ADDRESS TO LADIES. 31 indeed, dignifies humanity; for it interests without corrupting, and elevates the feeling without hardening the heart. But no haughty pride guards its approach-no zealous spirit forbids its entrance; the portals are open to all, but they are to be passed only on the wings of perseverance. In vain does an utilitarian age ask what is the use of literary pursuits?—what benefit is thence to arise to society?—in what respect is the sum of human happiness to be increased by this extension? What, I would ask, in reply, is the use of the poetry of Milton, the music of Handel, the paintings of Raffaelle? Why are the roses more prized than all the harvests of the fields, though they are beautiful alone? To what does everything great or elevating in nature tend, if not to the soul itself to that soul which is eternal and invisible, and never ceases to yearn after the eternal and invisible, how far soever it may be removed from whatever affects only present existence, and which, in that very yearning, at once reveals its ultimate destiny, and points to the means by which alone that destiny is to be attained? Be not deterred, then, by the difficulties of the ascent, the toil requisite to reach the summit. Of such study may truly be said what has been so finely spoken of the moral uses of affliction: "It is like the black mountain of Bender, in India; the higher you advance, the steeper is the ascent, the darker and more desolate the objects with which you are surrounded; but when you are at the summit, the heaven is above your head, and at your feet the kingdom of Cashmere." SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON. V.-ADDRESS TO LADIES. CONTINUATION OF THE FOREGOING. I SEE with pleasure around me not merely an assembly of men, but a large proportion of the other sex. To the latter I would, in an especial manner, address myself ere we part, and that not in the spirit of chivalrous gallantry, but of serious moral duty. I will do so in the words of a man second to none that ever existed in intellectual power, and least of all liable to be swayed in matters of thought by the attractions of your society. "It is my decided opinion," said Napoleon, "that every thing in the future man depends upon his mother." If any thing was requisite to support so great an authority, I would add, that as far as my own observation has gone, I have never either heard or read of a remarkable man who had not a remarkable mother, If, then, study is requisite for the men who are to rule the world, what must it be for you who are to form the men? whose blessed province it is to implant those early lessons of virtue, and inculcate those early feelings of religion and habits of perseverance, on which the whole future fate of life depends, and which, by the blessing of God, when once received, will never be forgotten? Thus it is that you will duly discharge your inestimable mission; thus it is that you will contribute your part to the great work of human advancement; and thus it is that you will regain in home the lost Paradise of Eden, and be enabled to say of it, in your last hours, "This it is which has softened the trials of Time; this has, indeed, been the gate of heaven." IB. COPERNICUS, after harboring in his bosom for long, long years that pernicious heresy, -the solar system, died on the day of the appearance of his book from the press. The closing scene of his life, with a little help from the imagination, would furnish a noble subject for an artist. For thirty-five years he has revolved and matured in his mind his system of the heavens. A natural mildness of disposition, bordering on timidity, a reluct ance to encounter controversy, and a dread of persecution, have led him to withhold his work from the press, and to make known his system but to a few confidential friends and disciples. At length he draws near his end; he is seventy-three years of age, and he yields his work on the "revolutions of the heavenly orbs" to his friends for publication. The day at last has come on which it is to be ushered into the world. It is the 24th of May, 1543. On that day, the effect, no doubt, of the intense excitement of his mind operating upon an exhausted frame, an effusion of blood brings him to the gates of the grave. His last hour is come; he lies stretched upon the couch from which he will never rise, in his apartment at the Canonry at Frauenberg, in East Prussia. The beams of the setting sun glance through the Gothic windows of his chamber; near his bedside is the armillary sphere, which he has contrived to represent his theory of the heavens; his picture painted by himself, the amusement of his earlier years, hangs before him; beneath it his astrolabe and other imperfect astronomical instruments; and around him are gathered his sorrowing disciples. The door of the apartment opens; the eye of the departing sage is turned to see who enters; it is a friend who brings him the first printed OBLIGATIONS TO ENGLAND. 33 copy of his immortal treatise. He knows that in that book he contradicts all that had ever been distinctly taught by former philosophers; he knows that he has rebelled against the sway of Ptolemy, which the scientific world had acknowledged for a thousand years; he knows that the popular mind will be shocked by his innovations; he knows that the attempt will be made to press even religion into the service against him; but he knows that his book is true. He is dying, but he leaves a glorious truth, as his dying be quest, to the world. He bids the friend who has brought it place himself between the window and his bedside, that the sun's rays may fall upon the precious volume, and he may behold it once before his eye grows dim. He looks upon it, takes it in his hands, presses it to his breast, and expires. But no, he is not wholly gone. A smile lights up his dying countenance; a beam of returning intelligence kindles in his eye; his lips move; and the friend who leans over him can hear him faintly murmur the beautiful sentiments which the Christian lyrist of a later age has so finely expressed in verse: "Ye golden lamps of heaven, farewell, with all your feeble light! Farewell, thou ever-changing moon, pale empress of the night! And thou, refulgent orb of day, in brighter flames arrayed, My soul, which springs beyond thy sphere, no more demands thy aid. The pavement of those heavenly courts, where I shall reign with God." So died the great Columbus of the heavens. E. EVERETT, VII. OBLIGATIONS TO ENGLAND. SIR, in spite of all that has passed, we owe England much; and even on this occasion, standing in the midst of my generousminded countrymen, I may fearlessly, willingly, acknowledge the debt. We owe England much; - nothing for her martyrdoms; nothing for her proscriptions; nothing for the innocent blood with which she has stained the white robes of religion and liberty; these claims our fathers canceled, and her monarch rendered them and theirs a full acquittance forever. But, for the living treasures of her mind, garnered up and spread abroad for centuries by her great and gifted, who that has drunk at the sparkling streams of her poetry, who that has drawn from the deep fountains of her wisdom, who that speaks and reads and thinks her language, will be slow to own his obligation? We may forgive the presumption which "declared" its right "to bind the American colonies," for it was wofully expiated by the humiliation which "acknowledged" those same "American colonies" to be "sovereign and independent states." The immediate workers, too, of that political iniquity, have passed away. Another race is there to lament the folly, another here to magnify the wisdom, that cut the knot of empire. Shall these inherit and entail everlasting enmity? Like the Carthaginian. Hamil'car, shall we come up hither with our children, and on this holy altar swear the pagan oath of undying hate? Even our goaded fathers disdained this. Let us fulfill their words, and prove to the people of England that "in peace" we know how to treat them "as friends." They have been twice told that "in war 99 we know how to meet them as "enemies; and they will hardly ask another lesson, for it may be that, when the third trumpet shall sound, a voice will echo along their seagirt cliffs" The glory has departed!" CHARLES SPRAGUE, VIIL - AMERICA'S TRIUMPHS. WHAT were the victories of Pompey to the united achievements of our Washingtons and Montgomerys and Greens, our Franklins and Jeffersons and Adams's and Laurens's, of the senate of sages whose wisdom conducted, of the band of warriors whose valor accomplished, of the "noble army of martyrs" whose blood sealed and consecrated, the Revolution of '76? What were the events of a few campaigns, however brilliant and successful, in the wars of Italy, or Spain, or Pontus, to by far the greatest era — excepting, perhaps, the Reformation that has occurred in the political history of modern times, to an era that has fixed forever the destinies of a whole quarter of the globe, with the numbers without number that are soon to inhabit it, and has already had, as it will probably continue to have, a visible influence upon the condition of society in all the rest? Nay, what is there, even in the most illustrious series of victories and conquests, that can justly be considered as affording, to a mind that dares to make a philosophic estimate of human affairs, a nobler and more interesting subject of contemplation and discourse than the causes which led to the foundation of this mighty empire; than the wonderful and almost incredible history of what it has since done and is already grown to; than the scene of unmingled prosperity and happiness that is opening and spreading all around us; than the prospect, as dazzling as it is vast, that lies before us, the uncircumscribed career of aggrandizement and improvement which we are beginning to run under such happy THE PEACE OF THE NATIONS. 35 auspices, and with the advantage of having started at a point where it were well for the species had it been the lot of many nations even to have ended their career! It is true, we shall not boast that the pomp of triumph has three hundred times ascended the steps of our capitol, or that the national temple upon its brow blazes in the spoils of a thousand cities. True, we do not send forth our prætors to plunder and devastate the most fertile and beautiful portions of the earth, in order that a haughty aristocracy may be enriched with booty, or a worthless populace be supplied with bread; nor, in every region under the sun, from the foot of the Grampian hills to the land of frankincense and myrrh, is the spirit of man broken and debased by us beneath the iron yoke of a military domination. No! our triumphs are the triumphs of reason, of happiness, of human nature. Our rejoicings are greeted with the most cordial sympathy of the cosmopolite and the philanthropist ; and the good and the wise all round the globe give us back the echo of our acclamations. It is the singular fortune, or, I should rather say, it is the proud distinction of Americans, that, in the race of moral improvement which society has been every where running for some centuries past, we have outstripped every competitor, and have carried our institutions, in the sober certainty of waking bliss, to a higher pitch of perfection than ever warmed the dreams of enthusiasm or the speculations of the theorist. HUGH S. LEGARE. IX. THE PEACE OF THE NATIONS. SIR, there are considerations, springing from our situation and condition, which fervently invite us to take the lead in the great work of peace. To this should bend the patriotic ardor of the land; the ambition of the statesman; the efforts of the scholar; the pervasive influence of the press; the mild persuasion of the sanctuary; the early teachings of the school. Here, in ampler ether and diviner air, are untried fields for exalted triumphs, more truly worthy the American name than any snatched from rivers of blood. War is known as the Last Reason of Kings. Let it be no reason of our Republic. Let us renounce and throw off, forever, the yoke of a tyranny more oppressive than any in the annals of the world. As those standing on the mountain-top first discern the coming beams of morning, let us, from the vantageground of liberal institutions, first recognize the ascending sun of a new era! It is a beautiful picture in Grecian story, that there was, at |