Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia Part 39

_Robert Treat Paine_, 1772-1811.

Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise.

The queen of the world, and child of the skies!

Thy genius commands thee; with rapture behold While ages on ages thy splendors unfold.

_Timothy Dwight_, 1752-1817.

COLUMBIA

AMERICAN FUTURITY.

JOHN ADAMS, second President of the United States. Born October 19, 1735; died July 4, 1826.

A prospect into futurity in America is like contemplating the heavens through the telescopes of Herschel. Objects stupendous in their magnitudes and motions strike us from all quarters, and fill us with amazement.

AMERICA THE OLD WORLD.

LOUIS JEAN RODOLOPHE AGa.s.sIZ, the distinguished naturalist. Born in Motier, near the Lake of Neufchatel, Switzerland, in 1807; died at Cambridge, Ma.s.s., December 14, 1873. From his "Geological Sketches." By permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Publishers, Boston.

First-born among the continents, though so much later in culture and civilization than some of more recent birth, America, so far as her physical history is concerned, has been falsely denominated the _New World_. Hers was the first dry land lifted out of the waters, hers the first sh.o.r.e washed by the ocean that enveloped all the earth beside; and while Europe was represented only by islands rising here and there above the sea, America already stretched an unbroken line of land from Nova Scotia to the far West.

DISCOVERY OF THE BIRD OF WASHINGTON.

JOHN JAMES AUDUBON, an American ornithologist. Born in Louisiana May 4, 1780. Died in New York January, 1851. From his "Adventures and Discoveries."

My commercial expeditions, rich in attraction for scientific observation, were attended also with the varied pleasures which delight a pa.s.senger on the waters of the glorious Mississippi. Fresh scenes are continually disclosed by the frequent windings of the river, as you speed along its rapid current. Thousands of birds in the adjacent woods gratify the ear with their sweet mellow notes, or dazzle the sight, as in their gorgeous attire they flash by. It was while ascending the Upper Mississippi, during the month of February, 1814, that I first caught sight of the beautiful Bird of Washington. My delight was extreme. Not even Herschel, when he discovered the planet which bears his name, could have experienced more rapturous feelings. Convinced that the bird was extremely rare, if not altogether unknown, I felt particularly anxious to learn its species. I next observed it whilst engaged in collecting cray fish on one of the flats of the Green River, at its junction with the Ohio, where it is bounded by a range of high cliffs. I felt a.s.sured, by certain indications, that the bird frequented that spot. Seated about a hundred yards from the foot of the rock, I eagerly awaited its appearance as it came to visit its nest with food for its young. I was warned of its approach by the loud hissing of the eaglets, which crawled to the extremity of the cavity to seize the prey--a fine fish. Presently the female, always the larger among rapacious birds, arrived, bearing also a fish. With more shrewd suspicion than her mate, glaring with her keen eye around, she at once perceived the nest had been discovered.

Immediately dropping her prey, with a loud shriek she communicated the alarm, when both birds, soaring aloft, kept up a growling to intimidate the intruders from their suspected design.

[Ill.u.s.tration: From Harper's Weekly. Copyright, 1892, by Harper & Brothers

PART OF COLUMBUS STATUE, NEW YORK MONUMENT.

(See page 244.)]

Not until two years later was I gratified by the capture of this magnificent bird. Considering the bird the n.o.blest of its kind, I dignified it with the great name to which this country owed her salvation, and which must be imperishable therefore among her people.

Like the eagle, Washington was brave; like it, he was the terror of his foes, and his fame, extending from pole to pole, resembles the majestic soarings of the mightiest of the feathered tribe. America, proud of her Washington, has also reason to be so of her Great Eagle.

ONE VAST WESTERN CONTINENT.

Sir EDWIN ARNOLD, C. S. I., an English poet and journalist. Born, June 10, 1832.

I reserve as the destiny of these United States the control of all the lands to the south, of the whole of the South American continent. Petty troubles will die away, and all will be yours. In South America alone there is room for 500,000,000 more people. Some day it will have that many, and all will acknowledge the government at Washington. We in England will not grudge you this added power. It is rightfully yours.

With the completion of the ca.n.a.l across the Isthmus of Nicaragua you must have control of it, and of all the surrounding Egypt of the New World.

THE RISING OF THE WESTERN STAR.

(ANONYMOUS.)

Land of the mighty! through the nations Thy fame shall live and travel on; And all succeeding generations Shall bless the name of Washington.

While year by year new triumphs bringing, The sons of Freedom shall be singing-- Ever happy, ever free, Land of light and liberty.

Columbus, on his dauntless mission, Beheld his lovely isle afar; Did he not see, in distant vision, The rising of this western star-- This queen, who now, in state befitting, Between two ocean floods is sitting?

Ever happy, ever free, Land of light and liberty.

THE AMERICAN FLAG.

HENRY WARD BEECHER, a distinguished American writer and preacher.

Born in Litchfield, Conn., June 24, 1813; died, March 8, 1887, in Brooklyn, N. Y. From his "Patriotic Addresses." By permission of Messrs. Fords, Howard & Hulbert, Publishers, New York.

When a man of thoughtful mind sees a nation's flag, he sees not the flag only, but the nation itself; and whatever may be its symbols, he reads chiefly in the flag the government, the principles, the truth, the history, which belong to the nation which sets it forth. When the French tricolor rolls out to the wind, we see France. When the newfound Italian flag is unfurled, we see Italy restored. When the other three-cornered Hungarian flag shall be lifted to the wind, we shall see in it the long-buried, but never dead, principles of Hungarian liberty.

When the united crosses of St. Andrew and St. George on a fiery ground set forth the banner of old England, we see not the cloth merely; there rises up before the mind the n.o.ble aspect of that monarchy which, more than any other on the globe, has advanced its banner for liberty, law, and national prosperity. This nation has a banner, too, and wherever it streamed abroad men saw daybreak bursting on their eyes, for the American flag has been the symbol of liberty, and men rejoiced in it.

Not another flag on the globe had such an errand, or went forth upon the seas carrying everywhere, the world around, such hope for the captive and such glorious tidings. The stars upon it were to the pining nations like the morning stars of G.o.d, and the stripes upon it were beams of morning light. As at early dawn the stars stand first, and then it grows light, and then, as the sun advances, that light breaks into banks and streaming lines of color, the glowing red and intense white striving together and ribbing the horizon with bars effulgent, so on the American flag stars and beams of many-colored lights shine out together. And wherever the flag comes, and men behold it, they see in its sacred emblazonry no rampant lion and fierce eagle, but only light, and every fold indicative of liberty. It has been unfurled from the snows of Canada to the plains of New Orleans; in the halls of the Montezumas and amid the solitude of every sea; and everywhere, as the luminous symbol of resistless and beneficent power, it has led the brave to victory and to glory. It has floated over our cradles; let it be our prayer and our struggle that it shall float over our graves.

NATIONAL SELF-RESPECT.

NATHANIEL S. S. BEMAN, an American Presbyterian divine. Born in New Lebanon, N. Y., 1785; died at Carbondale, Ill., August 8, 1871. For forty years pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, Troy, N. Y.

The western continent has, at different periods, been the subject of every species of transatlantic abuse. In former days, some of the naturalists of Europe told us that everything here was constructed upon a small scale. The frowns of nature were represented as investing the whole hemisphere we inhabit. It has been a.s.serted that the eternal storms which are said to beat upon the brows of our mountains, and to roll the tide of desolation at their bases; the hurricanes which sweep our vales, and the volcanic fires which issue from a thousand flaming craters; the thunderbolts which perpetually descend from heaven, and the earthquakes, whose trepidations are felt to the very center of our globe, have superinduced a degeneracy through all the productions of nature. Men have been frightened into intellectual dwarfs, and the beasts of the forest have not attained more than half their ordinary growth.

While some of the lines and touches of this picture have been blotted out by the reversing hand of time, others have been added, which have, in some respects, carried the conceit still farther. In later days, and, in some instances, even down to the present period, it has been published and republished from the enlightened presses of the Old World, that so strong is the tendency to deterioration on this continent that the descendants of European ancestors are far inferior to the original stock from which they sprang. But inferior in what? In national spirit and patriotic achievement? Let the revolutionary conflict--the opening scenes at Boston and the catastrophe at Yorktown--furnish the reply. Let Bennington and Saratoga support their respective claims. Inferior in enterprise? Let the sail that whitens every ocean, and the commercial spirit that braves every element and visits every bustling mart, refute the unfounded aspersion. Inferior in deeds of zeal and valor for the Church? Let our missionaries in the bosom of our own forest, in the distant regions of the East, and on the islands of the great Pacific, answer the question. Inferior in science and letters and the arts? It is true our nation is young; but we may challenge the world to furnish a national maturity which, in these respects, will compare with ours.

The character and inst.i.tutions of this country have already produced a deep impression upon the world we inhabit. What but our example has stricken the chains of despotism from the provinces of South America--giving, by a single impulse, freedom to half a hemisphere? A Washington here has created a Bolivar there. The flag of independence, which has waved from the summit of our Alleghany, has now been answered by a corresponding signal from the heights of the Andes. And the same spirit, too, that came across the Atlantic wave with the Pilgrims, and made the rock of Plymouth the corner-stone of freedom, and of this republic, is traveling back to the East. It has already carried its influence into the cabinets of princes, and it is at this moment sung by the Grecian bard and emulated by the Grecian hero.

COLUMBIA--A PROPHECY.

ST. GEORGE BEST. In Kate Field's _Washington_.

Puissant land! where'er I turn my eyes I see thy banner strewn upon the breeze; Each past achievement only prophesies Of triumphs more unheard of. These Are shadows yet, but time will write thy name In letters golden as the sun That blazed upon the sight of those who came To worship in the temple of the Delphic One.

THE FINAL STAGE.

HENRY HUGH BRACKENRIDGE, a writer and politician. Born near Campbellton, Scotland, 1748; died, 1816. From his "Rising Glory of America," a commencement poem.

This is thy praise, America, thy power, Thou best of climes by science visited, By freedom blest, and richly stored with all The luxuries of life! Hail, happy land, The seat of empire, the abode of kings, The final stage where time shall introduce Renowned characters, and glorious works Of high invention and of wondrous art, Which not the ravages of time shall waste, 'Till he himself has run his long career!

BRIGHT'S BEATIFIC VISION.