Seem almost hushed--patience awhile! Though slowly night to day gives birth, Soon the young babe with radiant smile Shall gladden all the waiting earth. By fair gradation changes come, No harsh transitions mar God's plan, But slowly works from sun to sun His perfect rule of love to man. And patience, too, my countrymen, In this our nation's fierce ordeal! Bright burns the searching flame, and then, The dross consumed, shall shine the real. Wake, watcher! see the mountain peaks Already catch a golden ray, Light on the far horizon speaks The dawning of a glorious day. Murky the shadows still that cling In the deep valleys, but the mist Is soaring up on silver wing To where the sun the clouds has kissed. Hard-fought and long the strife may be, The powers of wrong be slow to yield, But Right shall gain the victory, And Freedom hold the battle field. AMERICAN DESTINY. We would study the question of American Destiny in the light of common sense, of history, and of science. It may be unusual to illustrate from science a principle which is to have a political application; but we shall endeavor to do so, believing it to be unexceptionably legitimate. The different departments of science, science and history, science and politics, have been, heretofore, kept quite distinct as to the provinces of inquiry to which it was presumed they severally belonged. Each has been cultivated as if it had no relation external to itself, and was not one of a family of cognate truths. This, however, is undergoing a gradual but certain change, in which it is becoming constantly more manifest that between the different departments of human inquiry there are mutual dependences and complicated interrelations, which enable us, by the truths of one science, to thread the mazes of another. There are certain general laws which pertain with equal validity to many departments of activity in the natural world; there are parallel lines of development as the result of the inherent correlation of forces. Thus, if we have found a great general law in physiology, that same law may apply with equal aptness to astronomy, geology, chemistry, and even to social and political evolution. One of these general laws, and perhaps the most comprehensive in its character and universal in its application of any yet known, we will announce in the language of Guyot, the comparative geographer: 'We have recognized in the life of all that develops itself, three successive states, three grand phases, three evolutions, identically repeated in every order of existence; a _chaos_, where all is confounded together; a _development_, where all is separating; a _unity_, where all is binding itself together and organizing. We have observed that here is the law of _phenomenal life_, the _formula_ of development, whether in inorganic nature or in organized nature.'