PRINCIPLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

Quincy.

WHEN We speak of the glory of our fathers, we mean not that vulgar renown to be attained by physical strength, nor yet that higher fame to be acquired by intellectual power. Both often exist without lofty thought, or pure intent, or generous purpose. The glory, which we celebrate, was strictly of a moral and religious character; righteous as to its ends; just as to its means. The American Revolution had its origin neither in ambition, nor avarice, nor envy, nor in any gross passion; but in the nature and relation of things, and in the thence resulting necessity of separation from the parent State. Its progress was limited by that necessity. During the struggle, our fathers displayed great strength and great moderation of purpose. In difficult times, they conducted with wisdom; in doubtful times, with firmness; in perilous, with courage ;-under oppressive trials, erect; amidst great temptations, unseduced; in the dark hour of danger, fearless; in the bright hour of prosperity, faithful.

It was not the instant feeling and pressure of the arm of despotism that roused them to resist, but the principle on which that arm was extended. They could have paid the stamp-tax, and the tea-tax, and other impositions of the British government, had they been increased a thousand fold. But payment acknowledged the right; and they spurned the consequences of that acknowledgement. In spite of those acts, they could have lived, and happily; and bought, and sold, and got gain, and been at ease. But they would have held those blessings on the tenure of dependence on a foreign and distant power; at the mercy of a king, or his minions; or of councils, in which they had no voice, and where their interests could not be represented, and where little likely to be heard. They saw that their prosperity in such case would be precarious, their possessions uncertain, their ease inglorious.

But, above all, they realized that those burdens, though light to them, would, to the coming age, to us, their posterity, be heavy, and probably insupportable. Reasoning on the inevitable increase of interested imposition, upon those who are without power and have none to help, they foresaw that, sooner or later, desperate struggles must come. They preferred to meet the trial in their own times, and to

make the sacrifices in their own persons. They were willing themselves to endure the toil, and to incur the hazard, that we and our descendants, their posterity, might reap the harvest and enjoy the increase.

Generous men! exalted patriots! immortal statesmen! For this deep moral and social affection, for this elevated selfdevotion, this noble purpose, this bold daring, the multiplying myriads of your posterity, as they thicken along the Atlantic coast, from the St Croix to the Mississippi, as they spread backwards to the lakes, and from the lakes to the mountains, and from the mountains to the western waters, shall, on this day,* annually, in all future time, as we, at this hour, come up to the temple of the Most High, with song, and anthem, and thanksgiving, and choral symphony, and halleluiah; to repeat your names; to look steadfastly on the brightness of your glory; to trace its spreading rays to the points from which they emanate; and to seek, in your character and conduct, a practical illustration of public duty, in every occurring social exigence.

WHATEVER difficulties may have attended your entrance upon the path of the just, they will vanish by degrees: the steepness of the mountain will lessen as you ascend: the path, in which you have been accustomed to walk, will grow more and more beautiful; and the celestial mansions, to which you tend, will brighten with new splendour, the nearer you approach them. In other affairs, continued exertion may occasion lassitude and fatigue. Labour may be carried to such an excess as to debilitate the body. The pursuits of knowledge may be carried so far as to impair the mind: but neither the organs of the body, nor the faculties of the soul, can be endangered by the practice of religion. On the contrary, this practice strengthens the powers of action. Adding virtue to virtue, is adding strength to strength; and

How pleasant will it be, to mark the soul thus moving for ward in the brightness of its course! In the spring, who does not love to mark the progress of nature: the flower unfolding into beauty, the fruit coming forward to matu rity, the fields advancing to the pride of harvest, and the months revolving into the perfect year? Who does not love, in the human species, to observe the progress to maturity the infant by degrees growing up to man; the young idea beginning to shoot, and the embryo character beginning to unfold?

But if these things affect us with delight; if the prospect of external nature in its progress, if the flower unfolding into beauty, if the fruit coming forward to maturity, if the infant by degrees growing up to man, and the embryo character beginning to unfold, affect us with pleasurable sensations, how much greater delight will it afford, to observe the progress of this new creation, the growth of the soul in the graces of the divine life, good resolutions ripening into good actions, good actions leading to confirmed habits. of virtue, and the new nature advancing from the first lineaments of virtue, to the full beauty of holiness!

These are pleasures that time will not take away. While animal spirits fail, and joys, which depend upon the liveliness of the passion, decline with years, the solid comforts of a holy life, the delights of virtue and a good conscience, will be a new source of happiness in old age, and have a charm for the end of life.

As the stream flows pleasantest when it approaches the ocean; as the flowers send up their sweetest odours at the close of the day; as the sun appears with greatest beauty in his going down; so at the end of his career, the virtues and graces of a good man's life, come before him with the most blessed remembrance, and impart a joy which he never felt before. Over all the moments of life, religion scatters her favours, but reserves her best, her choicest, her divinest blessings for the last hour.

THE STAR.-Read.

How brilliant on the Ethiop brow of Night
Burns yon fixed star, whose intermitting rays,
Like woman's changeful eye, now shun our gaze,
And now break forth in all the life of light!

Far fount of beams! thou scarce art to the sight,
In size, a spangle on the Tyrian stole
Of Majesty, 'mid hosts more mildly bright,
Although of worlds the centre and the soul!
Sure, 't was a thing for angels to have seen,
When God did hang those lustres through the sky;
And Darkness, turning pallid, sought to screen
With dusky wing her dazed and haggered eye;-
But 't was in vain-for, pierced with light, she died;
And now her timid ghost dares only brood
O'er planets in their midnight solitude,
Doomed all the day in ocean's caves to hide.
Thou burning axle of a mighty wheel!
Dost thou afflict the beings of thy ray
With feelings such as we on earth must feel-
Pride, passion, envy, hatred, agony?
Doth any weep o'er blighted hope? or curse
That hour thy light first ushered them to life?
Or malice, keener than the assassin's knife,
Stab in the dark? or hollow friendship, worse,
Skilled round the heart with viper coil to wind,
Forsake, and leave his sleepless sting behind?
No! if I deemed it, I should cease to look
Beyond the scene were thousands know such ills;
Nor longer read that brightly-lettered book,
Which heaven unfolds, whose page of beauty fills
The breast with hope of an immortal lot,
When tears are dried, and injuries forgot.
Oh, then the soul, no longer earthward weighed,
Shall soar tow'rds heaven on exulting wing.
Among the joys past Fancy's picturing,

It may be one to scan, through space displayed,
Those wondrous works our blindness now debars-
The awful secrets written in the stars.

'But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves: for the wind was contrary.'-Matthew xiv. 24.

FEAR was within the tossing bark,
When stormy winds grew loud;
And waves came rolling, high and dark,
And the tall mast was bowed.

And men stood breathless in their dread,
And baffled in their skill-
But one was there, who rose, and said
To the wild sea, 'Be still!'

And the wind ceased-it ceased! that word
Passed through the gloomy sky;

The troubled billows knew the Lord,

And sank beneath his eye.