Columbus and Columbia.

Joseph Emerson Worcester, a celebrated American lexicographer. Born at Bedford, N. H., 1758; died, 1865.

The discovery of America was the greatest achievement of the kind ever performed by man; and, considered inconnection with its consequences, it is the greatest event of modern times. It served to wake up the unprecedented spirit of enterprise; it opened new sources of wealth, and exerted a powerful influence on commerce by greatly increasing many important articles of trade, and also by bringing into general use others before unknown; by leading to the discovery of the rich mines of this continent, it has caused the quantity of the precious metals in circulation throughout the world to be exceedingly augmented; it also gave a new impulse to colonization, and prepared the way for the advantages of civilized life and the blessings ofChristianityto be extended over vast regions which before were the miserable abodes of barbarism and pagan idolatry.

The man to whose genius and enterprise the world is indebted for this discovery was Christopher Columbus of Genoa. He conceived that in order to complete the balance of the terraqueous globe another continent necessarily existed, which might be reached by sailing to the west from Europe; but he erroneously connected it with India. Being persuaded of the truth of his theory, his adventurous spirit made him eager to verify it by experiment.

It is remarkable how few of the eminent men of the discoverers and conquerors of the New World died in peace. Columbus died broken-hearted; Roldan and Bobadilla were drowned; Ojeda died in extreme poverty; Encisco was deposed by his own men; Nicuesa perished miserably by the cruelty of his party; Balboa was disgracefully beheaded; Narvaez was imprisoned in a tropical dungeon, and afterward died of hardship; Cortez was dishonored; Alvarado was destroyed in ambush; Pizarro was murdered,and his four brothers cut off; Sir Walter Raleigh was beheaded by an ungrateful king; the noble and adventurous Robert La Salle, the explorer of the Mississippi Valley, was murdered by his mutinous crew; Sir Martin Frobisher died of a wound received at Brest; Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Raleigh's noble half-brother, "as near to God by sea as by land," sank with the crew of the little Squirrel in the deep green surges of the North Atlantic; Sir Francis Drake, "the terror of the Spanish Main," and the explorer of the coast of California, died of disease near Puerto Bello, in 1595. The frozen wilds of the North hold the bones of many an intrepid explorer. Franklin and Bellot there sleep their last long sleep. The bleak snow-cladtundraof the Lena delta saw the last moments of the gallant De Long. Afric's burning sands have witnessed many a martyrdom to science and religion. Livingston, Hannington, Gordon, Jamieson, and Barttelot are golden names on the ghastly roll. Australia's scrub-oak and blue-gum plains have contributed their quota of the sad and sudden deaths on the earth-explorers' roll.

Hail, Columbia! happy land!Hail, ye heroes! heaven-born band!Joseph Hopkinson, 1770-1842.

And ne'er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.Robert Treat Paine, 1772-1811.

Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise.The queen of the world, and child of the skies!Thy genius commands thee; with rapture beholdWhile ages on ages thy splendors unfold.Timothy Dwight, 1752-1817.

John Adams, second President of the United States. Born October 19, 1735; died July 4, 1826.

A prospect into futurity in America is like contemplating the heavens through the telescopes of Herschel. Objects stupendous in their magnitudes and motions strike us from all quarters, and fill us with amazement.

Louis Jean Rodolophe Agassiz, the distinguished naturalist. Born in Motier, near the Lake of Neufchâtel, Switzerland, in 1807; died at Cambridge, Mass., December 14, 1873. From his "Geological Sketches." By permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Publishers, Boston.

First-born among the continents, though so much later in culture and civilization than some of more recent birth, America, so far as her physical history is concerned, has been falsely denominated theNew World. Hers was the first dry land lifted out of the waters, hers the first shore washed by the ocean that enveloped all the earth beside; and while Europe was represented only by islands rising here and there above the sea, America already stretched an unbroken line of land from Nova Scotia to the far West.

John James Audubon, an American ornithologist. Born in Louisiana May 4, 1780. Died in New York January, 1851. From his "Adventures and Discoveries."

My commercial expeditions, rich in attraction for scientificobservation, were attended also with the varied pleasures which delight a passenger on the waters of the glorious Mississippi. Fresh scenes are continually disclosed by the frequent windings of the river, as you speed along its rapid current. Thousands of birds in the adjacent woods gratify the ear with their sweet mellow notes, or dazzle the sight, as in their gorgeous attire they flash by. It was while ascending the Upper Mississippi, during the month of February, 1814, that I first caught sight of the beautiful Bird of Washington. My delight was extreme. Not even Herschel, when he discovered the planet which bears his name, could have experienced more rapturous feelings. Convinced that the bird was extremely rare, if not altogether unknown, I felt particularly anxious to learn its species. I next observed it whilst engaged in collecting cray fish on one of the flats of the Green River, at its junction with the Ohio, where it is bounded by a range of high cliffs. I felt assured, by certain indications, that the bird frequented that spot. Seated about a hundred yards from the foot of the rock, I eagerly awaited its appearance as it came to visit its nest with food for its young. I was warned of its approach by the loud hissing of the eaglets, which crawled to the extremity of the cavity to seize the prey—a fine fish. Presently the female, always the larger among rapacious birds, arrived, bearing also a fish. With more shrewd suspicion than her mate, glaring with her keen eye around, she at once perceived the nest had been discovered. Immediately dropping her prey, with a loud shriek she communicated the alarm, when both birds, soaring aloft, kept up a growling to intimidate the intruders from their suspected design.

PART OF COLUMBUS STATUE, NEW YORK MONUMENT."From Harper's Weekly.Copyright, 1892, by Harper & BrothersPART OF COLUMBUS STATUE, NEW YORK MONUMENT.(See page244.)

Not until two years later was I gratified by the capture of this magnificent bird. Considering the bird the noblest of its kind, I dignified it with the great name to which this country owed her salvation, and which must be imperishable therefore among her people. Like the eagle, Washington was brave; like it, he was the terror of his foes, and his fame, extending from pole to pole, resembles the majestic soarings of the mightiest of the feathered tribe. America, proud of her Washington, has also reason to be so of her Great Eagle.

SirEdwin Arnold, C. S. I., an English poet and journalist. Born, June 10, 1832.

I reserve as the destiny of these United States the control of all the lands to the south, of the whole of the South American continent. Petty troubles will die away, and all will be yours. In South America alone there is room for 500,000,000 more people. Some day it will have that many, and all will acknowledge the government at Washington. We in England will not grudge you this added power. It is rightfully yours. With the completion of the canal across the Isthmus of Nicaragua you must have control of it, and of all the surrounding Egypt of the New World.

(ANONYMOUS.)

Land of the mighty! through the nationsThy fame shall live and travel on;And all succeeding generationsShall bless the name of Washington.While year by year new triumphs bringing,The sons of Freedom shall be singing—Ever happy, ever free,Land of light and liberty.Columbus, on his dauntless mission,Beheld his lovely isle afar;Did he not see, in distant vision,The rising of this western star—This queen, who now, in state befitting,Between two ocean floods is sitting?Ever happy, ever free,Land of light and liberty.

Henry Ward Beecher, a distinguished American writer and preacher. Born in Litchfield, Conn., June 24, 1813; died, March 8, 1887, in Brooklyn, N. Y. From his "Patriotic Addresses." By permission of Messrs. Fords, Howard & Hulbert, Publishers, New York.

When a man of thoughtful mind sees a nation's flag, he sees not the flag only, but the nation itself; and whatever may be its symbols, he reads chiefly in the flag the government, the principles, the truth, the history, which belong to the nation which sets it forth. When the French tricolor rolls out to the wind, we see France. When the newfound Italian flag is unfurled, we see Italy restored. When the other three-cornered Hungarian flag shall be lifted to the wind, we shall see in it the long-buried, but never dead, principles of Hungarian liberty. When the united crosses of St. Andrew and St. George on a fiery ground set forth the banner of old England, we see not the cloth merely; there rises up before the mind the noble aspect of that monarchy which, more than any other on the globe, has advanced its banner for liberty, law, and national prosperity. This nation has a banner, too, and wherever it streamed abroad men saw daybreak bursting on their eyes, for the American flag has been the symbol of liberty, and men rejoiced in it. Not another flag on the globe had such an errand, or went forth upon the seas carrying everywhere, the world around, such hope for the captive and such glorious tidings. The stars upon it were to thepining nations like the morning stars of God, and the stripes upon it were beams of morning light. As at early dawn the stars stand first, and then it grows light, and then, as the sun advances, that light breaks into banks and streaming lines of color, the glowing red and intense white striving together and ribbing the horizon with bars effulgent, so on the American flag stars and beams of many-colored lights shine out together. And wherever the flag comes, and men behold it, they see in its sacred emblazonry no rampant lion and fierce eagle, but only light, and every fold indicative of liberty. It has been unfurled from the snows of Canada to the plains of New Orleans; in the halls of the Montezumas and amid the solitude of every sea; and everywhere, as the luminous symbol of resistless and beneficent power, it has led the brave to victory and to glory. It has floated over our cradles; let it be our prayer and our struggle that it shall float over our graves.

Nathaniel S. S. Beman, an American Presbyterian divine. Born in New Lebanon, N. Y., 1785; died at Carbondale, Ill., August 8, 1871. For forty years pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, Troy, N. Y.

The western continent has, at different periods, been the subject of every species of transatlantic abuse. In former days, some of the naturalists of Europe told us that everything here was constructed upon a small scale. The frowns of nature were represented as investing the whole hemisphere we inhabit. It has been asserted that the eternal storms which are said to beat upon the brows of our mountains, and to roll the tide of desolation at their bases; the hurricanes which sweep our vales, and the volcanic fires which issue from a thousand flaming craters; thethunderbolts which perpetually descend from heaven, and the earthquakes, whose trepidations are felt to the very center of our globe, have superinduced a degeneracy through all the productions of nature. Men have been frightened into intellectual dwarfs, and the beasts of the forest have not attained more than half their ordinary growth.

While some of the lines and touches of this picture have been blotted out by the reversing hand of time, others have been added, which have, in some respects, carried the conceit still farther. In later days, and, in some instances, even down to the present period, it has been published and republished from the enlightened presses of the Old World, that so strong is the tendency to deterioration on this continent that the descendants of European ancestors are far inferior to the original stock from which they sprang. But inferior in what? In national spirit and patriotic achievement? Let the revolutionary conflict—the opening scenes at Boston and the catastrophe at Yorktown—furnish the reply. Let Bennington and Saratoga support their respective claims. Inferior in enterprise? Let the sail that whitens every ocean, and the commercial spirit that braves every element and visits every bustling mart, refute the unfounded aspersion. Inferior in deeds of zeal and valor for the Church? Let our missionaries in the bosom of our own forest, in the distant regions of the East, and on the islands of the great Pacific, answer the question. Inferior in science and letters and the arts? It is true our nation is young; but we may challenge the world to furnish a national maturity which, in these respects, will compare with ours.

The character and institutions of this country have already produced a deep impression upon the world we inhabit. What but our example has stricken the chains ofdespotism from the provinces of South America—giving, by a single impulse, freedom to half a hemisphere? A Washington here has created a Bolivar there. The flag of independence, which has waved from the summit of our Alleghany, has now been answered by a corresponding signal from the heights of the Andes. And the same spirit, too, that came across the Atlantic wave with the Pilgrims, and made the rock of Plymouth the corner-stone of freedom, and of this republic, is traveling back to the East. It has already carried its influence into the cabinets of princes, and it is at this moment sung by the Grecian bard and emulated by the Grecian hero.

St. George Best.In Kate Field'sWashington.

Puissant land! where'er I turn my eyesI see thy banner strewn upon the breeze;Each past achievement only prophesiesOf triumphs more unheard of. TheseAre shadows yet, but time will write thy nameIn letters golden as the sunThat blazed upon the sight of those who cameTo worship in the temple of the Delphic One.

Henry Hugh Brackenridge, a writer and politician. Born near Campbellton, Scotland, 1748; died, 1816. From his "Rising Glory of America," a commencement poem.

This is thy praise, America, thy power,Thou best of climes by science visited,By freedom blest, and richly stored with allThe luxuries of life! Hail, happy land,The seat of empire, the abode of kings,The final stage where time shall introduceRenowned characters, and glorious worksOf high invention and of wondrous art,Which not the ravages of time shall waste,'Till he himself has run his long career!

The Right HonorableJohn Bright, the celebrated English orator and radical statesman. Born at Greenbank, Rochdale, Lancashire, November 16, 1811; died, March 27, 1889. From a speech delivered at Birmingham, England, 1862.

I have another and a far brighter vision before my gaze. It may be but a vision, but I will cherish it. I see one vast confederation stretching from the frozen North in unbroken line to the glowing South, and from the wild billows of the Atlantic westward to the calmer waters of the Pacific main; and I see one people and one language, and one faith and one law, and, over all that wide continent, the home of freedom, and a refuge for the oppressed of every race and every clime.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, one of the most gifted female poets. Born near Ledbury, Herefordshire, England, in 1807; died at Florence, Italy, in June, 1861.

I heard an angel speak last night,And he said, "Write—Write a nation's curse for me,And send it over the western sea."I faltered, taking up the word:"Not so, my lord!If curses must be, choose anotherTo send thy curse against my brother.For I am bound by gratitude,By love and blood,To brothers of mine across the sea,Who stretch out kindly hands to me.""Therefore," the voice said, "shalt thou writeMy curse to-night;From the summits of love a curse is driven,As lightning is from the tops of heaven."

William Cullen Bryant, an eminent American poet. Born at Cummington, Mass., November 3, 1794; died, June 12, 1878.

Oh, Mother of a mighty race,Yet lovely in thy youthful grace!The elder dames, thy haughty peers,Admire and hate thy blooming years;With words of shameAnd taunts of scorn they join thy name.They know not, in their hate and pride,What virtues with thy children bide;How true, how good, thy graceful maidsMake bright, like flowers, the valley shades;What generous menSpring, like thine oaks, by hill and glen;What cordial welcomes greet the guestBy the lone rivers of the West;How faith is kept, and truth revered,And man is loved, and God is feared,In woodland homes,And where the solemn ocean foams.Oh, fair young Mother! on thy browShall sit a nobler grace than now.Deep in the brightness of thy skies,The thronging years in glory rise,And, as they fleet,Drop strength and riches at thy feet.

James Bryce, M. P. Born at Belfast, Ireland, May 10, 1838. Appointed Regius Professor of Civil Law to the University of Oxford, England, 1870. From his "American Commonwealth."

Americans seem to live in the future rather than in the present; not that they fail to work while it is called to-day, but that they see the country, not merely as it is, but as it will be twenty, fifty, a hundred years hence, when the seedlings shall have grown to forest trees. Time seems too brief for what they have to do, and result always to come short of their desire. One feels as if caught and whirled along in a foaming stream chafing against its banks, such is the passion of these men to accomplish in their own lifetimes what in the past it took centuries to effect. Sometimes, in a moment of pause—for even the visitor finds himself infected by the all-pervading eagerness—one is inclined to ask them: "Gentlemen, why in heaven's name this haste? You have time enough. No enemy threatens you. No volcano will rise from beneath you. Ages and ages lie before you. Why sacrifice the present to the future, fancying that you will be happier when your fields teem with wealth and your cities with people? In Europe we have cities wealthier and more populous than yours, and we are not happy. You dream of your posterity; but your posterity will look back to yours as the golden age, and envy those who first burst into this silent, splendid nature, who first lifted up their axes upon these tall trees, and lined these waters with busy wharves. Why, then,seek to complete in a few decades what the other nations of the world took thousands of years over in the older continents? Why do rudely and ill things which need to be done well, seeing that the welfare of your descendants may turn upon them? Why, in your hurry to subdue and utilize nature, squander her splendid gifts? Why allow the noxious weeds of Eastern politics to take root in your new soil, when by a little effort you might keep it pure? Why hasten the advent of that threatening day when the vacant spaces of the continent shall all have been filled, and the poverty or discontent of the older States shall find no outlet? You have opportunities such as mankind has never had before, and may never have again. Your work is great and noble; it is done for a future longer and vaster than our conceptions can embrace. Why not make its outlines and beginnings worthy of these destinies, the thought of which gilds your hopes and elevates your purposes?"

VIEW OF THE CONVENT OF SANTA MARIA DE LA RÁBIDA (HUELVA), SPAIN, WHERE COLUMBUS TOOK REFUGE.VIEW OF THE CONVENT OF SANTA MARIA DE LA RÁBIDA (HUELVA), SPAIN, WHERE COLUMBUS TOOK REFUGE.This convent has been restored and preserved as a National Museum since 1846.(See pages17and275.)

Edmund Burke, an illustrious orator, statesman, and philanthropist. Born in Dublin, 1730; died, July 9, 1797. To Burke's eternal credit and renown be it said, that, had his advice and counsels been listened to, the causes which produced the American Revolution would have been removed.

I can not prevail on myself to hurry over this great consideration—the value of America to England. It is good for us to be here. We stand where we have an immense view of what is, and what is past. Clouds, indeed, and darkness, rest upon the future. Let us, however, before we descend from this noble eminence, reflect that this growth of our national prosperity has happened within the short period of the life of man. It has happened within sixty-eight years. There are those alive whose memory might touch the two extremities. For instance, my Lord Bathurstmight remember all the stages of the progress. He was, in 1704, of an age, at least, to be made to comprehend such things. Suppose that the angel of this auspicious youth, foreseeing the many virtues which made him one of the most amiable, as he is one of the most fortunate, men of his age, had opened to him in vision, that when, in the fourth generation, the third prince of the house of Brunswick had sat twelve years on the throne of that nation, which by the happy issue of moderate and healing councils was to be made Great Britain, he should see his son, Lord Chancellor of England, turn back the current of hereditary dignity to its fountain, and raise him to a higher rank of peerage, whilst he enriched the family with a new one. If amidst these bright and happy scenes of domestic honor and prosperity that angel should have drawn up the curtain and unfolded the rising glories of his country; and, whilst he was gazing with admiration on the then commercial grandeur of England, the genius should point out to him a little speck, scarce visible in the mass of the national interest, a small seminal principle, rather than a formed body, and should tell him, "Young man, there is America, which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world. Whatever England has been growing to by a progressive increase of improvement, brought in by varieties of people, by succession of civilizing conquests and civilizing settlements in a series of 1,700 years, you shall see as much added to her by America in the course of a single life!" If this state of his country had been foretold to him, would it not have required all the sanguine credulity of youth, and all the fervid glow of enthusiasm, to make him believe it? Fortunate man, he has lived to see it! Fortunate,indeed, if he live to see nothing to vary the prospect, and cloud the setting of his day!

Emilio Castelar, one of Spain's most noted orators and statesmen. His masterly articles on Columbus in theCentury Magazinealone would insure an international reputation. From a speech in the Spanish Cortes, 1871.

America, and especially Saxon America, with its immense virgin territories, with its republic, with its equilibrium between stability and progress, with its harmony between liberty and democracy, is the continent of the future—the immense continent stretched by God between the Atlantic and Pacific, where mankind may plant, essay, and resolve all social problems. Europe has to decide whether she will confound herself with Asia, placing upon her lands old altars, and upon the altars old idols, and upon the idols immovable theocracies, and upon the theocracies despotic empires; or whether she will go by labor, by liberty, and by the republic, to co-operate with America in the grand work of universal civilization.

William Ellery Channing, D. D., a distinguished American Unitarian divine, and one of the most eloquent writers America has produced. Born at Newport, R. I., April 7, 1780; died, October 2, 1842. From an address on "The Annexation of Texas to the United States."

When we look forward to the probable growth of this country; when we think of the millions of human beings who are to spread over our present territory; of the career of improvement and glory opened to this new people; of the impulse which free institutions, if prosperous, may be expected to give to philosophy, religion, science,literature, and arts; of the vast field in which the experiment is to be made; of what the unfettered powers of man may achieve; of the bright page of history which our fathers have filled, and of the advantages under which their toils and virtues have placed us for carrying on their work. When we think of all this, can we help, for a moment, surrendering ourselves to bright visions of our country's glory, before which all the glories of the past are to fade away? Is it presumption to say that if just to ourselves and all nations we shall be felt through this whole continent; that we shall spread our language, institutions, and civilization through a wider space than any nation has yet filled with a like beneficent influence? And are we prepared to barter these hopes, this sublime moral empire, for conquests by force? Are we prepared to sink to the level of unprincipled nations; to content ourselves with a vulgar, guilty greatness; to adopt in our youth maxims and ends which must brand our future with sordidness, oppression, and shame? Why can not we rise to noble conceptions of our destiny? Why do we not feel that our work as a nation is to carry freedom, religion, science, and a nobler form of human nature over this continent? And why do we not remember that to diffuse these blessings we must first cherish them in our own borders, and that whatever deeply and permanently corrupts us will make our spreading influence a curse, not a blessing, to this New World? It is a common idea in Europe that we are destined to spread an inferior civilization over North America; that our absorption in gain and outward interests mark us out as fated to fall behind the Old World in the higher improvements of human nature—in the philosophy, the refinements, the enthusiasm of literature and the arts, which throw a luster round other countries. I am not prophet enough to read our fate.

The ChicagoInter Ocean.

The Columbian Exposition should be an exhibition worthy of the fame of Columbus and of the great republic that has taken root in the New World, which the Genoese discoverer not only "to Castille and to Aragon gave," but to the struggling, the oppressed, the aspiring, and the resolute of all humanity in all its conditions.

Rufus Choate,, the most eminent advocate of New England. Born at Essex, Mass., October 1, 1799; died at Halifax, N. S., July 13, 1858. From an Independence Day oration delivered in Boston.

But now there rises colossal the fine sweet spirit of nationality—the nationality of America. See there the pillar of fire which God has kindled, and lighted, and moved, for our hosts and our ages. Under such an influence you ascend above the smoke and stir of this small local strife; you tread upon the high places of the earth and of history; you think and feel as an American for America; her power, her eminence, her consideration, her honor are yours; your competitors, like hers, are kings; your home, like hers, is the world; your path, like hers, is on the highway of empires; your charge, her charge, is of generations and ages; your record, her record, is of treaties, battles, voyages, beneath all the constellations; her image—one, immortal, golden—rises on your eye as our western star at evening rises on the traveler from his home; no lowering cloud, no angry river, no lingering spring, no broken crevasse, no inundated city or plantation, no tracts of sand, arid and burning, on that surface, but all blended and softened into one beam of kindred rays, the image, harbinger, and promise of love, hope, and a brighter day.

But if you would contemplate nationality as an active virtue, look around you. Is not our own history one witness and one record of what it can do? This day, the 4th of July, and all which it stands for—did it not give us these? This glory of the fields of that war, this eloquence of that revolution, this one wide sheet of flame, which wrapped tyrant and tyranny, and swept all that escaped from it away, forever and forever; the courage to fight, to retreat, to rally, to advance, to guard the young flag by the young arm and the young heart's blood, to hold up and hold on till the magnificent consummation crown the work—were not all these imparted or inspired by this imperial sentiment.

Look at it! It has kindled us to no aims of conquest. It has involved us in no entangling alliances. It has kept our neutrality dignified and just. The victories of peace have been our prized victories. But the larger and truer grandeur of the nations, for which they are created, and for which they must one day, before some tribunal, give account, what a measure of these it has enabled us already to fulfill! It has lifted us to the throne, and has set on our brow the name of the Great Republic. It has taught us to demand nothing wrong and to submit to nothing wrong; it has made our diplomacy sagacious, wary, and accomplished; it has opened the iron gate of the mountain, and planted our ensign on the great tranquil sea. It has made the desert to bud and blossom as the rose; it has quickened to life the giant brood of useful arts; it has whitened lake and ocean with the sails of a daring, new, and lawful trade; it has extended to exiles, flying as clouds, the asylum of our better liberty. It has kept us at rest within our borders; it has scattered the seeds of liberty, under law and under order, broadcast; it has seen and helped American feeling to swell into afuller flood; from many a field and many a deck, though it seeks not war, makes not war, and fears not war, it has borne the radiant flag, all unstained.

There is a love of country which comes uncalled for, one knows not how. It comes in with the very air, the eye, the ear, the instinct, the first beatings of the heart. The faces of brothers and sisters, and the loved father and mother, the laugh of playmates, the old willow tree and well and school-house, the bees at work in the spring, the note of the robin at evening, the lullaby, the cows coming home, the singing-book, the visits of neighbors, the general training—all things which make childhood happy, begin it.

And then, as the age of the passions and the age of the reason draw on, and the love of home, and the sense of security and property under the law come to life, and as the story goes round, and as the book or the newspaper relates the less favored lot of other lands, and the public and private sense of the man is forming and formed, there is a type of patriotism already. Thus they have imbibed it who stood that charge at Concord, and they who hung on the deadly retreat, and they who threw up the hasty and imperfect redoubt at Bunker Hill by night, set on it the blood-red provincial flag, and passed so calmly with Prescott and Putnam and Warren through the experiences of the first fire.

To direct this spontaneous sentiment of hearts to our great Union, to raise it high, to make it broad and deep, to instruct it, to educate it, is in some things harder, and in some things easier; but it may be, it must be, done. Our country has her great names; she has her food for patriotism, for childhood, and for man.—Ibid.

An appropriate addition to the White Squadron of the United States navy was launched from the Cramps' ship-yard at Philadelphia, July 26, 1892, and was most appropriately christened the Columbia. The launch was in every way a success, and was witnessed by many thousand people, including Secretary Tracy, Vice-President Morton, and others prominent in the navy and in public life.

This new vessel is designed to be swifter than any other large war vessel now afloat, and she will have a capacity possessed by no other war vessel yet built, in that of being able to steam at a ten-knot speed 26,240 miles, or for 109 days, without recoaling. She also possesses many novel features, the principal of which is the application of triple screws. She is one of two of the most important ships designed for the United States navy, her sister ship, No. 13, now being built at the same yards.

The dimensions of the Columbia are: Length on mean load line, 412 feet; beam, 58 feet. Her normal draught will be 23 feet; displacement, 7,550 tons; maximum speed, 22 knots an hour; and she will have the enormous indicated horse-power of 20,000. As to speed, the contractor guarantees an average speed, in the open sea, under conditions prescribed by the Navy Department, of twenty-one knots an hour, maintained for four consecutive hours, during which period the air-pressure in the fire-room must be kept within a prescribed limit. For every quarter of a knot developed above the required guaranteed speed the contractor is to receive a premium of $50,000 over and above the contract price; and for each quarter of a knot that the vessel may fail of reaching the guaranteed speed there is to be deducted from the contract price the sum of $25,000. There seems to be no doubt among the navalexperts that she will meet the conditions as to speed, and this is a great desideratum, since her chief function is to be to sweep the seas of an enemy's commerce. To do her work she must be able to overhaul, in an ocean race, the swiftest transatlantic passenger steamships afloat.

The triple-screw system is a most decided novelty. One of these screws will be placed amidships, or on the line of the keel, as in ordinary single-screw vessels, and the two others will be placed about fifteen feet farther forward and above, one on each side, as is usual in twin-screw vessels. The twin screws will diverge as they leave the hull, giving additional room for the uninterrupted motion upon solid water of all three simultaneously. There is one set of triple expansion engines for each screw independently, thus allowing numerous combinations of movements. For ordinary cruising the central screw alone will be used, giving a speed of about fourteen knots; with the two side-screws alone, a speed of seventeen knots can be maintained, and with all three screws at work, at full power, a high speed of from twenty to twenty-two knots can be got out of the vessel. This arrangement will allow the machinery to be worked at its most economical number of revolutions at all rates of the vessel's speed, and each engine can be used independently of the others in propelling the vessel. The full steam pressure will be 160 pounds. The shafting is made of forged steel, 16½ inches in diameter. In fact, steel has been used wherever possible, so as to secure the lightest, in weight, of machinery. There are ten boilers, six of which are double-ended—that is, with furnaces in each end—21¼ feet long and 15½ feet in diameter. Two others are 18¼ feet long and 11⅔ feet in diameter, and the two others, single-ended, are 8 feet long and 10 feet in diameter. Eight of the largest boilers are set in watertight compartments.

In appearance the Columbia will closely resemble, when ready for sea, an ordinary merchantman, the sides being nearly free from projections or sponsons, which ordinarily appear on vessels of war. She will have two single masts, but neither of them will have a military top, such as is now provided upon ordinary war vessels. This plan of her merchantman appearance is to enable her to get within range of any vessel she may wish to encounter before her character or purpose is discovered. The vitals of the ship will be well protected with armor plating and the gun stations will be shielded against the firing of machine guns. Her machinery, boilers, magazines, etc., are protected by an armored deck four inches thick on the slope and 2½ inches thick on the flat. The space between this deck and the gun-deck is minutely subdivided with coal-bunkers and storerooms, and in addition to these a coffer-dam, five feet in width, is worked next to the ship's side for the whole length of the vessel. In the bunkers the space between the inner and outer skins of the vessel will be filled with woodite, thus forming a wall five feet thick against machine gun fire. This filling can also be utilized as fuel in an emergency. Forward and abaft of the coal bunkers the coffer-dam will be filled with some water-excluding substance similar to woodite. In the wake of the four-inch and the machine guns, the ship's side will be armored with four-inch and two-inch nickel steel plates.

The vessel will carry no big guns, for the reason that the uses for which she is intended will not require them. Not a gun will be in sight, and the battery will be abnormally light. There will be four six-inch breech-loading rifles, mounted in the open, and protected with heavy shields attached to the gun carriages; eight four-inch breech-loading rifles; twelve six-pounder, and four one-pounder rapid-firing guns; four machine or Gatling guns, and six torpedo-launching tubes. Besides these she has a ram bow. The Columbia is to be completed, ready for service, by May 19, 1893.

Eliza Cook, a popular English poetess. Born in Southwark, London, 1817.

Land of the West! though passing brief the record of thine age,Thou hast a name that darkens all on history's wide page.Let all the blasts of fame ring out—thine shall be loudest far;Let others boast their satellites—thou hast the planet star.Thou hast a name whose characters of light shall ne'er depart;'Tis stamped upon the dullest brain, and warms the coldest heart;A war-cry fit for any land where freedom's to be won:Land of the West! it stands alone—it is thy Washington!

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