God hath sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat for this planting. CENTER OF CIVILIZATION. From _North British Review_. It is too late to disparage America. Accustomed to look with wonder on the civilization of the past, upon the unblest glories of Greece and of Rome, upon mighty empires that have risen but to fall, the English mind has never fixed itself on the grand phenomenon of a great nation at school. Viewing America as a forward child that has deserted its home and abjured its parent, we have ever looked upon her with a callous heart and with an evil eye, judicially blind to her progress. But how she has gone on developing the resources of a region teeming with vegetable life. How she has intrenched herself amid noble institutions, with temples enshrined in religious toleration, with universities of private bequest and public organization, with national and unshackled schools, and with all the improvements which science, literature, and philanthropy demand from the citizen or from the state. Supplied from the Old World with its superabundant life, the Anglo-Saxon tide has been carrying its multiplied population to the West, rushing onward through impervious forests, leveling their lofty pines and converting the wilderness into abodes of populous plenty, intelligence, and taste. Nor is this living flood the destroying scourge which Providence sometimes lets loose upon our species. It breathes in accents which are our own; it is instinct with English life; and it bears on its snowy crest the auroral light of the East, to gild the darkness of the West with the purple radiance of salvation, of knowledge, and of peace. Her empire of coal, her kingdom of cotton and of corn, her regions of gold and of iron, mark out America as the center of civilization, as the emporium of the world's commerce, as the granary and storehouse out of which the kingdoms of the East will be clothed and fed; and, we greatly fear, as the asylum in which our children will take refuge when the hordes of Asia and the semi-barbarians of Eastern Europe shall again darken and desolate the West. Though dauntless in her mien, and colossal in her strength, she displays upon her banner the star of peace, shedding its radiance upon us. Let us reciprocate the celestial light, and, strong and peaceful ourselves, we shall have nothing to fear from her power, but everything to learn from her example. A YOUTHFUL LAND. JAMES OTIS, a celebrated American orator and patriot. Born at West Barnstable, Mass., February 5, 1725. Killed by lightning at Andover, Mass., May, 1783.