ngering spring, no broken
crevasse, no inundated city or plantation, no tracts of sand, arid and
burning, on that surface, but all blended and softened into one beam of
kindred rays, the image, harbinger, and promise of love, hope, and a
brighter day.

But if you would contemplate nationality as an active virtue, look
around you. Is not our own history one witness and one record of what it
can do? This day, the 4th of July, and all which it stands for--did it
not give us these? This glory of the fields of that war, this eloquence
of that revolution, this one wide sheet of flame, which wrapped tyrant
and tyranny, and swept all that escaped from it away, forever and
forever; the courage to fight, to retreat, to rally, to advance, to
guard the young flag by the young arm and the young heart's blood, to
hold up and hold on till the magnificent consummation crown the
work--were not all these imparted or inspired by this imperial
sentiment.

Look at it! It has kindled us to no aims of conquest. It has involved us
in no entangling alliances. It has kept our neutrality dignified and
just. The victories of peace have been our prized victories. But the
larger and truer grandeur of the nations, for which they are created,
and for which they must one day, before some tribunal, give account,
what a measure of these it has enabled us already to fulfill! It has
lifted us to the throne, and has set on our brow the name of the Great
Republic. It has taught us to demand nothing wrong and to submit to
nothing wrong; it has made our diplomacy sagacious, wary, and
accomplished; it has opened the iron gate of the mountain, and planted
our ensign on the great tranquil sea. It has made the desert to bud and
blossom as the rose; it has quickened to life the giant brood of useful
arts; it has whitened lake and ocean with the sails of a daring, new,
and lawful trade; it has extended to exiles, flying as clouds, the
asylum of our better liberty. It has kept us at rest within our borders;
it has scattered the seeds of liberty, under law and under order,
broadcast; it has seen and helped American feeling to swell into a
fuller flood; from many a field and many a deck, though it seeks not
war, makes not war, and fears not war, it has borne the radiant flag,
all unstained.

THE LOVE OF COUNTRY.

There is a love of country which comes uncalled for, one knows not how.
It comes in with the very air, the eye, the ear, the instinct, the first
beati