will leans on a principle, when he is the vehicle of ideas,
he borrows their omnipotence. Gibraltar may be strong, but ideas are
impregnable, and bestow on the hero their invincibility. "It was a great
instruction," said a saint in Cromwell's war, "that the best courages are
but beams of the Almighty." Hitch your wagon to a star. Let us not fag in
paltry works which serve our pot and bag alone. Let us not lie and steal.
No god will help. We shall find all their teams going the other
way--Charles's Wain, Great Bear, Orion, Leo, Hercules: every god will
leave us. Work rather for those interests which the divinities honor and
promote--justice, love, freedom, knowledge, utility.

If we can thus ride in Olympian chariots by putting our works in the path
of the celestial circuits, we can harness also evil agents, the powers of
darkness, and force them to serve against their will the ends of wisdom
and virtue. Thus, a wise government puts fines and penalties on pleasant
vices. What a benefit would the American government, not yet relieved of
its extreme need, render to itself, and to every city, village, and hamlet
in the States, if it would tax whiskey and rum almost to the point of
prohibition! Was it Bonaparte who said that he found vices very good
patriots? "He got five millions from the love of brandy, and he should be
glad to know which of the virtues would pay him as much." Tobacco and
opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if
you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm
as they do.

These are traits, and measures, and modes; and the true test of
civilization is, not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the
crops--no, but the kind of man the country turns out. I see the vast
advantages of this country, spanning the breadth of the temperate zone. I
see the immense material prosperity--towns on towns, states on states, and
wealth piled in the massive architecture of cities; California quartz
mountains dumped down in New York to be repiled architecturally
along-shore from Canada to Cuba, and thence westward to California again.
But it is not New York streets, built by the confluence of workmen and
wealth of all nations, though stretching out toward Philadelphia until
they touch it, and northward until they touch New Haven, Hartford,
Springfield, Worcester, and Boston--not these that make the real
estimation. But, when I look over this constellation of cities whi