the other by prevention. On the diffusion of education among the people rest the preservation and perpetuation of our free institutions.

D. Webster, New Hampshire, 1782-1852.

46. Nature.

Nature has a thousand ways and means of rising above herself, but incomparably the noblest manifestations of her capability of color are in the sunsets among the high clouds. I speak especially of the moment before the sun sinks, when his light turns pure rose-color, and when this light falls upon a zenith covered with countless forms of inconceivable delicacy, threads, and flakes of vapor, which would in common daylight be pure snow-white, and which give, therefore, a fair field to the tone of light. There is then no limit to the multitude, and no check to the intensity of the hues assumed. The whole sky, from the zenith to the horizon, becomes one molten, mantling sea of color and fire; every black bar turns massy gold, every ripple and wave into unsullied, shadowless crimson, and purple, and scarlet, and colors for which there are no words in language and no ideas in the mind, things which can only be conceived while