For the great Nation grows slowly upward to its perfect proportions, as the parent and teacher of men. And all things and all men in it help to decide and develop that capacity. Not dazzling battle-bursts alone, not alone victorious charges on the trampled plain, not splendid triumphs, when laurelled legions march home from conquered provinces and humbled lands, not the mighty deeds of mighty men in camps, nor the mighty words of mighty men in senates, though all these do their part, and a grand part too--not these alone give the great land its character and might. These come from a thousand little things, we seldom think of. By the workman's axe that fells the forest as by the soldier's bayonet, by the gleaming ploughshare in the furrow as by the black Columbiad couchant on the rampart, by the schoolhouse in the valley as by the grim battery on the bay, by the church spire rising from the grove, by the humble cottage in the glen, by the Bible on the stand at eve, by the prayer from the peaceful hearth, by the bell that calls to worship through the hallowed air; by the merchant at his desk, and by the farmer in the harvest field, by the judge upon the bench, and the workman in his shop, by the student in his silent room, and by the sailor on the voiceful sea, by the honest speaker's tongue, by the honest writer's pen, and by the free press that gives the words of both a thousand pair of eagles' wings over land and sea, by every just and kindly word and work, by every honest, humble industry, by every due reward to manliness and right and loyalty, and by every shackle forged and every gallows built for villany and scoundrelhood; by a thousand things like these about us daily, working unnoticed year by year, is the great river swelled, of thought and feeling and conviction, that floats a mighty nation's grandeur on through the waiting centuries. BUCKLE, DRAPER, AND A SCIENCE OF HISTORY. _SECOND PAPER._