When Daniel Webster replied to Senator Hayne, of South Carolina, during the exciting debate on the right of secession, he commenced his ever-memorable speech with these words: 'When the mariner has been tossed for many days in thick weather and on an unknown sea, he naturally avails himself of the first pause in the storm--the earliest glance of the sun--to take his latitude, and ascertain how far the elements have driven him from his true course. Let us imitate this prudence before we float farther, that we may at least be able to conjecture where we now are.' No words are fitter for our ears at this tumultuous period than are these, when the passions of our countrymen, North and South, are excited with the bitterest animosity, and when the discordant cries of party faction at the North are threatening a desolation worse than that of contending armies. In considering, then, our condition, it behooves us first, to 'take our latitude, and ascertain where we now are,'--not as a section or a party, but as a nation and a people. Let us avail ourselves of that distant and dim glimmer in the heavens which even now is looked upon by the sanguine as the promise of peace, and in its light survey our dangers and nerve ourselves to our duties. We behold, then, a people, bound together by the ties of a common interest, namely, national prosperity and renown, and in possession of a land more favored by natural elements of advantage than any other on the face of the globe. We see them standing up in the ranks of hostile resistance each to each, the one great and glorious army fighting for the restoration of a nation once the envy of the world; the other great and glorious army equally ardent and valorous in behalf of a separation of that territory in which they are taught to believe we cannot hold together in peace and amity. Both armies and people are evincing in their very warfare the elements of character which heretofore distinguished us as a nation, and are employing the very means for each other's destruction which were of late the principles of action which rendered us in the highest degree a nation worthy of respect at home and admiration abroad. It is not the purpose of this paper to go back to causes or to relate the subsequent events which have placed us where we are. These causes and events are well known to us and to the world. But here we now stand, with this fratricidal war increased to the most alarming proportions, and with, results but partially developed. Here we of the North stand, with a still invincible army, loyal to the cause nearest to the heart of every patriot, and confident in the ability to withstand and overcome the machinations of the enemy. Here, too, we--ay, _we_ of the South stand, bound together in a common aim, an ardent hope, and a proclaimed and omnipotent impulse to action. _This is the only proper view to take of