SELECTIONS IN PROSE. 31 membering that now is the only time for us. It is, indeed, a sorry way to get through the world by putting off a duty till to-morrow, saying, "Then I will do it." No! this will never answer. "Now" is ours; "then" may never be. F all the experiences which we shall have in life, of all the blessings which it shall please Providence to allow us to cultivate, there is not one which will breathe a purer fragrance, or which will bear a more heavenly aspect, than education. It will be a companion which no misfortunes can ever depress, no clime destroy, no enemy alienate, no despotism enslave; at home a friend, abroad an introduction, in solitude a solace, in society an ornament. It chastens vice, it guides virtue, it gives at once a grace and government to genius. Without education what is man? A splendid slave, a reasoning savage, vacillating between the dignity of an intelligence derived from God and the degradation of passions participated with brutes, shuddering at the terrors of a hereafter, or embracing the horrid hope of annihilation. What is this wondrous world of his residence? "A mighty maze, and all without a plan," a dark and desolate and dreary cavern, without wealth or ornament or order. But light up within it the torch of knowledge and how wondrous the transition! The seasons change, the atmosphere breathes, the landscape lives, earth unfolds its fruits, ocean rolls in its magnificence, the heavens display their constellated canopy, and the grand animated spectacle of nature rises revealed before the educated, its varieties regulated and its mysteries resolved. The philosophy which bewilders, the prejudices which debase, the superstitions which enslave, vanish before education. If man but follow its precepts purely, it will not only lead him to the victories of this world, but open the very portals of omnipotence for his admission. OTHING is more evident than that the West will write the next page of American history. I believe this because the West is growing more rapidly than any other part of the country. The tens of thousands who emigrate from the poverty of the Old to the hopes of the New World, anxious to build a home at once, naturally gravitate to that vast territory which so enticingly invites any one who can level the forest and till the soil. They are a hardy class of men and women. Full of health and vigor, they somehow get into the spirit of the age at once; and so by means of the ploughs and rakes, the reaping and threshing machines, they are marching along the highway of industry to social position, patriotism, wealth. What a transformation from their surroundings in Europe! So in a few years the log-huts on the river's bank have disappeared, and the thrifty, busy town builds its school-houses and its churches to attest its earnest and its hopeful work. The little village on the edge of the lake, through which, a century ago, a loaded team could scarcely find a safe passage, has become a huge and commanding city, claiming the admiration of the world, and built not like Paris, by the command of imperious and profligate rulers, but by the royal will and generosity of a free and ambitious people. * * Chicago. with this magnificent and rapid prog all, a spirit of justice, morality, and crown the increasing power of the glo will nobly fulfil her destiny. We believe that the tide of hun already swept five hundred miles bey Waters, will keep its onward course herds on the slopes of the Rocky Mo already hear the wind vibrating the w smiles and tears, our hopes and fe shore; and we already hear the rattli starts from a New York depot, that vast belt of the continent, stringing all the North upon the same line of light the echoes in the city by the Golden C ELO LOQUENCE is not found alone i of the people. We shall find it us, if our hearts are rightly tuned melody. There is eloquence in a smi language of happiness; it tells of a heart; it whispers soft tales of love or is eloquence in the flowers. They love; how, when the Creator cursed t disobedience, he left the flowers to relics of Paradise, and the emblem of man's primeval innocence. There is eloquence in the groves. Birds of gay and brilliant plumage skip from branch to branch, warbling their melodious lays of love, and speaking a language which ever finds an echo in the joyous heart of innocence and childhood. There is eloquence in music. Who has not felt it? Whose soul has never thrilled with sweet and gentle emotions as the voice of song stole softly over his slumbering senses, lulling them to repose by its soothing and heavenly melody? There is eloquence in the starry heavens. These effulgent gems, that glitter so brightly on the mantle of Night, tell us of God's omnipotence; how, when chaos reigned supreme, his voice sounded amid the fearful gloom of nature, and at his bidding darkness fled, earth sprang into life, revolving worlds began their ceaseless rounds, suns lit the firmament, and the "morning stars sang together for joy." Ex. 29. - THE FATHERS OF THE REPUBLIC. HE Fathers of the Republic were men of whom the simple truth was the highest praise. They were sagacious, sober, and thoughtful. Most of them were of so calm a temper that they lived to extreme age; with one or two exceptions they were profound scholars, and studied the history of mankind that they might know man. They were so familiar with the lives and thoughts of the wisest and best minds of the past, that the writings they have left to us are preserved as a rich legacy of classic style. They held and taught that the conscience, and not the pocket, is the real citadel of a had determined to accomplish, and laid grand superstructure of our Republic. publicans in the true sense of the word should ever be remembered by us as m est ambition. Ex. 30. - MY COUNTRY. · IR, I dare not trust myself to spe with the rapture which I always template her marvellous history. W pared with it? On my return to it, a only four years, I was filled with wond all I heard. I listened to accounts thousand miles in magnificent steamb of those great lakes which but the sleeping in the primeval silence of cesses of a vast wilderness; and I fe grandeur and a majesty in this irresisti of a race, created as I believe, and elec people a continent, which belong to either of the moral or material world. We may become so much accustom that they shall make as little impressio as the glories of the heavens above u them lately as with the eye of the st far from being without poetry, as s |