sps the bow,
To fight their master's quarrels. Courtrai's field
And Sempach's hill that lesson's worth may show.

The restless soul still yearns for things unknown;
It chafes against its bondage, points the way
That leads to freedom, but the sword alone
Makes good the dreams that else would but betray.

See, Luther speaks, and Europe flies to arms:
Her stubborn fight outlasts a hundred years;
A thousand fields her richest life-blood warms,
Yet gain the vanquished more than pays their tears.

If Orange and Gustavus conquering died,
Not Coligny nor Hampden fell in vain,
For one domain escaped the furious tide,
And peace made that one desolate--chivalrous Spain!

So, when the traitorous truth was whispered round,--
Equality for man on earth as heaven,--
It was but speculation's idlest sound,
Till by the sword the time-worn bonds were riven.

Though Moscow, Leipzig, Waterloo, might seem
To roll the tide back, they but marked its flood;
Nor could the Holy Allies' darkest scheme
Restore the wrongs so well effaced in blood.

The end is not yet. God's mysterious way
Evolves its purpose in its destined time.
Vainly we seek its fated march to stay:
All things subserve it--wisdom, folly, crime.

We are his instruments. The past has fled
For us. We suffer for the future dim.
Then sternly face the darkness round us spread,
Do each his duty--leave the rest to Him!

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

The Nineteenth Century dawned upon a nation already glorious with the
sublime promise of a prophetic infancy. The strong serpents of Tyranny
and Superstition had been crushed in its powerful grasp. The songs of
two oceans--the lullaby of its earlier days--had cheered it on to a
youth whose dignity and beauty were bought with sword and rifle, with
blood and death. Wrapped at last in the _toga_ of an undisputed manhood,
it took its place among the empires of the earth, the son of a king,
mightier than all; free to enact new laws, to promulgate new systems of
economy, social and political, free to worship and to think. With what
success a government grounded on a principle so faultless has been
administered, may not now be written, but is not more doubtful than it
was when the drum beat its _reveille_ only on our distant frontiers, and
the booming of guns from ship or shore was but the nation's welcome to
days made memorable by its great men