INDEX OF AUTHORS.

Wendell Phillips, "the silver-tongued orator of America," and anti-slavery reformer. Born in Boston, Mass., November 29, 1811; died, February 2, 1884.

The Carpathian Mountains may shelter tyrants. The slopes of Germany may bear up a race more familiar with the Greek text than the Greek phalanx. For aught I know, the wave of Russian rule may sweep so far westward as to fill once more with miniature despots the robber castles of the Rhine. But of this I am sure: God piled the Rocky Mountains as the ramparts of freedom. He scooped the Valley of the Mississippi as the cradle of free States. He poured Niagara as the anthem of free men.

Edward G. Porter.In an article entitled "The Ship Columbia and the Discovery of Oregon," in theNew England Magazine, June, 1892.

Few ships, if any, in our merchant marine, since the organization of the republic, have acquired such distinction as the Columbia.

By two noteworthy achievements, 100 years ago, she attracted the attention of the commercial world and rendered a service to the United States unparalleled in our history.She was the first American vessel to carry the stars and stripes around the globe; and, by her discovery of "the great river of the West" to which her name was given, she furnished us with the title to our possessionof that magnificent domain which to-day is represented by the flourishing young States of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho.

The famous ship was well-known and much talked about at the time, but her records have mostly disappeared, and there is very little knowledge at present concerning her.

Edna Dean Proctor.In SeptemberCentury

The rose may bloom for England,The lily for France unfold;Ireland may honor the shamrock,Scotland her thistle bold;But the shield of the great Republic,The glory of the West,Shall bear a stalk of the tasseled corn—Of all our wealth the best.The arbutus and the golden-rodThe heart of the North may cheer;And the mountain laurel for MarylandIts royal clusters rear;And jasmine and magnoliaThe crest of the South adorn;But the wide Republic's emblemIs the bounteous, golden corn!

Thomas Buchanan Read, a distinguished American artist and poet. Born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, 1822; died in New York, May 11, 1872. From his "Emigrant's Song."[60]

Leave the tears to the maiden, the fears to the child, While the future stands beckoning afar in the wild; For there Freedom, more fair, walks the primeval land, Where the wild deer all court the caress of her hand. There the deep forests fall, and the old shadows fly, And the palace and temple leap into the sky. Oh, the East holds no place where the onward can rest, And alone there is room in the land of the West!

The Rev.Myron W. Reed, a distinguished American clergyman of Denver, Colo. From an address delivered in 1892.

The best thing we can do for the world is to take care of America. Keep our country up to the primitive pitch. In front of my old home, in another city, is the largest elm in the county. It never talked, it never went about doing good. It stood there and made shade for an acre of children, and a shelter for all the birds that came. It stood there and preached strength in the air by wide-flung branches, and strength in the earth by as many and as long roots as limbs. It stood, one fearful night, the charge of a cyclone, and was serene in the March morning. It proclaimed what an elm could be. It set tree-planters to planting elms. So America preaches, man capable of self-government; preaches over the sea, a republic is safer than any kingdom. Men have outgrown kings. We shall remember Walt Whitman, if only for a line, "O America! we build for you because you build for the world."

William Henry Seward, an eminent American statesman. Born at Florida, Orange County, N. Y., May 16, 1801; died at Auburn, N. Y., October 10, 1872.

A kind of reverence is paid by all nations to antiquity. There is no one that does not trace its lineage from the gods, or from those who were especially favored by the gods. Every people has had its age of gold, or Augustine age, or historic age—an age, alas! forever passed. These prejudices are not altogether unwholesome. Although they produce a conviction of declining virtue, which is unfavorable to generous emulation, yet a people at once ignorant and irreverential would necessarily become licentious. Nevertheless, such prejudices ought to be modified. It is untrue that in the period of a nation's rise from disorder to refinement it is not able to continually surpass itself. We see thepresent, plainly, distinctly, with all its coarse outlines, its rough inequalities, its dark blots, and its glaring deformities. We hear all its tumultuous sounds and jarring discords. We see and hear thepastthrough a distance which reduces all its inequalities to a plane, mellows all its shades into a pleasing hue, and subdues even its hoarsest voices into harmony. In our own case, the prejudice is less erroneous than in most others. The Revolutionary age was truly a heroic one. Its exigencies called forth the genius, and the talents, and the virtues of society, and they ripened amid the hardships of a long and severe trial. But there were selfishness and vice and factions then as now, although comparatively subdued and repressed. You have only to consult impartial history to learn that neither public faith, nor public loyalty, nor private virtue, culminated at that period in our own country; while a mere glance at the literature, or at the stage, or at the politics of any European country, in any previous age, reveals the factthat it was marked, more distinctly than the present, by licentious morals and mean ambition. It is only just to infer in favor of the United States an improvement of morals from their established progress in knowledge and power; otherwise, the philosophy of society is misunderstood, and we must change all our courses, and henceforth seek safety in imbecility, and virtue in superstition and ignorance.

Samuel Sewell.Born at Bishopstoke, Hampshire, England, March, 1652. Died at Boston, Mass., January, 1730.

Lift up your heads, O ye Gates of Columbia, and be ye lift up, ye Everlasting Doors, and the King of Glory shall come in.

Joseph Story, a distinguished American jurist. Born in Marblehead, Mass., September 18, 1779; died at Cambridge, Mass., September 10, 1845. By permission of Messrs. Little, Brown & Co., Publishers.

When we reflect on what has been, and is, how is it possible not to feel a profound sense of the responsibilities of this Republic to all future ages? What vast motives press upon us for lofty efforts! What brilliant prospects invite our enthusiasm! What solemn warnings at once demand our vigilance and moderate our confidence! We stand, the latest, and, if we fail, probably the last, experiment of self-government by the people. We have begun it under circumstances of the most auspicious nature. We are in the vigor of youth. Our growth has never been checked by the oppressions of tyranny. Our constitutions have never been enfeebled by the vices or luxuries of the Old World. Such as we are, we have been from the beginning—simple, hardy, intelligent, accustomed to self-government and self-respect. The Atlantic rolls between us and any formidable foe. Within our own territory, stretching through many degrees of latitude and longitude, we have the choice of many products and many means of independence. The government is mild. The press is free. Religion is free. Knowledge reaches, or may reach, every home. What fairer prospect of success could be presented? What means more adequate to accomplish the sublime end? What more is necessary than for the people to preserve what they themselves have created? Already has the age caught the spirit of our institutions. It has already ascended the Andes, and snuffed the breezes of both oceans. It has infused itself into the life-blood of Europe, and warmed the sunny plains of France and the lowlands of Holland. It has touched the philosophy of Germany and the north, and, moving to the south, has opened to Greece the lessons of her better days.

William Stoughton. From an election sermon at Boston, Mass., April 29, 1669.

God sifted a whole nation that he might send choice grain over into this wilderness.

Moses F. Sweetser, an Americanlittérateur. Born in Massachusetts, 1848. From his "Hand-book of the United States."[61]

The name America comes fromamalric, oremmerich, an old German word spread through Europe by the Goths, and softened in Latin to Americus, and in Italian to Amerigo. It was first applied to Brazil. Americus Vespucius, the son of a wealthy Florentine notary, made several voyages to the New World, a few years later thanColumbus, and gave spirited accounts of his discoveries. About the year 1507, Hylacomylus, of the college at St. Dié, in the Vosges Mountains, brought out a book on cosmography, in which he said, "Now, truly, as these regions are more widely explored, and another fourth part is discovered, by Americus Vespucius, I see no reason why it should not be justly calledAmerigen; that is, the land of Americus, or America, from Americus, its discoverer, a man of a subtle intellect." Hylacomylus invented the name America, and, as there was no other title for the New World, this came gradually into general use. It does not appear that Vespucius was a party to this almost accidental transaction, which has made him a monument of a hemisphere.

T. T. Swinburne, the poet, has written to J. M. Samuels, chief of the Department of Horticulture at the World's Columbian Exposition, proposing the columbine as the Columbian Exposition and national flower. He gives as reasons:

It is most appropriate in name, color, and form. Its name is suggestive of Columbia, and our country is often called by that name. Its botanical name,aquilegia, is derived fromaquila(eagle), on account of the spur of the petals resembling the talons, and the blade, the beak, of the eagle, our national bird. Its colors are red, white, and blue, our national colors. The corolla is divided into five points resembling the star used to represent our States on our flag; its form also represents the Phrygian cap of liberty, and it is an exact copy of the horn of plenty, the symbol of the Columbian Exposition. The flowers cluster around a central stem, as our States around the central government.

Bayard Taylor, the distinguished American traveler, writer, and poet. Born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, in 1835; died at Berlin, December 19, 1878. From his "Song of '76." By permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Publishers, Boston.

Waken, voice of the land's devotion!Spirit of freedom, awaken all!Ring, ye shores, to the song of ocean,Rivers answer, and mountains call!The golden day has come;Let every tongue be dumbThat sounded its malice or murmured its fears;She hath won her story;She wears her glory;We crown her the Land of a Hundred Years!Out of darkness and toil and dangerInto the light of victory's day,Help to the weak, and home to the stranger,Freedom to all, she hath held her way!Now Europe's orphans restUpon her mother-breast.The voices of nations are heard in the cheersThat shall cast upon herNew love and honor,And crown her the Queen of a Hundred Years!North and South, we are met as brothers;East and West, we are wedded as one;Right of each shall secure our mother's;Child of each is her faithful son.We give thee heart and hand,Our glorious native land,For battle has tried thee, and time endears.We will write thy story,And keep thy gloryAs pure as of old for a Thousand Years!

Henry David Thoreau, American author and naturalist. Born in Concord, Mass., 1817; died in 1862. From his "Excursions" (1863). By permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Publishers, Boston.

If the moon looks larger here than in Europe, probably the sun looks larger also. If the heavens of America appear infinitely higher and the stars brighter, I trust that these facts are symbolical of the height to which the philosophy and poetry and religion of her inhabitants may one day soar. At length, perchance, the immaterial heaven will appear as much higher to the American mind, and the intimations that star it, as much brighter. For I believe that climate does thus react on man, as there is something in the mountain air that feeds the spirit and inspires. Will not man grow to greater perfection intellectually as well as physically under these influences? Or is it unimportant how many foggy days there are in his life? I trust that we shall be more imaginative, that our thoughts will be clearer, fresher, and more ethereal, as our sky; our understanding more comprehensive and broader, like our plains; our intellect generally on a grander scale, like our thunder and lightning, our rivers, and mountains, and forests, and our hearts shall even correspond in breadth and depth and grandeur to our inland seas. Else to what end does the world go on, and why was America discovered?

William Tudor, an Americanlittérateur. Born at Boston in 1779; died, 1830.

Our numerous waterfalls and the enchanting beauty of our lakes afford many objects of the most picturesquecharacter; while the inland seas, from Superior to Ontario, and that astounding cataract, whose roar would hardly be increased by the united murmurs of all the cascades of Europe, are calculated to inspire vast and sublime conceptions. The effects, too, of our climate, composed of a Siberian winter and an Italian summer, furnish new and peculiar objects for description. The circumstances of remote regions are here blended, and strikingly opposite appearances witnessed, in the same spot, at different seasons of the year. In our winters, we have the sun at the same altitude as in Italy, shining on an unlimited surface of snow, which can only be found in the higher latitudes of Europe, where the sun, in the winter, rises little above the horizon. The dazzling brilliancy of a winter's day and a moonlight night, in an atmosphere astonishingly clear and frosty, when the utmost splendor of the sky is reflected from a surface of spotless white, attended with the most excessive cold, is peculiar to the northern part of the United States. What, too, can surpass the celestial purity and transparency of the atmosphere in a fine autumnal day, when our vision and our thought seem carried to the third heaven; the gorgeous magnificence of the close, when the sun sinks from our view, surrounded with various masses of clouds, fringed with gold and purple, and reflecting, in evanescent tints, all the hues of the rainbow.

Horace Walpole, fourth Earl of Oxford, a famous English literary gossip, amateur, and wit. Born in London, October, 1717; died, March, 1797.

Liberty has still a continent to exist in.

Daniel Webster, the celebrated American statesman, jurist, and orator. Born at Salisbury, N. H., January 18, 1782; died at Marshfield, Mass., October 24, 1852.

I profess to feel a strong attachment to the liberty of the United States; to the constitution and free institutions of the United States; to the honor, and I may say the glory, of this great Government and great country.

I feel every injury inflicted upon this country almost as a personal injury. I blush for every fault which I think I see committed in its public councils as if they were faults or mistakes of my own.

I know that, at this moment, there is no object upon earth so attracting the gaze of the intelligent and civilized nations of the earth as this great Republic. All men look at us, all men examine our course, all good men are anxious for a favorable result to this great experiment of republican liberty. We are on a hill and can not be hid. We can not withdraw ourselves either from the commendation or the reproaches of the civilized world. They see us as that star of empire which, half a century ago, was predicted as making its way westward. I wish they may see it as a mild, placid, though brilliant orb, making its way athwart the whole heavens, to the enlightening and cheering of mankind; and not a meteor of fire and blood, terrifying the nations.

John Greenleaf Whittier, the distinguished American poet. Born at Haverhill, Mass, December 17, 1807. From his poem, "On receiving an eagle's quill from Lake Superior." By permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Publishers, Boston.

I hear the tread of pioneers,Of nations yet to be;The first low wash of waves, where soonShall roll a human sea.The rudiments of empire hereAre plastic yet and warm;The chaos of a mighty worldIs rounding into form.Each rude and jostling fragment soonIts fitting place shall find—The raw material of a state,Its muscle and its mind.And, westering still, the star which leadsThe New World in its trainHas tipped with fire the icy spearsOf many a mountain chain.The snowy cones of OregonAre kindling on its way;And California's golden sandsGleam brighter in its ray.

Robert C. Winthrop, an American statesman and orator. Born in Boston, Mass., May 12, 1809. From his "Centennial Oration," delivered in Boston, 1876.

Instruments and wheels of the invisible governor of the universe! This is indeed all which the greatest men ever have been, or ever can be. No flatteries of courtiers, no adulations of the multitude, no audacity of self-reliance, no intoxications of success, no evolutions or developments of science, can make more or other of them. This is "the sea-mark of their utmost sail," the goal of their farthest run, the very round and top of their highest soaring. Oh, if there could be to-day a deeper and more pervadingimpression of this great truth throughout our land, and a more prevailing conformity of our thoughts and words and acts to the lessons which it involves; if we could lift ourselves to a loftier sense of our relations to the invisible; if, in surveying our past history, we could catch larger and more exalted views of our destinies and our responsibilities; if we could realize that the want of good men may be a heavier woe to a land than any want of what the world calls great men, our centennial year would not only be signalized by splendid ceremonials, and magnificent commemorations, and gorgeous expositions, but it would go far toward fulfilling something of the grandeur of that "acceptable year," which was announced by higher than human lips, and would be the auspicious promise and pledge of a glorious second century of independence and freedom for our country. For, if that second century of self-government is to go on safely to its close, or is to go on safely and prosperously at all, there must be some renewal of that old spirit of subordination and obedience to divine, as well as human, laws, which has been our security in the past. There must be faith in something higher and better than ourselves. There must be a reverent acknowledgment of an unseen, but all-seeing, all-controlling Ruler of the Universe. His word, His house, His day, His worship, must be sacred to our children, as they have been to their fathers; and His blessing must never fail to be invoked upon our land and upon our liberties. The patriot voice, which cried from the balcony of yonder old State House, when the declaration had been originally proclaimed, "stability and perpetuity to American independence," did not fail to add, "God save our American States." I would prolong that ancestral prayer. And the last phrase to pass my lips at this hour, and to take its chance for remembrance or oblivion in years to come, as the conclusion of this centennial oration, and as the sum and summing up of all I can say to the present or the future, shall be: There is, there can be, no independence of God; in Him, as a nation, no less than in Him, as individuals, "we live, and move, and have our being!"God save our American States!

From "Things that Threaten the Destruction of American Institutions," a sermon byT. De Witt Talmage, delivered in Brooklyn Tabernacle, October 12, 1884.

What! can a nation die? Yes; there has been great mortality among monarchies and republics. Like individuals, they are born, have a middle life and a decease, a cradle and a grave. Sometimes they are assassinated and sometimes they suicide. Call the roll, and let some one answer for them. Egyptian civilization, stand up! Dead, answer the ruins of Karnak and Luxor. Dead, respond in chorus the seventy pyramids on the east side the Nile. Assyrian Empire, stand up! Dead, answer the charred ruins of Nineveh. After 600 years of opportunity, dead. Israelitish Kingdom, stand up! After 250 years of miraculous vicissitude, and Divine intervention, and heroic achievement, and appalling depravity, dead. Phœnicia, stand up! After inventing the alphabet and giving it to the world, and sending out her merchant caravans to Central Asia in one direction, and her navigators into the Atlantic Ocean in another direction, and 500 years of prosperity, dead. Dead, answer the "Pillars of Hercules" and the rocks on which the Tyrian fishermen spread their nets. Athens—after Phidias, after Demosthenes, after Miltiades, after Marathon—dead. Sparta—after Leonidas, after Eurybiades, after Salamis, after Thermopylæ—dead.

Roman Empire, stand up and answer to the roll-call! Once bounded on the north by the British Channel and onthe south by the Sahara Desert of Africa, on the east by the Euphrates and on the west by the Atlantic Ocean. Home of three civilizations. Owning all the then discovered world that was worth owning. Gibbon, in his "Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire," answers, "Dead." And the vacated seats of the ruined Coliseum, and the skeletons of the aqueduct, and the miasma of the Campagna, and the fragments of the marble baths, and the useless piers of the bridge Triumphalis, and the silenced forum, and the Mamertine dungeon, holding no more apostolic prisoners; and the arch of Titus, and Basilica of Constantine, and the Pantheon, lift up a nightly chorus of "Dead! dead!" Dead, after Horace, and Virgil, and Tacitus, and Livy, and Cicero; after Horatius of the bridge, and Cincinnatus, the farmer oligarch; after Scipio, and Cassius, and Constantine, and Cæsar. Her war-eagle, blinded by flying too near the sun, came reeling down through the heavens, and the owl of desolation and darkness made its nest in the forsaken ærie. Mexican Empire, dead! French Empire, dead! You see it is no unusual thing for a government to perish. And in the same necrology of nations, and in the same cemetery of expired governments, will go the United States of America unless some potent voice shall call a halt, and through Divine interposition, by a purified ballot-box and an all-pervading moral Christian sentiment, the present evil tendency be stopped.

STATUE OF COLUMBUS, ST LOUIS, MO.STATUE OF COLUMBUS, ST LOUIS, MO.First Bronze Statue to Columbus in America(See page279.)

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