a handsome business. He is eminently a successful lawyer. Nor has his success been the result of accident: it has been the legitimate fruit of patient toil, and a judicious use of his talents.

To his profession he has ever been loyal, and beneath her banner he has walked for over twenty-five years. His constancy and fidelity to the noblest of sciences, furnish a bright example to the army of young men in California who are about entering upon the practice of law.

THE GOLDEN WEDDING.

BY JOSEPH W. WINANS.

From mountain springs far, far apart, out in the frozen north,
Two tender rills, in infant glee, to life and light burst forth;
And gathering volume as they flowed from their primeval source,
'Midst constant change of scene and soil held their appointed course.
Through channels formed by nature's law their destined routes to run,
They glided on to meet at last and mingle into one.

Then seaward on its broadening path the shining river sped,

To gladden every clime through which its fruitful waters spread;

And further as it swept along, remoter lands to lave,

Like human progress, it diffused a more enriching wave.

While through the densely peopled realms it opulently rolled,

Upon its breast, whose broad expanse the sunlight tinged with gold,
From ship to shallop many a craft to many a distant shore,
With life and commerce freighted full, that lordly river bore;
Down drifting through the dusty land, with fertilizing tide,
It grew amain a cherished source of luxury and pride;
Until, where at the marge of earth the sounding surges roar,
Deep into ocean's dense abyss it plunged for evermore.
'Twas thus in the good olden time-the time of long ago-

From separate springs, my parents dear, your lives began to flow;

Through flowery scenes they coursed along, with ceaseless verdure bright,

Till, ere youth's halcyon days had fled, love bade them to unite.

Adown the wide domain of time-that empire broad and free-
Your blended lives have flowed along, as river flows to sea.

Through fifty fluctuating years-a century half told—

Not like Pactolus' wave, of eld, which ran o'er sands of gold,
But rather like that grander stream whose waters, as they glide
From State to State, still stretching on, a continent divide;
Your mingled destinies, beloved, expanding as they roll,

Have scattered blessings far and wide while speeding to their goal.
Full many a gallant argosy, upon its glowing breast,
The river of your nuptial life has tenderly caressed;
Down through the barren years has poured its renovating stream,
Till what were drear and dead before, with life and beauty teem.
The motley, yet imposing fleet, upon that river borne,

Is gliding to the happy land whence none shall e'er return;
With high resolves, and virtues rare, and deeds of noble worth,
With precious souls which from your own took their immortal birth,

All richly freighted for yon shore which lies beyond the main,
Whose radiant harbor, when attained, yields everlasting gain.
Majestic river! still flow on, and-in thy widening scope-
Still promise to the future give and to the present hope;
Nor haste, until thy bright career of usefulness is o'er,
To plunge into that mighty void, upon whose further shore
No mortal eye hath ever gazed since being first began,
And sorrow-laden earth was made the heritage of man.
Awhile on thy prolific course along the sunny land
Yet linger ere thy billows seek the dim and misty strand
Where ocean waits thy coming with its wierd and solemn song:
How short, O Time! how short thy reign-Eternity, how long!

THE DIGNITY OF LABOR,

A Lecture delivered before the Mercantile Library Association of San Francisco, on Friday evening, December 28th, 1855.

BY JOSEPH W. WINANS.

The world is awakening from its long sleep of ages. The people are shaking off their lethargy, as the lion shakes the dew-drops from his mane. Low, muttering thunders give portent of an earthquake, whose coming shall shake terribly the nations. Thrones are tottering, dynasties downfalling, kingdoms crumbling into dust. The wave of Revolution is sweeping onward, over the wrecks of empire. Earth's millions soon shall own no despot's sway. The people are the rulers. Labor is king! Mark the world-wonders that were wrought in earlier days, when labor was the serf, and not the lord. Gaze through the earth and down the ages. What girded Babylon, with its tremendous walls? What reared the pyramids? What struck a sphynx forth from the solid rock? What built the Parthenon? What stormed the walls of ocean-circled Tyre, the Mistress of the Seas, and left the billows sporting in her place? What brought out Jupiter Olympus from the marble, and formed Rhodian Colossus from the brass? Labor-labor of the arm in him who wrought, labor of the head in him who planned. But though these achievements were the trophies of labor's carlier day, won by the energy and efforts of a few, prouder, far prouder triumphs greet it now, when all mankind acknowledge its supremacy-when every tongue is vocal with its praise-when millions prove its power with the thought and hand. Although the ancient world regarded labor as the instrument of great designs, yet was it ever stigmatised by low associations and invidious conceptions. Even the Mantuan, who tells us, "Labor conquers all things," calls it "improbus," or base. It was reserved for a later age; an age of energy and toil; an age in which the ploughshare overcomes the sword, and the spear is forsaken for the hammer; an age whose wondrous spread of intelligence and freedom has taught man the grandeur of his power and the mightiness of his ambition; an age of which progress is the law,

and development the consequence; it was reserved for such an age to trample down the prejudices of the olden time and vindicate the majesty of labor. If the lightning's spark, touched to the trembling wires, athwart the continents flings thoughts, like rockets, burning as they fall, so labor strikes from man those powerful displays of physical and mental prowess which electrify the world.

Contrasted by prominent but individual examples, the present, it is true, has slight advantage over ancient times. Would you point to the creations of manual contrivance? What later structures overcome in vastness and elaboration the massive masonry of Trajan's bridge, or the stupendous causeway of the Via Appia? Would you move amid the realms of Art, or scan the works of Intellect? Who but the ancients fashioned and contrived the rich designs of architecture, or brought its forms to such a rare perfection? How many an art of which they were the masters has been lost for ever to the world! What fabric vies in splendor with the Etruscan vase? What sybarite now sleeps on purple gorgeous as the Tyrian dye? What combination of ingredients can reproduce or rival the Corinthian brass? Though Michael Angelo mounts to sublimity and Claude excels in softness, yet did not Zeuxis by his art beguile the very birds of heaven? Is not Parrhasius reputed the Correggio, and Apelles the Raphael of antiquity? Who ventures to contend that the superb creations of Canova or Thorwalsden shame the chiseled splendors of Praxiteles or Phidias? If England has her Garrick and France her Talma, did not Rome glory in a Roscius? If listening senates hung spell-bound upon the eloquence of Burke and crowded auditories thrilled at the exhortations of Bossuet, did not Isocrates surpass them in refinement, Lysias in elegance, Demosthenes in burning vehemence and force? What though Shakspeare rules the minds of men with undisputed sway, has Homer been forgotten? Hath Pindar's lyric lost its fire, or Virgil's strain its sweetness, because Milton clothed his song in thunders and Tennyson caught up the music of the spheres? Onward, with measured pomp, in grand battalions, moves the columned language of Macaulay, while the contrasted periods of Cicero swell like an organ on the ear. And so the parallel might be prolonged. But herein lies the difference. The ancient world is brilliant in its instances of high preeminence, yet these were isolated and individual, while the mass lay altogether dormant, sunken in ignorance or degradation; but now, the PEOPLE, prompted by the strong incentives of intelligence and freedom, have begun to work. What a startling change has human progress wrought! Beforetime the nation was a force, and acted through its chief. The people were the atom-cloments, which, in their combination, made that force, and the earth contained so many moral forces only as it numbered nations.

Now man, the individual, is in himself a force, an independent force, and the earth has just so many forces as it numbers living, thinking, acting men: for even in this day of unexarapled effort many exist who do not live, many are sentient who do not think, many concern themselves with manifold affairs who do not act! Beforetime

men were thought for by their rulers, and thus became mere agents of a despot's will; now, in the general heritage of independence, man has discerned his right-nay, his divine prerogative of thinking for himself. No longer moping in the thrall of tyranny or reft of the free franchise of opinion, he has risen into the full stature of his manhood, realized the magnitude of his capacity, and in that knowledge verified the true nobility of labor; of labor, in its highest form, the union of the physical and mental; labor of the sinewy arm, labor of the burning brain! So he whose vocation is mechanical is prompted to employ his hours of leisure in the cultivation of the mind; he whose pursuits are mental, to invigorate his frame by frequent action. And thus, while mind and body act, react upon each other with reciprocal intensity, man, the lord of creation, though" fallen from his high state," without a fetter on his tireless wing, is rising higher, higher, in his flight towards the stars. the deeds of labor are involved the destinies of human nature. It is the source of all excellence, of all attainment; the instrument of progress, the parent of invention; the universal, absolute, allconqueror, omnipotent in prowess, like Achilles, but with no vulnerable spot upon the heel. In the language of an eminent economist, "Labor is the talisman that has raised man from the condition of the savage; that has changed the desert and the forest into cultivated fields; that has covered the earth with cities and the ocean with ships; that has given us abundance, comfort, and elegance instead of want, misery, and barbarism:

"All is the gift of industry, whate'er
Exalts, embellishes, and renders life
Delightful!'"'

Before mortal man was fashioned from this globe on which he treads, the Divine hand had by its own operations proclaimed the dignity of labor. That Grand Architect who set a universe in motion; who called forth order out of chaos; at whose bidding sprung from realms of darkness those refulgent orbs which move upon their courses through the unmeasured track of space, and down the march of ages; who disclosed the sublime harmonies of nature, and stamped beauty in living radiance upon the features of creation; through six primeval days wrought out His wondrous plan, and the morning stars when they sang together at the earliest dawn of being were jubilant of praise over the consummated work of Deity. Man, the noblest of created things, was designed for perfect happiness in coninuous repose, and, but for his wanton disobedience, would still have wandered through the scented groves of Eden and by the margins of its pleasant streams, amidst the ceaseless bloom of flowers and the lulling melody of fountains-unvext with toil, unclouded with a care, his every sense pervaded with delight, "all nature beauty to his eye or music to his ear."

Bat man fell, and forth went the Divine fiat, "cursed is the ground for thy sake," "in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread until thou return unto the ground." Yet what was thus visited, in

long entail, on him and his posterity for ever as a seeming curse, was converted instantly by the Supreme Benevolence into a blessing, and labor was ennobled by Omnipotence, the punishment transmuted to reward through "the dear alchemy of mercy," because it was the lot of that being whom He had created in His image. Thus honored with the sanction and enjoined by the command of Deity, made from the first the destiny of human nature, labor is and ever must be honorable; honorable in all its forms, material or mental; honorable in all its achievements, whether of the hand or brain. It matters not in what department of duty you may act. The very diversity of occupations and pursuits becomes the most efficient means for the advancement of the common good. One, by the aid of microscopes, constructs the most minute contrivances of mechanism; another, by the strength of brawny arms, shapes to his will· the rigid iron. One, delving amid darkness, tears the bright gold from the bowels of the earth; another opens up the globe in smiling furrows, teeming with increase. In the lone midnight, far above the city's murmur, twinkles the scholar's solitary lamp.

By painful calculation, the astronomer traces out new bodies in the fields of space, which have shone unseen for centuries; by elaborate experiment, the chemist detects new affinities, and establishes new principles in matter. While the investigations of science are disclosing the abstruse mysteries of nature, the labors of the closet are adding to the sum of human knowledge. If Bacon, by profound analysis, improved the discipline, enlarged the scope of mind, and revealed the subtler forms of intellectual philosophy, Kepler and Leibnitz and D'Alembert achieved results no less important by their researches into the hidden arcana of the universe. Thus the great stream of labor floweth on, bearing the works and treasures of all ages on its breast in rudest crafts and stateliest argosies, hoarding up boundless wealth within its depths, wafting the voyager upon its heaving tides to fame and fortune! Who is it that thrives among his fellows, and mounts to eminence, and rules the meaner throng? Who but him of the iron will and ceaseless hand; whose mind is eager for the conquest of his purpose; whose frame demands no respite from its toil; who bends him firmly to his task, while the common eye is hid in slumber, and flinches not for obstacle or opposition; he whose

"keen spirit

Seizes the prompt occasion-makes the thoughts
Start into instant action, and at once

Plans and performs, resolves and executes."

Truly saith the Eastern proverb: "In proportion to one's labor eminence is gained, and he who seeketh eminence passeth sleepless nights. He diveth into the sea who searcheth for pearls, and succeedeth in acquiring lordship. Whoso seeketh eminence without laboring for it, loseth his life in the search of vanity." In every rank of life, in each department of action, labor is indispensable to the attainment of success. Would you speak of the triumphs of genius? What is genius without labor? A meteoric glare that