lines, its soil yields almost an infinite variety of productions. It gives the fruits and grains of all zones. Within its bosom lie hid all minerals; the iron, the copper, vast fields of coal, the gold, the silver, the platina, the quicksilver, while the very "rock pours out rivers of oil." Its forests are rich in exhaustless stores of timber, while its prairies are the granaries of the world.

It is the land of the free school, the free press, and the free pulpit. It is impossible to compute the power of this trio. The free schools, open to rich and poor, bind together the people in educational bonds and in the common memories of the recitation-room and the play-ground; and how strong they are, you, reader, well know, as some past recollection tugs at your heart-strings. The free press may not always be altogether as dignified or elevated as the more highly cultivated may desire, but it is ever open to the complaints of the people; is ever watchful of popular rights, and jealous of class encroachments, and the highest in authority know that it is above President or Senate.

The free pulpit, sustained not by legally exacted tithes wrung from an unwilling people, but by the freewill offerings of loving supporters, gathers about it the millions, inculcates the highest morality, points to brighter worlds, and when occasion demands will not be silent before political wrongs. Its power, simply as an educating agency, can scarcely be estimated. In this country its freedom gives a competition so vigorous that it must remain in direct popular sympathy. How strong it is, the country saw when its voice was lifted in the old cry, "Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft." Its words started the slumbering,

roused the careless, and called the "sacramental host," as well as the " men of the world, to arms." These three grand agencies are not rival, but supplementary, each doing an essential work in public culture.

Ours, above all others, is the land of homes. Local attachment is essential to patriotism. Give a man a bit of ground, and let him build a house, though it be scarce larger than Queen Mab's, and he becomes a permanent part of the country. He has something to live for, vote for, fight for. Here there is no system of vast land-ownerships, with lettings and sub-lettings, but, on the contrary, the abundance and cheapness of land, and the prevalence of wise home exemptions, give a large portion of the population proprietary interests.

To all this add the freedom of the elective franchise, which invests the humblest citizen with the functions of sovereignty, and opens to his competition the highest places of trust and profit, and is there not reason for loving such a country? Is there not reason why its home-born sons should swear upon its holy altars that this trust, received from their fathers, shall be transmitted, pure and whole, to their children? Is there not reason why each adopted son should see that the land which gives him sanctuary, refuge, and citizenship, shall not be rent in twain? Especially that it shall not be divided in the interest of class distinctions, of distinction between labor and capital, based upon a difference of birth and ancestry.

Above all, we assume the higher doctrine that civil government is divinely appointed, "that the powers that be are ordained of God," and thus make the maintenance of lawfully established government duty. God,

the King of nations, summons us to prevent its overthrow, and He declares that in the hour when it is imperiled the magistrate shall not bear the sword in vain, but shall be "the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil," and that they who rise up against lawful authority, and "resist the power, resist the ordinance of God, and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation." Patriotism, then, comes to the baptism of Christian duty, and for the hour when just government and righteous authority are periled, the duty is one of sternness, and the sword of the magistrate is its symbol.

T. M. Eddy.

THE QUEEN OF FRANCE AND THE SPIRIT OF CHIVALRY.

IT

T is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles ; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision.

I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in, glittering like a morning star, full of life and splendor and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what a heart must I have to contemplate, without emotion, that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream, when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation

of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers.

I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult! But the age of chivalry is gone, that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nation, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage while it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness.-E. Burke.

THE FALL OF THE PEMBERTON MILL.

A DESCRIPTION of the terrible disaster which took place at the Pemberton Mills, in the city of Lawrence, Mass., in 1860.

THE 'HE silent city steeped and bathed itself in rose

tints; the river ran red and crimsoned on the distant New Hampshire hills: Pemberton, mute and cold, frowned across the disc of the climbing sun, and dipped, as she had seen it dip before, with blood. The day broke softly, the snow melted, and the wind blew warm from the river.

Sene was a little dizzy this morning the constant palpitation of the floors always made her dizzy after a wakeful night-and so her colored threads danced out of place and troubled her.

Del Ivory, working beside her, said: "How the mill shakes. What's going on?"

"It's the new machinery they're histing in," observed the overseer, carelessly. "Great improvements, but very, very heavy; they calc'late on getting it all into place to-day."

The wind began at last to blow chilly up the staircases and in at the cracks; the melted drifts out under the walls began to harden; the sun dipped above the dam; the mill dimmed slowly; shadows crept down between the frames.

"It's time for lights," said Meg Match, and swore a little at her spools.

"Del," said Sene, "I think to-morrow" she stopped. Something strange happened to her frame; it jarred, buzzed, snapped, the thread untwisted and flew out of place.

"Curious," she said, and looked up, looked up to see her overseer turn wildly, clap his hands to his head, and fall; to hear a shriek from Del that froze her blood; to see the solid ceiling gape above her; to see the walls and windows stagger; to see iron pillars reel, and vast machinery throw up its giant arms, and a tangle of human faces blanche and writhe! She sprang as the floor sunk. As pillar after pillar gave way, she bounded up an inclined plane, with the gulf yawning after her. It gained upon her, leaped at her, caught her; beyond were the stairs and an open door;