foot of the British throne? No! for myself I can truly say, that after my native land, I feel a tenderness and a reverence for that of my fathers. The pride I take in my own country makes me respect that from which we are sprung.

In touching the soil of England, I seem to return like a descendant to the old family seat, to come back to the abode of an aged, the tomb of a departed parent. I acknowledge this great consanguinity of nations. The sound of my native language, beyond the sea, is a music to my ear beyond the richest strains of Tuscan softness, or Castilian majesty. I am not yet in a land of strangers, while surrounded by the manners, the habits, the forms in which I have been brought up. I wander delighted through a thousand scenes which the historians, the poets, have made familiar to us, of which the names are interwoven with our earliest associations. I tread with reverence the spot where I can retrace the footsteps of our suffering fathers; the pleasant land of their birth has a claim on my heart. It seems to me a classic, yea, a holy land, rich in the memories of the great and good; the martyrs of liberty, the exiled heralds of truth; and richer, as the parent of this land of promise in the west.

I am not, I need not say I am not, the panegyrist of England. I am not dazzled by her riches, nor awed by her power. The sceptre, the mitre and the coronet, stars, garters and blue ribbons, seem to me poor things for great men to contend for. Nor is my admiration awakened by her armies, mustered for the battles of Europe; her navies, overshadowing the ocean; nor her empire, grasping the furthest East. It is these, and the price of guilt and blood by which they are maintained, which are the cause why no friend of liberty can salute her with undivided affections. But it is the refuge of free principles, though often persecuted; the school of religious liberty, the more precious for the struggles to which it has been called; the tomb of those who have reflected honor on all who speak the English tongue; it is the birthplace of our fathers, the home of the Pilgrims; it is these which I love and venerate in England. I should feel ashamed of an enthusiasm for Italy and Greece, did I not also feel it for a land like

this. In an American it would seem to me degenerate and ungrateful to hang with passion upon the traces of Homer and Virgil, and follow without emotion the nearer and plainer footsteps of Shakspeare and Milton; and I should think him cold in his love for his native land, who felt no melting in his heart for that other native land, which holds the ashes of his forefathers.

THE DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE. ·O. Dewey.

You are a man; you are a rational and religious being; you are an immortal creature. Yes, a glad and glorious existence is yours: your eye is opened to the lovely and majestic vision of nature; the paths of knowledge are around you, and they stretch onward to eternity; and, most of all, the glory of the infinite God, the all-perfect, all-wise, and all-beautiful, is unfolded to you. What, now, compared with this, is a little worldly renown? The treasures of infinity and of eternity are heaped upon thy laboring thought; - can that thought be deeply occupied with questions of mortal prudence? It is as if a man were enriched by some generous benefactor almost beyond measure, and should find nothing else to do but vex himself and complain, because another man was made a few thousands richer,

Where, unreasonable complainer, dost thou stand, and what is around thee? The world spreads before thee its sublime mysteries, where the thoughts of sages lose themselves in wonder; the ocean lifts up its eternal anthems to thine ear; the golden sun lights thy path; the wide heavens stretch themselves above thee, and worlds rise upon worlds, and systems beyond systems, to infinity; and dost thou stand in the centre of all this, to complain of thy lot and place? Pupil of that infinite teaching, minister at nature's great altar, — child of heaven's favor, ennobled being, redeemed creature, must thou pine in sullen and envious melancholy, amidst the plenitude of the whole creation?

In that thou art a man, thou art infinitely exalted above what any man can be, in that he is praised. I would rather be the

humblest man in the world, than barely be thought greater than the greatest. The beggar is greater, as a man, than is the man, merely as a king. Not one of the crowds that listened to the eloquence of Demosthenes and Cicero, not one who has bent with admiration over the pages of Homer and Shakspeare, not one who followed in the train of Cæsar or of Napoleon, would part with the humblest power of thought, for all the fame that is echoing over the world and through the ages.

THE FIRST BATTLE-GROUND OF THE REVOLUTION.— R. Choate.

THAT was a glorious morning, the 19th of April, 1775; and wherein, I would ask, consisted the specific, transcendent glories of that day? Wherein lies that strange charm that belongs to everything connected with this place, its incidents and details? Why is it that our hearts grow liquid, and that we can pour them out like water, when we listen again to that old story, older than the words of our mothers' love, needing none of that brilliant genius which had that day touched their ears, to invest them with power which should never die?

What is it that

It is because it

Why is it so pleasant to come up here from the miserable strifes and bickerings of every-day life, to dwell and worship for a short space of time in such charmed presence as this? makes the specific, transcendent glory of the day? was an event so rare, so strange, so ominous of good or evil to future generations of man. It was from these instruments, and from these flags, borne by these trembling hands, — it was that essence, so subtile, so rare, so extensive, so mysterious, that free and that stirring spirit, the sentiment of American nationality, which was first breathed into the life of this people, and made to pour itself through and about the body of the people, and which shall last until the heavens be no more.

Let, then, the events of which we are reminded by these scenes and these men mark the strong birth-love of the American people. On that day, within the space of twelve hours, the old colonial

party passed away, like a scroll. The veil of the first temple was that day rent from top to bottom. That day, American liberty was then and there born. Our aged and revered friends of Concord, and Lexington, and Acton, of Carlisle, Sudbury and the surrounding towns, went into that battle British colonists; the baptism of fire was laid upon their charmed brows, and they rose from their knees American citizens! The flag of Massachusetts, the pine-tree flag, that old flag, was carried into battle in the morning; and if the survivor who rolled it up that night had noticed it, he would have seen, gleaming through a blaze of light, on one side, the pine-tree banner, and, on the other, the glorious stars and stripes!

DEDICATION OF THE CEMETERY AT MOUNT AUBURN.-J. Story.

OUR cemeteries, rightly selected and properly arranged, may be made subservient to some of the highest purposes of religion and human duty. They may preach lessons to which none may refuse to listen, and which all that live must hear. Truths may be there felt and taught, in the silence of our own meditations, more persuasive and more enduring than ever flowed from human lips. The grave hath a voice of eloquence, nay, of superhuman eloquence, - which speaks at once to the thoughtlessness of the rash, and the devotion of the good; which addresses all times, and all ages, and all sexes; which tells of wisdom to the wise, and of comfort to the afflicted; which warns us of our follies and our dangers; which whispers to us in accents of peace, and alarms us in tones of terror; which steals with a healing balm into the stricken heart, and lifts up and supports the broken spirit; which awakens a new enthusiasm for virtue, and disciplines us for its severer trials and duties; which calls up the images of the illustrious dead, with an animating presence for our example and glory; and which demands of us, as men, as patriots, as Christians, as immortals, that the powers given by God should be devoted to his service, and the minds created by his love should return to him

with larger capacities for virtuous enjoyment, and with more spiritual and intellectual brightness.

A rural cemetery seems to combine in itself all the advantages which can be proposed to gratify human feelings, or tranquillize human fears; to secure the best religious influences, and to cherish all those associations which cast a cheerful light over the darkness of the grave.

And what spot can be more appropriate than this, for such a purpose? Nature seems to point it out with significant energy, as the favorite retirement for the dead. There are around us all the varied features of her beauty and grandeur, the forest-crowned height, the abrupt acclivity, the sheltered valley, the deep glen, the grassy glade, and the silent grove. Here are the lofty oak, the beech, that" wreathes its old fantastic roots so high," the rustling pine, and the drooping willow; the tree that sheds its pale leaves with every autumn, a fit emblem of our own transitory bloom, and the evergreen, with its perennial shoots, instructing us that "the wintry blast of death kills not the buds of virtue." Here is the thick shrubbery to protect and conceal the new-made grave; and there is the wild-flower creeping along the narrow path, and planting its seeds in the upturned earth. All around us there breathes a solemn calm, as if we were in the bosom of a wilderness, broken only by the breeze as it murmurs through the tops of the forest, or by the notes of the warbler pouring forth his matin or his evening song.

Ascend but a few steps, and what a change of scenery to surprise and delight us! We seem, We seem, as it were in an instant, to pass from the confines of death to the bright and balmy regions of life! Below us flows the winding Charles, with its rippling current, like the stream of time hastening to the ocean of eternity! In the distance, the city—at once the object of our admiration and our love— rears its proud eminences, its glittering spires, its lofty towers, its graceful mansions, its curling smoke, its crowded haunts of business and pleasure, which speak to the eye, and yet leave a noiseless loneliness on the ear. Again we turn, and the walls of our venerable university rise before us, with many a recollection