amazed world. We would never have supposed that socialism and despotism, the fatal negations of freedom, could have been boldly proclaimed in this century as the defence and refuge of humanity. We could never have believed possible such a waste of national zeal within so short a period, as we have witnessed in Italy and Germany-countries that are endeared to every civilized man. A large part of Europe is in a state of violence, either convulsive action or enforced repose, and one of the greatest nations has apparently once more sought refuge in the reminiscences of the saddest times of Rome. History often reaches our shores from that portion of the globe by entire chapters. We are necessarily affected by new events and new ideas, as we in turn influence Europe; for we are of kindred blood, of one christian faith, of similar pursuits and civilization; we have one science and the same arts; we have one common treasure of knowledge and power; our alphabet and our numeric signs are the same; and we are members of one family of advanced nations. In such times it behooves us to keep a steady eye on all the signs of the times. Let us be attentive; let us understand. Goethe says truly that we must learn to read occasionally between the lines of books in order to understand them. It is a remark which applies with still greater force to the pages of history and those that record the changes of our own days. You live in an energetic age. Men are intently bent on bold and comprehensive ends, and mischief is pursued with similar activity. The calling of our inter-oceanic country is a solemn one; the youngest nation shall bind the old to the oldest, and the Pacific shall unite, though the narrow Bosphorus has long divided. Your institutions come from the freest nation of ancient and venerable Europe and your duties are proportionate to the blessings you are enjoying. The period we live in, our country's position and youth, our abundance of land and food, our descent and our freedom-all call upon us, and warn us. If this work then aid, in ever so slight a degree, in the discharge of these high duties; if it help to show that the political and national Know Thyself is as important as the individual; if it impress more forcibly upon your minds the advice of Pliny: Habe ante oculos hanc esse terram quæ nobis miserit jura, and give it a meaning far wider than that which the Roman could give to it; if it prove an additional incentive to hold fast to our liberty and to cultivate it with fresh purity of purpose; if it increase our love of sterling action and disdain of self-praise; if it tend to confirm civil fortitude, that virtue which is acquired by the habit of at once obeying and insisting upon the laws of a free country, and shows itself most elevated when it resists alluring excitement; if, in some measure, it serve to restrain us from exaggeration and judging by plausibility-two faults that are rifer in our age than they have been almost at any other period; if it steady the reader against that enthusiasm which Wesley designates as "the looking to the end without the means;" if it deepen our abhorrence of all absolutism, whether it be individual or collective, called by whatever name, monarchical or democratic, and founded upon whatever theory, whether on the jus divinum of a dynasty or the pretended universal suffrage of a Cæsar, or on the arrogance of a party and of its demagogue; and if it strengthen our conviction of the dignity of man, too feeble to wield unlimited power, and too noble to submit to it; if this book aid, in any degree, in the acknowledgment of St. Paul's great command: "Honor all men," in the wide sphere of political existence then, indeed, I shall be richly rewarded, and shall not consider myself too bold if I point to you as Epaminondas, in his dying hour, pointed to Leuctra and Mantinea." COLUMBIA, S. C., July, 1853. L. 1 General Minutes, appended to his edition of the Book of Common Prayer, for the American Methodists. 2 Diodor. Sic. L. xv. c. 87, 6. |