XVI.—NEW ENGLAND AS A PART OF THE UNION. RICHARD YATES. During the troubles attendant upon the great rebellion, those who sympathized with the South were in the habit of charging New England with having originated the difficulties, and of urging the separation of the six Eastern States from the Union. Mr. Yates, then Governor of Illinois, protests against this suggestion in the following words: I regret that appeals are made to the masses, by a few public presses in the country, for separation from New England. Not a drop of New England blood flows in my veins; still, I should deem myself an object of commiseration and shame if I could forget her glorious history, if I could forget that the blood of her citizens freely commingled with that of my own ancestors, upon those memorable fields which ushered in the dawn of civil and religious liberty. I do not propose to be the eulogist of New England; but she is indissolubly bound to us by all the bright memories of the past, by all the glory of the present, by all the hopes of the future. I shall always exult in the fact that I belong to a Republic in the galaxy of whose stars New England is among the brightest and the best. Palsied be the hand that would sever the ties which bind the East and West. XVII. THE CONSTITUTION. ANDREW JACKSON. We have hitherto relied upon the Constitution as the perpetual bond of our Union. We have received it as the work of the assembled wisdom of the nation. We have trusted to it as the sheet anchor of our safety in the stormy times of conflict with a foreign or domestic foe. We have looked to it with sacred love as the palladium of our liberties, and, with all the solemnities of religion, have pledged to each other our lives and fortunes here, and our hopes of happiness hereafter, in its defence and support. Were we mistaken, my countrymen, in attaching this importance to the Constitution of our country? Did we pledge ourselves to the support of an airy nothing, a bubble that must be blown away by the first breath of disaffection? XVIII. THE VALUE OF OUR INSTITUTIONS TO FUTURE TIMES. DANIEL WEBSTER. The following is from a speech by Daniel Webster, delivered on the two-hundredth anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock. He has been speaking of the next succeeding centennial anniversary of the same event, when he breaks forth into the following magnificent apostrophe. It requires the fullest volume of voice : Advance, then, ye future generations! We would hail you, as you rise, in your long succession, to fill the places which we now fill, and to taste the blessings of existence, where we are passing, and soon shall have passed, our human duration. We bid you welcome to the healthful skies and the verdant fields of New England. We greet your accession to the great inheritance which we have enjoyed. We wel come you to the blessings of good government and religious liberty. We welcome you to the treasures of science and the delights of learning. We welcome you to the transcendent sweets of domestic life, to the happiness of kindred and parents and children. We welcome you to the immeasurable blessings of rational existence, the immortal hope of Christianity, and the light of everlasting truth. SELECTIONS FOR READING. I. TREES. ALFRED B. STREET. 1. Whether pluming the mountain, edging the lake, eyelashing the stream, roofing the waterfall, sprinkling the meadow, burying the homestead, or darkening leagues of hill, plain, and valley, trees have always "haunted me like a passion." Let me summon a few of them, prime favorites, and familiar to the American forest. 2. The aspen-what soft, silver-gray tints on its leaves, how smooth its mottled bark, its whole shape how delicate and sensitive! You may be sitting on the homestead lawn some summer noon, the trees all motionless, and the hot air trembling over the surface of the unstirred grass. Suddenly you will hear a fluttering like the unloosing of a rapid brook, and looking whence comes the sound, you will see the aspen shaking as if falling to pieces, or as if the leaves were little wings, each striving to fly off. All this time the broad leaf of the maple close by, does not lift even its pointed edges. This soft murmur really sends a coolness through the sultry atmosphere; but while your ear is drinking the music and your eye is filled with the tumultuous dancing, instantly both cease, as if the tree were stricken with a palsy, and the quiet leaves flash back the sunshine like so many fairy mirrors. 3. Next the elm. How noble the lift and droop of its branches! With such graceful downward curves on either side, it has the shape of the Greek vase. Such lavish foliage, also, running down the trunk to the very roots, as if a rich vine were wreathed around it! And what frameworks those branches shape, breaking the landscape beyond into halfoval scenes which look, through the chiar -oscuro, as if beheld through slightly shaded glass. And how finely the elm leans over the brook-its native place-turning the water into ebony, and forming a shelter for the cattle from the heat. It is scattered, too, over the meadow, making shady nooks for the mowers at their noontide meal, shadowing also the farmer's gate, and mantling his homestead in an affluence of green 4. Then the maple. What a splendid cupola of leaves it builds up into the sky-an almost complete canopy from the summer shower. It reddens brilliantly when the blue-bird tells us spring has come, and, a few days later, its dropped fringes gleam in the fresh grass like flakes of fire. And in autumn, too, its crimson is so rich, one might term it the blush of the wood. 5. And the beech. How cheerful its snow-spotted trunk looks in the deep woods-how fresh the green of its regularly scalloped leaves! At springtide the tips of its sprays feather out in the glossiest and most delicate cream-satin, amid which the young leaf glows like a speck of emerald. And in the fall what rich clusters of fruit burthen the boughs! The pattering of the brown, three-cornered beech-nut upon the dead leaves is constant in the hazy, purple days of our Indian summer, and makes a sweet music, almost as continuous as the dripping of a rill, in the mournful forest. 6. The birch is a great favorite of mine. It reminds me of the whistles of my boyhood. Its fragrant bark-what delight it was to wrench it from the silvery wood for the shrill music I delighted in, particularly by the hearth-stone of my home! 7. "Conscience!" my aunt Katy used to ejaculate, holding her ears, "is that whistling coming again? John (John is my name-John Smith), do, do stop!" And when came a shriller blast, "John, you little torment! if you don't stop, I'll box your ears!" What splendid tassels the birch hangs out at the bidding of April !-tassels that Indian sachems were proud to wear at the most honored feasts of their nation. 8. And into such rich gold is it transmuted by October, that a light almost of its own is shed within the sylvan reThe speckled bark of the black birch is glossy and bright, but give me the beauty of the white birch's coat. cesses. How like a shaft of ivory it gleams in the daylight woods! How the flame of moonlight kindles it into columned pearl! 9. Did you ever, while wandering in the forest about the first of June, have your eyes dazzled at a distance with what you supposed to be a tree laden with snow? It was the dogwood. Glittering in its white blossoms, each one spread over a broad leaf of the brightest verdure, pointed gauze upon emerald, there stands the pretty tree like a bride. The shadbush and cherry have dropped their white honors a month before, but the dogwood keeps company with the basswood and locust in brightening the last days of spring with its floral beauty. Up in the soft blue it lifts its wreathed crown, for it gathers its richest glow of blossom at its head, and makes the forest bright as with silver chandeliers. 10. While admiring the dogwood, an odor of exquisite sweetness may salute you; and, if at all conversant in treeknowledge, you will know the censer dispensing this fragrance. But you will have to travel some distance, and you will do it as the hound tracks the deer, by scent; for the perfume fills the forest long before the tree catches the eye. At length you see it-the basswood-clustered with yellow blossoms, golden bells pouring out such strong, delicious fragrance, you realize the idea of Shelley : "And the hyacinth, purple and white and blue, It was felt like an odor within the sense." And the deep hum, too, about it-an atmosphere of soundthe festival of the bees surrounding the chalices so rich with. honey. 11. I have mentioned the flowers of the locust and chestnut in conjunction with the basswood. Delicate pearl does the former hang out amid the vivid green of its beautiful leaves, and sweet is that pearl as the lips of the maiden you love. 12. And the chestnut-scattered thickly among its long, dark-green leaves, are strings of pale gold blossoms-haunts also of the reveling bee. Does the school-boy ever forget "the days that he went " truanting after the auburn fruit em |