man, he now sleeps in the grandeur of eternal peace. Honor to his beautiful memory! Americans every where at this hour are celebrating amid the roar of cannon, and the pealing of Cathedral bells, not only the deeds of our Revolutionary fathers but the greater glories of the last few years. By the St. Lawrence, by the Hudson, by the Thames, by the Mississippi, by the Ganges, by the Nile, by the golden shores of the Bosphorus-as well as on the banks of the Liffey, the Shannon, the Barrow and the Suir-there is good cheer to-day, a feast of reason and a flow of soul—one voice and one heart animate the citizens of this bounteous land. This is the holiday of the whole nation. We find monumental structures raised to enliven the patriotic virtues of nations. The patriarchal pillars of stone, and the Pythean, Nemean, Isthemean and Olympic Games were institutions of this character. The various feasts of the Jews were the evidences of this principle. To those established by God they added a feast of the dedication of the Temple and also the feast of Purim, to commemorate their wonderful deliverances. Mark, too, the Heaven-ordained ordinances of the Israelitish Passover and the Christian Eucharist! Like a blazing line of fire, they perpetuate through all time the infinite condescension of God. And so it is in regard to this festive, joyful, glorious day. The 4th of July, 1861, beheld the hardy sons of the North and South brightening their armor for the combat. Their battle-ground was a continent, their audience was the world. The 4th of July, 1862, found the North in mourning over the slain of the Chicahominy, the South rejoicing in success. The 4th of July, 1863, and the North had shattered into atoms the legions of the South at Vicksburg and Gettysburg. On the Nation's birth day, 1864, both sections were ready for the final struggle. Ere another anniversary, the North is victorious, the South is vanquished, Democracy and freedom have triumphed, rebellion and slavery have died. I need not review the struggle which preceded and suc ceeded the Declaration of Independence. Your own minds are familiar with the terrible privations of the revolutionary soldiers, who amid the snows of Virginia winters, amid the deadly malaria of the Carolina swamps, amid the bleak winds that sweep our ocean shore, amid the deadly heats of the Mississippi, confronted the mercenary men, butchers of Brunswick, and the ingenious masters of the scalping knife and tomahawk from the banks of the St. Lawrence. See these undaunted patriots in their obscure caucus gatherings, in their town meetings, in their provincial assemblies, in their continental Congress, breathing defiance to the British Parliament and the British throne, marching with their raw militia to the conflict with the trained vete rans of the seven years war. Witness there a group of Colonies, extemporised into a Confedaracy, entering with a calm self-possession into alliance with the oldest monarchy of Europe, occupying as they did a narrow belt of territory along the coast, thinly peopled, partially cleared, hemmed in by the native savages, by the Alleghanies, by the Ohio and the Lakes behind them, dilating with the grandeur of the position, radiant in the prospective glories of their career. Contemplate this, as Everett truly says, and you will acknowledge the men of seventy-six to have been the noblest men of progress the world has ever seen. We commemorate, in the first place, the greatness of our physical and territorial advantages. In the performance of this sacred duty we have an illustrious model, for we find that Moses when viewing the promised land, described it as a good land, a land of brooks, of depths, that spring out of vallies and hills, a land of oil, olive and honey. Israel is compared to a valley full of fertility, and watered by unfailing streams—to a garden by the side of rivers, covered with beauty and luxuriance, and sustained in perpetual fertility, a forest in which the trees are planted by God-to the lion which even cunning no hunter can approach, but which terrifies the forest. All of which images, though they may not affect us, yet to the Eastern imagina tion unquestionably conveyed ideas of exquisite loveliness, the most extraordinary power and the most singular fertility. In like manner, we American citizens might speak of the peerless position, of the rich variety of plain, hill and dale of our productions, so varied, so abundant, so valuable; of our lakes, rivers, mountains prairies; of our cities, in wealth, population and in magnificence rivalling the oldest in the world. Where throughout the wide extended globe is there a country more blessed by all the gifts of nature than our own? Columbia is a grand and beautiful country—a land of unexampled fertility-traversed with wonder by the stranger who sees tract after tract of cultivated ground like one vast garden, courting his gaze in every direction. The emigrations to the United States are without parallel in the history of the world. From every nation they are flocking to the West, they come, "As the winds come, when forests are rended, They come as the waves come when navies are stranded." If the ratios of our past increase can be relied on, the population of the country will be in 1930, more than one hundred millions. A step further in the calculation presents a prospect still more sublime and wonderful, 1960, this mighty mass of commingled races will have swollen to the stupendous aggregate of two hundred and fifty millions-one-fourth the present population of all the earth. Where is that prodigious increase of numbers, this vast extension of emigration to end? Where will its mighty boundaries terminate? They will crowd each hemisphere, they will spurn both tropics. Its watch towers will shine on every shore, and be reflected back from every deep. Nature has set no bounds to the round growth of this mighty Republic. A new world swelling upwards, cradling all the arts of life, and inviting rapid immigrations. Our's is, indeed, a wonderful country-vast in the immense extent of its territory-vast in the magnificent scale and grandeur of its scenery-vast in the unparalleled riches of mineral resources-vast in its majestic rivers and lofty mountains. We realize on an extraordinary scale the splendid description of the ornamental edging of the buckler of Achilles: "Now the broad shield complete, the artist crowned In living silver seemed the waves to roll And beat the buckler's verge and bound the whole." There may be other countries where more of physical beauty and variety charms the eye than in America: where less of variableness and gloom marks the atmosphere; where softer gales fan, and sweeter flowers perfume; where more enamelled meads display themselves, and more melodious waterfalls murmur on the ear; where more of the luxuriance of nature is blended with a greater triumph of art, and where more glorious skies and constant weather bestow elasticity and health to the human frame, and there may be lands where the stream of philosophy has a wider sweep and deeper flow; where learning finds more devoted adhe. rents, and where liberty, at least in theory, is more highly prized; but there is no other land, in either hemisphere, which, on the whole, can vie with Columbia. She stands, as she has long stood, the fairest form of government ever known on earth. We commemorate also to-day the civil and religious liberty so largely enjoyed by the American people. There are two different and somewhat inconsistent notions of liberty prevailing in the world, of which one is of Greek and the other Teutonic origin. According to the first, liberty consists in a share in the government, while the government itself demands from the individual the most implicit obedience to its laws; in fact, according to this theory, the subject was absorbed in the State. The working out of this principle in its extreme results has been seen in Sparta and in the ancient Greek and Italian Republics. This notion was carried into Gaul by the Roman Colonies, and enters largely into that French idea of liberty, which is connected with submission to an absolute Emperor. The Teutonic idea of liberty, on the other hand, was that of freedom in individual action. That is the best government, according to this idea, which governs the least. It was this idea of liberty which inspired our patriotic fathers to raise the standard of revolt, and enabled them successfully to defy the licentious legions of England. Liberty is then the power of acting according to our own will, and on our own convictions, in any manner not inconsistent with the interests and well-being of the community to which we belong, without hindrance and without injury either from the public laws or from the passions of individual men. The history of the race presents but one long record of efforts to secure this priceless and splendid boon. It is the darling theme of every free-born man. To procure it thousands have died on the battlefields; to maintain and preserve it, thousands more have bled upon the scaffold. The watchword, freedom endangered, inspires heroism in every heart; nerves every patriot to gird himself for the battle, and causes every height to flame with its beacon fires. The most brilliant epochs of nations are the heroic struggles in behalf of civil and religious liberty. The grandest efforts of mind, the noblest achievements of arms, the most sublime ministrations of charity that have adorned and illustrated the history of our race, have all sprung from this principle. Liberty is the very fairest flower that can grow upon the soil of nations. Columbia's greatest glory does not consist in her political economy; in the number of her ships floating on the ocean; her greatest glory is civil and religious liberty. It is our inheritance to an extent and with a security which we believe to be utterly unparalleled in the history of former times. The heresy of secession which sought to overturn this liberty is the adversary of God and of man; the murderer of all virtue; the parent and nurse of impurity and vice, the progress of which can only be traced in pollution and blood, and the triumph of which can be celebrated only over the utter wreck and ruin of all that is dear and dignified and holy, alike in the life that now is, and also in the life that is to come. If the legal right of secession had existed, it was a crime, morally, to have exerted it at such a time. Our national prosperity exceeded that of any other |