the less advanced and civilized portions of the globe, to the great advantage of both, but particularly of the latter. 4. The application of steam to the purposes of travel and transportation by land and water, has vastly increased the facility, cheapness, and rapidity of both, diffusing, with them, information and intelligence almost as quickly and as freely as if borne by the winds; while the electrical wires outstrip them in velocity, rivaling in rapidity even thought itself. 5. The joint effect of all has been a great increase and diffusion of knowledge; and with this, an impulse to progress and civilization heretofore unexampled in the history of the world, accompanied by a mental energy and activity unprecedented. 6. To all these causes, public opinion and its organ, the press, owe their origin and great influence. Already they have attained a force in the more civilized portions of the globe sufficient to be felt by all governments, even the most absolute and despotic. But, as great as they now are, they have as yet attained nothing like their maximum force. 7. It is probable that not one of the causes which have contributed to their formation and influence has yet produced its full effect; while several of the most powerful have just begun to operate; and many others, probably of equal or even greater force, yet remain to be brought to light. 8. When the causes now in operation have produced their full effect, and inventions and discoveries shall have been exhausted-if that may ever be-they will give a force to public opinion, and cause changes, political and social, difficult to be anticipated. What will be their final bearing, time only can decide with any certainty. 9. That they will, however, greatly improve the condition of man ultimately, it would be impious to doubt; it would be to suppose that the all-wise and beneficent Being, the Creator of all, had so constituted man, as that the employment of the high intellectual faculties with which he has been pleased to endow him, in order that he might develop the laws that control the great agents of the material world, and make them subservient to his use, would prove to him the cause of permanent evil, and not of permanent good. 10. If, then, such supposition be inadmissible, they must, in their orderly and full development, end in his permanent good. But this cannot be, unless the ultimate effect of their action, politically, shall be, to give ascendency to that form of government best calculated to fulfill the ends for which government is ordained. 11. For so completely does the well-being of our race depend on good government, that it is hardly possible any change, the ultimate effect of which should be otherwise, could prove to be a permanent good. John C. Calhoun. FOR PREPARATION.-I. In what centuries were the following inventions or discoveries made?-The mariner's compass (12th century); gunpowder (13th century); printing (15th century); steam-engine (18th century); the telegraph (19th century). II. Sphere, ae-quired', me-ehăn'-ie-al, ma-çhïn'-er-y (-sheen'), înad-mis'-si-ble. III. Write a letter to a friend, placing correctly the date, address, subscription, and superscription. Thus: IV. Despotic, ultimate, faculties, permanent, ordained. V. Make a list of the inventions named in the piece, and opposite each itemize (write in the form of items) the benefits that have resulted from it (e. g., printing-preservation and diffusion of: (a) Fruits of observation (b) and reflection; (c) discoveries; (d) inventions; (e) accumulation of acquired knowledge). "Labor and capital” (“capital" is the money invested in a business). CXIV. THE BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD. 1. The muffled drum's sad roll has beat No more on life's parade shall meet And glory guards, with solemn round, 2. No rumor of the foe's advance No troubled thought at midnight haunts No vision of the morrow's strife No braying horn or screaming fife 3. Their shivered swords are red with rust; And plenteous funeral-tears have washed And the proud forms, by battle gashed, 4. The neighing troop, the flashing blade, The bugle's stirring blast, The charge, the dreadful cannonade, feel 5. Like the fierce Northern hurricane 6. Full many a mother's breath has swept O'er Angostura's plain, And long the pitying sky has wept Above its mouldered slain. The raven's scream, or eagle's flight, Alone now wake each solemn height That frowned o'er that dread fray. 7. Sons of the Dark and Bloody Ground, Where stranger-steps and tongues resound Your own proud land's heroic soil Shall be your fitter grave: She claims from War its richest spoil— The ashes of her brave. 8. Thus, 'neath their parent turf they rest, Borne to a Spartan mother's breast The sunshine of their native sky Smiles sadly on them here, And kindred eyes and hearts watch by 9. Rest on, embalmed and sainted dead! Nor shall your glory be forgot While Fame her record keeps, 10. Yon marble minstrel's voiceless stone When many a vanished year hath flown, Nor wreck, nor change, nor winter's blight, Nor Time's remorseless doom, Can dim one ray of holy light Theodore O'Hara. |