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them the glorious objects of entire independence, and it will breathe into them anew the breath of life.

Read this Declaration at the head of the army; every sword will be drawn from its scabbard, and the solemn vow uttered to maintain it, or to perish on the bed of honor. Publish it from the pulpit; religion will approve it, and the love of religious liberty will cling around it, resolved to stand with it, or fall with it. Send it to the public halls; first proclaim it there; let them hear it who first heard the roar of the enemy's cannon; let them see it who saw their brothers and their sons fall on the field of Bunker Hill, and in the streets of Lexington and Concord, and the very walls will cry out in its support.

Sir, I know the uncertainty of human affairs; but I see clearly through this day's business. You and I, indeed, may rue it. We may not live to the time when this Declaration shall be made good. We may die; die colonists; die slaves; die, it may be, ignominiously, and on the scaffold. Be it so be it so. If it be the pleasure of Heaven that my country shall require the poor offering of my life, the victim shall be ready at the appointed hour of sacrifice, come when that hour may. But, while I do live, let me have a country, or at least the hope of a country, and that a free country.

But, whatever may be our fate, be assured, be assured that this Declaration will stand. It may cost treasure, and it may cost blood: but it will stand, and it will richly compensate for both. Through the thick gloom of the present, I see the brightness of the future, as the sun in heaven. We shall make this a glorious, an immortal day. When we are in our graves, our children will honor it. They will celebrate it with thanksgiving, with festivity, with bonfires and illuminations. On its annual return, they will shed tears, copious, gushing tears, not of subjection and slavery, not of agony and distress, but of exultation, of gratitude, and of joy.

Sir, before God, I believe that the hour has come. My judgment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I hope in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it; and I leave off as I begun, that, live or die, survive or perish, I am for the Declaration. It is my living sentiment, and, by the blessing of God, it shall be my dying sentiment - Independence now, and INDEPENDENCE FOREVER!

MOUNT VERNON.

A deeply interesting and highly eloquent address, delivered by the Hon. Joel B. Sutherland, in the presence of two thousand veteran soldiers of the War of 1812, assembled around the tomb of Washington, January 10th, 1856, representing nineteen States of the United States of America.

MY

Y COUNTRYMEN - SOLDIERS OF 1812: Look where we may we Americans cannot discover a spot so hallowed as this sacred shrine, where are garnered up the ashes of our beloved Washington. Around this sepulchre we therefore assemble, and most reverently bow the knee in token of our admiration of his spotless character. He was a soldier, a statesman, and a Christian. The Almighty gave him to America to make us free. This is manifested in the watchings of Providence over him, as well when the Indian levelled his rifle at his heart, and firing, failed to kill him, as during the after-scenes in the bloody drama of the Revolution, when he was shielded from every harm. And, still further to indicate that our future existence as a people was largely to depend upon the father of our country, we find the course of events so moulded as that, after leading our army to victory, he was chosen to preside over the deliberations of the convention that framed our Constitution. With his unequalled name to that glorious instrument that binds the States together, we may confidently trust that they will never be sundered.

Who can witness the holy reverence and deep emotions of this assemblage of the descendants of the men of '76, at this restingplace of the great and the good, without believing that every other American, though not present with us, bears just as ardent a love for our country as we do ourselves?

These States will never break the links of holy concord that hold them together, as long as this tomb can be found by those who shall succeed us.

The lesson to be gathered from our pilgrimage here will be long remembered. Thousands will annually follow our example, and treading in our footsteps, will come up hither. Every father throughout the whole land will, at least once, repair to the repository of the mighty dead. Nay, more, he will bring with him his children when of proper age, and here, in the face of heaven and these venerated relics, pledge them to stand by the holy brotherhood of States.

Our mission is a progressive wonder. The voice of the first pilgrim who had landed upon our shores, breathing liberty in its sweet tones, has been echoing from that time till now over the hills and valleys, lakes and rivers, mountains and plains of this our almost boundless country. It has reached from the Atlantic far, far away, even climbing that vast rocky barrier betwixt us and the wide-spreading Pacific.

Our language, too, is the language of freedom. The nations that use it are either free, or on the high-road toward the full enjoyment of freedom. What may we, therefore, not expect in the advancing march of our America, the very Eden of the world?

We see at a glance, in our brilliant and happy career, the most marked demonstrations that we have a heavenly star to light up our onward course. God in his providence has reared his Christian standard of liberty in all parts of our territory, has given us school-houses, and religious temples devoted to his service, making our people a terror to evil-doers, and a praise to them that do well.

With such a wealth of promises surrounding us on all sides, we will not permit ourselves to be disturbed about our national destiny, for we are satisfied that "our Union" is in the safe-keeping of a Power that will preserve it sure and steadfast, even as "the everlasting hills."

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GRANDEUR OF THE TRACKLESS SEA.

"The sea is His, and He made it."

TS majesty is God. What is there more sublime than the trackless, desert, all-surrounding, unfathomable sea? What is there more peacefully sublime than the calm, gently-heaving, silent sea? What is there more terribly sublime than the angry, dashing, foaming sea? Power resistless, overwhelming power, is its attribute and its expression, whether in the careless, conscious grandeur of its deep rest, or the wild tumult of its excited wrath. It is awful where its crested waves rise up to make a compact with the black clouds, and the howling winds, and the thunder, and the thunderbolt; and they sweep on, in the joy of their dread

alliance, to do the Almighty's bidding. And it is awful, too, when it stretches its broad level out to meet in quiet union the bended sky, and show in the line of meeting the vast rotundity of the world. There is majesty in its wild expanse, separating and enclosing the great continents of the earth, occupying twothirds of the whole surface of the globe, penetrating the land with its bays and secondary seas, and receiving the constantly pouring tribute of every river, of every shore. There is majesty in its fulness, never diminishing, and never increasing. There is majesty in its integrity, for the whole vast surface is uniform; in its local unity, for there is but one ocean, and the inhabitants of any one meridian spot may visit the inhabitants of any other in the wide world. Its depth is sublime - who can sound it? Its strength is sublime - what fabric of man can resist it? Its voice is sublime, whether in the prolonged song of its ripple, or the stern music of its roar; whether it utters its hollow and melancholy tones within a labyrinth of wave-worn caves, or thunders at the base of some huge promontory; or beats against some toiling vessel's side, lulling the voyager to rest with its wild monotony; or dies away with the calm and dying twilight, in gentle murmurs, on some sheltered shore. What sight is there more magnificent than the quiet or the stormy sea? What music is there, however artful, which can be compared with the natural and changeful melodies of the resounding sea?

Its beauty is of God. It possesses it, in richness of its own; it borrows it from earth, and air, and heaven. The clouds lend it the various dyes of their wardrobe, and throw down upon it the broad masses of their shadows as they go sailing and sweeping by. The rainbow laves in it its many-colored feet. The sun loves to visit it, and the moon, and the glittering brotherhood of planets and stars; for they delight themselves in its beauty. The sunbeams return from it in showers of diamonds and glances of fire; the moonbeams find in it a pathway of silver, when they dance to and fro with the breeze and the waves through the livelong night. It has a light, too, of its own, soft and streaming behind a milky-way of dim and uncertain lustre, like that which is shining dimly above. It harmonizes in its forms and sounds both with the night and the day. It cheerfully reflects the light, and unites solemnly with the darkness. It imparts sweetness to the music of men, and grandeur to the thunder of heaven.

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BRIGHT WATER.

H, water for me! bright water for me,

And wine for the tremulous debauchee. Water cooleth the brow, and cooleth the brain, And maketh the faint one strong again;

It comes o'er the sense like a breeze from the sea,
All freshness, like infant purity;

Oh, water, bright water for me, for me:
Give wine, give wine to the debauchee!

Fill to the brim, fill to the brim;
Let the flowing crystal kiss the rim !

For my hand is steady, my eye is true,

For I, like the flowers, drink nothing but dew.
Oh, water, bright water's a mine of wealth,

And the ores which it yieldeth are vigor and health.

So water, pure water, for me, for me!

And wine for the tremulous debauchee!

Fill again to the brim-again to the brim!
For water strengtheneth life and limb!
To the days of the aged it addeth length,
To the might of the strong it addeth strength;
It freshens the heart, it brightens the sight,
'Tis like quaffing a goblet of morning light!
So, water, I will drink nothing but thee,
Thou parent of health and energy!

When over the hills, like a gladsome bride,
Morning walks forth in her beauty's pride,
And, leading a band of laughing Hours,
Brushes the dew from the nodding flowers,
Oh! cheerily then my voice is heard
Mingling with that of the soaring bird,
Who flingeth abroad his matin loud,

As he freshens his wing in the cold, gray cloud.

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