establish among the different States relations of friendship and peace. 3. The importance of this benefit is easy to be understood by considering the sure and tremendous miseries which would follow disunion. For ourselves, we fear that, bloody and mournful as human history now is, a sadder page than has yet been written might record the sufferings of this country should we divide ourselves into separate communities. These would cherish toward one another singularly fierce and implacable enmities. We do not refer to the angry and vindictive feelings which would grow out of the struggles implied in a separation. There are other and more permanent causes of hatred and hostility. 4. One cause, we think, would be found in the singularly active, bold, enterprising spirit which actuates this whole country. A neighborhood of restless, daring, all-grasping communities would contain within itself the seeds of perpetual hostility. Our feverish activity would break out in endless competitions and jealousies. The same great objects would be grasped at by all. Add to this that the necessity of preserving some balance of power would lead each republic to watch the other with a suspicious eye, and this balance could not be maintained in these young and growing communities as easily as in the old and stationary ones of Europe. Among nations such as we should form, which would only have begun to develop their resources, the political equilibrium would be perpetually disturbed. 5. Under such influences an irritable and almost justifiable sensitiveness to one another's progress would fester into unrelenting hatred. Our neighbor's good would become to us a misery and a curse. To obstruct one another's growth would be deemed the perfection of policy. Slight collisions of interest would be exaggerated into unpardonable wrongs, and unprincipled statesmen would find little difficulty in swelling imaginary grievances into causes of war. 6. We proceed to the second and a very important consideration. Our possession of a common language, which is now an unspeakable good, would, in case of disunion, prove as great a calamity, for it would serve above all things to multiply jealousies and exasperate bad passions. In Europe different nations, having each its own language and comparatively small communication, can act but little on each other. Each expresses its own self-esteem and its scorn of other communities in writings which seldom pass its own bounds, and which minister to its own vanity and prejudices without inflaming other States. But suppose this country broken up into contiguous nations, all speaking the same language, all enjoying unrestrained freedom of the press, and all giving utterance to their antipathies and recriminations in newspapers which would fly through all on the wings of the winds,-who can set bounds to the madness which such agents of mischief would engender? 7. Another source of discord, in case of our separation, is almost too obvious to be mentioned. Once divided, we should form stronger bonds of union with foreign nations than with one another. Belligerents in the Old World would strive to enlist us in their quarrels. From disunion we should reap, in plentiful harvests, destructive enmities at home and degrading subserviency to the powers of Europe; and, in case of separation, party spirit, the worst foe of free States, would rage more furiously in each of the new and narrower communities than it does now in our extensive Union; and this spirit would not only spread deadly hatred through each republic, but would perpetually embroil it with its neighbors. 8. We complain of party rage even now, but it is mild and innocent compared with what we should experience were our Union dissolved. Each republic would then be broken into factions one in possession and the other in pursuit of power, and both prepared to link themselves with the factions of their neighbors. Party spirit, when spread over a large country, is far less envenomed and ruinous than when shut up in small States. The histories of Greece and Rome are striking illustrations of this truth. 9. There is no need of exaggeration. We do dread separa tion as the greatest of political evils. Under the wise distri bution of power in this country, we enjoy the watchful and minute protection of a local government, with the immense advantage of a widespread community. Greater means of prosperity a people cannot enjoy. Let us not be defrauded of them by selfish or malignant passions. Let us prize and uphold our National Government. Let us prize it as our bond of union, as that which constitutes us one people, as preserving the different States from mutual jealousies and wars and from separate alliances with foreign nations, as mitigating party spiritin one word, as perpetuating our peace. CHANNING. ... SELECT ETYMOLOGIES.-Balance: fr. L. bì'lanx, bilan'cis, having two scales; fr. bis, twice, and lanx, plate, scale. Exasperate: L. exas'pero, exaspera'lum; fr. as'pero, I make rough, fr. as'per, rough; h., asperity... Federal: fr. L. fœdus, a league or treaty; h., con-federate. . . . Fraud: L. fraus, frau'dis, a cheating; h., de-fraud... Indelible: L. in-de-le'bilis; fr. in-, not, and de'leo, de-le'tum, to destroy. Mercy F. merci; fr. L. mer'ces, mer-ce'dis, earnings, reward. Misery L. mì-sèr'ia; fr. mi'ser, wretched; h., com-miserate, miser. Mitigate: L. mi'tigo, mitiga'tum; fr. mi'tis, mild, soft; h., im-mitigable. Mutual: L. mu'tuus, equal on both sides. ... Recrimination: L. recrimina'tio; fr. re and cri'men, crim'inis, a crime; h., criminal, criminate, etc. Relent: F. ralentir; fr. L. len'tus, pliant. . . . Venom: L. ve-ne'num, a potion that destroys life. XCV.-CHARACTER OF JAMES WATT. 1. JAMES WATT, the great improver of the steam-engine, died on the 25th of August, 1819, in the eighty-fourth year of his age. This name fortunately needs no commemoration of ours, for he that bore it lived to see it crowned with undisputed and unenvied honors, and many generations will probably pass away before it shall have gathered all its fame. We have said that Mr. Watt was the great improver of the steamengine, but in truth, as to all that is admirable in its structure or vast in its utility, he should rather be described as its inIt was by his invention that its action was so regulated as to make it capable of being applied to the finest and ventor. most delicate manufactures, and its power so increased as to set weight and solidity at defiance. By his admirable contrivances it has become a thing stupendous alike for its force and its flexibility, for the prodigious power which it can exert and the ease and precision and ductility with which it can be varied, distributed and applied. The trunk of an elephant, that can pick up a pin or rend an oak, is as nothing to it. 2. It can engrave a seal and crush masses of obdurate metal before it, draw out without breaking a thread like gossamer and lift up a ship of war like a bauble in the air. It can embroider muslin and forge anchors, cut steel into ribbons and impel loaded vessels against the fury of the winds and waves. It would be difficult to estimate the value of the benefits which these inventions have conferred upon the country. There is no branch of industry that has not been indebted to them, and in all the most material they have not only widened most magnificently the field of its exertions, but multiplied a thousandfold the amount of its productions. Our improved steam-engine has increased indefinitely the mass of human comforts and enjoyments, and rendered cheap and accessible, all over the world, the materials of wealth and prosperity. It has armed the feeble hand of man, in short, with a power to which no limits can be assigned, completed the dominion of mind over the most refractory qualities of matter, and laid a sure foundation for all those future miracles of mechanic power which are to aid and reward the labors of after generations. 3. It is to the genius of one man, too, that all this is mainly owing, and certainly no man ever before bestowed such a gift on his kind. The blessing is not only universal, but unbounded, and the fabled inventors of the plow and the loom, who were deified by the erring gratitude of their rude contemporaries, conferred less important benefits on mankind than the inventor of our present steam-engine. Independently of his great attainments in mechanics, Mr. Watt was an extraordinary and, in many respects, a wonderful man. Perhaps no individual in his age possessed so much and such varied and exact information, had read so much or remembered what he had read so accurately and well. He never appeared to be at all encumbered or perplexed with the verbiage of the dull books he perused or the idle talk to which he listened, but to have at once extracted, by a kind of intellectual alchemy, all that was worthy of attention, and to have reduced it for his own use to its true value and to its simplest form. 4. It is needless to say that, with these vast resources, his conversation was at all times rich and instructive in no ordinary degree; but it was, if possible, still more pleasing than wise, and had all the charms of familiarity with all the substantial treasures of knowledge. He generally seemed to have no choice or predilection for one subject of discourse rather than another, but allowed his mind, like a great cyclopædia, to be opened at any letter his associate might choose to turn up, and only endeavored to select from his inexhaustible stores what might be best adapted to the taste of his hearers. He preserved, almost to the last moment of his existence, not only the full command of his extraordinary intellect, but all the alacrity of spirit and the social gayety which had illuminated his happiest days. But a short time before his death he applied himself with all the ardor of early life to the invention of a machine for mechanically copying all sorts of sculpture and statuary, and distributed among his friends some of its earliest performances as the productions of a young artist, just entering on his eighty-third year! 5. This happy and useful life came at last to a gentle close. He had suffered some inconvenience through the summer, but was not seriously indisposed till within a few weeks from his death. He then became perfectly aware of the event which was approaching, and, with his usual tranquillity and benevolence of nature, seemed only anxious to point out to the friends around him the many sources of consolation which were afforded by the circumstances under which it was about to take place. He expressed his sincere gratitude to Providence for the length of days with which he had been blessed and his exemption from most of the infirmities of age, as well as for the calm and cheerful evening of life that he had been permitted |