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7.

8.

Fade into air. Up in each girded breast
There sprang a rooted and mysterious strength, -
A loftiness to face a world in arms,

To strip the pomp from scepter and to lay
Upon the sacred altar the warm blood
Of slain affections, when they rise between
The soul and God.

And can ye deem it strange
That from their planting such a branch should bloom
As nations envy? Would a germ, embalmed
With prayer's pure tear-drops, strike no deeper root
Than that which mad ambition's hand doth strew
Upon the winds, to reap the winds again?
Hid by its veil of waters from the hand
Of greedy Europe, their bold vine spread forth
In giant strength. Its early clusters, crushed
In England's wine-press, gave the tyrant host
A draught of deadly wine.

O, ye who boast

In your free veins the blood of sires like these,
Lose not their lineaments. Should Mammon cling
Too close around your heart, or wealth beget
That bloated luxury which eats the core
From manly virtue, or the tempting world
Make faint the Christian purpose in your soul,
Turn ye to Plymouth's beach, and on that rock
Kneel in their foot-prints, and renew the vow
'They breathed to God.

LESSON VI.

WESTWARD MOVEMENT OF CIVILIZATION.

MORLEY.

1. DECIDEDLY one of the most interesting points in the past history of the United States, is the striking illustration it has afforded of the great law of civilization, its movement from east to west. It was a direct and startling demonstration of

Mam'mon; the god of riches. Rock; the Plymouth rock, where the pilgrims first landed.

The

the truth which history has long labored to indicate. land upon which the sun of civilization first rose, we know not with certainty; but as far back as our vision can extend we behold it shining upon the most eastern limits of the eastern hemisphere.

2. Assyria, Egypt, Grecce, Rome, we behold successively lighted up, as the majestic orb rolls over them; and as he advances still farther through his storied and mysterious zodiac, we behold the shadows of evening as surely stealing upon the lands which he leaves behind him.

3. Rome falls before the adventurous and destructive Goth;" and for a moment the world seems darkened; but vast causes, new materials, conflicting elements, are silently at work to produce order out of apparent chaos, through the long eclipse of the dark ages; and when light is again restored, behold, the radiance which we first worshiped on the shores of the Indian Ocean has at last reached and illumined the whole coast of the Atlantic, while the most western states of Europe are rejoicing in its beams.

4. Here, it would seem, the sun's course was finished. The law which has hitherto visibly governed his career must be reversed; the world's western limit has been reached, and either his setting is at hand, or he must roll backward through his orbit. But it is not so. Just as we were about to doubt the universality of the law, which we believed indubitably and historically established, the world swings open upon its hinges, and reveals another world beyond the ocean, as vast and perfect as itself.

5. America starts into existence, the long-forgotten dream of the ancients is revived and realized, and the world's history is rounded into as complete a circle as its physical conforma. tion. We have said that the exemplification of the westward march of culture was the most striking feature in the history of America. Connected with this, however, and hardly of less importance, is the illustration which it affords us of the

a As-syr-i-a; an ancient country, now a part of Turkey in Asia. b The Goths were an ancient people, once occupying what is now Sweden.

manner in which the civilization of the world has been successively entrusted to distinct races.

6. Throwing out at once all disquisition concerning the great races which have regularly made their appearance, and accomplished their mission in past ages, we turn our attention simply to the great race of the present time. This is, indubitably, the Anglo-Saxon race.“ We assume this without argument, because we believe that none of our readers will be desirous of holding us to the proof.

b

7. The Anglo-Saxon, like all great races, is of a composite origin; and its materials would almost seem to have been carefully selected with the view of producing a breed of singular energy, endurance, and power. The Saxon hardihood, the Norman fire, the Teutonic phlegm, had long ago been molded, one would deem, for some great purpose, into one grand national stock; and to this race, when it had attained the fulness and perfection of its strength, was the conquest of America entrusted.

LESSON VII.

THE SAME SUBJECT, CONCLUDED.

MORLEY.

1. THE original colonization of this country by the English, and the present system of internal colonization successfully prosecuted in the United States, from east to west, form a striking counterpart to the Gothic invasion of the Roman empire in the fifth century.

2. The one was the irruption of barbarism upon an ancient civilization; the other, the triumph of civilization over an ancient barbarism. Each was, in a great degree, the work of the same race; and it would truly seem that the barbarian has begun to pay the debt which he has owed to humanity since the destruction of the Western Empire.

■ Anglo-Saxon race; descendants of the Angli and Saxones, who united and conquered England in the fifth century. b Normans; the inhabitants of ancient Scandinavia, or Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. c Teutones; an ancient people, occupying a part of what is now called Denmark,

3. The civilized Goths, whose mission is now to contend with and humanize the wilderness of America, are the descendants of those Goths who for a time annihilated the an. cient civilization of Europe; and the task of destruction which they so successfully accomplished, and which resulted, after all, in a great benefit to the human race, differed no less in its general nature from their present condition, than did the instruments by which it was effected differ from those by which the conquest of America is in the course of accomplishment.

4. The Roman state retained, in appearance, the same gi gantic proportions which belonged to it when it sat enthroned upon the whole civilized world. It was a vast but a hollow shell; outwardly imposing, but inwardly rotten to the core; and with the first stroke of the sword of Alaric, it crumbled into dust. The Goth was but the embodiment of the doom which had long impended over the empire of the Cæsars."

5. He was but the appointed actor in the last scene of that historic destiny which had ruled the state since Romulus first watched the vulture's flight from the Palatine. For purposes inscrutable then, probably, but plain enough to every human. intelligence at the present day, the civilization of Europe, after having reached and passed the highest possible point of refinement, was for the time annihilated. The Goth destroyed, but he did not rebuild.

6. Beneath the foot-print of the barbarian's war-horse, the grass withered and never revived. It was but a type of the utter exhaustion of the soil; and after the tempest had lain waste every vestige of the extraordinary culture which had, as it were, drained and impoverished the land, it lay fallow for ages before it was again susceptible of cultivation. The colonization of America was exactly the reverse of the pic. ture. The race that had destroyed now came forward to civ ilize and humanize.

Cæsars; Julius Cæsar, Augustus Cæsar, &c., e Roin'-u-lus; the founder of Rome. d Pal'-a-tine; one of the

a Al-a-ric king of the Visigoths. Roman emperors.

seven hills on which Rome was built.

7. The Goth of the fifth century, whose courser's hoof crushed every flower in his track, reäppears in the seventeenth, with his hand upon the plowshare, and cities spring up like corn-blades in every furrow which he traces through the wilderness. His task is but just begun. He has but entered upon his sublime mission; and it is to be expected that as many centuries as elapsed before the old world was ripened for his destroying scythe are again to be told, before he is to enjoy the perfected fruits of his present labors.

LESSON VIll.

FATE OF THE INDIANS.

STORY.

1. THERE is, indeed, in the fate of these unfortunate beings, much to awaken our sympathy, and much to disturb the sobriety of our judgment; much which may be urged to excuse their own atrocities; much in their characters which betrays us into an involuntary admiration. What can be more melancholy than their history? By a law of their nature, they seem destined to a slow, but sure extinction. Everywhere, at the approach of the white man, they fade away.

2. We hear the rustling of their footsteps, like that of the withered leaves of autumn, and they are gone forever. They pass mournfully by us, and they return no more. Two centuries ago, the smoke of their wigwams and the fires of their councils rose in every valley, from Hudson's Bay to the farthest Florida, from the ocean to the Mississippi and the lakes.

3. The shouts of victory and the war-dance rang through the mountains and the glades. The thick arrows and the deadly tomahawk whistled through the forests; and the hunter's trace and the dark encampment startled the wild beasts in their lairs. The warriors stood forth in their glory. The young listened to the songs of other days. The mothers played with their infants, and gazed on the scene with warm hopes of the future. The aged sat down; but they wept not.

4. They should soon be at rest in fairer regions, where the

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