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laws, and to maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment of the rights of person and property.

9. Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity.

10. Let it simply be asked, where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in the courts of justice. And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles.

11. It is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who, that is a sincere friend to it, can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?

12. Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.

LX.—WAR BETTER THAN A FALSE PEACE.

ELIZABETH BARRET BROWNING.

1. A cry is up in England, which doth ring The hollow world through, that for ends of trade And virtue, and God's better worshiping,

We henceforth should exalt the name of peace, And leave those bloody wars that eat the soul, (Besides their clippings at our golden fleece).

2. I, too, have loved peace, and from bole to bole Of immemorial, undeciduous trees,

Would write, as lovers use, upon a scroll

The holy name of peace, and set it high
Where none should pluck it down. On trees, I say,
Not upon gibbets !-with the greenery
Of dewy branches and the flowery May,
Sweet meditation 'twixt the earth and sky,
Providing for the shepherd's holiday!

3. Not upon gibbets! though the vulture leaves
Some quiet to the bones he first picked bare.
Not upon dungeons! though the wretch who grieves
And groans within, stirs not the outer air

As much as little field-mice stir the sheaves.
Not upon chain-bolts! though the slave's despair
Has dulled his helpless, miserable brain,

And left him blank beneath the freeman's whip, To sing and laugh out idiocies of pain.

4. Nor yet on starving bones! where many a lip Has sobbed itself asleep through curses vain! I love no peace which is not fellowship,

And which includes not many. I would have
Rather the raking of the guns across

The world, and shrieks against heaven's architrave,
Rather the struggle in the slippery fosse
Of dying men and horses, and the wave
Blood-bubbling.

5. Enough said! By Christ's own cross

And by the faint heart of my womanhood, Such things are better than a peace which sits Beside the hearth in self-commended mood, And takes no thought how wind and rain by fits Are howling out of doors against the good Of the poor wanderer. What! your peace admits Of outside anguish while it sits at home? I loathe to take its name upon my tongue. It is no peace.

6. 'Tis treason stiff with doom,—

'Tis gagged despair, and inarticulate wrong,
Annihilated Poland, stifled Rome,

Dazed Naples, Hungary fainting 'neath the thong,
And Austria wearing a smooth olive leaf
On her brute forehead, while her hoofs outpress
The life from these Italian souls in brief.
O Lord of peace! who art Lord of righteousness,
Constrain the anguished worlds from sin and grief,
Pierce them with conscience, purge them with redress,
And give us peace which is no counterfeit !

LXI.-OUR HEROES, LIVING AND DEAD.

GEORGE PUTNAM.

[From an address delivered in 1865 in honor of the students and graduates of Harvard College, in the war for the Union.]

1. But sorrow, while it has its fit seasons and its sacred rights of indulgence, is not the highest sentiment for the dead, such dead as ours; nor is it the best tribute to their memory. The death of these true martyrs is not the principal fact about them to contemplate in the highest mood to which we aspire to-day; not their death, but their life, such as it was while they lived it here, in the grace of opening manhood, and such as it was in the spirit in which they surrendered it, and such as it is here still as a spiritual presence and power in the lives of those who survive them and those who shall come after them; this is the theme we must essay to rise to, from out of the depths of our sorrow and the mist of our tears and the darkness of the grave.

2. In spiritual estimates, visible success is of the smallest account. Though the cause to which these gallant youths gave themselves had perished utterly, it would have detracted nothing from the beauty and nobleness of their sacrifice. And yet it is a supreme satisfaction and joy to us, and it seems as if it must be to them in their higher sphere, that it has not perished but triumphed completely. They have not died in vain. The great hope that inspired and armed them has been realized, how gloriously! They have accomplished their work. They have saved their country,-they and such as they. The pillars of this vast national fabric were leaning and trembling to their fall, and they have reerected them. A parricidal hand was raised against the nation's life, and they have struck it down. Disruption, disintegration, anarchy, and the elements of eternal strife were

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coming upon us like a tide, and they have stayed the ruin. They have restored the perishing nationality, established it on the rock of humanity and right, made it imperial among the powers of the earth, and let it forth upon a grander and happier career of power and beneficence.

3. They have won peace out of the bloody strife,-a righteous and beautiful peace,-that is even now diffusing its blessings and smiles over the land from ocean to ocean, from lake to gulf, over all the fields of industry, along all the lines of commerce, into all homes and hearts. They have delivered a numerous and unhappy race from cruel bondage. They have cut out the one consuming cancer from the body politic, lifted the one curse, wiped out the one stain. They have conquered the very cause of the war, dug up the root of all this bitterness, slain the one guilty shedder of all their blood. They have given the charter of manhood to every being that bears the image of God throughout the continent; shame and woe to us if we do not ratify and maintain it! They have made the conquest of their arms the triumph of universal humanity. Their blood will cry out to us from the ground for our base recreancy if we let that stupendous victory go back, that sacred banner of freedom go down again.

4. Such are the successes of our dead warriors. This is what they have done-they and their million compatriots in arms, gathered in ones and tens, in squads and regiments, from the cities, the prairies, the mountain sides, from every village and cross-road, from sequestered homes that in giving them gave their all, this is what they have achieved. Or, rather, these are the splendid and beautiful results which a benignant Providence has wrought out through the instru mentality of their valor and patriotism. Not unto us, Lord, not unto us, and not unto them, but unto thy name be the glory!

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