But we will not talk of themes like these. We will not think of failure, dishonor, and despair. We will elevate our minds to the contemplation of our high duties and the great trust committed to us. We will resolve to lay the foundations of our prosperity on that rock of private virtue which can not be shaken until the laws of the moral world are reversed. From our own breasts shall flow the salient springs of national increase. Then our success, our happiness, our glory, will be as inevitable as the inferences of mathematics. We may calmly smile at all the croakings of all the ravens, whether of native or foreign breed. The whole will not grow weak by the increase of its parts. Our growth will be like that of the mountain oak, which strikes its roots more deeply into the soil, and clings to it with a closer grasp, as its lofty head is exalted and its broad arms stretched out. The loud burst of joy and gratitude which, on this, the anniversary of our independence, is breaking from the full hearts of a mighty people, will never cease to be heard. No chasms of sullen silence will interrupt its course; no discordant notes of sectional madness mar the general harmony. Year after year will increase it by tributes from now unpeopled solitudes. The farthest West shall hear it and rejoice; the Oregon shall swell it with the voice of its waters; the Rocky Mountains shall fling back the glad sound from their snowy crests. ON FREEDOM'S GENEROUS SOIL. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, M. D., the distinguished American author, wit, and poet. Born in Cambridge, Mass., August 29, 1809. America is the only place where man is full-grown. NATIONAL HERITAGE. The Rev. THOMAS STARR KING, an American Unitarian divine. Born in New York in 1824; died, 1864. From an address on the "Privileges and Duties of Patriotism," delivered in November, 1862. By permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Publishers, Boston.