wounds.

But we will not talk of themes like these. We will not think of failure,
dishonor, and despair. We will elevate our minds to the contemplation of
our high duties and the great trust committed to us. We will resolve to
lay the foundations of our prosperity on that rock of private virtue
which can not be shaken until the laws of the moral world are reversed.
From our own breasts shall flow the salient springs of national
increase. Then our success, our happiness, our glory, will be as
inevitable as the inferences of mathematics. We may calmly smile at all
the croakings of all the ravens, whether of native or foreign breed.

The whole will not grow weak by the increase of its parts. Our growth
will be like that of the mountain oak, which strikes its roots more
deeply into the soil, and clings to it with a closer grasp, as its lofty
head is exalted and its broad arms stretched out. The loud burst of joy
and gratitude which, on this, the anniversary of our independence, is
breaking from the full hearts of a mighty people, will never cease to be
heard. No chasms of sullen silence will interrupt its course; no
discordant notes of sectional madness mar the general harmony. Year
after year will increase it by tributes from now unpeopled solitudes.
The farthest West shall hear it and rejoice; the Oregon shall swell it
with the voice of its waters; the Rocky Mountains shall fling back the
glad sound from their snowy crests.

ON FREEDOM'S GENEROUS SOIL.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, M. D., the distinguished American author,
wit, and poet. Born in Cambridge, Mass., August 29, 1809.

America is the only place where man is full-grown.

NATIONAL HERITAGE.

The Rev. THOMAS STARR KING, an American Unitarian divine. Born in
New York in 1824; died, 1864. From an address on the "Privileges
and Duties of Patriotism," delivered in November, 1862. By
permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Publishers, Boston.

Suppose that the continent could turn toward you to-morrow at sunrise,
and show to you the whole American area in the short hours of the sun's
advance from Eastport to the Pacific. You would see New England roll
into light from the green plumes of Aroostook to the silver stripe of
the Hudson; westward thence over the Empire State, and over the lakes,
and over the sweet valleys of Pennsylvania, and over the prairies, the
morning blush would run and would waken all the line of the Missis