bduing the wilds to the bonds of use, multiplying fertile fields and
busy schools and noble work-shops and churches, hallowed by free-will
offerings of prayer; and happy homes, and domes dedicated to the laws of
States that rise by magic from the haunts of the buffalo and deer, all
in less than a long lifetime; and if we could see also how, in achieving
this, the flag which represents all this history is dyed in traditions
of exploits, by land and sea, that have given heroes to American annals
whose names are potent to conjure with, while the world's list of
thinkers in matter is crowded with the names of American inventors, and
the higher rolls of literary merit are not empty of the title of our
"representative men"; if all that the past has done for us, and the
present reveals, could thus stand apparent in one picture, and then if
the promise of the future to the children of our millions under our
common law, and with continental peace, could be caught in one vast
spectral exhibition--the wealth in store, the power, the privilege, the
freedom, the learning, the expansive and varied and mighty unity in
fellowship, almost fulfilling the poet's dream of "the parliament of
man, the federation of the world"--you would exclaim with exultation,
"I, too, am an American!" You would feel that patriotism, next to your
tie to the Divine Love, is the greatest privilege of your life; and you
would devote yourselves, out of inspiration and joy, to the obligations
of patriotism, that this land, so spread, so adorned, so colonized, so
blessed, should be kept forever against all the assaults of traitors,
one in polity, in spirit, and in aim.

SIFTED WHEAT.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. From his "Courtship of Miles Standish,"
IV.

God hath sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat for this planting.

CENTER OF CIVILIZATION.

From _North British Review_.

It is too late to disparage America. Accustomed to look with wonder on
the civilization of the past, upon the unblest glories of Greece and of
Rome, upon mighty empires that have risen but to fall, the English mind
has never fixed itself on the grand phenomenon of a great nation at
school. Viewing America as a forward child that has deserted its home
and abjured its parent, we have ever looked upon her with a callous
heart and with an evil eye, judicially blind to her progress.

But how she has gone on developing the resources of a region teeming
with vegetable l