To waste the gifts of freedom. Have a care
Lest from thy brow the clustered stars be torn
And trampled in the dust. For so of old

The thronging Goth and Vandal trampled Rome,
And where the temples of the Cæsars stood,
The lean wolf unmolested made her lair.

ONE VAST WESTERN CONTINENT.

Sir EDWIN ARNOLD, C. S. I., an English poet and journalist. Born, June 10, 1832.

I reserve as the destiny of these United States the control of all the lands to the south, of the whole of the South American continent. Petty troubles will die away, and all will be yours. In South America alone there is room for 500,000,000 more people. Some day it will have that many, and all will acknowledge the government at Washington. We in England will not grudge you this added power. It is rightfully yours. With the completion of the canal across the Isthmus of Nicaragua you must have control of it, and of all the surrounding Egypt of the New World.

THE RISING OF THE WESTERN STAR.

(ANONYMOUS.)

Land of the mighty! through the nations
Thy fame shall live and travel on;

And all succeeding generations

Shall bless the name of Washington.

While year by year new triumphs bringing,
The sons of Freedom shall be singing-
Ever happy, ever free,

Land of light and liberty.

Columbus, on his dauntless mission,

Beheld his lovely isle afar;

.

Did he not see, in distant vision,
The rising of this western star-
This queen, who now, in state befitting,
Between two ocean floods is sitting?
Ever happy, ever free,

Land of light and liberty.

THE AMERICAN FLAG.

HENRY WARD BEECHER, a distinguished American writer and preacher. Born in Litchfield, Conn., June 24, 1813; died, March 8, 1887, in Brooklyn, N. Y. From his "Patriotic Addresses." By permission of Messrs. Fords, Howard & Hulbert, Publishers, New York. When a man of thoughtful mind sees a nation's flag, he sees not the flag only, but the nation itself; and whatever may be its symbols, he reads chiefly in the flag the government, the principles, the truth, the history, which belong to the nation which sets it forth. When the French tricolor rolls out to the wind, we see France. When the newfound Italian flag is unfurled, we see Italy restored. When the other three-cornered Hungarian flag shall be lifted to the wind, we shall see in it the long-buried, but never dead, principles of Hungarian liberty. When the united crosses of St. Andrew and St. George on a fiery ground set forth the banner of old England, we see not the cloth merely; there rises up before the mind the noble aspect of that monarchy which, more than any other on the globe, has advanced its banner for liberty, law, and national prosperity. This nation has a banner, too, and wherever it streamed abroad men saw daybreak bursting on their eyes, for the American flag has been the symbol of liberty, and men rejoiced in it. Not another flag on the globe had such an errand, or went forth upon the seas carrying everywhere, the world around, such hope for the captive and such glorious tidings. The stars upon it were to the

pining nations like the morning stars of God, and the stripes upon it were beams of morning light. As at early dawn the stars stand first, and then it grows light, and then, as the sun advances, that light breaks into banks and streaming lines of color, the glowing red and intense white striving together and ribbing the horizon with bars effulgent, so on the American flag stars and beams of manycolored lights shine out together. And wherever the flag comes, and men behold it, they see in its sacred emblazonry no rampant lion and fierce eagle, but only light, and every fold indicative of liberty. It has been unfurled from the snows of Canada to the plains of New Orleans; in the halls of the Montezumas and amid the solitude of every sea; and everywhere, as the luminous symbol of resistless and beneficent power, it has led the brave to victory and to glory. It has floated over our cradles; let it be our prayer and our struggle that it shall float over our graves.

NATIONAL SELF-RESPECT.

NATHANIEL S. S. BEMAN, an American Presbyterian divine. Born in New Lebanon, N. Y.. 1785; died at Carbondale, Ill., August 8, 1871. For forty years pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, Troy, N. Y.

The western continent has, at different periods, been the subject of every species of transatlantic abuse. In former days, some of the naturalists of Europe told us that everything here was constructed upon a small scale. The frowns of nature were represented as investing the whole. hemisphere we inhabit. It has been asserted that the eternal storms which are said to beat upon the brows of our mountains, and to roll the tide of desolation at their bases; the hurricanes which sweep our vales, and the volcanic fires which issue from a thousand flaming craters; the