Between that light and our eyes a cloud for a time may seem to gather; chariots, armed men on foot, the troops of kings, may march on us, and our fears may make us for a moment turn from it; a sea may spread before us, and waves seem to hedge us up; dark idolatries may alienate some hearts for a season from that worship; revolt, rebellion, may break out in the camp, and the waters of our springs may run bitter to the taste, and mock it; between us and that Canaan a great river may seem to be rolling but beneath that high guidance our way is onward, ever onward.

Those waters shall part, and stand on either hand in heaps; that idolatry shall repent; that rebellion shall be crushed; that stream shall be sweetened; that overflowing river shall be passed on foot, dry-shod, in harvest-time; and from that promised land of flocks, fields, tents, mountains, coasts, and ships, from north and south, and east and west, there shall swell one cry yet of victory, peace, and thanksgiving!

But we were seeking the nature of the spirit of nationality, and we pass in this inquiry from contrast to analysis. You may call it, in one aspect, a mode of contemplating the nation in its essence, and so far it is an intellectual conception; and you may call it a feeling towards the nation thus contemplated, and so far it is an emotion. In the intellectual exercise, it contemplates the nation as it is one, and as it is distinguished from all other nations; and in the emotional exercise it loves it, and is proud of it, as thus it is contemplated.

This you may call its ultimate analysis. But how much more is included in it! How much flows from it! How cold and inadequate is such a description, if we leave it there! Think of it first as a state of consciousness, as

å spring of feeling, as a motive to exertion, as blessing your country, and as reacting on you! Think of it as it fills your mind and quickens your heart, and as it fills the mind and quickens the heart of millions around you!

Instantly, 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 traveller 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 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 crowned the work,

were not all these imparted or inspired by this imperial sentiment?

Has it not here begun the master-work of man, the creation of a national life? Did it not call out that prodigious development of wisdom, the wisdom of constructiveness which illustrated the years after the war, and the framing and adopting of the Constitution? Has it not, in general, contributed to the administering of that government wisely and well since ?

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 fulfil! 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 all our borders; it has repressed without blood the intemperance of local insubordination; 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; it has opened our age of lettered glory; it has opened and honored the age of the industry of the people!

LXXXIII. THE RISING IN 1776.

THOMAS BUCHANAN READ.

THOMAS BUCHANAN READ was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, March 12, 1822. He is a portrait-painter by profession, but has published several volumes of poetry, among which are many pieces of decided merit, He has also edited a work entitled "Specimens of the Female Poets of America."

UT of the North the wild news came,

OUT

Far flashing on its wings of flame,

Swift as the boreal light which flies
At midnight through the startled skies.
And there was tumult in the air,

The fife's shrill note, the drum's loud beat,
And through the wide land everywhere
The answering tread of hurrying feet;
While the first oath of Freedom's gun
Came on the blast from Lexington;
And Concord, roused, no longer tame,
Forgot her old baptismal name,
Made bare her patriot arm of power,
And swelled the discord of the hour.

Within its shade of elm and oak

The church of Berkley Manor stood;

There Sunday found the rural folk,

And some esteemed of gentle blood.
In vain their feet with loitering tread
Passed mid the graves where rank is naught;
All could not read the lesson taught

In that republic of the dead.

How sweet the hour of Sabbath talk,

The vale with peace and sunshine full Where all the happy people walk,

Decked in their homespun flax and wool!

Where youth's gay hats with blossoms bloom; And every maid, with simple art,

Wears on her breast, like her own heart,

A bud whose depths are all perfume;
While every garment's gentle stir
Is breathing rose and lavender.

The pastor came; his snowy locks

Hallowed his brow of thought and care;
And calmly, as shepherds lead their flocks,
He led into the house of prayer.

The pastor rose; the prayer was strong;
The psalm was warrior David's song;,
The text, a few short words of might,
"The Lord of hosts shall arm the right!"
He spoke of wrongs too long endured,
Of sacred rights to be secured;
Then from his patriot tongue of flame
The startling words for Freedom came.
The stirring sentences he spake
Compelled the heart to glow or quake,
And, rising on his theme's broad wing,
And grasping in his nervous hand
The imaginary battle-brand,
In face of death he dared to fling
Defiance to a tyrant king.

Even as he spoke, his frame, renewed
In eloquence of attitude,

Rose, as it seemed, a shoulder higher;
Then swept his kindling glance of fire
From startled pew to breathless choir;