gather now the highest palm of all. The victory of ideas is grander far than any victory of blood. What battle ever did so much for humanity as the Sermon on Mars Hill? What battle ever did so much as the Declaration of Independence? But Sermon and Declaration are one, and it is your glorious part to assure the National Unity on this adamantine base. All hail to the Republic, redeemed and regenerated, One and Indivisible! Nullification and Secession are already, like the extinct monsters of a former geological period, to be seen only in the museum of History. With their extinction must disappear the captious, litigious, and disturbing spirit engendered by State pretensions. The whole face of the country will be transformed. There will be concord for discord, smiles for frowns. There will be a new consciousness of national life, with a corresponding glow. The soul will dilate with the assured unity of the Republic, and all will feel the glory of its citizenship. Since that of Rome, nothing so commanding. Local jealousies and geographical distinctions will be lost in the attractions of a common country. Then, indeed, there will be no North, no South, no East, no West; but there will be One Nation. No single point of the compass, but the whole horizon, will receive our regard. Not the Southern Cross flaming with beauty, not even the North Star, long time guide of the mariner and refuge to the flying bondman, but the whole star-spread firmament, will be our worship and delight. As the Nation stands confessed in undivided sovereignty, the States will not cease their appropriate functions. Interlocked, interlaced, and harmonized, they will be congenial parts of the mighty whole, with Liberty and Equality the recognized birthright of all, and no local pretension to interfere against the universal law. There will be a sphere alike for the States and Nation. Local self-government, which is the pride of our institutions, will be reconciled with the national supremacy in maintenance of human rights, and the two together will constitute the elemental principles of the Republic. The States will exercise a minute jurisdiction required for the convenience of all; the Nation will exercise that other paramount jurisdiction required for the protection of all. The reconciliation--God bless the word!--thus begun will embrace the people, who, forgetting past differences, will feel more than ever that they are One, and it will invigorate the still growing Republic, whose original root was little more than an acorn, so that it will find new strength to resist the shock of tempest or time, while it overarches the continent with its generous shade. Such, at least, is the aspiration in which all may unite.