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and easy to come at: in fine, here is what an Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would be well contented with; and service enough for God, for the fields are here white for harvest."

The history of man does not furnish any more interesting scene, nor one calling up finer associations or more generous sympathies, than the first conference of William Penn and his followers with the savage chiefs; when, to recur again to his own inimitable words, "they met on the broad pathway of good faith and good-will, so that no advantage was taken on either side, but all was openness, brotherhood, and love." Montesquieu, with his usual brilliant and ambitious originality, has styled Penn the modern Lycurgus. Paradoxical as this strange association of names may at first appear, there is one marked point of resemblance between the Spartan and the Pennsylvanian legislator; widely as they differed in the character of their institutions, and the ultimate ends of their ambition.

It is the peculiar glory of these two, above all the other legislators of mankind, to have possessed that self-balanced and confident energy of mind, which could enable them to disregard all considerations of temporary expediency and private interest, and to make every part of their system harmonize in perfect unison with those leading principles which were to pervade, animate, and govern every portion of the state. From "Address before New York Historical Society."

us.

THE SPREAD OF KNOWLEDGE.

CHANNING.

Books are now placed within reach of all. Works, once too costly except for the opulent, are now to be found on the laborer's shelf. Genius sends its light into cottages. The great names of literature have become household words among the crowd. Every party, religious or political, scatters its sheets on all the winds. We may lament, and too justly, the small comparative benefit as yet accomplished by this agency; but this ought not to surprise or discourage In our present state of improvement, books of little worth, deficient in taste and judgment, and ministering to men's prejudices and passions, will almost certainly be circulated too freely. Men are never very wise and select in the exercise of a new power. Mistake, error, is the discipline through which we advance. It is an undoubted fact, that, silently, books of a higher order are taking place of the worthless. Happily, the instability of the human mind works sometimes for good as well as evil; men grow tired at length even of amusements.

The remarks now made on literature might be extended to the fine

arts. In these we see, too, the tendency to universality. It is said that the spirit of the great artists has died out; but the taste for their works is spreading.. By the improvements of engraving, and the invention of casts, the genius of the great masters is going abroad. Their conceptions are no longer pent up in galleries open to but few, but meet us in our homes, and are the household pleasures of millions. Works, designed for the halls and eyes of emperors, popes, and `nobles, find their way, in no poor representations, into humble dwellings, and sometimes give a consciousness of kindred powers to the child of poverty. The art of drawing, which lies at the foundation of most of the fine arts, and is the best education of the eye for nature, is becoming a branch of common education.

Thus we see, in the intellectual movements of our times, the tendency to expansion, to universality; and this must continue. It is not an accident, or an inexplicable result, or a violence on nature; it is founded in eternal truth. Every mind was made for growth, for knowledge; and its nature is sinned against when it is doomed to ignorance. Every being is intended to acquaint himself with God and his works, and to perform wisely and disinterestedly the duties of life. Accordingly, when we see the multitude of men beginning to thirst for knowledge, for intellectual action, for something more than animal life, we see the great design of Nature about to be accom plished; and society, having received this impulse, will never rest till it shall have taken such a form as will place within every man's reach the means of intellectual culture. This is the revolution to which we are tending and without this, all outward political changes would be but children's play, leaving the great work of society yet to be done.

From Essays."

THE HEAVENS PROCLAIM THE DEITY.

O. M. MITCHEL.

WOULD you gather some idea of the eternity past of God's existence, go to the astronomer, and hid him lead you with him in one of his walks through space; and, as he sweeps outward from object to object, from universe to universe, remember that the light from those filmy stains on the deep pure blue of heaven, now falling on your eye, has been traversing space for a million of years. Would you gather some knowledge of the omnipotence of God, weigh the earth on which we dwell, then count the millions of its inhabitants that have come and gone for the last six thousand years. Unite their strength into one arm, and test its power in an effort to move this earth. It could not stir it a single foot in a thousand years; and yet under the omnipotent

hand of God, not a minute passes that it does not fly for more than a thousand miles. But this is a mere atom;-the most insignificant point among his innumerable worlds. At his bidding, every planet, and satellite, and comet, and the sun himself, fly onward in their appointed courses. His single arm guides the millions of sweeping suns, and around His throne circles the great constellation of unnumbered universes.

Would you comprehend the idea of the omniscience of God, remember that the highest pinnacle of knowledge reached by the whole human race, by the combined efforts of its brightest intellects, has enabled the astronomer to compute approximately the perturbations of the planetary worlds. He has predicted roughly the return of half a score of comets. But God has computed the mutual perturbations of millions of suns, and planets, and comets, and worlds, without number, through the ages that are passed, and throughout the ages which are yet to come, not approximately, but with perfect and absolute precision. The universe is in motion,-system rising above system, cluster above cluster, nebula above nebula,—all majestically sweeping around under the providence of God, who alone knows the end from the beginning, and before whose glory and power all intelligent beings, whether in heaven or on earth, should bow with humility and awe.

Would you gain some idea of the wisdom of God, look to the admirable adjustments of the magnificent retinue of planets and satellites which sweep around the sun. Every globe has been weighed and poised, every orbit has been measured and bent to its beautiful form. All is changing, but the laws fixed by the wisdom of God, though they permit the rocking to and fro of the system, never introduce disorder, or lead to destruction. All is perfect and harmonious, and the music of the spheres that burn and roll around our sun is echoed by that of ten millions of moving worlds, that sing and shine around the bright suns that reign above.

From "Planetary and Stellar Worlds.”

THE FRANKS.

AUGUSTIN THIERRY.

IN 1810, I was finishing my studies at the College of Blois, when a copy of "Les Martyrs," brought from without, circulated through the college. It was a great event for those amongst us who already felt a love of the beautiful and of glory. We quarrelled for the book; it was arranged that each one should have it by turns, and mine fell on a holiday, at the hour of going out walking. That day I pretended to have hurt my foot, and remained alone at home. I read, or rather devoured the pages, seated before my desk in a vaulted room, which

was our school-room, and the aspect of which appeared to me grand and imposing. I at first felt a vague delight, my imagination was dazzled; but when I came to the recital of Eudore, that living history of the declining empire, a more active and reflecting interest attached me to the picture of the Eternal City, of the court of a Roman emperor, the march of a Roman army in the marshes of Batavia, and its encounter with an army of Franks.

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I had read in the history of France, used by the scholars of the military college, and our classical book, The Franks, or French, already masters of Tournay, and the banks of the Escaut, had extended their conquests as far as Somme. . . . Clovis, son of King Childéric, ascended the throne 481, and by his victories strengthened the foundations of the French monarchy." All my archæology of the middle ages consisted in these sentences, and some others of the same kind, which I had learned by heart. French, throne, monarchy, were to me the beginning and end, the groundwork and the form of our national history. Nothing had given me any notion of M. de Chateaubriand's terrible Franks, clothed in the skins of bears, seals, and wild boars, and of the camp guarded by leathern boats, and chariots drawn by huge oxen, of the army placed in the form of a triangle, in which could be distinguished nothing but a forest of javelins, of wild beasts' skins, and half-naked bodies." As the dramatic contrast between the savage warrior and the civilized soldier gradually developed itself, I was more and more deeply struck; the impression made on me by the war-song of the Franks was something electrical. I left the place where I was seated, and marching from one end of the room to the other, repeated aloud, and making my steps ring on the pavement:

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Pharamond! Pharamond! we have fought with the sword.

"We have hurled the battle-axe with two blades; sweat ran from the brow of the warriors, and trickled down their arms. The eagles and birds with yellow feet uttered screams of joy; the crows swam in the blood of the dead; all ocean was but a wound. The virgins have long wept.

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Pharamond! Pharamond! we have fought with the sword.

"Our fathers fell in battle, all the vultures moaned at it: our fathers satiated them with carnage. Let us choose wives whose milk shall be blood, and shall fill with valor the hearts of our sons. Pharamond, the song of the bard is ended, the hours of life are passing away; we will smile when we must die.

"Thus sang forty thousand barbarians. The riders raised and lowered their white shields in cadence; and at each burden, they struck their iron-clad chests with the iron of their javelins."

From "Preface to Récit des Temps Mérovingiens."

THE HOUSE OF REFUGE.

JOHN SERGEANT.

He who

THE philanthropist and the statesman may here concur. desires the welfare of all mankind, and he who only seeks to arrange the movement of a community so as to produce security and peace, will equally find his purpose promoted. And even the most rigid economist, looking only to the pecuniary cost (if any such there be), will have nothing to object. The expense of maintaining a refuge is not greater than the expense of maintaining a jail. The amount required to support its inmates is less than the cost of an equal number in prison. And if, enlarging his view, he recollects, that those who begin their days in a jail, most commonly become a burden for life, subsisted by the public while in, and by plunder when out; whereas the refuge, working a reform, enables them to support themselves, and to contribute something to the general expenses of society; that the one enlarges the sources of crime, and swells the streams that flow from it, and the other seeks to diminish the fountain of iniquity, and dry up its noxious issues; he will be convinced that a just economy walks hand in hand with charity and policy.

If at this moment you should see a destitute and helpless child approaching the brink of a precipice, and know that its ignorant steps would in a few moments lead it to destruction, would you not reach forth your hand to save it? Many are on their way to that yawning monster, a jail, which devours all that is sound and healthful in their nature, and fills the vacant space with corruption. Will you not, from your abundance, give something to save them from imminent ruin, and yourselves from the infliction you must suffer from them, or will you allow the mischief to spread and grow till some other hand shall check it?

It was said of an eminent heathen sage, that he brought philosophy from the clouds, and fixed her abode among men. The Christian's philosophy comes from heaven, brought by no mortal hands, but freely given to man for his own benefit and guidance. It teaches us that charity is like unto the duty enjoined by the "first and great commandment."

From "Address in Philadelphia," 1828.

THE DUTCH REPUBLIC.

G. C. VER PLANCK.

AFTER having beaten down and broken for ever the colossal power of the Spanish monarchy, the Dutch republic continued, for nearly a century, to hold the balance of European olitics with a strong and

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