E DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.]

On the eighth, John Nixon read it from the Walnut-street front of the
State House, in Philadelphia, to a great concourse of people gathered
from the city and the surrounding country. When the reading was
finished, the king's arms over the seat of Justice in the courtroom, was
torn down and burnt in the street; and at evening bonfires were lighted,
the city was illuminated, and it was not until a thunder-storm at
midnight compelled the people to retire, that the sounds of gladness
were hushed. Newport, Providence, Hartford, Baltimore, Annapolis,
Williamsburg, Charleston, Savannah, and other towns near the seaboard,
made similar demonstrations, and loyalty to the king, hitherto
open-mouthed, was silent and abashed.

From every inhabited hill and valley, town and hamlet of the old
thirteen States, arose the melodies of Freedom, awakened by this great
act of the people's proxies; and thousands of hearts in Europe, beating
strongly with hopes for the future, were deeply impressed and comforted.
Bold men caught the symphony, and prolonged its glad harmony, even
beyond the Alps and the Apennines, until it wooed sleeping slaves from
their slumbers in the shadows of despotism forth into the clear light,
panoplied in the armor of absolute right and justice. France was
aroused, and turning in its bed of submission like the giant beneath old
AEtna, to look for light and liberty, an earthquake shock ensued which
shook thrones, crumbled feudal altars whereon equality was daily
sacrificed, and so rent the vail of the temple of despotism, that the
people saw plainly the fetters and instruments of unholy rule, huge and
terrible, within the inner court. They pulled down royalty, overturned
distinctions, and gave the first impulse to the civil and social
revolutions which have since spread from that focus, to purify the
political atmosphere of Europe. Back to our glorious manifesto the
struggling nations look; and when they wish to arraign their tyrants,
that indictment is their text and guide. Its specific charges against
the ruler of Great Britain, of course have no relevancy in other cases,
but the great truths set forth in the Declaration are immutable. Always
appropriate as a basis of governmental theory and practice, at all times
and in all places, they can not fail to receive the hearty concurrence
of the wise and good in all lands, and under all circumstances. They
were early appreciated by the ph