conqueror, could one of these events have happened? I think

not.

Let us now turn our attention for a few moments to the principles of conservation which exist in the Republic as we find it to-day and to some of the dangers with which it is threatened. The love of country is, of course, taken for granted. At the end of one hundred years that remains as ardent as ever. There has grown up since the beginning another institution which has become with the love of country a most powerful co-efficient in the perpetuation of national life. I mean the common school. This institution so republican in itself, this nursery of knowledge where the boy and girl of the rich man and the boy and girl of the poor man know no inequality is really the bulwark of all we enjoy. It is not so much the quantity of knowledge that it imparts, for the man survives much useless information with which his childhood is crammed, but it is the fact that the children of all the people are for years assembled daily at that plastic age when the most enduring impressions are formed that makes this factor of our prosperity so important. For this main reason I think we have carried the grading and subdivision of the common schools too far. It is a mistake to introduce distinctions of rank, beyond the rewards and the distinction which spring from merit in any pursuit, into those primary and essential functionaries of national existence.

Great schools lie at the foundation of great States, and as the school is, so will the nation be. England has been subjected to more formative processes from Rugby, Eton, Harrow, Oxford and Cambridge than all the parliaments from the beginning have ever been able to work upon her. The aristocratic and select pupils of the schools have given more than aught else to the English government its select and conservative form. Woe to that nation which is governed by men who are scholars merely. There is a dangerous bigotry in learning. Essential as it is, yet it is unsympathetic by its very nature. Its processes are ironbound and absolute, and in their practical application often become tyrannical. A Scotch philosopher has exalted common sense into one of the great classifications of the human intellect with the will, imagination and reason. If he failed to reach a metaphysical verity, he, at least, hit a political truth; for in common sense, in that average of the judgment of the learned and the unlearned lies the true

safety of such states as ours. It is the middle ground between the oligarchy and the mob. To produce that average common sense, the wit of man has as yet devised no such agency as the common school system of this country. There is also a danger to which in the beginning the country was not subjected. This everlasting and universal place hunting, which drives a man from productive employment into the train of some party, or worse still of some party leader, and converts him into a political janissary, dependent for his means of life upon the perpetuation of some other man in office, who is in his turn a parasite upon the body of some greater parasite, is something that the rising generation should be warned against.

It was formerly thought that the Republic would fracture because of the weakness incident to its great territorial extent. The pages of history are replete with the examples of great empires which have broken up their own tension. But that danger with us is obviated. The telegraph has annihilated time and made it a paradox-for messages sent westwardly are received earlier than their date. While as to space, the railroad has brought New York within seventy-two hours journey of San Francisco.

Again there is no fear of production pressing upon the means of subsistence and producing those dangerous classes which in other lands are a standing menace against existing institutions. We have uot drawn a tithe of the resources of this blessed land, so rich in soils, whose mines send their veins of wealth through every state, whose rivers reach from almost the sight of either ocean, and bear the wealth of temperate and tropic states to the sea on the bosom of one great stream.

What have we to fear? Nothing but ourselves. If we are mindful of that unvarying law that nations as well as individuals must do right, must not lie, must not steal, must not covet, all will be well with us and those who shall come after us. If we forget this rule, if we oppress the weak, if we spoliate the helpless, if we in our corruption wrong each other, if unrighteousness shall be exalted in our councils, if the balance of justice shall be made false, we shall go like the discrowned monarchies of old into the Golgotha of nations, never to be stirred to life again.

One hundred years! How long the time! How magical the

words! No enchanter's wand, no poet's dream called up a vision so gorgeous and yet so solemn as the reality of which this is the closing day. A free people, free for a hundred years, have met to honor those who made them free. It is not too much to suppose that from Heaven itself the benignant spirits of Washington, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, and all the rest are bending over us in solemn benedictions. From Independence and Faneuil Halls, from the Court House of Mecklenburgh, from Virginia's House of Burgesses reawaken the voice which one hundred years ago thrilled the world and whose echoes are now sounding and will forever sound while man has rights. Listen to their eloquence, swelling like an anthem in the great temple of Time, magnificently harmonious and triumphant with freedom's inspiration, carried on every breeze to every land, whispering freedom in the ear of slaves, thundering freedom in the ear of tyrants, and joining to the choral words, "We hold these truths to be self-evident-that all men are created equal; That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights: among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the government." And, if, in our time or in times to come, danger from within or without shall assail a single one of those principles, God grant that we, or who shall succeed us in this heritage of freedom, may say as your fathers said:

"And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."

THE ROUNDED AGE.

A POEM BY SAMUEL L. SIMPSON.

DELIVERED AT PORTLAND, OREGON, BY HON. RUFUS

JULY 4TH, 1876.

Unfurl the flag! let the winds caress
And lift it in rippling loveliness

Over all the wide west-world we claim

By cross and sword and in Freedom's name.
From the peaks that gleam o'er Alaskan gloom
To the isles of palm and the shores of bloom;
From the sacred rock where the seed was sown
To the sunset capes where the flow'r has blown,
O flag of the Union, toss and wave
O'er millions of freemen and not a slave.

Unfurl the flag! let it curl and kiss

The zephyr that faints in the summer bliss:-
It was born in storm, and its glory sprung
Where the bolts of battle shrieked and sung;
Through smoke and cloud it has won the right
To float and flaunt when the days are bright.
We know what souls in its white stars shine,
And the blood on its crimson spilled like wine;
We know the strifes and the wars and fears
That hedged it round for a hundred years!

Unfurl the flag! we have followed far
That mystical token of stripe and star,
And borne upon many a field of dread
Its streaming splendor of white and red;

MALLORY,

But now from the height of the struggling years

It bursts like the dawn on a night of tears-
A day-spring that flushes the farthest sea

With a roseate pledge of the time to be

When the man shall be sovereign and freedom shall reign From ice fretted Neva to Neva again.

God bless the flag! let it float, and fill

The sky with its beauty:-our heart-strings thrill

To the low, sweet chant of its wind-swept bars

And the chorus of all its clustered stars.

Embrace it, O mothers, and heroes shall grow

While its colors blush warm on your bosoms of snow!
Defend it, O fathers, there's no sweeter death

Than to float its fair folds with a soldier's last breath!
And love it, O children, be true to the sires

Who wove it in pain by the old camp-fires!

I.

The days are dim, the world is old
And bleak with human dust and mold;
In plume and mail the bold knights ride
To fray and tourney, scarf and sword,
Love's sweet intrigue, the warrior's pride
Rule king and courtier, liege and lord;
For war and love and lust of gold
And gropings for the things untold
Put many a lance in rest and stain
The weary earth with gory slain.
Kings come and go in tragic state,
And crowns with sparkling jewels set
In battle debris lie, and yet

The round world wheels, and Time and Fate

Touch hands and whisper, "God can wait!"

And still the despot's iron sway

Strikes truth and genius in the dust,

True hearts repine, great spirits rust,