RHETORICAL PASSAGES. PART II. THE DIGNITY OF LABOUR. THE 'dignity of labour! Consider its achievements! Dismayed by no difficulty, shrinking from no exertion, exhausted by no struggle, ever eager for renewed efforts in its persevering promotion of human happiness, "clamorous Labour knocks with its hundred hands at the golden gate of the morning," obtaining each day, through succeeding centuries, fresh benefactions for the world! Labour clears the forest, and drains the morass, and makes the wilderness rejoice and blossom as the rose. Labour drives the plough, and scatters the seed, and reaps the harvest, and grinds the corn, and converts it into bread, the staff of life. Labour, tending the pastures and sweeping the waters, as well as cultivating the soil, provides with daily sustenance the thousand millions of the family of man. Labour moulds the brick, and splits the slate, and quarries the stone, and shapes the column, and rears, not only the humble cottage, but the gorgeous palace, the tapering spire, and the stately dome. Labour, diving deep into the solid earth, brings up its longhidden stores of coal, to feed ten thousand furnaces, and in millions of habitations to defy the winter's cold. Labour explores the rich veins of deeply-buried rocks, extracting the gold, the silver, the copper, and the tin. Labour smelts the iron, and moulds it into a thousand shapes for use and ornament,— from the massive pillar to the tiniest needle, from the 'ponderous anchor to the wire-gauze, from the mighty fly-wheel of the steam-engine to the polished purse-ring or the glittering bead. Labour hews down the gnarled oak, and shapes the timber, and builds the ship, and guides it over the deep, plunging through the billows and wrestling with the tempest, to bear to our shores the produce of every clime. Labour brings us Indian rice and American cotton; African ivory and Greenland oil; fruits from the sunny South and furs from the frozen North ; tea from the East and sugar from the West ;-carrying, in exchange, to every land the products of British industry and British skill. Labour, by the universally spread ramifica(394) 21 tions of trade, 'distributes its own treasures from country to country, from city to city, from house to house, conveying to the doors of all, the necessaries and luxuries of life; and, by the pulsations of an untrammelled commerce,1 maintaining healthy life in the great social system. Labour, fusing opaque particles of rock,2 produces transparent glass, which it moulds and polishes, and combines so wondrously, that sight is restored to the blind; while worlds, before invisible from distance, are brought so near as to be weighed and measured with unerring exactness; and atoms, which had escaped all 'detection from their minuteness, reveal a world of wonder and beauty in themselves. Labour, possessing a secret far more important than the philosopher's stone, transmutes the most worthless substances into the most precious; and, placing in the crucible of its potent chemistry the putrid refuse of the sea and the land, extracts fragrant essences, and healing medicines, and materials of priceless importance in the arts. Labour, laughing at difficulties, spans majestic rivers, carries 'viaducts over marshy swamps, suspends aërial bridges above deep ravines, pierces the solid mountain with its dark, undeviating tunnel, blasting rocks and filling hollows; and, while linking together with its iron but loving grasp all nations of the Earth, verifies, in a literal sense, the ancient prophecy: "Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low."4 Labour draws forth its delicate iron thread," and, stretching it from city to city, from province to province, through mountains and beneath the sea, realizes more than fancy ever fabled, while it constructs a chariot on which speech may outstrip the wind, compete with the lightning, and fly as rapidly as thought itself. Labour seizes the thoughts of genius, the discoveries of science, the admonitions of piety, and with its magic types impressing the vacant page, renders it pregnant with life and power, perpetuating truth to distant ages, and diffusing it to all mankind. Labour sits enthroned in palaces of crystal, whose high arched roofs proudly sparkle in the sunshine which delighteth to honour it, and whose ample courts are crowded with the trophies of its victories in every country and in every age. Labour, a mighty magician, walks forth into a region uninhabited and waste; he looks earnestly at the scene, so quiet in its desolation; then, waving his wonder-working wand, those dreary valleys smile with golden harvests; those barren mountain-slopes are clothed with foliage; the furnace blazes; the anvil rings; the busy wheels whirl round; the town appears,the mart of Commerce, the hall of Science, the temple of Religion, rear high their lofty fronts; a forest of masts, gay with varied pennons, rises from the harbour; the quays are crowded with commercial spoils,—the peaceful spoils which enrich both him who receives and him who yields. Representatives of faroff regions make it their resort; Science enlists the elements of earth and heaven in its service; Art, awaking, clothes its strength with beauty; Literature, new born, redoubles and perpetuates its praise; Civilization smiles; Liberty is glad ; Humanity rejoices; Piety exults,-for the voice of industry and gladness is heard on every hand. And who, 'contemplating such achievements, will deny that there is dignity in Labour! achieve'ments, accom'plishments. admoni'tions, warn'ings. benefac'tions, good deeds. compete, strive. contemplating, pon'dering desolation, destitution. detection, discov'ery. dig'nity, no'bleness. NEWMAN HALL. ramifications, branch'es. sus'tenance, nourishment. 1 Pulsations of an untrammelled | is caused by the ammonia which they give commerce. This figure compares the off. It is well known that some of the finest scents are manufactured from putrefying matter. circulation of commodities in merchandise to the circulation of blood in the human body, the regularity of which is indicated by the beats of the pulse. Untrammelled, means free from the restrictions of import and export duties. 2 Particles of rock, the sand of which glass is made. This paragraph refers to the work of the optician, in making spectacles, telescopes, and micro scopes. 4.66 Every valley shall be exalted," &c.-Isaiah, xl. 4. 5 Iron thread. This paragraph of course refers to the electric telegraph. "A region uninhabited and waste.This passage rapidly sketches the progress of a colony, such as one of those in Australia or New England, from the time of its first settlement on a barren shore, till 3 Fragrant essences. The pungent it becomes a populous and flourishing smell arising from putrefying substances state. THE PROBLEM OF CREATION. If we look out upon the starry heavens by which we are 'sur rounded, we find them diversified in every possible way. Our own mighty Stellar System takes upon itself the form of a flat disk, which may be compared to a mighty ring breaking into two distinct divisions, severed from each other, the interior with stars less densely populous than upon the exterior. But take the telescope and go beyond this; and here you find, coming out from the depths of space, universes of every possible shape and fashion; some of them assuming a 'globular form, and, when we apply the highest possible penetrating power of the telescope, breaking into ten thousand brilliant stars, all crushed and condensed into one luminous, bright, and 'magnificent centre. But look yet farther. Away yonder, in the distance, you behold a faint, hazy, 'nebulous ring of light, the interior almost entirely dark, but the exterior ring-shaped, and exhibiting to the eye, under the most powerful telescope, the fact that it may be resolved entirely into stars, producing a universe somewhat analogous to the one we inhabit. Go yet deeper into space, and there you will behold another universe-voluminous scrolls of light, glittering with beauty, flashing with splendour, and sweeping a curve of most extraordinary form and of most tremendous outlines. Thus we may pass from planet to planet, from sun to sun, from system to system. We may reach beyond the limits of this mighty stellar cluster with which we are allied. We may find other island universes sweeping through space. The great unfinished problem still remains-Whence came this universe? Have all these stars which glitter in the heavens been shining from all eternity? Has our globe been rolling around the sun for countless ages? Whence, whence this magnificent architecture, whose architraves 1 rise in splendour before us in every direction? Is it all the work of chance? I answer, No. It is not the work of chance. Here Who shall reveal to us the true cosmogony 2 of the universe by which we are surrounded? Is it the work of an Omnipotent Architect? If so, who is this August Being? Go with me tonight, in imagination, and stand with old Paul, the great apostle, upon Mars Hill,3 and there look around you as he did. rises that magnificent building, the Parthenon, sacred to Minerva, the goddess of wisdom. There towers her colossal statue, rising in its majesty above the city of which she was the 'guardian—the first object to catch the rays of the rising, and the last to be kissed by the rays of the setting, sun. There are the temples of all the gods; and there are the shrines of every divinity. And yet I tell you these gods and these divinities, though created under the inspiring fire of poetic fancy and Greek imagination, never reared this stupendous structure by which we are surrounded. The Olympic Jove never built these heavens. The wisdom of Minerva never organized these magnificent systems. I say with St. Paul,5- "The God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands." No; here is the temple of our Divinity. Around us and above us rise Sun and System, Cluster and Universe. And I doubt not that in every region of this vast Empire of God, hymns of praise and anthems of glory are rising and reverberating from Sun to Sun and from System to System-heard by Omnipotence alone across 'immensity and through 'eternity! 'Architrave (ar'ketrave), entablature; | name for the Pallas Athene of the Greeks. or that part of the entablature which rests upon the column. 2 Cosmog'ony, the theory or science of the origin of the universe. 3 Mars Hill, Par'thenon, Miner'va.See p. 258, Note 4; and the lesson, Paul at Athens, p. 255. - Minerva is the Latin She was the goddess of wisdom. Olympic Jove.-Zeus of the Greeks, (called by the Romans Jupiter and Jove,) the chief of their deities, who were supposed to have their abode on Olympus, a lofty mountain in Thessaly. 5 With St. Paul.-See Acts, xvii. 24. EDUCATION AND THE STATE. I BELIEVE, sir,1 that it is the right and the duty of the State to provide means of education for the common people. This proposition seems to me to be implied in every definition that has ever yet been given of the functions of a Government. About the extent of those functions there has been much difference of opinion among ingenious men. There are some who hold that it is the business of a Government to meddle with every part of the system of human life: to regulate trade by bounties and prohibitions, to regulate expenditure by 'sumptuary laws, to regulate literature by a censorship, to regulate religion by an inquisition. Others go to the opposite extreme, and assign to Government a very narrow sphere of action. But the very narrowest sphere that ever was assigned to governments by any school of political philosophy is quite wide enough for my pur |