ot in their strength. The mountains are not easily crossed, and the valleys are not easily retained. the invader comes, he moves like an avalanche, carrying destruction in his path. The peasantry sinks before him. The country is too poor for plunder, and too rough for valuable conquest. Nature presents her eternal barriers on every side to check the wantonness of ambition; and Switzerland remains with her simple institutions, a military road to fairer climates, scarcely worth a permanent possession, and protected by the jealousy of her neighbors.

EXERCISE XVIII.

WHAT MIND IS FREE?

I CALL that mind free, which masters the senses, which protects itself against animal appetites, which contemns pleasure and pain in comparison with its own energy, which penetrates beneath the body and recognizes its own reality and greatness, which passes life, not in asking what it shall eat or drink, but in hungering, thirsting and seeking, after righteousness.

I call that mind free, which escapes the bondage of matter, which, instead of stopping at the material universe and making it a prison wall, passes beyond it to its Author, and finds, in the radiant signatures which it everywhere bears of the Infinite Spirit, helps to its own spiritual enlargement.

I call that mind free, which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master, which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which opens itself to light whencescever it may come, which receives new truth as ar angel from heaven, which, while consulting others, inquires still more of the oracle within itself, and uses instruction from abroad, not to supersede, but quicken and exalt, its own energies.

I call that mind free, which sets no bounds to its love, which is not imprisoned in itself or in a sect, which recognizes in all human beings the image of God and the

rights of His children, which delights in virtue and sympathizes with suffering, wherever they are seen, which conquers pride, anger and sloth, and offers itself up a willing victim to the cause of mankind.

I call that mind free, which is not passively framed by outward circumstances, which is not swept away by the torrent of events, which is not the creature of accidental impulse, but which bends events to its own improvement, and acts from an inward spring, from immutable principles which it has deliberately espoused.

I call that mind free, which protects itself against the usurpations of society, which does not cower to human opinion, which feels itself accountable to a higher tribunal than man's, which respects a higher law tha fashion, which respects itself too much to be the slav or tool of the many or the few.

I call that mind free, which, through confidence in God, and in the power of virtue, has cast off all fear but that of wrong doing, which no menace or peril can enthral, which is calm in the midst of tumults, and possesses itself, though all else be lost.

I call that mind free, which resists the bondage of habit, which does not mechanically repeat itself and copy the past, which does not live on its old virtues, which does not enslave itself to precise rules, but which forgets what is behind, listens for new and higher monitions of conscience, and rejoices to pour itself forth in fresh and higher exertions.

I call that mind free, which is jealous of its own freedom, which guards itself from being merged in others, which guards its empire over itself as nobler than the empire of the world.

In fine, I call that mind fiee, which, conscious of its affinity with God, and confiding in His promises by Jesus Christ, devotes itself faithfully to the unfolding of all its powers, which passes the bounds of time and death, which hopes to advance forever, and which finds nexhaustible power, both for action and suffering, in he prospect of immortality.

EXERCISE XIX.

SCIENCE.

SCIENCE does not stint man to the blessings of his own skies: she levels the forest, and fashions it to her mind, until the oak floats a gallant ship upon the waters, as on its element; she clothes it with wings, and sends it across the ocean, compelling the very stars to tell the mariner his way whithersoever he would go, that she may pour into the lap of man the blessings of other climes, of which nature has been chary to his own. Thus she binds the families of the earth together in the nterests of commerce, enriching each with the good of all. These are the triumphs of science.

And thus she has brought us, step by step, invention after invention, to the present state of civilized man. Nor does she close her labors here. She comes to man as a bride, with the treasures of the earth, the sea and the sky, for her dower; but it is not in her dower, rich and divine though it be, that her chief excellence consists. She is to be loved and prized for herself, as well as for the blessings she brings with her; and they usually woo her most successfully who seek her with no mercenary aims.

He who cultivates an acquaintance with the world in which he lives can never be alone. What is solitude, but the emptiness of an ignorant mind? He who can converse with nature, and ponder on the varied mysteries she brings to his notice, and by which she fills his heart with gratitude and delight, can never be alone. He needs no companionship. Let him wander forth by hill, and brook, and grove, no rhyming, love-sick, dreaming enthusiast, but a shrewd observer of facts, a searcher after principles and laws, and nature has enough to occupy, to interest, and improve, in her most common forms, without sending him to libraries for knowledge.

Where the vulgar eye can see only a shapeless mass of rock, revealing nothing to the careless and ignorant, he will detect a chronicle of the past, and tracing it to its native quarry, gather something from it of the stupendous changes which have transpired in our globe. While

others pass by the insect, unheeded in its toil, he will stoop to watch its labors, discover its habits, and admire the Divine wisdom which has fitted it to its sphere. The very clod, which is trod unnoticed by the common foot, in the organization of the humble herb upon it, the root, the stem, the circulation of its juices, and the provision for continuing its kind, is as a page in God's book, where He has stereotyped His power, His wisdom and His goodness. He cannot be a solitary being. The universe is open before him, and he sees everywhere the majesty and loveliness of a higher nature. Where others can perceive nothing, learn nothing, order, beauty and law, are revealed to him. Where others can see but a stone, he sees a God, and worships. He cannot be alone; for, step by step, he learns to understand what a God only could create.

EXERCISE XX.

FIDELITY TO THE FEDERAL UNION.

I WOULD earnestly exhort every son of New England to be faithful forever to the Federal Union. While they exercise, according to their several convictions, their political rights, in opposing all partial and sectional legislation, in resisting the extension, by the national authority, of anti-republican institutions, and discountenancing unrighteousness and injustice.in the mode in which the government is administered, let them rejoice in the assurance that, over whatever extent of territory, and from whatever motives of policy, the confederacy is spread, within its boundaries the arts of peace, which are their arts, and were the arts of their fathers, will have an opportunity, such as has never been secured before, to prevail over all the other arts.

If, impelled by the enterprise which marks their race, they follow with their traffic and ingenious industry the conquests of our armies, or open the way for cultivation and civilization to advance into the remotest regions of the West, or pursue their avocations in any quarter of the Union, however inconsistent with their views its

peculiar institutions may be, if they carry their household gods with them, all others will gradually be converted to their principles, and imbued with their spirit If the sons of New England rear the schoolhouse and the church wherever they select their homes, if they preserve the reliance upon their own individual energies, the love of knowledge, the trust in Providence, the spirit of patriotic faith and hope, which made its most barren regions blossom and become fruitful around their fathers, then will the glorious vision of those fathers be realized, and the continent rejoice, in all its latitudes and from sea to sea, in the blessings of freedom and education, of peace and prosperity, of virtue and religion.

EXERCISE XXI.

THE FATHERS OF MASSACHUSETTS.

THE venerable foundations of our republic, fellowcitizens, were laid, on the very spot where we stand, by the fathers of Massachusetts. Here, before they were able to erect a suitable place for worship, they were wont, beneath the branches of a spreading tree, to commend their wants, their sufferings, and their hopes, to Him that dwelleth not in houses made with hands; here they erected their first habitations; here they gathed their first church; here they made their first graves. Yes, on the very spot where we are assembled, crowned with this spacious edifice, surrounded by the comfortable abodes of a dense population, there were, during the first season after the landing of Winthrop, fewer dwellings for the living than graves for the dead. It seemed the will of Providence, that our fathers should be tried by the extremities of either season. When the Pilgrims approached the coast of Plymouth, they found it clad with all the terrors of a northern winter:

The sea around was black with storms,

And white the shore with snow.

The Massachusetts company arrived at the close of June. No vineyards, as now, clothed our inhospitable