J. M. Dickey

John Adams, second President of the United States. Born October 19, 1735; died July 4, 1826.

A prospect into futurity in America is like contemplating the heavens through the telescopes of Herschel. Objects stupendous in their magnitudes and motions strike us from all quarters, and fill us with amazement.

AMERICA THE OLD WORLD.

Louis Jean Rodolophe Agassiz, the distinguished naturalist. Born in Motier, near the Lake of NeufchÂtel, Switzerland, in 1807; died at Cambridge, Mass., December 14, 1873. From his "Geological Sketches." By permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Publishers, Boston.

First-born among the continents, though so much later in culture and civilization than some of more recent birth, America, so far as her physical history is concerned, has been falsely denominated the New World. Hers was the first dry land lifted out of the waters, hers the first shore washed by the ocean that enveloped all the earth beside; and while Europe was represented only by islands rising here and there above the sea, America already stretched an unbroken line of land from Nova Scotia to the far West.

DISCOVERY OF THE BIRD OF WASHINGTON.

John James Audubon, an American ornithologist. Born in Louisiana May 4, 1780. Died in New York January, 1851. From his "Adventures and Discoveries."

My commercial expeditions, rich in attraction for scientific observation, were attended also with the varied pleasures which delight a passenger on the waters of the glorious Mississippi. Fresh scenes are continually disclosed by the frequent windings of the river, as you speed along its rapid current. Thousands of birds in the adjacent woods gratify the ear with their sweet mellow notes, or dazzle the sight, as in their gorgeous attire they flash by. It was while ascending the Upper Mississippi, during the month of February, 1814, that I first caught sight of the beautiful Bird of Washington. My delight was extreme. Not even Herschel, when he discovered the planet which bears his name, could have experienced more rapturous feelings. Convinced that the bird was extremely rare, if not altogether unknown, I felt particularly anxious to learn its species. I next observed it whilst engaged in collecting cray fish on one of the flats of the Green River, at its junction with the Ohio, where it is bounded by a range of high cliffs. I felt assured, by certain indications, that the bird frequented that spot. Seated about a hundred yards from the foot of the rock, I eagerly awaited its appearance as it came to visit its nest with food for its young. I was warned of its approach by the loud hissing of the eaglets, which crawled to the extremity of the cavity to seize the prey—a fine fish. Presently the female, always the larger among rapacious birds, arrived, bearing also a fish. With more shrewd suspicion than her mate, glaring with her keen eye around, she at once perceived the nest had been discovered. Immediately dropping her prey, with a loud shriek she communicated the alarm, when both birds, soaring aloft, kept up a growling to intimidate the intruders from their suspected design.

PART OF COLUMBUS STATUE, NEW YORK MONUMENT. " From Harper's Weekly.
Copyright, 1892, by Harper & Brothers
PART OF COLUMBUS STATUE, NEW YORK MONUMENT.
(See page 244.)

Not until two years later was I gratified by the capture of this magnificent bird. Considering the bird the noblest of its kind, I dignified it with the great name to which this country owed her salvation, and which must be imperishable therefore among her people. Like the eagle, Washington was brave; like it, he was the terror of his foes, and his fame, extending from pole to pole, resembles the majestic soarings of the mightiest of the feathered tribe. America, proud of her Washington, has also reason to be so of her Great Eagle.

ONE VAST WESTERN CONTINENT.

Sir Edwin Arnold, C. S. I., an English poet and journalist. Born, June 10, 1832.

I reserve as the destiny of these United States the control of all the lands to the south, of the whole of the South American continent. Petty troubles will die away, and all will be yours. In South America alone there is room for 500,000,000 more people. Some day it will have that many, and all will acknowledge the government at Washington. We in England will not grudge you this added power. It is rightfully yours. With the completion of the canal across the Isthmus of Nicaragua you must have control of it, and of all the surrounding Egypt of the New World.

THE RISING OF THE WESTERN STAR.

(ANONYMOUS.)

Land of the mighty! through the nations
Thy fame shall live and travel on;
And all succeeding generations
Shall bless the name of Washington.
While year by year new triumphs bringing,
The sons of Freedom shall be singing—
Ever happy, ever free,
Land of light and liberty.
Columbus, on his dauntless mission,
Beheld his lovely isle afar;
Did he not see, in distant vision,
The rising of this western star—
This queen, who now, in state befitting,
Between two ocean floods is sitting?
Ever happy, ever free,
Land of light and liberty.

THE AMERICAN FLAG.

Henry Ward Beecher, a distinguished American writer and preacher. Born in Litchfield, Conn., June 24, 1813; died, March 8, 1887, in Brooklyn, N. Y. From his "Patriotic Addresses." By permission of Messrs. Fords, Howard & Hulbert, Publishers, New York.

When a man of thoughtful mind sees a nation's flag, he sees not the flag only, but the nation itself; and whatever may be its symbols, he reads chiefly in the flag the government, the principles, the truth, the history, which belong to the nation which sets it forth. When the French tricolor rolls out to the wind, we see France. When the newfound Italian flag is unfurled, we see Italy restored. When the other three-cornered Hungarian flag shall be lifted to the wind, we shall see in it the long-buried, but never dead, principles of Hungarian liberty. When the united crosses of St. Andrew and St. George on a fiery ground set forth the banner of old England, we see not the cloth merely; there rises up before the mind the noble aspect of that monarchy which, more than any other on the globe, has advanced its banner for liberty, law, and national prosperity. This nation has a banner, too, and wherever it streamed abroad men saw daybreak bursting on their eyes, for the American flag has been the symbol of liberty, and men rejoiced in it. Not another flag on the globe had such an errand, or went forth upon the seas carrying everywhere, the world around, such hope for the captive and such glorious tidings. The stars upon it were to the pining nations like the morning stars of God, and the stripes upon it were beams of morning light. As at early dawn the stars stand first, and then it grows light, and then, as the sun advances, that light breaks into banks and streaming lines of color, the glowing red and intense white striving together and ribbing the horizon with bars effulgent, so on the American flag stars and beams of many-colored lights shine out together. And wherever the flag comes, and men behold it, they see in its sacred emblazonry no rampant lion and fierce eagle, but only light, and every fold indicative of liberty. It has been unfurled from the snows of Canada to the plains of New Orleans; in the halls of the Montezumas and amid the solitude of every sea; and everywhere, as the luminous symbol of resistless and beneficent power, it has led the brave to victory and to glory. It has floated over our cradles; let it be our prayer and our struggle that it shall float over our graves.

NATIONAL SELF-RESPECT.

Nathaniel S. S. Beman, an American Presbyterian divine. Born in New Lebanon, N. Y., 1785; died at Carbondale, Ill., August 8, 1871. For forty years pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, Troy, N. Y.

The western continent has, at different periods, been the subject of every species of transatlantic abuse. In former days, some of the naturalists of Europe told us that everything here was constructed upon a small scale. The frowns of nature were represented as investing the whole hemisphere we inhabit. It has been asserted that the eternal storms which are said to beat upon the brows of our mountains, and to roll the tide of desolation at their bases; the hurricanes which sweep our vales, and the volcanic fires which issue from a thousand flaming craters; the thunderbolts which perpetually descend from heaven, and the earthquakes, whose trepidations are felt to the very center of our globe, have superinduced a degeneracy through all the productions of nature. Men have been frightened into intellectual dwarfs, and the beasts of the forest have not attained more than half their ordinary growth.

While some of the lines and touches of this picture have been blotted out by the reversing hand of time, others have been added, which have, in some respects, carried the conceit still farther. In later days, and, in some instances, even down to the present period, it has been published and republished from the enlightened presses of the Old World, that so strong is the tendency to deterioration on this continent that the descendants of European ancestors are far inferior to the original stock from which they sprang. But inferior in what? In national spirit and patriotic achievement? Let the revolutionary conflict—the opening scenes at Boston and the catastrophe at Yorktown—furnish the reply. Let Bennington and Saratoga support their respective claims. Inferior in enterprise? Let the sail that whitens every ocean, and the commercial spirit that braves every element and visits every bustling mart, refute the unfounded aspersion. Inferior in deeds of zeal and valor for the Church? Let our missionaries in the bosom of our own forest, in the distant regions of the East, and on the islands of the great Pacific, answer the question. Inferior in science and letters and the arts? It is true our nation is young; but we may challenge the world to furnish a national maturity which, in these respects, will compare with ours.

The character and institutions of this country have already produced a deep impression upon the world we inhabit. What but our example has stricken the chains of despotism from the provinces of South America—giving, by a single impulse, freedom to half a hemisphere? A Washington here has created a Bolivar there. The flag of independence, which has waved from the summit of our Alleghany, has now been answered by a corresponding signal from the heights of the Andes. And the same spirit, too, that came across the Atlantic wave with the Pilgrims, and made the rock of Plymouth the corner-stone of freedom, and of this republic, is traveling back to the East. It has already carried its influence into the cabinets of princes, and it is at this moment sung by the Grecian bard and emulated by the Grecian hero.

COLUMBIA—A PROPHECY.

St. George Best. In Kate Field's Washington.

Puissant land! where'er I turn my eyes
I see thy banner strewn upon the breeze;
Each past achievement only prophesies
Of triumphs more unheard of. These
Are shadows yet, but time will write thy name
In letters golden as the sun
That blazed upon the sight of those who came
To worship in the temple of the Delphic One.

THE FINAL STAGE.

Henry Hugh Brackenridge, a writer and politician. Born near Campbellton, Scotland, 1748; died, 1816. From his "Rising Glory of America," a commencement poem.

This is thy praise, America, thy power,
Thou best of climes by science visited,
By freedom blest, and richly stored with all
The luxuries of life! Hail, happy land,
The seat of empire, the abode of kings,
The final stage where time shall introduce
Renowned characters, and glorious works
Of high invention and of wondrous art,
Which not the ravages of time shall waste,
'Till he himself has run his long career!

BRIGHT'S BEATIFIC VISION.

The Right Honorable John Bright, the celebrated English orator and radical statesman. Born at Greenbank, Rochdale, Lancashire, November 16, 1811; died, March 27, 1889. From a speech delivered at Birmingham, England, 1862.

I have another and a far brighter vision before my gaze. It may be but a vision, but I will cherish it. I see one vast confederation stretching from the frozen North in unbroken line to the glowing South, and from the wild billows of the Atlantic westward to the calmer waters of the Pacific main; and I see one people and one language, and one faith and one law, and, over all that wide continent, the home of freedom, and a refuge for the oppressed of every race and every clime.

BROTHERS ACROSS THE SEA.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, one of the most gifted female poets. Born near Ledbury, Herefordshire, England, in 1807; died at Florence, Italy, in June, 1861.

I heard an angel speak last night,
And he said, "Write—
Write a nation's curse for me,
And send it over the western sea."
I faltered, taking up the word:
"Not so, my lord!
If curses must be, choose another
To send thy curse against my brother.
For I am bound by gratitude,
By love and blood,
To brothers of mine across the sea,
Who stretch out kindly hands to me."
"Therefore," the voice said, "shalt thou write
My curse to-night;
From the summits of love a curse is driven,
As lightning is from the tops of heaven."

THE GRANDEUR OF DESTINY.

William Cullen Bryant, an eminent American poet. Born at Cummington, Mass., November 3, 1794; died, June 12, 1878.

Oh, Mother of a mighty race,
Yet lovely in thy youthful grace!
The elder dames, thy haughty peers,
Admire and hate thy blooming years;
With words of shame
And taunts of scorn they join thy name.
They know not, in their hate and pride,
What virtues with thy children bide;
How true, how good, thy graceful maids
Make bright, like flowers, the valley shades;
What generous men
Spring, like thine oaks, by hill and glen;
What cordial welcomes greet the guest
By the lone rivers of the West;
How faith is kept, and truth revered,
And man is loved, and God is feared,
In woodland homes,
And where the solemn ocean foams.
Oh, fair young Mother! on thy brow
Shall sit a nobler grace than now.
Deep in the brightness of thy skies,
The thronging years in glory rise,
And, as they fleet,
Drop strength and riches at thy feet.

AMERICAN NATIONAL HASTE.

James Bryce, M. P. Born at Belfast, Ireland, May 10, 1838. Appointed Regius Professor of Civil Law to the University of Oxford, England, 1870. From his "American Commonwealth."

Americans seem to live in the future rather than in the present; not that they fail to work while it is called to-day, but that they see the country, not merely as it is, but as it will be twenty, fifty, a hundred years hence, when the seedlings shall have grown to forest trees. Time seems too brief for what they have to do, and result always to come short of their desire. One feels as if caught and whirled along in a foaming stream chafing against its banks, such is the passion of these men to accomplish in their own lifetimes what in the past it took centuries to effect. Sometimes, in a moment of pause—for even the visitor finds himself infected by the all-pervading eagerness—one is inclined to ask them: "Gentlemen, why in heaven's name this haste? You have time enough. No enemy threatens you. No volcano will rise from beneath you. Ages and ages lie before you. Why sacrifice the present to the future, fancying that you will be happier when your fields teem with wealth and your cities with people? In Europe we have cities wealthier and more populous than yours, and we are not happy. You dream of your posterity; but your posterity will look back to yours as the golden age, and envy those who first burst into this silent, splendid nature, who first lifted up their axes upon these tall trees, and lined these waters with busy wharves. Why, then, seek to complete in a few decades what the other nations of the world took thousands of years over in the older continents? Why do rudely and ill things which need to be done well, seeing that the welfare of your descendants may turn upon them? Why, in your hurry to subdue and utilize nature, squander her splendid gifts? Why allow the noxious weeds of Eastern politics to take root in your new soil, when by a little effort you might keep it pure? Why hasten the advent of that threatening day when the vacant spaces of the continent shall all have been filled, and the poverty or discontent of the older States shall find no outlet? You have opportunities such as mankind has never had before, and may never have again. Your work is great and noble; it is done for a future longer and vaster than our conceptions can embrace. Why not make its outlines and beginnings worthy of these destinies, the thought of which gilds your hopes and elevates your purposes?"

VIEW OF THE CONVENT OF SANTA MARIA DE LA RÁBIDA (HUELVA), SPAIN, WHERE COLUMBUS TOOK REFUGE. VIEW OF THE CONVENT OF SANTA MARIA DE LA RÁBIDA (HUELVA), SPAIN, WHERE COLUMBUS TOOK REFUGE.
This convent has been restored and preserved as a National Museum since 1846.
(See pages 17 and 275.)

AMERICA'S UNPRECEDENTED GROWTH.

Edmund Burke, an illustrious orator, statesman, and philanthropist. Born in Dublin, 1730; died, July 9, 1797. To Burke's eternal credit and renown be it said, that, had his advice and counsels been listened to, the causes which produced the American Revolution would have been removed.

I can not prevail on myself to hurry over this great consideration—the value of America to England. It is good for us to be here. We stand where we have an immense view of what is, and what is past. Clouds, indeed, and darkness, rest upon the future. Let us, however, before we descend from this noble eminence, reflect that this growth of our national prosperity has happened within the short period of the life of man. It has happened within sixty-eight years. There are those alive whose memory might touch the two extremities. For instance, my Lord Bathurst might remember all the stages of the progress. He was, in 1704, of an age, at least, to be made to comprehend such things. Suppose that the angel of this auspicious youth, foreseeing the many virtues which made him one of the most amiable, as he is one of the most fortunate, men of his age, had opened to him in vision, that when, in the fourth generation, the third prince of the house of Brunswick had sat twelve years on the throne of that nation, which by the happy issue of moderate and healing councils was to be made Great Britain, he should see his son, Lord Chancellor of England, turn back the current of hereditary dignity to its fountain, and raise him to a higher rank of peerage, whilst he enriched the family with a new one. If amidst these bright and happy scenes of domestic honor and prosperity that angel should have drawn up the curtain and unfolded the rising glories of his country; and, whilst he was gazing with admiration on the then commercial grandeur of England, the genius should point out to him a little speck, scarce visible in the mass of the national interest, a small seminal principle, rather than a formed body, and should tell him, "Young man, there is America, which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world. Whatever England has been growing to by a progressive increase of improvement, brought in by varieties of people, by succession of civilizing conquests and civilizing settlements in a series of 1,700 years, you shall see as much added to her by America in the course of a single life!" If this state of his country had been foretold to him, would it not have required all the sanguine credulity of youth, and all the fervid glow of enthusiasm, to make him believe it? Fortunate man, he has lived to see it! Fortunate, indeed, if he live to see nothing to vary the prospect, and cloud the setting of his day!

AMERICA THE CONTINENT OF THE FUTURE.

Emilio Castelar, one of Spain's most noted orators and statesmen. His masterly articles on Columbus in the Century Magazine alone would insure an international reputation. From a speech in the Spanish Cortes, 1871.

America, and especially Saxon America, with its immense virgin territories, with its republic, with its equilibrium between stability and progress, with its harmony between liberty and democracy, is the continent of the future—the immense continent stretched by God between the Atlantic and Pacific, where mankind may plant, essay, and resolve all social problems. Europe has to decide whether she will confound herself with Asia, placing upon her lands old altars, and upon the altars old idols, and upon the idols immovable theocracies, and upon the theocracies despotic empires; or whether she will go by labor, by liberty, and by the republic, to co-operate with America in the grand work of universal civilization.

NOBLE CONCEPTIONS.

William Ellery Channing, D. D., a distinguished American Unitarian divine, and one of the most eloquent writers America has produced. Born at Newport, R. I., April 7, 1780; died, October 2, 1842. From an address on "The Annexation of Texas to the United States."

When we look forward to the probable growth of this country; when we think of the millions of human beings who are to spread over our present territory; of the career of improvement and glory opened to this new people; of the impulse which free institutions, if prosperous, may be expected to give to philosophy, religion, science, literature, and arts; of the vast field in which the experiment is to be made; of what the unfettered powers of man may achieve; of the bright page of history which our fathers have filled, and of the advantages under which their toils and virtues have placed us for carrying on their work. When we think of all this, can we help, for a moment, surrendering ourselves to bright visions of our country's glory, before which all the glories of the past are to fade away? Is it presumption to say that if just to ourselves and all nations we shall be felt through this whole continent; that we shall spread our language, institutions, and civilization through a wider space than any nation has yet filled with a like beneficent influence? And are we prepared to barter these hopes, this sublime moral empire, for conquests by force? Are we prepared to sink to the level of unprincipled nations; to content ourselves with a vulgar, guilty greatness; to adopt in our youth maxims and ends which must brand our future with sordidness, oppression, and shame? Why can not we rise to noble conceptions of our destiny? Why do we not feel that our work as a nation is to carry freedom, religion, science, and a nobler form of human nature over this continent? And why do we not remember that to diffuse these blessings we must first cherish them in our own borders, and that whatever deeply and permanently corrupts us will make our spreading influence a curse, not a blessing, to this New World? It is a common idea in Europe that we are destined to spread an inferior civilization over North America; that our absorption in gain and outward interests mark us out as fated to fall behind the Old World in the higher improvements of human nature—in the philosophy, the refinements, the enthusiasm of literature and the arts, which throw a luster round other countries. I am not prophet enough to read our fate.

THE GRAND SCOPE OF THE COLUMBIAN CELEBRATION.

The Chicago Inter Ocean.

The Columbian Exposition should be an exhibition worthy of the fame of Columbus and of the great republic that has taken root in the New World, which the Genoese discoverer not only "to Castille and to Aragon gave," but to the struggling, the oppressed, the aspiring, and the resolute of all humanity in all its conditions.

AMERICAN NATIONALITY.

Rufus Choate,, the most eminent advocate of New England. Born at Essex, Mass., October 1, 1799; died at Halifax, N. S., July 13, 1858. From an Independence Day oration delivered in Boston.

But now there rises colossal the fine sweet spirit of nationality—the nationality of America. See there the pillar of fire which God has kindled, and lighted, and moved, for our hosts and our ages. 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 the world; your path, like hers, is on the highway of empires; your 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 traveler 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 promise 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, the 4th of July, 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 crown the work—were not all these imparted or inspired by this imperial sentiment.

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 account, what a measure of these it has enabled us already to fulfill! 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, and 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 our borders; 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.

THE LOVE OF COUNTRY.

There is a love of country which comes uncalled for, one knows not how. It comes in with the very air, the eye, the ear, the instinct, the first beatings of the heart. The faces of brothers and sisters, and the loved father and mother, the laugh of playmates, the old willow tree and well and school-house, the bees at work in the spring, the note of the robin at evening, the lullaby, the cows coming home, the singing-book, the visits of neighbors, the general training—all things which make childhood happy, begin it.

And then, as the age of the passions and the age of the reason draw on, and the love of home, and the sense of security and property under the law come to life, and as the story goes round, and as the book or the newspaper relates the less favored lot of other lands, and the public and private sense of the man is forming and formed, there is a type of patriotism already. Thus they have imbibed it who stood that charge at Concord, and they who hung on the deadly retreat, and they who threw up the hasty and imperfect redoubt at Bunker Hill by night, set on it the blood-red provincial flag, and passed so calmly with Prescott and Putnam and Warren through the experiences of the first fire.

To direct this spontaneous sentiment of hearts to our great Union, to raise it high, to make it broad and deep, to instruct it, to educate it, is in some things harder, and in some things easier; but it may be, it must be, done. Our country has her great names; she has her food for patriotism, for childhood, and for man.—Ibid.

THE UNITED STATES STEAMSHIP COLUMBIA.

An appropriate addition to the White Squadron of the United States navy was launched from the Cramps' ship-yard at Philadelphia, July 26, 1892, and was most appropriately christened the Columbia. The launch was in every way a success, and was witnessed by many thousand people, including Secretary Tracy, Vice-President Morton, and others prominent in the navy and in public life.

This new vessel is designed to be swifter than any other large war vessel now afloat, and she will have a capacity possessed by no other war vessel yet built, in that of being able to steam at a ten-knot speed 26,240 miles, or for 109 days, without recoaling. She also possesses many novel features, the principal of which is the application of triple screws. She is one of two of the most important ships designed for the United States navy, her sister ship, No. 13, now being built at the same yards.

The dimensions of the Columbia are: Length on mean load line, 412 feet; beam, 58 feet. Her normal draught will be 23 feet; displacement, 7,550 tons; maximum speed, 22 knots an hour; and she will have the enormous indicated horse-power of 20,000. As to speed, the contractor guarantees an average speed, in the open sea, under conditions prescribed by the Navy Department, of twenty-one knots an hour, maintained for four consecutive hours, during which period the air-pressure in the fire-room must be kept within a prescribed limit. For every quarter of a knot developed above the required guaranteed speed the contractor is to receive a premium of $50,000 over and above the contract price; and for each quarter of a knot that the vessel may fail of reaching the guaranteed speed there is to be deducted from the contract price the sum of $25,000. There seems to be no doubt among the naval experts that she will meet the conditions as to speed, and this is a great desideratum, since her chief function is to be to sweep the seas of an enemy's commerce. To do her work she must be able to overhaul, in an ocean race, the swiftest transatlantic passenger steamships afloat.

The triple-screw system is a most decided novelty. One of these screws will be placed amidships, or on the line of the keel, as in ordinary single-screw vessels, and the two others will be placed about fifteen feet farther forward and above, one on each side, as is usual in twin-screw vessels. The twin screws will diverge as they leave the hull, giving additional room for the uninterrupted motion upon solid water of all three simultaneously. There is one set of triple expansion engines for each screw independently, thus allowing numerous combinations of movements. For ordinary cruising the central screw alone will be used, giving a speed of about fourteen knots; with the two side-screws alone, a speed of seventeen knots can be maintained, and with all three screws at work, at full power, a high speed of from twenty to twenty-two knots can be got out of the vessel. This arrangement will allow the machinery to be worked at its most economical number of revolutions at all rates of the vessel's speed, and each engine can be used independently of the others in propelling the vessel. The full steam pressure will be 160 pounds. The shafting is made of forged steel, 16½ inches in diameter. In fact, steel has been used wherever possible, so as to secure the lightest, in weight, of machinery. There are ten boilers, six of which are double-ended—that is, with furnaces in each end—21¼ feet long and 15½ feet in diameter. Two others are 18¼ feet long and 11? feet in diameter, and the two others, single-ended, are 8 feet long and 10 feet in diameter. Eight of the largest boilers are set in watertight compartments.

In appearance the Columbia will closely resemble, when ready for sea, an ordinary merchantman, the sides being nearly free from projections or sponsons, which ordinarily appear on vessels of war. She will have two single masts, but neither of them will have a military top, such as is now provided upon ordinary war vessels. This plan of her merchantman appearance is to enable her to get within range of any vessel she may wish to encounter before her character or purpose is discovered. The vitals of the ship will be well protected with armor plating and the gun stations will be shielded against the firing of machine guns. Her machinery, boilers, magazines, etc., are protected by an armored deck four inches thick on the slope and 2½ inches thick on the flat. The space between this deck and the gun-deck is minutely subdivided with coal-bunkers and storerooms, and in addition to these a coffer-dam, five feet in width, is worked next to the ship's side for the whole length of the vessel. In the bunkers the space between the inner and outer skins of the vessel will be filled with woodite, thus forming a wall five feet thick against machine gun fire. This filling can also be utilized as fuel in an emergency. Forward and abaft of the coal bunkers the coffer-dam will be filled with some water-excluding substance similar to woodite. In the wake of the four-inch and the machine guns, the ship's side will be armored with four-inch and two-inch nickel steel plates.

The vessel will carry no big guns, for the reason that the uses for which she is intended will not require them. Not a gun will be in sight, and the battery will be abnormally light. There will be four six-inch breech-loading rifles, mounted in the open, and protected with heavy shields attached to the gun carriages; eight four-inch breech-loading rifles; twelve six-pounder, and four one-pounder rapid-firing guns; four machine or Gatling guns, and six torpedo-launching tubes. Besides these she has a ram bow. The Columbia is to be completed, ready for service, by May 19, 1893.

THE FIRST AMERICAN.

Eliza Cook, a popular English poetess. Born in Southwark, London, 1817.

Land of the West! though passing brief the record of thine age,
Thou hast a name that darkens all on history's wide page.
Let all the blasts of fame ring out—thine shall be loudest far;
Let others boast their satellites—thou hast the planet star.
Thou hast a name whose characters of light shall ne'er depart;
'Tis stamped upon the dullest brain, and warms the coldest heart;
A war-cry fit for any land where freedom's to be won:
Land of the West! it stands alone—it is thy Washington!

COLUMBIA THE MONUMENT OF COLUMBUS.

Kinahan Cornwallis. In "The Song of America and Columbus," 1892.

Queen of the Great Republic of the West,
With shining stars and stripes upon thy breast,
The emblems of our land of liberty,
Thou namesake of Columbus—hail to thee!

---

No fitter queen could now Columbus crown,
Or voice to all the world his great renown.
His fame in thee personified we see—
The sequel of his grand discovery;
Yea, here, in thee, his monument behold.
Whose splendor dims his golden dreams of old.
And standing by Chicago's inland sea,
The nations of the earth will vie with thee
In twining laurel wreaths for him of yore
Who found the New World in San Salvador.

---

Columbia! to Columbus give thy hand.
And, as ye on a sea of glory stand,
The world will read anew the story grand
Of thee, Columbia, and Columbus, too—
The matchless epic of the Old and New—
The tale that grows more splendid with the years—
The pride and wonder of the hemispheres.
In vast magnificence it stands alone,
With thee—Columbus greeting—on thy throne.

AMERICAN IDEA.

The Hon. Shelby M. Cullom, U. S. Senator from Illinois. In a speech delivered in Chicago, 1892.

From the altitude of now, from this zenith of history, look out upon the world. Behold! the American idea is everywhere prominent. The world itself is preparing to take an American holiday. The wise men, not only of the Orient, but everywhere, are girding up their loins, and will follow the star of empire until it rests above this city of Chicago—this civic Hercules; this miracle of accomplishment; the throbbing heart of all the teeming life and activity of our American commonwealth. The people of the world are soon to receive an object lesson in the stupendous kindergarten we are instituting for their benefit. Even Chile will be here, and will learn, I trust, something of Christian forbearance and good-fellowship.

Now, is it possible that monarchy, plutarchy, or any other archy, can long withstand this curriculum of instruction? No! I repeat, the American idea is everywhere triumphant. England is a monarchy, to be sure, but only out of compliment to an impotent and aged Queen. The Czar of Russia clings to his throne. It is a hen-coop in the mÄelstrom! The crumbling monarchies of the earth are held together only by the force of arms. Standing armies are encamped without each city. The sword and bayonet threaten and retard, but the seeds of liberty have been caught up by the winds of heaven and scattered broadcast throughout the earth. Tyranny's doom is sounded! The people's millennium is at hand! And this—this, under God, is the mission of America.

YOUNG AMERICA.

George William Curtis, a popular American author and lecturer. Born at Providence, R. I., February 24, 1824; died at West Brighton, Staten Island, N. Y., August 31, 1892.

I know the flower in your hand fades while you look at it. The dream that allures you glimmers and is gone. But flower and dream, like youth itself, are buds and prophecies. For where, without the perfumed blossoming of the spring orchards all over the hills and among all the valleys of New England and New York, would the happy harvests of New York and New England be? And where, without the dreams of the young men lighting the future with human possibility, would be the deeds of the old men, dignifying the past with human achievement? How deeply does it become us to believe this, who are not only young ourselves, but living with the youth of the youngest nation in history. I congratulate you that you are young; I congratulate you that you are Americans. Like you, that country is in its flower, not yet in its fruit, and that flower is subject to a thousand chances before the fruit is set. Worms may destroy it, frosts may wither it, fires may blight it, gusts may whirl it away; but how gorgeously it still hangs blossoming in the garden of time, while its penetrating perfume floats all round the world, and intoxicates all other nations with the hope of liberty.

Knowing that the life of every nation, as of each individual, is a battle, let us remember, also, that the battle is to those who fight with faith and undespairing devotion. Knowing that nothing is worth fighting for at all unless God reigns, let us, at least, believe as much in the goodness of God as we do in the dexterity of the devil. And, viewing this prodigious spectacle of our country—this hope of humanity, this young America, our America—taking the sun full in its front, and making for the future as boldly and blithely as the young David for Goliath, let us believe with all our hearts, and from that faith shall spring the fact that David, and not Goliath, is to win the day; and that, out of the high-hearted dreams of wise and good men about our country, Time, however invisibly and inscrutably, is, at this moment, slowly hewing the most colossal and resplendent result in history.

A HIDDEN WORLD.

Olive E. Dana, an American journalist. In the New England Journal.

The hidden world lies in the hand of God,
Waiting, like seed, to fall on the sod;
Tranquil its lakes were, and lovely its shores,
While idly each stream o'er the fretting rocks pours.
Its forests are fair and its mines fathomless,
Grand are its mountains in their loftiness;
Its fields wait the plow, and its harbors the ships,
No sail down the blue of the water-way slips.
God keeps in his palm, through centuries dim,
This hid, idle seed. It belongeth to him.
Away in a corner, where God only knows,
The seed when he plants it quickens and grows.
The pale buds unfold as the nations pass by,
The fragrance is grateful, the blooms multiply,
But it is blossom time, this what we see;
Who knows what the fullness of harvest will be.

COLUMBIA THE QUEEN OF THE WORLD.

Timothy Dwight, an American divine and scholar. Born at Northampton, Mass., May 14, 1752; died at New Haven, Conn., January 11, 1817.

Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise,
The queen of the world and the child of the skies.

A DEFINITION OF PATRIOTISM.

T. M. Eddy, an eloquent speaker and profound scholar. Born, 1823; died, 1874. From an oration delivered on Independence Day.

Patriotism is the love of country. It has ever been recognized among the cardinal virtues of true men, and he who was destitute of it has been considered an ingrate. Even among the icy desolations of the far north we expect to find, and do find, an ardent affection for the land of nativity, the home of childhood, youth, and age. There is much in our country to create and foster this sentiment. It is a country of imperial dimensions, reaching from sea to sea, and almost "from the rivers to the ends of the earth." None of the empires of old could compare with it in this regard. It is washed by two great oceans, while its lakes are vast inland seas. Its rivers are silver lines of beauty and commerce. Its grand mountain chains are the links of God's forging and welding, binding together North and South, East and West. It is a land of glorious memories. It was peopled by the picked men of Europe, who came hither, "not for wrath, but conscience' sake." Said the younger Winthrop to his father, "I shall call that my country where I may most glorify God and enjoy the presence of my dearest friends." And so came godly men and devoted women, flying from oppressive statutes, where they might find

Freedom to worship God.

There are spots on the sun, and the microscope reveals flaws in burnished steel, and so there were spots and flaws in the character of the early founders of this land; but with them all, our colonial history is one that stirs the blood and quickens the pulse of him who reads. It is the land of the free school, the free press, and the free pulpit. It is impossible to compute the power of this trio. The free schools, open to rich and poor, bind together the people in educational bonds, and in the common memories of the recitation-room and the playground; and how strong they are, you, reader, well know, as some past recollection tugs at your heart-strings. The free press may not always be altogether as dignified or elevated as the more highly cultivated may desire, but it is ever open to complaints of the people; is ever watchful of popular rights and jealous of class encroachments, and the highest in authority know that it is above President or Senate. The free pulpit, sustained not by legally exacted tithes wrung from an unwilling people, but by the free-will offerings of loving supporters, gathers about it the millions, inculcates the highest morality, points to brighter worlds, and when occasion demands will not be silent before political wrongs. Its power, simply as an educating agency, can scarcely be estimated. In this country its freedom gives a competition so vigorous that it must remain in direct popular sympathy. How strong it is, the country saw when its voice was lifted in the old cry, "Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft." Its words started the slumbering, roused the careless, and called the "sacramental host," as well as the "men of the world, to arms." These three grand agencies are not rival, but supplementary, each doing an essential work in public culture.

THE SHIP OF COLUMBUS—THE SANTA MARIA CARAVEL. THE SHIP OF COLUMBUS—THE SANTA MARIA CARAVEL. (See pages 94, 216, and 282.)

AMERICA—OPPORTUNITY.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, a noted American essayist, poet, and speculative philosopher. Born in Boston, Mass., May 25, 1803; died, April 27, 1882.

America is another name for opportunity.

THE SEQUEL OF THE DISCOVERY.

There is a Columbia of thought and art and character which is the last and endless sequel of Columbus' adventure.—Ibid.

YOUNG AMERICA.

Alexander Hill Everett, an American scholar and diplomatist. Born in Boston, Mass., 1792; died at Canton, China, May, 1847.

Scion of a mighty stock!
Hands of iron—hearts of oak—
Follow with unflinching tread
Where the noble fathers led.
Craft and subtle treachery,
Gallant youth, are not for thee;
Follow thou in words and deeds
Where the God within thee leads.
Honesty, with steady eye,
Truth and pure simplicity,
Love, that gently winneth hearts,
These shall be thy holy arts.
Prudent in the council train,
Dauntless on the battle plain,
Ready at thy country's need
For her glorious cause to bleed.
Where the dews of night distill
Upon Vernon's holy hill,
Where above it gleaming far
Freedom lights her guiding star,
Thither turn the steady eye,
Flashing with a purpose high;
Thither, with devotion meet,
Often turn the pilgrim feet.
Let the noble motto be:
God—the country—liberty!
Planted on religion's rock,
Thou shalt stand in every shock.
Laugh at danger, far or near;
Spurn at baseness, spurn at fear.
Still, with persevering might,
Speak the truth, and do the right.
So shall peace, a charming guest,
Dove-like in thy bosom rest;
So shall honor's steady blaze
Beam upon thy closing days.

RESPONSIBILITY.

The eyes of Europe are upon us; the monarch, from his throne, watches us with an angry countenance; the peasant turns his gaze on us with joyful faith; the writers on politics quote our condition as a proof of the possibility of popular government; the heroes of freedom animate their followers by reminding them of our success. At no moment of the last half century has it been so important that we should send up a clear and strong light which may be seen across the Atlantic. An awful charge of unfaithfulness to the interests of mankind will be recorded against us if we suffer this light to be obscured by the mingling vapors of passion and misrule and sin. But not Europe alone will be influenced by the character we give to our destiny. The republics of the South have no other guide toward the establishment of order and freedom than our example. If this should fail them, the last stay would be torn from their hope. We are placed under a most solemn obligation, to keep before them this motive to perseverance in their endeavors to place free institutions on a sure basis. Shall we leave those wide regions to despair and anarchy? Better that they had patiently borne a foreign yoke, though it bowed their necks to the ground.

Citizens of the United States, it has been said of us, with truth, that we are at the head of the popular party of the world. Shall we be ashamed of so glorious a rank? or shall we basely desert our place and throw away our distinction? Forbid it! self-respect, patriotism, philanthropy. Christians, we believe that God has made us a name and a praise among the nations. We believe that our religion yields its best fruit in a free land. Shall we be regardless of our duty as creatures of the Divine Power and recipients of His goodness? Shall we be indifferent to the effects which our religion may work in the world? Forbid it! our gratitude, our faith, our piety. In one way only can we discharge our duty to the rest of mankind—by the purity and elevation of character that shall distinguish us as a people. If we sink into luxury, vice, or moral apathy, our brightness will be lost, our prosperity deprived of its vital element, and we shall appear disgraced before man, guilty before God.

ATLANTIC AND PACIFIC.

The Atlantic is still the great historic sea. Even in its sunken wrecks might be read the record of modern nations. Who shall say that the Pacific will not yet become the great historic sea of the future—the vast amphitheater around which shall sit in majesty and power the two Americas, Asia, Africa, and the chief colonies of Europe. God forbid that the waters of our national life should ever settle to the dead level of a waveless calm. It would be the stagnation of death, the ocean grave of individual liberty.

GREATEST CONTINUOUS EMPIRE.

There is no parallel in all the records of the world to the case of that prolific British mother who has sent forth her innumerable children over all the earth to be the founders of half-a-dozen empires. She, with her progeny, may almost claim to constitute a kind of universal church in politics. But among these children there is one whose place in the world's eye and in history is superlative; it is the American Republic. She is the eldest born. She has, taking the capacity of her land into view as well as its mere measurement, a natural base for the greatest continuous empire ever established by man. And it may be well here to mention what has not always been sufficiently observed, that the distinction between continuous empire, and empire severed and dispersed over sea is vital. The development which the Republic has effected has been unexampled in its rapidity and force. While other countries have doubled, or at most trebled, their population, she has risen during one single century of freedom, in round numbers, from two millions to forty-five. As to riches, it is reasonable to establish, from the decennial stages of the progress thus far achieved, a series for the future; and, reckoning upon this basis, I suppose that the very next census, in the year 1880, will exhibit her to the world as certainly the wealthiest of all the nations. The huge figure of a thousand millions sterling, which may be taken roundly as the annual income of the United Kingdom, has been reached at a surprising rate; a rate which may perhaps be best expressed by saying that, if we could have started forty or fifty years ago from zero, at the rate of our recent annual increment, we should now have reached our present position. But while we have been advancing with this portentous rapidity, America is passing us by as if in a canter. Yet even now the work of searching the soil and the bowels of the territory, and opening out her enterprise throughout its vast expanse, is in its infancy. The England and the America of the present are probably the two strongest nations of the world. But there can hardly be a doubt, as between the America and the England of the future, that the daughter, at some no very distant time, will, whether fairer or less fair, be unquestionably yet stronger than the mother.

TYPICAL AMERICAN.

With the Cavalier once established as a fact in your charming little books, I shall let him work out his own stratum, as he has always done, with engaging gallantry, and we will hold no controversy as to his merits. Why should we? Neither Puritan nor Cavalier long survived as such. The virtues and traditions of both happily still live for the inspiration of their sons and the saving of the old fashion. But both Puritan and Cavalier were lost in the storm of their first revolution, and the American citizen, supplanting both, and stronger than either, took possession of the republic bought by their common blood and fashioned to wisdom, and charged himself with teaching men government and establishing the voice of the people as the voice of God. Great types, like valuable plants, are slow to flower and fruit. But from the union of these colonists, from the straightening of their purposes and the crossing of their blood, slow perfecting through a century, came he who stands as the first typical American, the first who comprehended within himself all the strength and gentleness, all the majesty and grace of this Republic—Abraham Lincoln. He was the sum of Puritan and Cavalier, for in his ardent nature were fused the virtues of both, and in the depths of his great soul the faults of both were lost. He was greater than Puritan, greater than Cavalier, in that he was American, and that in his homely form were first gathered the vast and thrilling forces of this ideal government—charging it with such tremendous meaning and so elevating it above human suffering that martyrdom, though infamously aimed, came as a fitting crown to a life consecrated from the cradle to human liberty. Let us, each cherishing his traditions and honoring his fathers, build with reverent hands to the type of this simple but sublime life, in which all types are honored, and in the common glory we shall win as Americans there will be plenty and to spare for your forefathers and for mine.

GRATITUDE AND PRIDE.

Fellow-citizens: This fresh, delightful morning, this vast assemblage of contented and happy people, this building, dedicated to the uses of civil government—all things about us tend to inspire our hearts with pride and with gratitude. Gratitude to that overruling Providence that turned hither, after the discovery of this continent, the steps of those who had the capacity to organize a free representative government. Gratitude to that Providence that has increased the feeble colonies on an inhospitable coast to these millions of prosperous people, who have found another sea and populated its sunny shores with a happy and growing people.

Gratitude to that Providence that led us through civil strife to a glory and a perfection of unity as a people that was otherwise impossible. Gratitude that we have to-day a Union of free States without a slave to stand as a reproach to that immortal declaration upon which our Government rests.

Pride that our people have achieved so much; that, triumphing over all the hardships of those early pioneers, who struggled in the face of discouragement and difficulties more appalling than those that met Columbus when he turned the prows of his little vessels toward an unknown shore; that, triumphing over perils of starvation, perils of savages, perils of sickness, here on the sunny slope of the Pacific they have established civil institutions and set up the banner of the imperishable Union.

NATURE SUPERIOR.

In both the northern and southern hemispheres of the New World, nature has not only outlined her works on a larger scale, but has painted the whole picture with brighter and more costly colors than she used in delineating and in beautifying the Old World. The heavens of America appear infinitely higher, the sky is bluer, the air is fresher, the cold is intenser, the moon looks larger, the stars are brighter, the thunder is louder, the lightning is vivider, the wind is stronger, the rain is heavier, the mountains are higher, the rivers longer, the forests bigger, the plains broader.

AMERICA'S WELCOME.

Cast your eyes over this extensive country; observe the salubrity of your climate, the variety and fertility of your soil, and see that soil intersected in every quarter by bold, navigable streams, flowing to the east and to the west, as if the finger of Heaven were marking out the course of your settlements, inviting you to enterprise, and pointing the way to wealth. You are destined, at some time or other, to become a great agricultural and commercial people; the only question is, whether you choose to reach this point by slow gradations, and at some distant period; lingering on through a long and sickly minority; subjected, meanwhile, to the machinations, insults, and oppressions, of enemies, foreign and domestic, without sufficient strength to resist and chastise them; or whether you choose rather to rush at once, as it were, to the full enjoyment of those high destinies, and be able to cope, single-handed, with the proudest oppressor of the Old World. If you prefer the latter course, as I trust you do, encourage immigration; encourage the husbandmen, the mechanics, the merchants, of the Old World to come and settle in this land of promise; make it the home of the skillful, the industrious, the fortunate, and happy, as well as the asylum of the distressed; fill up the measure of your population as speedily as you can, by the means which Heaven hath placed in your power; and I venture to prophesy there are those now living who will see this favored land amongst the most powerful on earth; able to take care of herself, without resorting to that policy, which is always so dangerous, though sometimes unavoidable, of calling in foreign aid. Yes, they will see her great in arts and in arms; her golden harvests waving over fields of immeasurable extent; her commerce penetrating the most distant seas, and her cannon silencing the vain boasts of those who now proudly affect to rule the waves.

But you must have men; you can not get along without them; those heavy forests of valuable timber, under which your lands are growing, must be cleared away; those vast riches which cover the face of your soil, as well as those which lie hid in its bosom, are to be developed and gathered only by the skill and enterprise of men. Do you ask how you are to get them? Open your doors, and they will come in; the population of the Old World is full to overflowing; that population is ground, too, by the oppressions of the governments under which they live. They are already standing on tiptoe upon their native shores, and looking to your coasts with a wishful and longing eye; they see here a land blessed with natural and political advantages which are not equaled by those of any other country upon earth; a land on which a gracious Providence hath emptied the horn of abundance; a land over which peace hath now stretched forth her white wings, and where content and plenty lie down at every door. They see something still more attractive than all this; they see a land in which liberty hath taken up her abode; that liberty whom they had considered as a fabled goddess, existing only in the fancies of poets; they see her here a real divinity, her altars rising on every hand throughout these happy States, her glories chanted by three millions of tongues, and the whole region smiling under her blessed influence. Let but this our celestial goddess, Liberty, stretch forth her fair hand toward the people of the Old World, tell them to come, and bid them welcome, and you will see them pouring in from the north, from the south, from the east, and from the west; your wildernesses will be cleared and settled, your deserts will smile, your ranks will be filled, and you will soon be in a condition to defy the powers of any adversary.

OUR GREAT TRUST.

Our Rome can not fall, and we be innocent. No conqueror will chain us to the car of his triumph; no countless swarm of Huns and Goths will bury the memorials and trophies of civilized life beneath a living tide of barbarism. Our own selfishness, our own neglect, our own passions, and our own vices will furnish the elements of our destruction. With our own hands we shall tear down the stately edifice of our glory. We shall die by self-inflicted wounds.

But we will not talk of themes like these. We will not think of failure, dishonor, and despair. We will elevate our minds to the contemplation of our high duties and the great trust committed to us. We will resolve to lay the foundations of our prosperity on that rock of private virtue which can not be shaken until the laws of the moral world are reversed. From our own breasts shall flow the salient springs of national increase. Then our success, our happiness, our glory, will be as inevitable as the inferences of mathematics. We may calmly smile at all the croakings of all the ravens, whether of native or foreign breed.

The whole will not grow weak by the increase of its parts. Our growth will be like that of the mountain oak, which strikes its roots more deeply into the soil, and clings to it with a closer grasp, as its lofty head is exalted and its broad arms stretched out. The loud burst of joy and gratitude which, on this, the anniversary of our independence, is breaking from the full hearts of a mighty people, will never cease to be heard. No chasms of sullen silence will interrupt its course; no discordant notes of sectional madness mar the general harmony. Year after year will increase it by tributes from now unpeopled solitudes. The farthest West shall hear it and rejoice; the Oregon shall swell it with the voice of its waters; the Rocky Mountains shall fling back the glad sound from their snowy crests.

ON FREEDOM'S GENEROUS SOIL.

America is the only place where man is full-grown.

NATIONAL HERITAGE.

Suppose that the continent could turn toward you to-morrow at sunrise, and show to you the whole American area in the short hours of the sun's advance from Eastport to the Pacific. You would see New England roll into light from the green plumes of Aroostook to the silver stripe of the Hudson; westward thence over the Empire State, and over the lakes, and over the sweet valleys of Pennsylvania, and over the prairies, the morning blush would run and would waken all the line of the Mississippi; from the frosts where it rises to the fervid waters in which it pours, for 3,000 miles it would be visible, fed by rivers that flow from every mile of the Alleghany slope, and edged by the green embroideries of the temperate and tropic zones; beyond this line another basin, too—the Missouri—catching the morning, leads your eye along its western slope till the Rocky Mountains burst upon the vision, and yet do not bar it; across its passes we must follow, as the stubborn courage of American pioneers has forced its way, till again the Sierras and their silver veins are tinted along the mighty bulwark with the break of day; and then over to the gold fields of the western slope, and the fatness of the California soil, and the beautiful valleys of Oregon, and the stately forests of Washington, the eye is drawn, as the globe turns out of the night shadow; and when the Pacific waves are crested with radiance, you have the one blending picture—nay, the reality—of the American domain. No such soil—so varied by climate, by products, by mineral riches, by forest and lake, by wild heights and buttresses, and by opulent plains, yet all bound into unity of configuration and bordered by both warm and icy seas—no such domain, was ever given to one people.

And then suppose that you could see in a picture as vast and vivid the preparation for our inheritance of this land. Columbus, haunted by his round idea, and setting sail in a sloop, to see Europe sink behind him, while he was serene in the faith of his dream; the later navigators of every prominent Christian race who explored the upper coasts; the Mayflower, with her cargo of sifted acorns from the hardy stock of British puritanism, and the ship, whose name we know not, that bore to Virginia the ancestors of Washington; the clearing of the wilderness, and the dotting of its clearings with the proofs of manly wisdom and Christian trust; then the gradual interblending of effort and interest and sympathy into one life—the congress of the whole Atlantic slope—to resist oppression upon one member; the rally of every State around Washington and his holy sword, and again the nobler rally around him when he signed the Constitution, and after that the organization of the farthest West with North and South, into one polity and communion; when this was finished, the tremendous energy of free life, under the stimulus and with the aid of advancing science, in increasing wealth, subduing the wilds to the bonds of use, multiplying fertile fields and busy schools and noble work-shops and churches, hallowed by free-will offerings of prayer; and happy homes, and domes dedicated to the laws of States that rise by magic from the haunts of the buffalo and deer, all in less than a long lifetime; and if we could see also how, in achieving this, the flag which represents all this history is dyed in traditions of exploits, by land and sea, that have given heroes to American annals whose names are potent to conjure with, while the world's list of thinkers in matter is crowded with the names of American inventors, and the higher rolls of literary merit are not empty of the title of our "representative men"; if all that the past has done for us, and the present reveals, could thus stand apparent in one picture, and then if the promise of the future to the children of our millions under our common law, and with continental peace, could be caught in one vast spectral exhibition—the wealth in store, the power, the privilege, the freedom, the learning, the expansive and varied and mighty unity in fellowship, almost fulfilling the poet's dream of "the parliament of man, the federation of the world"—you would exclaim with exultation, "I, too, am an American!" You would feel that patriotism, next to your tie to the Divine Love, is the greatest privilege of your life; and you would devote yourselves, out of inspiration and joy, to the obligations of patriotism, that this land, so spread, so adorned, so colonized, so blessed, should be kept forever against all the assaults of traitors, one in polity, in spirit, and in aim.

SIFTED WHEAT.

God hath sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat for this planting.

CENTER OF CIVILIZATION.

It is too late to disparage America. Accustomed to look with wonder on the civilization of the past, upon the unblest glories of Greece and of Rome, upon mighty empires that have risen but to fall, the English mind has never fixed itself on the grand phenomenon of a great nation at school. Viewing America as a forward child that has deserted its home and abjured its parent, we have ever looked upon her with a callous heart and with an evil eye, judicially blind to her progress.

But how she has gone on developing the resources of a region teeming with vegetable life. How she has intrenched herself amid noble institutions, with temples enshrined in religious toleration, with universities of private bequest and public organization, with national and unshackled schools, and with all the improvements which science, literature, and philanthropy demand from the citizen or from the state.

Supplied from the Old World with its superabundant life, the Anglo-Saxon tide has been carrying its multiplied population to the West, rushing onward through impervious forests, leveling their lofty pines and converting the wilderness into abodes of populous plenty, intelligence, and taste. Nor is this living flood the destroying scourge which Providence sometimes lets loose upon our species. It breathes in accents which are our own; it is instinct with English life; and it bears on its snowy crest the auroral light of the East, to gild the darkness of the West with the purple radiance of salvation, of knowledge, and of peace.

Her empire of coal, her kingdom of cotton and of corn, her regions of gold and of iron, mark out America as the center of civilization, as the emporium of the world's commerce, as the granary and storehouse out of which the kingdoms of the East will be clothed and fed; and, we greatly fear, as the asylum in which our children will take refuge when the hordes of Asia and the semi-barbarians of Eastern Europe shall again darken and desolate the West.

Though dauntless in her mien, and colossal in her strength, she displays upon her banner the star of peace, shedding its radiance upon us. Let us reciprocate the celestial light, and, strong and peaceful ourselves, we shall have nothing to fear from her power, but everything to learn from her example.

A YOUTHFUL LAND.

England may as well dam up the waters of the Nile with bulrushes as to fetter the step of Freedom, more proud and firm in this youthful land than where she treads the sequestered glens of Scotland or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of Switzerland. We plunged into the wave with the great charter of freedom in our teeth because the faggot and torch were behind us. We have waked this new world from its savage lethargy; forests have been prostrated in our path, towns and cities have grown up suddenly as the flowers of the tropics, and the fires in our autumnal woods are scarcely more rapid than the increase of our wealth and population.

THE COLUMBIAN CHORUS.

Prof. John Knowles Paine of Harvard University has completed the music of his Columbian march and chorus, to be performed on the occasion of the dedication of the Exposition buildings, October 21, 1892, to write which he was especially commissioned by the Exposition management. Prof. Paine has provided these original words for the choral ending of his composition:

All hail and welcome, nations of the earth!
Columbia's greeting comes from every State.
Proclaim to all mankind the world's new birth
Of freedom, age on age shall consecrate.
Let war and enmity forever cease,
Let glorious art and commerce banish wrong;
The universal brotherhood of peace
Shall be Columbia's high inspiring song.

SOVEREIGN OF THE ASCENDANT.

Search creation round, where can you find a country that presents so sublime a view, so interesting an anticipation? Who shall say for what purpose mysterious Providence may not have designed her? Who shall say that when in its follies, or its crimes, the Old World may have buried all the pride of its power, and all the pomp of its civilization, human nature may not find its destined renovation in the New! When its temples and its trophies shall have moldered into dust; when the glories of its name shall be but the legend of tradition, and the light of its achievements live only in song, philosophy will revive again in the sky of her Franklin, and glory rekindle at the urn of her Washington.

Is this the vision of romantic fancy? Is it even improbable? I appeal to History! Tell me, thou reverend chronicler of the grave, can all the illusions of ambition realized, can all the wealth of a universal commerce, can all the achievements of successful heroism, or all the establishments of this world's wisdom secure to empire the permanency of its possessions? Alas, Troy thought so once; yet the land of Priam lives only in song. Thebes thought so once; yet her hundred gates have crumbled, and her very tombs are but as the dust they were vainly intended to commemorate. So thought Palmyra; where is she? So thought the countries of Demosthenes and the Spartan; yet Leonidas is trampled by the timid slave, and Athens insulted by the servile, mindless, and enervate Ottoman. In his hurried march, Time has but looked at their imagined immortality, and all its vanities, from the palace to the tomb, have, with their ruins, erased the very impression of his footsteps. The days of their glory are as if they had never been; and the island that was then a speck, rude and neglected, in the barren ocean, now rivals the ubiquity of their commerce, the glory of their arms, the fame of their philosophy, the eloquence of their senate, and the inspiration of their bards. Who shall say, then, contemplating the past, that England, proud and potent as she appears, may not one day be what Athens is, and the young America yet soar to be what Athens was. Who shall say, when the European column shall have moldered, and the night of barbarism obscured its very ruins, that that mighty continent may not emerge from the horizon, to rule, for its time, sovereign of the ascendant.

LAND OF LIBERTY.

The Carpathian Mountains may shelter tyrants. The slopes of Germany may bear up a race more familiar with the Greek text than the Greek phalanx. For aught I know, the wave of Russian rule may sweep so far westward as to fill once more with miniature despots the robber castles of the Rhine. But of this I am sure: God piled the Rocky Mountains as the ramparts of freedom. He scooped the Valley of the Mississippi as the cradle of free States. He poured Niagara as the anthem of free men.

THE SHIP COLUMBIA.

Few ships, if any, in our merchant marine, since the organization of the republic, have acquired such distinction as the Columbia.

By two noteworthy achievements, 100 years ago, she attracted the attention of the commercial world and rendered a service to the United States unparalleled in our history. She was the first American vessel to carry the stars and stripes around the globe; and, by her discovery of "the great river of the West" to which her name was given, she furnished us with the title to our possession of that magnificent domain which to-day is represented by the flourishing young States of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho.

The famous ship was well-known and much talked about at the time, but her records have mostly disappeared, and there is very little knowledge at present concerning her.

COLUMBIA'S EMBLEM.

The rose may bloom for England,
The lily for France unfold;
Ireland may honor the shamrock,
Scotland her thistle bold;
But the shield of the great Republic,
The glory of the West,
Shall bear a stalk of the tasseled corn—
Of all our wealth the best.
The arbutus and the golden-rod
The heart of the North may cheer;
And the mountain laurel for Maryland
Its royal clusters rear;
And jasmine and magnolia
The crest of the South adorn;
But the wide Republic's emblem
Is the bounteous, golden corn!

EAST AND WEST.

Leave the tears to the maiden, the fears to the child, While the future stands beckoning afar in the wild; For there Freedom, more fair, walks the primeval land, Where the wild deer all court the caress of her hand. There the deep forests fall, and the old shadows fly, And the palace and temple leap into the sky. Oh, the East holds no place where the onward can rest, And alone there is room in the land of the West!

THE PRIMITIVE PITCH.

The best thing we can do for the world is to take care of America. Keep our country up to the primitive pitch. In front of my old home, in another city, is the largest elm in the county. It never talked, it never went about doing good. It stood there and made shade for an acre of children, and a shelter for all the birds that came. It stood there and preached strength in the air by wide-flung branches, and strength in the earth by as many and as long roots as limbs. It stood, one fearful night, the charge of a cyclone, and was serene in the March morning. It proclaimed what an elm could be. It set tree-planters to planting elms. So America preaches, man capable of self-government; preaches over the sea, a republic is safer than any kingdom. Men have outgrown kings. We shall remember Walt Whitman, if only for a line, "O America! we build for you because you build for the world."

MORAL PROGRESS.

A kind of reverence is paid by all nations to antiquity. There is no one that does not trace its lineage from the gods, or from those who were especially favored by the gods. Every people has had its age of gold, or Augustine age, or historic age—an age, alas! forever passed. These prejudices are not altogether unwholesome. Although they produce a conviction of declining virtue, which is unfavorable to generous emulation, yet a people at once ignorant and irreverential would necessarily become licentious. Nevertheless, such prejudices ought to be modified. It is untrue that in the period of a nation's rise from disorder to refinement it is not able to continually surpass itself. We see the present, plainly, distinctly, with all its coarse outlines, its rough inequalities, its dark blots, and its glaring deformities. We hear all its tumultuous sounds and jarring discords. We see and hear the past through a distance which reduces all its inequalities to a plane, mellows all its shades into a pleasing hue, and subdues even its hoarsest voices into harmony. In our own case, the prejudice is less erroneous than in most others. The Revolutionary age was truly a heroic one. Its exigencies called forth the genius, and the talents, and the virtues of society, and they ripened amid the hardships of a long and severe trial. But there were selfishness and vice and factions then as now, although comparatively subdued and repressed. You have only to consult impartial history to learn that neither public faith, nor public loyalty, nor private virtue, culminated at that period in our own country; while a mere glance at the literature, or at the stage, or at the politics of any European country, in any previous age, reveals the fact that it was marked, more distinctly than the present, by licentious morals and mean ambition. It is only just to infer in favor of the United States an improvement of morals from their established progress in knowledge and power; otherwise, the philosophy of society is misunderstood, and we must change all our courses, and henceforth seek safety in imbecility, and virtue in superstition and ignorance.

A PROPHETIC UTTERANCE OF COLONIAL DAYS.

Lift up your heads, O ye Gates of Columbia, and be ye lift up, ye Everlasting Doors, and the King of Glory shall come in.

NATIONAL INFLUENCE.

When we reflect on what has been, and is, how is it possible not to feel a profound sense of the responsibilities of this Republic to all future ages? What vast motives press upon us for lofty efforts! What brilliant prospects invite our enthusiasm! What solemn warnings at once demand our vigilance and moderate our confidence! We stand, the latest, and, if we fail, probably the last, experiment of self-government by the people. We have begun it under circumstances of the most auspicious nature. We are in the vigor of youth. Our growth has never been checked by the oppressions of tyranny. Our constitutions have never been enfeebled by the vices or luxuries of the Old World. Such as we are, we have been from the beginning—simple, hardy, intelligent, accustomed to self-government and self-respect. The Atlantic rolls between us and any formidable foe. Within our own territory, stretching through many degrees of latitude and longitude, we have the choice of many products and many means of independence. The government is mild. The press is free. Religion is free. Knowledge reaches, or may reach, every home. What fairer prospect of success could be presented? What means more adequate to accomplish the sublime end? What more is necessary than for the people to preserve what they themselves have created? Already has the age caught the spirit of our institutions. It has already ascended the Andes, and snuffed the breezes of both oceans. It has infused itself into the life-blood of Europe, and warmed the sunny plains of France and the lowlands of Holland. It has touched the philosophy of Germany and the north, and, moving to the south, has opened to Greece the lessons of her better days.

AN ELECT NATION.

God sifted a whole nation that he might send choice grain over into this wilderness.

THE NAME "AMERICA."

The name America comes from amalric, or emmerich, an old German word spread through Europe by the Goths, and softened in Latin to Americus, and in Italian to Amerigo. It was first applied to Brazil. Americus Vespucius, the son of a wealthy Florentine notary, made several voyages to the New World, a few years later than Columbus, and gave spirited accounts of his discoveries. About the year 1507, Hylacomylus, of the college at St. DiÉ, in the Vosges Mountains, brought out a book on cosmography, in which he said, "Now, truly, as these regions are more widely explored, and another fourth part is discovered, by Americus Vespucius, I see no reason why it should not be justly called Amerigen; that is, the land of Americus, or America, from Americus, its discoverer, a man of a subtle intellect." Hylacomylus invented the name America, and, as there was no other title for the New World, this came gradually into general use. It does not appear that Vespucius was a party to this almost accidental transaction, which has made him a monument of a hemisphere.

THE COLUMBINE AS THE EXPOSITION FLOWER.

It is most appropriate in name, color, and form. Its name is suggestive of Columbia, and our country is often called by that name. Its botanical name, aquilegia, is derived from aquila (eagle), on account of the spur of the petals resembling the talons, and the blade, the beak, of the eagle, our national bird. Its colors are red, white, and blue, our national colors. The corolla is divided into five points resembling the star used to represent our States on our flag; its form also represents the Phrygian cap of liberty, and it is an exact copy of the horn of plenty, the symbol of the Columbian Exposition. The flowers cluster around a central stem, as our States around the central government.

THE SONG OF '76.

Bayard Taylor, the distinguished American traveler, writer, and poet. Born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, in 1835; died at Berlin, December 19, 1878. From his "Song of '76." By permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Publishers, Boston.

Waken, voice of the land's devotion!
Spirit of freedom, awaken all!
Ring, ye shores, to the song of ocean,
Rivers answer, and mountains call!
The golden day has come;
Let every tongue be dumb
That sounded its malice or murmured its fears;
She hath won her story;
She wears her glory;
We crown her the Land of a Hundred Years!
Out of darkness and toil and danger
Into the light of victory's day,
Help to the weak, and home to the stranger,
Freedom to all, she hath held her way!
Now Europe's orphans rest
Upon her mother-breast.
The voices of nations are heard in the cheers
That shall cast upon her
New love and honor,
And crown her the Queen of a Hundred Years!
North and South, we are met as brothers;
East and West, we are wedded as one;
Right of each shall secure our mother's;
Child of each is her faithful son.
We give thee heart and hand,
Our glorious native land,
For battle has tried thee, and time endears.
We will write thy story,
And keep thy glory
As pure as of old for a Thousand Years!

MAN SUPERIOR.

If the moon looks larger here than in Europe, probably the sun looks larger also. If the heavens of America appear infinitely higher and the stars brighter, I trust that these facts are symbolical of the height to which the philosophy and poetry and religion of her inhabitants may one day soar. At length, perchance, the immaterial heaven will appear as much higher to the American mind, and the intimations that star it, as much brighter. For I believe that climate does thus react on man, as there is something in the mountain air that feeds the spirit and inspires. Will not man grow to greater perfection intellectually as well as physically under these influences? Or is it unimportant how many foggy days there are in his life? I trust that we shall be more imaginative, that our thoughts will be clearer, fresher, and more ethereal, as our sky; our understanding more comprehensive and broader, like our plains; our intellect generally on a grander scale, like our thunder and lightning, our rivers, and mountains, and forests, and our hearts shall even correspond in breadth and depth and grandeur to our inland seas. Else to what end does the world go on, and why was America discovered?

AMERICAN SCENERY.

Our numerous waterfalls and the enchanting beauty of our lakes afford many objects of the most picturesque character; while the inland seas, from Superior to Ontario, and that astounding cataract, whose roar would hardly be increased by the united murmurs of all the cascades of Europe, are calculated to inspire vast and sublime conceptions. The effects, too, of our climate, composed of a Siberian winter and an Italian summer, furnish new and peculiar objects for description. The circumstances of remote regions are here blended, and strikingly opposite appearances witnessed, in the same spot, at different seasons of the year. In our winters, we have the sun at the same altitude as in Italy, shining on an unlimited surface of snow, which can only be found in the higher latitudes of Europe, where the sun, in the winter, rises little above the horizon. The dazzling brilliancy of a winter's day and a moonlight night, in an atmosphere astonishingly clear and frosty, when the utmost splendor of the sky is reflected from a surface of spotless white, attended with the most excessive cold, is peculiar to the northern part of the United States. What, too, can surpass the celestial purity and transparency of the atmosphere in a fine autumnal day, when our vision and our thought seem carried to the third heaven; the gorgeous magnificence of the close, when the sun sinks from our view, surrounded with various masses of clouds, fringed with gold and purple, and reflecting, in evanescent tints, all the hues of the rainbow.

LIBERTY HAS A CONTINENT OF HER OWN.

Liberty has still a continent to exist in.

LOVE OF AMERICA.

I profess to feel a strong attachment to the liberty of the United States; to the constitution and free institutions of the United States; to the honor, and I may say the glory, of this great Government and great country.

I feel every injury inflicted upon this country almost as a personal injury. I blush for every fault which I think I see committed in its public councils as if they were faults or mistakes of my own.

I know that, at this moment, there is no object upon earth so attracting the gaze of the intelligent and civilized nations of the earth as this great Republic. All men look at us, all men examine our course, all good men are anxious for a favorable result to this great experiment of republican liberty. We are on a hill and can not be hid. We can not withdraw ourselves either from the commendation or the reproaches of the civilized world. They see us as that star of empire which, half a century ago, was predicted as making its way westward. I wish they may see it as a mild, placid, though brilliant orb, making its way athwart the whole heavens, to the enlightening and cheering of mankind; and not a meteor of fire and blood, terrifying the nations.

GENIUS OF THE WEST.

I hear the tread of pioneers,
Of nations yet to be;
The first low wash of waves, where soon
Shall roll a human sea.
The rudiments of empire here
Are plastic yet and warm;
The chaos of a mighty world
Is rounding into form.
Each rude and jostling fragment soon
Its fitting place shall find—
The raw material of a state,
Its muscle and its mind.
And, westering still, the star which leads
The New World in its train
Has tipped with fire the icy spears
Of many a mountain chain.
The snowy cones of Oregon
Are kindling on its way;
And California's golden sands
Gleam brighter in its ray.

GOD SAVE AMERICA.

Instruments and wheels of the invisible governor of the universe! This is indeed all which the greatest men ever have been, or ever can be. No flatteries of courtiers, no adulations of the multitude, no audacity of self-reliance, no intoxications of success, no evolutions or developments of science, can make more or other of them. This is "the sea-mark of their utmost sail," the goal of their farthest run, the very round and top of their highest soaring. Oh, if there could be to-day a deeper and more pervading impression of this great truth throughout our land, and a more prevailing conformity of our thoughts and words and acts to the lessons which it involves; if we could lift ourselves to a loftier sense of our relations to the invisible; if, in surveying our past history, we could catch larger and more exalted views of our destinies and our responsibilities; if we could realize that the want of good men may be a heavier woe to a land than any want of what the world calls great men, our centennial year would not only be signalized by splendid ceremonials, and magnificent commemorations, and gorgeous expositions, but it would go far toward fulfilling something of the grandeur of that "acceptable year," which was announced by higher than human lips, and would be the auspicious promise and pledge of a glorious second century of independence and freedom for our country. For, if that second century of self-government is to go on safely to its close, or is to go on safely and prosperously at all, there must be some renewal of that old spirit of subordination and obedience to divine, as well as human, laws, which has been our security in the past. There must be faith in something higher and better than ourselves. There must be a reverent acknowledgment of an unseen, but all-seeing, all-controlling Ruler of the Universe. His word, His house, His day, His worship, must be sacred to our children, as they have been to their fathers; and His blessing must never fail to be invoked upon our land and upon our liberties. The patriot voice, which cried from the balcony of yonder old State House, when the declaration had been originally proclaimed, "stability and perpetuity to American independence," did not fail to add, "God save our American States." I would prolong that ancestral prayer. And the last phrase to pass my lips at this hour, and to take its chance for remembrance or oblivion in years to come, as the conclusion of this centennial oration, and as the sum and summing up of all I can say to the present or the future, shall be: There is, there can be, no independence of God; in Him, as a nation, no less than in Him, as individuals, "we live, and move, and have our being!" God save our American States!

A VOICE OF WARNING.

What! can a nation die? Yes; there has been great mortality among monarchies and republics. Like individuals, they are born, have a middle life and a decease, a cradle and a grave. Sometimes they are assassinated and sometimes they suicide. Call the roll, and let some one answer for them. Egyptian civilization, stand up! Dead, answer the ruins of Karnak and Luxor. Dead, respond in chorus the seventy pyramids on the east side the Nile. Assyrian Empire, stand up! Dead, answer the charred ruins of Nineveh. After 600 years of opportunity, dead. Israelitish Kingdom, stand up! After 250 years of miraculous vicissitude, and Divine intervention, and heroic achievement, and appalling depravity, dead. Phoenicia, stand up! After inventing the alphabet and giving it to the world, and sending out her merchant caravans to Central Asia in one direction, and her navigators into the Atlantic Ocean in another direction, and 500 years of prosperity, dead. Dead, answer the "Pillars of Hercules" and the rocks on which the Tyrian fishermen spread their nets. Athens—after Phidias, after Demosthenes, after Miltiades, after Marathon—dead. Sparta—after Leonidas, after Eurybiades, after Salamis, after ThermopylÆ—dead.

Roman Empire, stand up and answer to the roll-call! Once bounded on the north by the British Channel and on the south by the Sahara Desert of Africa, on the east by the Euphrates and on the west by the Atlantic Ocean. Home of three civilizations. Owning all the then discovered world that was worth owning. Gibbon, in his "Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire," answers, "Dead." And the vacated seats of the ruined Coliseum, and the skeletons of the aqueduct, and the miasma of the Campagna, and the fragments of the marble baths, and the useless piers of the bridge Triumphalis, and the silenced forum, and the Mamertine dungeon, holding no more apostolic prisoners; and the arch of Titus, and Basilica of Constantine, and the Pantheon, lift up a nightly chorus of "Dead! dead!" Dead, after Horace, and Virgil, and Tacitus, and Livy, and Cicero; after Horatius of the bridge, and Cincinnatus, the farmer oligarch; after Scipio, and Cassius, and Constantine, and CÆsar. Her war-eagle, blinded by flying too near the sun, came reeling down through the heavens, and the owl of desolation and darkness made its nest in the forsaken Ærie. Mexican Empire, dead! French Empire, dead! You see it is no unusual thing for a government to perish. And in the same necrology of nations, and in the same cemetery of expired governments, will go the United States of America unless some potent voice shall call a halt, and through Divine interposition, by a purified ballot-box and an all-pervading moral Christian sentiment, the present evil tendency be stopped.