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condition to remodel nature itself, and from the materials it affords him to create a new, and, for his peculiar purpose, a more perfectly adjusted world. From "Criticism upon Balzore."

ENGLISH VALOR.

DR. JOHNSON.

By those who have compared the military genius of the English with that of the French nation, it is remarked, that the French officers will always lead, if the soldiers will follow; and that the English soldiers will always follow, if their officers will lead.

In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness: and, in this comparison, our officers seem to lose what our soldiers gain. I know not any reason for supposing that the English officers are less willing than the French to lead; but it is, I think, universally allowed that the English soldiers are more willing to follow. Our nation may boast, beyond any other people in the world, of a kind of epidemic bravery, diffused equally through all its ranks. We can show a peasantry of heroes, and fill our armies with clowns, whose courage may vie with that of their general.

Whence then is the courage of the English vulgar? It proceeds, in my opinion, from that dissolution of dependence, which obliges every man to regard his own character. While every man is fed by his own hands, he has no need of any servile arts; he may always have wages for his labor; and is no less necessary to his employer than his employer is to him. While he looks for no protection from others, he is naturally roused to be his own protector; and having nothing to abate his esteem of himself, he consequently aspires to the esteem of others. Thus every man that crowds our streets is a man of honor, disdainful of obligation, impatient of reproach, and desirous of extending his reputation among those of his own rank; and as courage is in most frequent use, the fame of courage is most eagerly pursued. From this neglect of subordination I do not deny that some inconveniences may from time to time proceed the power of the law does not always sufficiently supply the want of reverence, or maintain the proper distinction between different ranks; but good and evil will grow up in this world together; and they who complain in peace of the insolence of the populace, must remember that their insolence in peace is bravery in war.

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From "Political Tracts."

TRUTH.

LORD BACON.

THE first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the light of the sense, the last was the light of reason, and his Sabbath work, ever since, is the illumination of his Spirit. First he breathed light upon the face of the matter, or chaos, then he breathed light into the face of man; and still he breatheth and inspireth light into the face of his chosen. The poet, that beautified the sect, that was otherwise inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well, "It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tost upon the sea; a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle, and the adventures thereof below; but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantageground of truth (a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene), and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below;" so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.

Το pass from theological and philosophical truth to the truth of civil business, it will be acknowledged, even by those that practise it not, that clear and round dealing is the honor of man's nature, and that mixture of falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold or silver, which may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it; for these winding and crooked courses are the goings of the serpent, which goeth basely upon the belly, and not upon the feet. There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious; and therefore Montaigne saith prettily, when he inquired the reason why the word of the lie should be such a disgrace, and such an odious charge, "If it be well weighed, to say, that a man lieth, is as much as to say that he is brave towards God, and a coward towards man; for a lie faces God, and shrinks from man." Surely the wickedness of falsehood and breach of faith cannot possibly be so highly expressed as in that it shall be the last peal to call the judgments of God upon the generations of men: it being foretold, that when "Christ cometh," he shall not "find faith upon earth."

From "Essays."

MENTAL AND MORAL GREATNESS.

DR. STEVENS.

BEHIND the high altar, in the cathedral of Cologne, is a costly shrine, in which are placed the silver-gilt coffins of three kings. The skulls of these kings are crowned with golden diadems, studded with jewels,

and inscribed with their names written in rubies. This is political greatness-a skull crowned with gold-a name written in rubies. Touching comment on the mock greatness and the fleeting glory of kings and statesmen !

And is not moral greatness superior to this? Is not a crown of glory around brows that never die better than a diadem of gold upon a fleshless skull? Is not a name, written with the finger of God in the book of life, better than a name written over the shrine of our bones with rubies? Yet, with all this contest, sense wrestles with faith--and the flesh generally gains the mastery over the spirit, forgetting "that the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal."

Mental greatness is nobler than martial or political greatness. There is something sublime in beholding the struggles and achievements of a great mind. To see it silently gather to itself new energies-new forces and with these to make new onsets in the dominion of thought, seeking to rule, an intellectual king, over its realms. These sights are grand, whether we behold them in the philosopher, fathoming the depths of mind-in the geologist, quarrying out science from the rock and the fossil-or in the chemist, deducing the laws of life and death from the crucible and the laboratory; whether we see them in the artist, busied in the magnificent creations of the chisel and the pencil-in the poet, entering into the treasure-houses of imagination, and stringing those rosaries of thought, the jewelled epic and the sparkling song or in the astronomer, soaring to the planets, measuring their paths-weighing their masses, and calling them by their names. But after all, what is it? A few systems--a few poems-a few discoveries -the writing of a few names in rubies-and that is all of mental greatness! From "Discourse on Washington's Birth-Day," 1846.

PACIFIC RAILROAD.

CALVIN COLTON.

THE social and political results of such a road, such a universal path, will be as important and notable as any yet recorded in history. The people of Asia and of Europe will thus be introduced to each other, and made neighbors and friends; whereas now they are almost total strangers. Universal liberty will receive a new stimulus from this great construction. America, the land of the free, will then be in the centre of the world; and it will diffuse the blessings of freedom to the continents and nations that gird it round. It will teach them the lessons which it has learned. It will inspire them to greater things by its example. It will control the universal public opinion of the world

by its superior intelligence. Such is to be the future of America. It is to rise in importance in the eyes of the nations. It will be the greatest of empires. Upon us the ends of the world will come. England will no longer be the first maritime power of the world. The old Queen of the Atlantic will be surpassed in beauty, freshness, and power, by her young daughter, who is soon to be crowned Queen of the greater Pacific. The star of empire, which takes its way westward, is about to stand still over the great and vigorous young republic, which the American citizen is proud to call his native land.

From "Discourse before the American Geographical Society," 1855.

THE EXILE'S HOPE.

VICTOR HUGO.

You are wrung with grief, but you have courage and faith. You do well, my friends. Courage, then! Courage! more than ever! As I have already said, it grows more evident, from day to day, that, at this instant, France and England have left to them but one path, one outlet of safety-the emancipation of the peoples-the insurrection in mass of the prostrate nationalities-the REVOLUTION! Sublime alternative! It is grand that safety has become identified with justice. It is in this that Providence breaks forth in splendor. Ay, have courage, more than ever. In the hour of utmost peril Danton exclaimed, "Daring! daring! and yet more daring!" In adversity we should cry out, "Hope! hope! and still more hope!" Friends and brothers! the great republic, the democratic, social, and free republic, will, ere long, blaze out in magnificence again; for it is the office of the empire to give it a new birth, as it is the office of the night to usher in the day. These men of tyranny and misery will disappear. Their time to stay is now counted by quick minutes. They are backing to the edge of the abyss, and we, who are already in the gulf, can see their heels that quiver already beyond the borders of the precipice. Oh, exiles! I call forth in testimony the hemlock the Socrates have drank; the Golgothas the Christs have climbed; the Jerichos the Joshuas have caused to crumble. I summon up in testimony the baths of blood taken by the Thraseas; the faggots whence John Huss, and those of this world like him, have cried, the swan will yet be born! I summon in testimony these seas that beat around us, and which the Columbuses have passed beyond ; I call upon yonder stars which shine above us, and which the Galileos have questioned, to bear witness, exiles and brethren, that liberty can never die she is immortal, and, exiles, Truth is eternal!

Progress is the very stride of God.

Then let those who weep be comforted! and those who tremble, if

any such there be among us, be assured. Humanity ignores self murder, and God lays not aside his omnipotent control.

No, the peoples shall not for ever grope in darkness, knowing not what hour has been reached in science, what hour in philosophy, what hour in art, what hour in human mind, and, with their eyes fixed upon despotism, that black dial of gloom on which the double needle, at once sword and sceptre, for ever motionless, for ever marks Midnight. From "Speech on the Anniversary of the French Revolution," 1848.

GOLDEN GRAIN.

66

EDWARD EVERETT.

GOLD, while it is gold, is good for little or nothing. You can neither eat it, nor drink it, nor smoke it. You can neither wear it, nor burn it as fuel, nor build a house with it; it is really useless till you exchange it for consumable, perishable goods; and the more plentiful it is the less its exchangeable value. Far different the case with our Atlantic gold; it does not perish when consumed, but, by a nobler alchemy than that of Paracelsus, is transmuted in consumption to a higher life. "Perish in consumption," did the old miser say? "Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die." The burning pen of inspiration, ranging heaven and earth for a similitude, to convey to our poor minds some not inadequate idea of the mighty doctrine of the resurrection, can find no symbol so expressive as bare grain, it may chance of wheat or some other grain." To-day a senseless plant, tomorrow it is human bone and muscle, vein and artery, sinew and nerve; beating pulse, heaving lungs, toiling, ah, sometimes, overtoiling brain. Last June, it sucked from the cold breast of the earth the watery nourishment of its distending sap-vessels; and now it clothes the manly form with warm, cordial flesh; quivers and thrills with the five-fold mystery of sense; purveys and ministers to the higher mystery of thought. Heaped up in your granaries this week, the next it will strike in the stalwart arm, and glow in the blushing cheek, and flash in the beaming eye; till we learn at last to realize that the slender stalk, which we have seen shaken by the summer breeze, bending in the corn-field under the yellow burden of harvest, is indeed the "staff of life," which, since the world began, has supported the toiling and struggling myriads of humanity on the mighty pilgrimage of being.

From "Speech before U. S. Agricultural Society,” 1854.

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