THE old South rested everything on slavery and agriculture, unconscious that these could neither give nor maintain healthy growth. The new South presents a

perfect democracy, the oligarchs leading in the popular movement—a social system compact and closely knitted, less splendid on the surface, but stronger at the core a hundred farms for every plantation, fifty homes for every palace, and a diversified industry that meets the complex needs of this complex age.

Her

The new South is enamored of her new work. soul is stirred with the breath of a new life. The light of a grander day is falling fair on her face. She is thrilling with the consciousness of growing power and prosperity. As she stands upright, full-statured and equal among the people of the earth, breathing the keen air, and looking out upon the expanding horizon, she understands that her emancipation came because in the inscrutable wisdom of God her honest purpose was crossed and her brave armies were beaten.

FREEDOM OF THOUGHT.

EMILIO CASTELAR.

WE must have an end of all persecution of ideas. I condemn the governments of France and Prussia when they oppress the Jesuits.

I condemn the government of Russia when it oppresses the Jews.

I affirm that to persecute ideas is like persecuting light, air, electricity, or the magnetic fluid.

Ideas escape all persecution. When repressed they explode like powder.

THE HEROIC AGE.

RUFUS CHOATE. EXTRACTS.

I MEAN by a heroic age and race, one the course of whose history, and the traits of whose character, and the extent and permanence of whose influences are of a kind and power not merely to be recognized in after time as respectable or useful, but of a kind and of a power to kindle and feed the moral imagination, move the capacious heart, and justify the intelligent wonder of the world.

I mean by a nation's heroic age a time distinguished above others, not by chronological relation alone, but by a concurrence of grand and impressive agencies with large results; by some splendid and remarkable triumph of men over some great enemy, some great evil, some great labor, some great danger; by uncommon examples of the rarer virtues and qualities, tried by an exigency that occurs only at the beginning of new epochs, the accession of new dynasties of dominion or liberty when the great bell of Time sounds another hour.

WAR AND PEACE.

FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON. EXTRACTS.

THROUGH the physical horrors of warfare, poetry discerns the redeeming nobleness. Carnage is terrible. Death and insults to woman worse than death- and human features obliterated under the hoof of the war

horse and reeking hospitals-and ruined commerceand violated homes-and broken hearts, and broken hearts, — they are all is something worse than death.

awful. But there
Cowardice is worse.
manliness is worse.
worse than a hundred thousand deaths—when a people
has gravitated down into the creed that "wealth of na-
tions" consists, not in generous hearts" Fire in each
breast and Freedom on each brow"-in national vir-
tue and primitive simplicity and heroic endurance and
preference of duty to life, - not in men, but in silk
and cotton and something that they call "capital.”

And the decay of enthusiasm and
And it is worse than death-ay,

Peace is blessed-peace rising out of charity. But peace springing out of the calculations of selfishness is not blessed. If the price to be paid for peace is this, that "wealth accumulate and men decay," betterfar better that every street in every town of our once noble country should run blood!

ABOLITIONISM.

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.

GENUINE abolitionism is not a hobby, got up for personal or associated aggrandizement; it is not a political ruse; it is not a spasm of sympathy, which lasts but for a moment, leaving the system weak and worn; it is not a fever of enthusiasm; it is not the fruit of fa naticism; it is not a spirit of faction. It is of Heaven, not of men. It lives in the heart as a vital principle.

It is an essential part of Christianity, and aside from it there can be no humanity. Its scope is not confined to the slave population of the United States, but embraces mankind. Opposition cannot weary it out, force cannot put it down, fire cannot consume it. It is the spirit of Jesus, who was sent "to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God." Its principles are self-evident, its measures rational, its purposes merciful and just. It cannot be diverted from the path of duty, though all earth and hell oppose; for it is lifted far above all earth-born fear. When it fairly takes possession of the soul, you may trust the soul-carrier anywhere, that he will not be recreant to humanity. In short, it is a life, not an impulse -a quenchless flame of philanthropy, not a transient spark of sentimentalism.

THE OLD CONSTITUTION.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

AY, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high;
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;

Beneath it rung the battle shout,
And burst the cannon's roar,-

The meteor of the ocean air

Shall sweep the clouds no more.