And then suppose that you could see in a picture as vast and vivid the preparation for our inheritance of this land. Columbus, haunted by his round idea, and setting sail in a sloop, to see Europe sink behind him, while he was serene in the faith of his dream; the later navigators of every prominent Christian race who explored the upper coasts; the Mayflower, with her cargo of sifted acorns from the hardy stock of British puritanism, and the ship, whose name we know not, that bore to Virginia the ancestors of Washington; the clearing of the wilderness, and the dotting of its clearings with the proofs of manly wisdom and Christian trust; then the gradual interblending of effort and interest and sympathy into one life--the congress of the whole Atlantic slope--to resist oppression upon one member; the rally of every State around Washington and his holy sword, and again the nobler rally around him when he signed the Constitution, and after that the organization of the farthest West with North and South, into one polity and communion; when this was finished, the tremendous energy of free life, under the stimulus and with the aid of advancing science, in increasing wealth, subduing the wilds to the bonds of use, multiplying fertile fields and busy schools and noble work-shops and churches, hallowed by free-will offerings of prayer; and happy homes, and domes dedicated to the laws of States that rise by magic from the haunts of the buffalo and deer, all in less than a long lifetime; and if we could see also how, in achieving this, the flag which represents all this history is dyed in traditions of exploits, by land and sea, that have given heroes to American annals whose names are potent to conjure with, while the world's list of thinkers in matter is crowded with the names of American inventors, and the higher rolls of literary merit are not empty of the title of our "representative men"; if all that the past has done for us, and the present reveals, could thus stand apparent in one picture, and then if the promise of the future to the children of our millions under our common law, and with continental peace, could be caught in one vast spectral exhibition--the wealth in store, the power, the privilege, the freedom, the learning, the expansive and varied and mighty unity in fellowship, almost fulfilling the poet's dream of "the parliament of man, the federation of the world"--you would exclaim with exultation, "I, too, am an American!" You would feel that patriotism, next to your tie to the Divine Love, is the greatest privilege of your life; and you would devote yourselves, out of inspiration and joy, to the obligations of patriotism, that this land, so spread, so adorned, so colonized, so blessed, should be kept forever against all the assaults of traitors, one in polity, in spirit, and in aim. SIFTED WHEAT. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. From his "Courtship of Miles Standish," IV.