come.

5. Other misfortunes may be borne, or their effects overIf disastrous war should sweep our commerce from the ocean, another generation may renew it; if it exhaust our treasury, future industry may replenish it; if it desolate and lay waste our fields, still, under a new cultivation, they will grow green again, and ripen to future harvests. It were but a trifle even, if the walls of yonder Capitol were to crumble, if its lofty pillars should fall, and its gorgeous decorations be all covered by the dust of the valley. All these might be rebuilt. But who shall reconstruct the fabric of demolished government? Who shall rear again the well-proportioned columns of constitutional liberty? Who shall frame together the skillful architecture which unites national sovereignty with state rights, individual security, and public prosperity?

6. No, gentlemen: if these columns fall, they will be raised not again. Like the Colosseum,' and the Parthenon, they will be destined to a mournful, a melancholy immortality. Bitterer tears, however, will flow over them than were ever shed over the monuments of Roman or Grecian art; for they will be the remnants of a more glorious edifice than Greece or Rome ever saw, the edifice of constitutional American liberty.

7. But, gentlemen, let us hope for better things. Let us trust in that gracious Being who has hitherto held our country as in the hollow of His hand. Let us trust to the virtue and the intelligence of the people, and to the cfficacy of religious obligation. Let us trust to the influence of Washington's example. Let us hope that that fear of Heaven which expels all other fear, and that regard to duty which transcends all other regard, may influence public men and private citizens, and lead our country still onward in her happy career.

8. Full of these gratifying anticipations and hopes, let us look forward to the end of that century which is now commenced. A hundred years hence, other disciples of Washington will celebrate his birth, with no less of sincere admiration than we now commemorate it. When they shall meet, as we now meet, to do themselves and him that honor, so surely as they shall see the blue summits of his native mountains rise in the horizon, so surely as they shall behold the river on whose banks he lived, and on whose banks he rests, still flowing on toward the sea, so surely may they see, as we now see, the flag of the Union floating on the top of the Capitol; and then, as now, may the sun in his course visit no land more free, more happy, more lovely, than this our own country!

LESSON CXXI.

1 Per i he ́li oN, (PERI, near; HELION, the sun;) the point of a planet's orbit nearest to the sun.

2 PLE' IAD, one of the Pleiades, a group of seven small stars situated in the neck of the constellation Taurus, regarded by Madler as the central group of the system of the Milky Way.

3 SOUTHERN CROSS. See note, page 138.

POLE-STAR. See note, page 138.

'DI A PASON, (DIA, through; PASON, all;) all through the octave, or interval which includes all the tones of the diatonic scale; the entire compass of tones.

1.

STARS IN MY COUNTRY'S SKY.

RE

AR

MRS. L. H. SIGOURNEY.

ye all there, are ye all there,
Stars of my country's sky?
Are ye all there, are ye all there,
In your shining homes on high?

"Count us, count us!" was their answer,

As they dazzled on my view,

In glorious perihelion,1

Amid their field of blue.

2. I can not count ye rightly;

There's a cloud with sable rim:
I can not make your number out,
For my eyes with tears are dim.
Oh! bright and blessed angel
On white wing floating by,
Help me to count, and not to miss
One star in my country's sky!

3. Then the angel touched mine eyelids, And touched the frowning cloud;

And its sable rim departed,

And it fled with murky shroud.
There was no missing Pleiad

'Mid all that sister race;

The Southern Cross3 gleamed radiant forth,
And the Pole-star1 kept its place.

4. Then I knew it was the angel
Who woke the hymning strain,
That, at our Redeemer's birth,
Pealed out o'er Bethlehem's plain:
And still its heavenly key-tone
My listening country held;
For all her constellated stars
The diapason swelled.

1. "

LESSON CXXII.

GOD BLESS OUR STARS.

B. F. TAYLOR.

OD bless our stars forever!

GOD

Thus the angels sang sublime,
When round God's forges fluttered fast

The sparks of starry time;

When they fanned them with their pinions,
Till they kindled into day,
And revealed Creation's bosom,

Where the infant Eden lay.

2. "God bless our stars forever!"
Thus they sang, the seers of old,
When they beckoned to the Morning,

Through the future's misty fold,—
When they waved the wand of wonder,-
When they breathed the magic word,
And the pulses' golden glimmer
Showed the waking granite heard.

3. "God bless our stars forever!"
"Tis the burden of the song
Where the sail through hollow midnight
Is flickering along;

When a ribbon of blue heaven

Is a-gleaming through the clouds,

With a star or two upon it,

For the sailor in the shrouds.

4. "God bless our stars forever!" It is Liberty's refrain,

From the snows of wild Nevada

To the sounding woods of Maine:
Where the green Multnomah wanders;
Where the Alabama rests;

Where the thunder shakes his turban
Over Alleghany's crests;

5. Where the mountains of New England
Mock Atlantic's stormy main;
Where God's palm imprints the prairie
With the type of heaven again;
Where the mirrored morn is dawning,
Link to link, our lakes along;
And Sacramento's Golden Gate
Swinging open to the song,-

6. There and there, "Our stars forever!"
How it echoes! How it thrills!

Blot that banner? Why, they bore it
When no sunset bathed the hills.

Now over Bunker see it billow,

Now at Bennington it waves,
Ticonderoga swells beneath,
And Saratoga's graves!

7. Oh! long ago at Lexington,

And above those minute-men,

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The "Old Thirteen" were blazing bright,
There were only thirteen then!

God's own stars are gleaming through it,-
Stars not woven in its thread;
Unfurl it, and that flag will glitter

With the heaven overhead.