STORY OF SCHOOL.

In the open casement a lingering bee
Murmured a drowsy tune,

And, from the upland meadows, a song,
In the lulls of the afternoon,

Had come on the air that wandered by,
Laden with scents of June.

Our tasks were finished and lessons said,
As we sat all hushed and still,
Listening to the purl of the brook,
And the whirr of the distant mill,

And waiting the word of dismissal, that yet
Waited the master's will.

The master was old, and his form was bent,
And scattered and white his hair;

But his heart was young, and there ever dwelt
A calm and kindly air,

Like a halo over a pictured saint,

On his face marked deep with care.

His eyes were closed, and his wrinkled hands
Were folded over his vest,

As wearily back in his old arm-chair

He reclined as if to rest;

And the golden streaming sunlight fell

On his brow, and down his breast.

We waited in reverent silence long,

And silence the master kept,

Though still the accustomed saintly smile

Over his features crept;

And we thought, worn out with the lengthened toil

Of the summer's day, he slept.

So we quietly rose and left our seats,

And outward into the sun,

From the gathering shade of the dusty room,

Stole silently one by one

For we knew, by the distant striking clock,

It was time the school was done,

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And left the master sleeping alone,
Alone in his high-backed chair,

With his eyelids and his withered palms
Folded as if in prayer,

And the mingled light and smile on his face,

And we knew not Death was there.

Nor knew that just as the clock struck five,
His kindly soul away,

A shadowy messenger silently bore
From its trembling house of clay,
To be a child with the Saints of Heaven,
And to dwell with Christ alway!

OUR COMMON SCHOOLS.-DANIEL WEBSTER.

NEW ENGLAND may be allowed to claim for her schools, I think, a merit of a peculiar character. She early adopted and has constantly maintained the principle, that it is the undoubted right and the bounden duty of Government to provide for the instruction of all youth. That which is elsewhere left to chance, or to charity, we secure by law. For the purpose of public instruction, we hold every man subject to taxation in proportion to his property, and we look not to the question whether he himself have or have not children to be benefited by the education for which he pays. We regard it as a wise and liberal system of police, by which property and life and the peace of society are secured. We seek to prevent, in some measure, the extension of the penal code, by inspiring a salutary and conservative principle of virtue and of knowledge in an early age. We hope to excite a feeling of respectability and a sense of character by enlarging the capacity and increasing the sphere of intellectual enjoyment. By general instruction, we seek, as far as possible, to purify the whole moral atmosphere, to keep good sentiments uppermost, and to turn the strong current of feeling and opinion, as well as the censures of the law and the denunciations of religion, against ira

OUR NATIONALITY.

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morality and crime. We hope for a security beyond the law and above the law, in the prevalence of enlightened and well principled moral sentiment. We hope to continue and prolong the time when, in the villages and farm-houses of New England, there may be undisturbed sleep within unbarred doors. And knowing that our Government rests directly on the public will, that we may preserve it, we endeavor to give a safe and proper direction to that public will.

We do not, indeed, expect all men to be philosophers or statesmen, but we confidently trust, and our expectation of the duration of our system of government rests on that trust, that by the diffusion of general knowledge and good and virtuous sentiments, the political fabric may be secure, as well against open violence and overthrow, as against that slow but sure undermining of licentiousness.

OUR NATIONALITY.-THOMAS STARR KING.

OUR duty is to maintain American nationality. I believe, as devoutly as I bow to the Sermon on the Mount, that God summons us to “bend each corporal agent" and all the fibers of the soul to that work now. Our nationality, we repeat, has its charter and seal not in a written constitution so much as in the trend of a coast-the trough of a glorious valley, grooved by the finger of Omnipotence, the most princely domain of the globe-the course and sweep of a history more manifestly providential than any since the deliverance from Egypt and the settlement of Palestine. If we can feel what traditions mean-if we are open to the inspiration of great characters, noble as any in the secular annals of our planet-if we are not dead to the call of a long-compacted and holy trust, we shall confess that we have one great duty, one supreme privilege, rather, in these terrible days, namely, to devote all that we have, and are, and hope to be, to the maintenance of the nation which God has delivered in its fresh magnificence to the keeping of our valor and patriotism. Make the preservation

of nationality the goal of all action, the touchstone of all politics, Stand for every thing that serves that. Resist every thing, reject every thing, pour impassioned scorn upon every thing that opposes that. If a man or a party talks State sovereignty, say that the only real sovereignty a State can have is in consenting to fit, like a rib, into the national back-bone. It loses its sovereignty when it sets up to be what God never made it to be-a whole body. If a man or a party talks of the Tennessee River, or the Cumberland, show him the Ohio, into which they flow. If he talks the Ohio, point him to Cairo, where it pours into a mightier tide. If he talks the Yellowstone or the Platte, or the Kansas, or the Arkansas, tell him that the nation holds, to-day, the springs of all these, and that they hurry with their American contributions to the stream over whose mouth the American banner floats secure. If he talks the Sacramento, in the dialect

of State sovereignty or secession, tell him that he had better smother his pestilent breath in the muddiest portion of its waves.

OUR FLAG.-J. W. WINANS.

WHEN the first gun was fired on Sumter, the nation was insulted; when her flag struck to rebels, the outrage was complete. That flag, like a bright meteor, had penetrated every land and floated upon every sea. Its stars were the coronet of freedom; its stripes were the scourges of oppression. Around its folds twined thickly clustering memories of a nation's greatness, grandeur and benignity. An emblem of glory, it controlled the dearest affections of the heart, and oftentimes brought tears of emotion to the eye or shouts of triumph to the lip. Its glorious beauty sprang from the tracery of woman's gentle hand, while its might prevailed above the roar of battle. Upon that floating drapery the eye of infancy had rested in its first moment of perception, and unto it had fondly turned the old man's last and dying gaze. Aye, and the hero when he fell upon the field crept to its cherished presence and there died in its embrace. When

Chatham, in a burst of startling eloquence, appealed to the venerable ancestry of England, whose portraits lined the walls of Parliament around him, and, by a strange illusion, wrested their very presence from the portals of the tomb, he evoked no influences more august, no holier thrill than that old flag inspires in every patriot breast. Wherever it appears, it is the symbol of power and the shield of safety. Who clings to it, not all the tyrants of the earth can tear from its protection, not even those who tore Becket trembling from the altar. And yet, strange paradox, if to a Roman prætor the panting suppliant could cry in vain, “I am a Roman citizen," what wonder that that flag, although invincible abroad, should be contemned by rebel hearts at home. O, the depth of the disgrace! O, the burning vehemence of the revenge! Not all the efforts of a potent aristocracy could rescue Verres from his doom; nor can those gloomy malcontents escape who trailed the standard of their country in the dust. But the dishonor of that flag was the salvation of the people. The whole nation sprang to arms. The spirit of the fathers still glowed in the breasts of their descendants. It was Massachusetts who first sounded the tocsin of alarm, and reared the standard of resistance in the olden time; it was Massachusetts who first sprang to arms in the rebellion of the present hour. Steadily and firmly, State by State, her sisters wheeled into the line of battle, until, from ocean unto ocean, there arose a host more mighty than the armies of Sennacherib. Upon many a bloody field, from Roanoke to Shiloh; through the thick horrors of a civil strife; amid want, privation, and exposure; with a courage no danger could appall, a resolution no impediment could overcome, and a gallantry no opposition could resist, they have again proclaimed before the startled world the power, the prowess, and the perpetuity of these United States.