[From DANIEL WEBSTER'S Works.

Co. 1866.]

Boston: Little, Brown, &

Finally, Gentlemen, there was in the breast of Washington one sentiment so deeply felt, so constantly uppermost, that no proper occasion escaped without its utterance. From the letter which he signed in behalf of the Convention when the Constitution was sent out to the people, to the moment when he put his hand to that last paper in which he addressed his countrymen, the Union, the Union was the great object of his thoughts. In that first letter he tells them that, to him and his brethren of the Convention, union appears to be the greatest interest of every true American; and in that last paper he conjures them to regard that unity of government which constitutes them one people as the very palladium of their prosperity and safety, and the security of liberty itself. He regarded the union1 of these States less as one of our blessings, than as the great treasure-house which contained them all. Here, in his judgment, was the great magazine of all our means of prosperity; here, as he thought, and as every true American still thinks, are deposited all our animating prospects, all our solid hopes for future greatness. He has taught us to maintain this union, not by seeking to enlarge the powers of the government, on the one hand, nor by surrendering them, on the other; but by an administration of them at once firm and moderate, pursuing objects truly national, and carried on in a spirit of justice and equity.

Gentlemen, I propose "THE MEMORY OF GEORGE WASHINGTON."

1 See III. p. 279.

[From J. S. MILL'S Dissertations and Discussions. New York: Henry Holt & Co. 1873.]

Is there, then, no remedy? Are the decay of individual energy, the weakening of the influence of superior minds over the multitude, the growth of charlatanerie,1 and the diminished efficacy of public opinion as a restraining power, are these the price we necessarily pay for the benefits of civilization? and can they only be avoided by checking the diffusion of knowledge, discouraging the spirit of combination, prohibiting improvements in the arts of life, and repressing the further increase of wealth and of production? Assuredly not. Those advantages which civilization cannot give which in its uncorrected influence it has even a tendency to destroy-may yet co-exist with civilization; and it is only when joined to civilization that they can produce their fairest fruits. All that we are in danger of losing we may preserve, all that we have lost we may regain, and bring to a perfection hitherto unknown; but not by slumbering, and leaving things to themselves, no more than by ridiculously trying our strength against their irresistible tendencies: only by establishing counter-tendencies, which may combine with those tendencies, and modify them.

[From MACAULAY's History of England. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1878.]

When this had been done it would be impossible for our rulers to misunderstand the law: but, unless something more were done, it was by no means improbable that they might violate it. Unhappily the Church had long taught the nation that hereditary monarchy, alone

1 Charlatanry is the preferable form.

among our institutions, was divine and inviolable; that the right of the House of Commons to a share in the legislative power was a right merely human, but that the right of the King to the obedience of his people was from above; that the Great Charter was a statute which might be repealed by those who had made it, but that the rule which called the princes of the blood-royal to the throne in order of succession was of celestial origin, and that any Act of Parliament inconsistent with that rule was a nullity.

[From THOMAS CARLYLE'S Inaugural Address, in Critical and Miscellaneous Essays. New York: Scribner, Welford, & Co. 1872.]

Finally, Gentlemen, I have one advice to give you, which is practically of very great importance, though a very humble one. In the midst of your zeal and ardor, for such, I foresee, will rise high enough, in spite of all the counsels to moderate it that I can give you, remember the care of health. I have no doubt you have among you young souls ardently bent to consider life cheap, for the purpose of getting forward in what they are aiming at of high; but you are to consider throughout, much more than is done at present, and what it would have been a very great thing for me if I had been able to consider, that health is a thing to be attended to continually; that you are to regard that as the very highest of all temporal things for you [Applause]. There is no kind of achievement you could make in the world that is equal to perfect health. What to it are nuggets and millions? The French financier said, "Why, is there no sleep to be sold!" Sleep was not in the market at any quotation.

[From HAWTHORNE'S Blithedale Romance. Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co. 1875.]

"You mistake the matter completely," rejoined Westervelt.

"What, then, is your own view of it?" I asked.

"Her mind was active, and various in its powers," said he. "Her heart had a manifold adaptation; her constitution an infinite buoyancy, which (had she possessed only a little patience to await the reflux of her troubles) would have borne her upward, triumphantly, for twenty years to come. Her beauty would not have waned or scarcely so, and surely not beyond the reach of art to restore it in all that time. She had life's summer all before her, and a hundred varieties of brilliant success. What an actress Zenobia might have been! It was one of her least valuable capabilities. How forcibly she might have wrought upon the world, either directly in her own person, or by her influence upon some man, or a series of men, of controlling genius! Every prize that could be worth a woman's having — and many prizes which other women are too timid to desire-lay within Zenobia's reach."

"In all this," I observed, "there would be nothing to satisfy her heart."

"Her heart!" answered Westervelt, contemptuously.

[Those who wish still further to pursue the study of Punctuation are referred to WILSON'S Treatise on the subject.]

INDEX.