y to be hoped that the returning good sense of the people in all
the States, and an increase of harmony and brotherly good will
everywhere, may prevent the necessity of resorting to the exercise of
legal authority; it is to be hoped that all good citizens will be much
more inclined to reflect on the value of the Union and the benefits
which it has conferred upon all, than to speculate upon impracticable
means for its severance or dissolution. No State legislation, it is
evident, is competent to declare such severance or dissolution--the
people of no State have clothed their Legislature with any such
authority; any act therefore proclaiming such severance by a
Legislature, would be merely null and void as altogether exceeding its
constitutional powers. No State was brought into the Union by the
Legislature thereof, and no State can be put out of the Union by the
Legislature thereof. Doubtless it is to be admitted that revolution,
forcible revolution, may produce dismemberment more or less extensive;
but there is no power on earth competent, by any peaceable or recognized
manner of proceeding, to discharge the consciences of the citizens of
the United States from the duty of supporting the Constitution. The
government may be overthrown, or the Union broken into fragments by
force of arms or force of numbers, but neither can be done by any
prescribed form or peaceable existing authority."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The above portrait of Daniel Webster is taken from a book just
issued by the Fowler & Wells Co., New York, entitled, "A Natural System
of Elocution and Oratory," founded upon analysis of the Human
Constitution. By Thomas A. Hyde and William Hyde. Among other valuable
subjects which this book contains is a description and analysis of
Webster oratory.

HAWTHORNE'S LAST SKETCH.

BY PHILIP R. AMMIDON.

In the list of contributors to the old "New England Magazine,"--of which
this is in a manner the legitimate successor,--among other names
afterward famous is that of Nathaniel Hawthorne, then an obscure writer
for various periodicals, and the ill-paid author of those juvenile
histories that gave Mr. S. G. Goodrich ("Peter Parley") a literary
reputation he scarcely earned.

The writer has a copy of this respectable and for a time popular
monthly, with which he would be reluctant to part. It contains, for the
first time printed, "The White Old Maid," one of the weirdest and most
fascinating of the "Twice-Told Tale