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I wish to impress on both officers and cadets, that the nation is looking to this institution with an eye of hope, and pride, and affectionate solicitude. Officers! You will appreciate the honour you have received from your country in being called to preside over this institution, as the highest mark of her confidence. The trust which you have undertaken is high and solemn. Behold the favoured children of the nation. These are to be the future men of America. If properly reared, her ornaments in peace-in war, her shield and buckler. To the improvement of the inind, add sentiments of morality, honour, and patriotism. The maintenance of your authority by a rigid discipline, is essential alike to the youths and to the institution. But remember they are taken young and inexperienced from their paternal roof. Their homes and their parents are afar off. Their wants are no longer administered to by the hands of affection. You are substituted for the absent parent-temper then the sternness of authority by acts of kindness and beneficence; there is no imcompatibility between them, and in their due mixture consists the highest excellence of your calling; your reward is in the consciousness of having done your duty, in the mass of worth and intelligence you annually return to society, and in the approbation of your country.

Cadets! your country has claims upon you-you have been singled out of thousands of unsuccessful candidates as the objects of her favour. Repay this kindness by your exemplary conduct and by attainments in science. Subordination to your superiors stands foremost as a prominent part of your duty. It is indispensible to your own welfare. Although the duties enjoined may seem to your inexperience unnecessarily severe, remember they have been prescribed by your fathers, whose affection you cannot doubt: they are the result of wisdom enlightened by experience; respect them therefore, for the source from which they emanate. There are two roads which lie before you the signs of the one are virtue, renown and happiness; of the other; vice, degradation and ruin. Is there any one among you whose spirit is so debased as to hesitate which to elect? The one is full of satisfaction; a consciousness that you have done your duty, giving joy to your parents, and rejoicing yourself in your course. The other presents no temptation but the temporary indulgence of the grossest appetites, whose reward is infamy and wretchedness. You may yet from inexperience not have sufficiently appreciated how essentially the happiness of your country is involved in your fate. Suppose, but why need I suppose such a case, when we saw it but yesterday—a father present-the whole father sat upon his

face-agitated by the conflicting emotions of fear and hope, when his son was called to come down on the arena. The anxious suspense was painful to all, till the son, with a master's hand, distinctly evolved the intricate mazes of the most abstruse sciences; then the gentle murmur of applause circulated from one to another, till the father's fears were dissipated and hope changed into confidence; and when, to fill the measure of his happiness, he was told that the attainments of his son were inferior to his moral worth, the tear of joy burst from his eye, and the paternal benediction, involuntarily escaping, settled on the head of his beloved child. You, indeed, might not have the pleasure of your father's presence, but wheresoever he is, however distant, his solicitude for your success is no less intense. He is anxiously awaiting the impartial award of the distinguished men who have been called together to examine

you.

If you have no father, you have perhaps some widowed mother, who nurtured your infancy-watched your sick-bed with a sleepless eye, or gambolled with you in health-whose happiness you carry in your hand, and who, when she nightly prepares her pillow, sends up your name in her supplications to the throne of mercy, with the cry of "My God, my God, protect and prosper my child ;" and in the distant prospect beyond this, sees your country holding the wreath of merit for him who deserves it. Is there one of you so debased as to be insensible to these great considerations? If so, there is that other path which you must travel. With the mark of reproach on your forehead, with the consciousness of demerit, you timidly seek the paternal roof to carry disgrace into the bosom of that family, who but yesterday, at the mention of your name, thrilled with hope and expectation. But this picture is too dark to pursue. Turning from it with disgust, I supplicate our common Father that you may be exempt from such a doom.

There is one other subject to which I wish to invite your most serious attention. Our country, from its extent, and for the purpose of geographical discrimination, is divided into sections, east, west, north and south. To this let the division be confined; add not to its prejudices and jealousies-scowl into contempt every term and every effort to keep them alive.

Remember your fathers fought as Americans-as Americans they conquered. In the same name, and as one family, they produced the present constitution of your country, the noblest effort of the human mind, and carrying in its fate the last hopes, of human liberty-thus by one act repaying to Europe what ever we were indebted for the arts and sciences, of which she claimed to have been the origin. Remember that you are des

tined to occupy a distinguished place in the annals of your country-to whose prosperity or degradation you may greatly contribute and remember also that your own country is not alone concerned. Placed as she is at the head of the republics of this hemisphere, her example has become interesting, not only to them, but to all mankind. You have the earth as your theatre, and the human race as your spectators. If the great problem we are working here of man's capacity for self-government fail, there will be an end of human hopes.

Finally, my children, in whatever situation your destiny may place you, keep forever before your eyes what you owe your country, and in the hour of exigency, should it ever come, to you will she look as the able and fearless champions of her liberty, her happiness, and her glory. I tender you all, officers and cadets, an affectionate farewell.

BATTLE OF LAKE ERIE.-Washington Irving.

In this battle, we trust, incontrovertible proof is given, if such proof were really wanted, that the success of our navy does not arise from chance, or superiority of force; but from the cool, deliberate courage, the intelligent minds and naval skill of our officers, the spirit of our seamen, and the excellent discipline of our ships; from principles, in short, which must insure a frequency of prosperous results, and give permanency to the reputation we have acquired. We have been rapidly adding troplry to trophy, and successively driving the enemy from every excuse in which he sought to shelter himself from the humiliation of defeat; and after having perfectly established our capability of fighting and conquering in single ships, we have now gone further and shown, that it is possible for us to face the foe in squadron, and vanquish him even though superior in force.

In casting our eye over the details of this engagement, we are struck with the prominent part which the commander takes in the contest. We realize in his dauntless exposure and individual prowess, what we have read in heroic story, of the warrior, streaming like a meteor through the fight, and working wonders with his single arm. The fate of the combat seemed to rest upon his sword; he was the master spirit that directed the storm of battle, moving amid flames, and smoke, and death, and mingling wherever the struggle was most desperate and deadly. After sustaining in the Lawrence the whole blaze

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of the enemy's cannonry; after fighting until all around him was wreck and carnage; we behold him, looking forth from his shattered deck, with unruffled countenance, on the direful perils that environed him, calculating with wary eye the chances of the battle, and suddenly launching forth on the bosom of the deep, to shift his flag on board another ship, then in the hottest of the action. This was one of those master strokes by which great events are achieved, and great characters stamped, as it were, at a single blow-which bespeak the rare combination of the genius to conceive, the promptness to decide, and the boldness to execute. Most commanders have such glorious chances for renown, some time or another, within their reach; but it requires the nerve of a hero to grasp the perilous opportunity. We behold Perry following up his dar ing movement with sustained energy-dashing into the squadron of the enemy-breaking their line-raking starboard and larboard-and in this brilliant style achieving a consummate victory.

Independent of the vast accession of glory to our flag, this conquest insured the capture of Detroit-the rout of the British armies the subjugation of the whole peninsula of Upper Canada, and, if properly followed up, the triumphant success of our northern war. Well did Commodore Perry say "it had pleased the Almighty," when, by this achievement, he beheld immediate tranquility restored to an immense extent of country. Mothers, no longer shrunk aghast, and clasped their infants to their breasts, when they heard the shaking of the forest or the howling of the blast the aged sire no longer dreaded the shades of night, lest ruin should burst upon him in the hour of repose, and his cottage be laid desolate by the firebrand and the scalping knife-Michigan was rescued from the dominion of the sword, and quiet and security once more settled on the harassed frontiers, from Huron to Niagara.

Were any thing wanting to perpetuate the fame of this victo ry, it would be sufficiently memorable from the scene where it was fought. This war has been distinguished by new and pe culiar characteristics. Naval warfare has been carried into the interior of a continent, and navies, as if by magic, launched from among the depths of the forest. The bosoms of peaceful lakes which, but a short time since, were scarcely navigated by man, except to be skimmed by the light canoe of the savage, have all at once been ploughed by hostile ships. The vast silence that had reigned for ages on those mighty waters, was broken by the thunder of artillery, and the affrighted savage

stared with amazement from his covert, at the sudden apparition of a seafight amid the solitudes of the wilderness.

The peal of war has once sounded on that lake, but probably will never sound again. The last roar of cannonry that died along her shores, was the expiring note of British domination, Those vast internal seas will, perhaps, never again be the separating space between contending nations; but will be embosomed within a mighty empire; and this victory, which decided their fate, will stand unrivalled and alone, deriving lustre and perpetuity from its singleness.

In future times, when the shores of Erie shall hum with busy population; when towns and cities shall brighten where now extend the dark and tangled forest; when ports shall spread their arms, and lofty barks shall ride where now the canoe is fastened to the stake; when the present age shall have grown into venerable antiquity, and the mists of fable begin to gather round its history; then will the inhabitants of Canada look back to this battle we record, as one of the romantic achievements of the days of yore. It will stand first on the page of their local legends, and in the marvellous tales of the borders. The fisherman, as he loiters along the beach, will point to some half buried cannon, corroded with the rust of time, and will speak of ocean warriors that came from the shores of the Atlantic-while the boatman, as he trims his sail to the breeze, will chant in rude ditties the name of Perry-the early hero of Lake Erie.

PHILIP OF POKANOKET.-Washington Irving.

With a scanty band of followers, who still remained true to his desperate fortunes, the unhappy Philip wandered back to the vicinity of Mount Hope, the ancient dwelling of his fathers. Here he lurked about, like a spectre, among the desolated scenes of former power and prosperity, now bereft of home, of family, and friend. There needs no better picture of his destitute and piteous situation than that furnished by the homely pen of the chronicler, who is unwarily enlisting the feelings of the reader in favour of the hapless warrior whom he reviles.→ "Philip," he says, "like a savage wild beast, having been hunted by the English forces through the woods above a hundred miles backward and forward, at last was driven to his own den upon Mount Hope, where he retired with a few of his best friends, into a swamp, which proved but a prison to keep him fast till the messengers of death came by divine permission to execute vengeance upon him."

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