House, both of them chuckling-"My fortune, however acquired."

Thus, gentlemen, we see that a man's country is not a certain area of land - of mountains, rivers, and woods - but it is principle; and patriotism is loyalty to that principle.

In poetic minds and in popular enthusiasm this feeling becomes closely associated with the soil and symbols of the country. But the secret sanctification of the soil and the symbol is the idea which they represent, and this idea the patriot worships through the name and the symbol, as a lover kisses with rapture the glove of his mistress and wears a lock of her hair upon his heart.

So, with passionate heroism, of which tradition is never weary of tenderly telling, Arnold Von Winkelried gathers into his bosom the sheaf of foreign spears, that his death may give life to his country. So Nathan Hale, disdaining no service that his country demands, perishes untimely, with no other friend than God and the satisfied sense of duty. So George Washington, at once comprehending the scope of the destiny to which his country was devoted, with one hand put aside the crown, and with the other sets his slaves free. So, through all history from the beginning, a noble army of martyrs has fought fiercely and fallen bravely for that unseen mistress, their country. So, through all history to the end, as long as men believe in God, that army must still march and fight and fall recruited only from the flower of mankind cheered only by their own hope of humanity - strong only in their confidence in their cause.

G.W.Curtis.

CCLXXV.

POLITICAL MORALITY.

HAVE we no interest that the controlling force in this country shall be a moral force?- that it shall conspire with the great idea of Liberty, and not degrade and destroy it? The theory of our institutions is our pride. But it is a pitiful truth that our public life has become synonymous with knavery. If a politician is introduced, you feel of your pockets. It is shameful that it is universally conceded that the best men, the men of intelligence and probity, generally avoid politics, and

that the word itself has come to mean something not to be touched without defilement. Consequently, what` good men will not touch, bad men will. It is understood that bribery carries the election; and the Presidency is the result of an adroit process of financial engineering. I have myself been shown a handful of bank-notes publicly displayed in the ante-room of a Legislature, and sagaciously told: "That is the logic for legislators." Men think they cannot afford to go to Congress, and send other men to do their duties to the State-forgetting that we can have nothing without paying for it, and that if we hope to enjoy the best government in the world we must give time and labor, each one of us, and not suppose that the country will govern itself, nor bad men govern it well.

Remember that the greatness of our country is not in its achievement, but in its promise a promise which cannot be fulfilled without that sovereign moral sense without a sensitive national conscience. If it were a question of the mere daily pleasure of living, the gratification of taste, opportunity of access to the great intellectual and æsthetic results of human genius, and whatever embellishes human life, no man could hesitate for a moment between the fulness of foreign lands in these respects, and the conspicuous poverty of our own. What have we done? We have subdued and settled a vast domain. We have made every inland river turn a mill, and wherever, on the dim rim of the globe, there is a harbor, we have lighted it with an American sail. We have bound the Atlantic to the Mississippi, so that we drift from the sea to the prairie upon a cloud of vapor; and we are stretching one hand across the continent to fulfil the hope of Columbus in a shorter way to Cathay, and with the other we are grasping under the sea to clasp there the hand of the old continent, that so the throbbing of the ocean may not toss us further apart, but be as the beating of one common pulse of the world.

Yet these are the results common to all national enterprise, and different with us only in degree, not in kind. These are but the tools with which to shape a destiny. Commercial prosperity is only a curse, if it be not subservient to moral and intellectual progress; and our prosperity will conquer us, if we do not conquer our prosperity.

G. W. Curtis.

THE

CCLXXVI.

IDEAS THE LIFE OF A PEOPLE.

HE leaders of our Revolution were men of whom the simple truth is the highest praise. Of every condition in life, they were singularly sagacious, sober and thoughtful. Lord Chatham spoke only the truth when he said to Franklin, of the men who composed the first colonial Congress: "The Congress is the most honorable assembly of statesmen since those of the ancient Greeks and Romans in the most virtuous times." Given to grave reflection, they were neither dreamers nor visionaries, and they were much too earnest to be rhetoricians. It is a curious fact, that they were generally men of so calm a temper that they lived to extreme age. With the exception of Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams, they were most of them profound scholars, and studied the history of mankind that they might know men. They were so familiar with the lives and thoughts of the wisest and best minds of the past that a classic aroma hangs about their writings and their speech; and they were profoundly convinced of what statesmen always know, and the adroitest mere politicians never perceive that ideas are the life of a people — that the conscience, not the pocket, is the real citadel of a nation, and that when you have debauched and demoralized that conscience by teaching that there are no natural rights, and that therefore there is no moral right or wrong in political action, you have poisoned the wells and rotted the crops in the ground. The three greatest living statesmen of England knew this also - Edmund Burke knew it, and Charles James Fox, and William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. But they did not speak for the King or Parliament, or the English nation. Lord Gower spoke for them wher

he said in Parliament: "Let the Americans talk about their natural and divine rights! their rights as men and citizens! their rights from God and nature! I am for enforcing these measures!" My lord was contemptuous, and the King hired the Hessians, but the truth remained true. The Fathers saw the scarlet soldiers swarming over the sea, but more steadily they saw that national progress had been secure only in the degree that the political system had conformed to natural justice. They

knew the coming wreck of property and trade, but they knew more surely that Rome was never so rich as when she was dying, and, on the other hand, the Netherlands, never so powerful as when they were poorest. Farther away, they read the names of Assyria, Greece, Egypt. They had art, opulence, splendor. Corn enough grew in the valley of the Nile. The Syrian sword was as sharp as any. They were merchant princes, and the clouds in the sky were rivalled by their sails upon the sea. They were soldiers, and their frown frightened the world. "Soul, take thine ease," those Empires said, languid with excess of luxury and life. Yes: but you remember the King who had built his grandest palace, and was to occupy it upon the morrow, but when the morrow came the palace was a pile of ruins. "Woe is me!" cried the King," who is guilty of this crime?" "There is no crime," replied the sage at his side; "but the mortar was made of sand and water only, and the builders forgot to put in the lime." So fell the old empires, because the governors forgot to put justice into their governments.

66

G. W. Curtis.

A

CCLXXVII.

AMERICAN BATTLE-FLAGS.

T the opening of the session of Congress, in 1872, Mr. Sumner introduced a resolution, providing that the names of the battles won over fellow-citizens in the war of the Rebellion, should be removed from the regimental colors of the army, and from the army register.

It was in substance only, a repetition of a resolution which he had introduced ten years before, during the war, when the first names of victories were put on American battle-flags. This resolution called forth a new storm against him. It was denounced as an insult to the heroic soldiers of the Union, and a degradation of their victories and well-earned laurels. It was condemned as an unpatriotic act.

Charles Sumner insult the soldiers who had spilled their blood in a war for human rights! Charles Sumner degrade victories, and depreciate laurels, won for the cause of universal freedom! How strange an imputation!

Let the dead man have a hearing. This was his thought: No civilized nation, from the republics of antiquity down to our days, ever thought it wise or patriotic to preserve in conspicuous and durable form the mementos of victories won over fellow-citizens in civil war. Why not? Because every citizen should feel himself with all others as the child of a common country, and not as a defeated foe. All civilized governments of our days have instinctively followed the same dictate of wisdom and patriotism.

The Irishman, when fighting for Old England at Waterloo, was not to behold on the red cross floating above him, the name of the Boyne. The Scotch Highlander, when standing in the trenches of Sevastopol, was not by the colors of his regiment to be reminded of Culloden. No French soldier at Austerlitz or Solferino had to read upon the tricolor any reminiscence of the Vendée. No Hungarian at Sadowa was taunted by any Austrian banner with the surrender of Villagos. German regiment from Saxony or Hanover, charging under the iron hail of Gravelotte was made to remember by words written on a Prussian standard, that the black eagle had conquered them at Koniggratz and Langensalza.

No

Should the son of South Carolina, when at some future day defending the Republic against some foreign foe, be reminded by an inscription on the colors floating over him, that under this flag the gun was fired that killed his father at Gettysburg? Should this great and enlightened Republic, proud of standing in the front of human progress, be less wise, less large-hearted, than the ancients were two thousand years ago, and the kingly governments of Europe are to-day?

Let the battle-flags of the brave volunteers, which they brought home from the war with the glorious record of their victories, be preserved intact as a proud ornament of our State Houses and armories; but let the colors of the army, under which the sons of all the States are to meet and mingle in common patriotism, speak of nothing but union, not a union of conquerors and conquered, but a union which is the mother of all, equally tender to all, knowing of nothing but equality, peace, and love among her children.

Do you want conspicuous mementos of your victories? They