Switzerland, a republic for six centuries, is a standing demonstration of the practicability of popular institutions in Europe.

The French Nation, let us fondly hope, will succeed in maintaining their liberties. Louis Philippe in leaving the shores of Republican France exclaimed-" I carry with me the French Monarchy, and shall descend with it to the tomb." May his prophecy be realized. The famous prognostication of the Great Napoleon that "fifty years will leave Europe Republican or Cossack," though not fulfilled within the time limited, yet seems more probable of fulfilment than ever in favor of the first alternative. That eloquent and sincere advocate of popular liberty, Emilio Castelar, assured me last summer in the strongest terms of his confident belief in the stability of the French Republic.

The great German nation, whose love of liberty has been historic since the days when the people of that strong race staid the conquering legions of Rome, and whose fragments have been united in our own day by the genius of the greatest statesman of the age, supported by the patriotic valor of the people, will, in consequence of this love of liberty, of the solid elements of their character and their system of universal education, be among the first in the changes of the future, to establish their government on the basis of popular sovereignty.

Happy day when the Republic of America, which has welcomed and adopted as her own so many thousands of German-speaking people, shall reach across the ocean and clasp hands with the great Republic of Germany.

Italy the theatre of the old Roman, with his haughty pride, and world-wide ambition-whose fatal dowry of beauty made her in turn a prey to the cupidity of the Spaniards, the ambition of the French, the reckless Corsair of the Moslem, the home of the finest creations of the pencil and chisel-its fragments from Naples to Venice now happily united under one sway, although the freedom of the elder republics no longer exists and although her sons seem to have exchanged the courage that comes from strength for the craft that comes from weakness-may we not hope that during the next century this favored land, awakened and re-animated by the spirit of liberty, will be transformed into her ancient glory. Even in stagnant and efféte Turkey the force of the people is at

last being felt. On the 30th day of May last, the Grand Vizier sent the following telegram from Constantinople to the Turkish Minister at Washington: "In the presence of the unanimous will of the people Abdul Aziz Khan has been dethroned to-day and Sultan Murad, heir presumptive, been proclaimed Emperor of Turkey." The world moves.

And lastly, what shall I say of that marvel of nations—the seagirt kingdom of Great Britain. Shall I recall bitter memories and revive the contest of a hundred years ago, whose necessity arose not from the heart of the English people as its sentiments were interpreted by the great Chatham, but from the whims and prejudices of a personal ruler? God forbid it! I claim the renown and achievements of the English nation as a part of our inheritance. They are a wonderful people. The names of the greatest poets, the greatest orators, the greatest statesmen, the most learned judges of the world are to be found in larger numbers on the pages of English history than in the history of any other single people. In no contemporary nation has the progress of the people in the recovery of their rights from the grasp of hereditary rulers been more sure and steady than in conservative England during the last fifty years. Her people are prepared for Republican institutions whenever the clock of destiny shall strike the hour, for even now "all the institutions of England seek the genial sunshine of public opinion, and languish without it."

And when that change comes, if not before, there is one beautiful land endeared to us by a thousand associations, and connected with our country by the tenderest ties that we hope will share in the fruitions of the change, and realize that independence so long deferred that has been the cherished dreams of her gallant people for so many generations. Oh! how many hearts will bound and burst with joy when Ireland rising from her chains, shall take her place in the family of Republics, "redeemed, regenerated and disenthralled," by the spirit of universal liberty.

FELLOW-CITIZENS-Let us mold and trust the future, and hope that when our children's children, one hundred years hence, shall meet to commemorate the birth-day of a still united nation, they will behold, in both hemispheres, a grand galaxy of Republics, of which ours will be the bright center around which they all cluster but none outvie.

MEMORIES OF THE PAST..

AN ORATION BY HON. COLUMBUS DREW.

DELIVERED AT JACKSONVILLE, FLA., JULY 4th, 1876.

FELLOW-CITIZENS.-In commemorating the Centennial Anniversary of Independence in Florida, we do so not as one of the Old Thirteen of the Confederation, but as children of that illustrious ancestry, and of the new-born States that have added to their glory.

When the blow was struck in 1776, and the freedom of the Colonies was won in 1783, Florida, like the other Colonies, had been an appendage to the British Crown. Her breast heaved not in sympathetic response to the note of revolution, nor were her hands extended to take part in the coming struggle. When the bell in the State House of Philadelphia proclaimed the triumph of the American arms, the sword that sundered the Colonies from England cut, as it were, this beauteous pendant from the eardrop of Freedom, and cast it into the sea. It was only groped for and gathered by the slow processes of a doubtful diplomacy, when the casket purchased by the blood of freedom should have held the prize intact. It was the saddle-skirt of Georgia, and when Brother Jonathan was in the stirrups at the coming in of the chase, he should not have allowed it to be cut off. We have now been tacked on again; and so far as this celebration is concerned, are proud to be part and parcel of the "Empire State of the South;" but until the next Centenary we propose to be "sovereign." We are proud, too, of our proximity to our sister, who was in her " teens in the Revolution-a maiden of such glorious report; and shall this day, as far as possible, shelter ourself under the ægis of her fame.

But what are the incidents which we may commemorate as our own? A hundred years ago was the mid-period of the twenty years of English ownership of Florida. With the recession to Spain, in 1783, occurred the Treaty of Peace by which England

relinquished the colonies of the Revolutionary struggle. With the English occupation the sons of Spain departed, and English names became associated with localities and identified with the new period of our History. Along the coast, Hillsborough, Halifax, Beresford, Rolles, and Beauclerck, revive the illustrious memories of the Mother Country, that were shining lights in the evening horizon of the Eighteenth Century, crowning the north pinnacle of the pyramid with the sweet name of the Princess Amelia. Oliver Goldsmith had made the colonization by Oglethorpe the theme of the "Deserted Village," which completed his fame in 1770, morbidly condoling the sad fate of the exile voyagers to Frederica and the Altamaha.

Through torrid tracts with fainting steps they go,
Where wild altama murmurs to their woe.

Far different there from all that charmed before,

The varied terrors of that horrid shore.

Those blazing suns that dart a downward ray;

And fiercely shed intolerable day;

Those matted woods where birds forget to sing,
But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling.

Those poisonous fields with rank luxuriance crowned,
Where the dark scorpion gathers death around;
Where at each step the stranger fears to wake
The rattling terrors of the vengeful snake,
Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey;
And savage men more murderous still than they;
While oft in whirls the mad tornado flies,
Mingling the ravaged landscape with the skies.
Far different these from every former scene,
The cooling brook, the grassy-vested green,
The breezy covert of the warbling grove,

That only sheltered thefts of harmless love."

Such is the description given by Goldsmith of the primeval groves under whose very scions we now celebrate this day. Well might Dr. Johnson, his cotemporary and companion, while he honored the genius of the writer, ridicule the historical delineations of his pen.

Sir Joshua Reynolds, the bosom friend of Goldsmith, was giving to canvas, while Goldsmith was writing, his distorted fancies of

Georgia and Florida scenery; and Burke, another friend, was ut tering his first fulminations against the oppression of the Colonies.

Bartram, the botanist, leaving the garden of his father on the Schuylkill, where now the world is celebrating America's Centennial epoch, was exploring the St. John's. He launched his boat for his river voyage on the very spot on which Jacksonville now stands, then the virgin forest, and the asserted domain of Micco Chlucco, the Long Warrior.

In the garden on the Schuylkill, fostered by the munificence of the Crown, as a Colonial nursery of botanical science, the Bartrams lived when the storm of revolution broke, and its shades were sought by the congenial spirits of Washington, Franklin, and other worthies of the struggle.

These are names and incidents which entitle Florida to a niche in that hundred years expired which, like the coral temples of the ocean that surround her, rise mysteriously and sublimely into the fabric of history.

It may be said, without much strain of poetic license, that the ocean waves which break upon the beach of the beautiful St. John's leap from the snowy shores of Cumberland Island. Dungenness is there! The home of Nathaniel Greene is there! He sleeps not there, and the silent stars that watch over the noble and the good, if they single out the heroic living or the heroic dead, to assign to each a guardian of immortal destiny, only know where now he sleeps. His home is there, if his memory has a home on earth; for the olive-trees that cluster there, sweet emblem of a nation's peace, may have been planted by his hand, and the shade that lingers over the tablet to his name be the spirit-vigil of his rest.

Proud architect of a nation's liberty and honor! Builder of a home for Freedom's rest! Well mightest thou, when the din of battle is over, and we can contemplate,

"Our bruised arms hung up for monuments,"

have planted the shadow of another home more typical of that celestial rest which now is thine! Born in another sea-girt gem, Rhode Island proudly claims his birth-place, and the island chain that almost joins the two extremes, hung upon the breast of a continent, is a precious necklace of emerald beads, which memory