When I see the immigration of the Pilgrims from the chalky shores of England,—in the night fleeing from their native home,—so dramatically and ably pictured by Mr. Webster in his celebrated oration,—when father, mother, brother, wife, sister, lover, were all lost by those melancholy wanderers—“stifling,” in the language of one who is immortal in the conception, “the mighty hunger of the heart,” and landing, amidst cold and poverty and death, upon the rude rocks of Plymouth,—I venture to think the will of Deity was there! When I have remembered the Revolution of ’76,—the Seven Years’ War—three millions of men in arms against the most powerful nation in history, and vindicating their independence,—I have thought that their sufferings and death were not in vain! When I have seen the forsaken hearthstone,—looked upon the battle-field, upon the dying and the dead,—heard the agonizing cry, “Water, for the sake of God! water;” seeing the dissolution of being—pale lips pressing in death the yet loved images of wife, sister, lover,—I have not deemed—I will not deem all these things in vain! I cannot regard this great continent, reaching from the Atlantic to the far Pacific, and from the St. John’s to the Rio del Norte, as the destined home of a barbarian people of third-rate civilization. Like the Roman who looked back upon the glory of his ancestors, in woe, exclaiming, “Great Scipio’s ghost complains that we are slow, And Pompey’s shade walks unavenged among us,” the great dead hover around me:—Lawrence, “Don’t give up the ship.”—Henry, “Give me liberty or give me death!”—Adams, “Survive or perish, I am for the Declaration.”—Allan, “In the name of the living God, I come!” Come then, Thou Eternal, who dwellest not in temples made with hands, but who, in the city’s crowd or by the far forest stream, revealest Thyself to the earnest seeker after the true and right, inspire my heart; give me undying courage to pursue the promptings of my spirit; and whether I shall be called in the shades of life to look upon as sweet and kind and lovely faces as now, or shut in by sorrow and night, horrid visions shall gloom upon me in my dying hour, O my country, mayest thou yet be free! COLUMBIA BY FREDERICK LAWRENCE KNOWLES Mated to the Millennium,—Time’s last heir And proudest daughter, conquerless as he; Girdled with lakes like jewels princely fair, With strong feet planted in the Mexic sea! Where Law is liberty, where Love is power, And the twain one, there Treason cannot dwell; A fangless asp, it coiled one impotent hour, But at thy white glance backward writhed to hell. Leave dotard empires flames of drunken war, Be thine chaste hours of labor and increase, Vineyards and harvests yielding guiltless store, Toil’s bloodless battles on the plains of peace!