Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia Part 40

The Right Honorable JOHN BRIGHT, the celebrated English orator and radical statesman. Born at Greenbank, Rochdale, Lancashire, November 16, 1811; died, March 27, 1889. From a speech delivered at Birmingham, England, 1862.

I have another and a far brighter vision before my gaze. It may be but a vision, but I will cherish it. I see one vast confederation stretching from the frozen North in unbroken line to the glowing South, and from the wild billows of the Atlantic westward to the calmer waters of the Pacific main; and I see one people and one language, and one faith and one law, and, over all that wide continent, the home of freedom, and a refuge for the oppressed of every race and every clime.

BROTHERS ACROSS THE SEA.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING, one of the most gifted female poets.

Born near Ledbury, Herefordshire, England, in 1807; died at Florence, Italy, in June, 1861.

I heard an angel speak last night, And he said, "Write-- Write a nation's curse for me, And send it over the western sea."

I faltered, taking up the word: "Not so, my lord!

If curses must be, choose another To send thy curse against my brother.

For I am bound by grat.i.tude, By love and blood, To brothers of mine across the sea, Who stretch out kindly hands to me."

"Therefore," the voice said, "shalt thou write My curse to-night; From the summits of love a curse is driven, As lightning is from the tops of heaven."

THE GRANDEUR OF DESTINY.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, an eminent American poet. Born at c.u.mmington, Ma.s.s., November 3, 1794; died, June 12, 1878.

Oh, Mother of a mighty race, Yet lovely in thy youthful grace!

The elder dames, thy haughty peers, Admire and hate thy blooming years; With words of shame And taunts of scorn they join thy name.

They know not, in their hate and pride, What virtues with thy children bide; How true, how good, thy graceful maids Make bright, like flowers, the valley shades; What generous men Spring, like thine oaks, by hill and glen;

What cordial welcomes greet the guest By the lone rivers of the West; How faith is kept, and truth revered, And man is loved, and G.o.d is feared, In woodland homes, And where the solemn ocean foams.

Oh, fair young Mother! on thy brow Shall sit a n.o.bler grace than now.

Deep in the brightness of thy skies, The thronging years in glory rise, And, as they fleet, Drop strength and riches at thy feet.

AMERICAN NATIONAL HASTE.

JAMES BRYCE, M. P. Born at Belfast, Ireland, May 10, 1838.

Appointed Regius Professor of Civil Law to the University of Oxford, England, 1870. From his "American Commonwealth."

Americans seem to live in the future rather than in the present; not that they fail to work while it is called to-day, but that they see the country, not merely as it is, but as it will be twenty, fifty, a hundred years hence, when the seedlings shall have grown to forest trees. Time seems too brief for what they have to do, and result always to come short of their desire. One feels as if caught and whirled along in a foaming stream chafing against its banks, such is the pa.s.sion of these men to accomplish in their own lifetimes what in the past it took centuries to effect. Sometimes, in a moment of pause--for even the visitor finds himself infected by the all-pervading eagerness--one is inclined to ask them: "Gentlemen, why in heaven's name this haste? You have time enough. No enemy threatens you. No volcano will rise from beneath you. Ages and ages lie before you. Why sacrifice the present to the future, fancying that you will be happier when your fields teem with wealth and your cities with people? In Europe we have cities wealthier and more populous than yours, and we are not happy. You dream of your posterity; but your posterity will look back to yours as the golden age, and envy those who first burst into this silent, splendid nature, who first lifted up their axes upon these tall trees, and lined these waters with busy wharves. Why, then, seek to complete in a few decades what the other nations of the world took thousands of years over in the older continents? Why do rudely and ill things which need to be done well, seeing that the welfare of your descendants may turn upon them? Why, in your hurry to subdue and utilize nature, squander her splendid gifts?

Why allow the noxious weeds of Eastern politics to take root in your new soil, when by a little effort you might keep it pure? Why hasten the advent of that threatening day when the vacant s.p.a.ces of the continent shall all have been filled, and the poverty or discontent of the older States shall find no outlet? You have opportunities such as mankind has never had before, and may never have again. Your work is great and n.o.ble; it is done for a future longer and vaster than our conceptions can embrace. Why not make its outlines and beginnings worthy of these destinies, the thought of which gilds your hopes and elevates your purposes?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: VIEW OF THE CONVENT OF SANTA MARIA DE LA RaBIDA (HUELVA), SPAIN, WHERE COLUMBUS TOOK REFUGE.

This convent has been restored and preserved as a National Museum since 1846.

(See pages 17 and 275.)]

AMERICA'S UNPRECEDENTED GROWTH.

EDMUND BURKE, an ill.u.s.trious orator, statesman, and philanthropist.

Born in Dublin, 1730; died, July 9, 1797. To Burke's eternal credit and renown be it said, that, had his advice and counsels been listened to, the causes which produced the American Revolution would have been removed.

I can not prevail on myself to hurry over this great consideration--the value of America to England. It is good for us to be here. We stand where we have an immense view of what is, and what is past. Clouds, indeed, and darkness, rest upon the future. Let us, however, before we descend from this n.o.ble eminence, reflect that this growth of our national prosperity has happened within the short period of the life of man. It has happened within sixty-eight years. There are those alive whose memory might touch the two extremities. For instance, my Lord Bathurst might remember all the stages of the progress. He was, in 1704, of an age, at least, to be made to comprehend such things. Suppose that the angel of this auspicious youth, foreseeing the many virtues which made him one of the most amiable, as he is one of the most fortunate, men of his age, had opened to him in vision, that when, in the fourth generation, the third prince of the house of Brunswick had sat twelve years on the throne of that nation, which by the happy issue of moderate and healing councils was to be made Great Britain, he should see his son, Lord Chancellor of England, turn back the current of hereditary dignity to its fountain, and raise him to a higher rank of peerage, whilst he enriched the family with a new one. If amidst these bright and happy scenes of domestic honor and prosperity that angel should have drawn up the curtain and unfolded the rising glories of his country; and, whilst he was gazing with admiration on the then commercial grandeur of England, the genius should point out to him a little speck, scarce visible in the ma.s.s of the national interest, a small seminal principle, rather than a formed body, and should tell him, "Young man, there is America, which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world. Whatever England has been growing to by a progressive increase of improvement, brought in by varieties of people, by succession of civilizing conquests and civilizing settlements in a series of 1,700 years, you shall see as much added to her by America in the course of a single life!" If this state of his country had been foretold to him, would it not have required all the sanguine credulity of youth, and all the fervid glow of enthusiasm, to make him believe it? Fortunate man, he has lived to see it!

Fortunate, indeed, if he live to see nothing to vary the prospect, and cloud the setting of his day!

AMERICA THE CONTINENT OF THE FUTURE.

EMILIO CASTELAR, one of Spain's most noted orators and statesmen.

His masterly articles on Columbus in the _Century Magazine_ alone would insure an international reputation. From a speech in the Spanish Cortes, 1871.

America, and especially Saxon America, with its immense virgin territories, with its republic, with its equilibrium between stability and progress, with its harmony between liberty and democracy, is the continent of the future--the immense continent stretched by G.o.d between the Atlantic and Pacific, where mankind may plant, essay, and resolve all social problems. Europe has to decide whether she will confound herself with Asia, placing upon her lands old altars, and upon the altars old idols, and upon the idols immovable theocracies, and upon the theocracies despotic empires; or whether she will go by labor, by liberty, and by the republic, to co-operate with America in the grand work of universal civilization.

n.o.bLE CONCEPTIONS.

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING, D. D., a distinguished American Unitarian divine, and one of the most eloquent writers America has produced.

Born at Newport, R. I., April 7, 1780; died, October 2, 1842. From an address on "The Annexation of Texas to the United States."

When we look forward to the probable growth of this country; when we think of the millions of human beings who are to spread over our present territory; of the career of improvement and glory opened to this new people; of the impulse which free inst.i.tutions, if prosperous, may be expected to give to philosophy, religion, science, literature, and arts; of the vast field in which the experiment is to be made; of what the unfettered powers of man may achieve; of the bright page of history which our fathers have filled, and of the advantages under which their toils and virtues have placed us for carrying on their work. When we think of all this, can we help, for a moment, surrendering ourselves to bright visions of our country's glory, before which all the glories of the past are to fade away? Is it presumption to say that if just to ourselves and all nations we shall be felt through this whole continent; that we shall spread our language, inst.i.tutions, and civilization through a wider s.p.a.ce than any nation has yet filled with a like beneficent influence? And are we prepared to barter these hopes, this sublime moral empire, for conquests by force? Are we prepared to sink to the level of unprincipled nations; to content ourselves with a vulgar, guilty greatness; to adopt in our youth maxims and ends which must brand our future with sordidness, oppression, and shame? Why can not we rise to n.o.ble conceptions of our destiny? Why do we not feel that our work as a nation is to carry freedom, religion, science, and a n.o.bler form of human nature over this continent? And why do we not remember that to diffuse these blessings we must first cherish them in our own borders, and that whatever deeply and permanently corrupts us will make our spreading influence a curse, not a blessing, to this New World? It is a common idea in Europe that we are destined to spread an inferior civilization over North America; that our absorption in gain and outward interests mark us out as fated to fall behind the Old World in the higher improvements of human nature--in the philosophy, the refinements, the enthusiasm of literature and the arts, which throw a l.u.s.ter round other countries. I am not prophet enough to read our fate.

THE GRAND SCOPE OF THE COLUMBIAN CELEBRATION.

The Chicago _Inter Ocean_.

The Columbian Exposition should be an exhibition worthy of the fame of Columbus and of the great republic that has taken root in the New World, which the Genoese discoverer not only "to Castille and to Aragon gave,"

but to the struggling, the oppressed, the aspiring, and the resolute of all humanity in all its conditions.

AMERICAN NATIONALITY.

RUFUS CHOATE,, the most eminent advocate of New England. Born at Ess.e.x, Ma.s.s., October 1, 1799; died at Halifax, N. S., July 13, 1858. From an Independence Day oration delivered in Boston.

But now there rises colossal the fine sweet spirit of nationality--the nationality of America. See there the pillar of fire which G.o.d has kindled, and lighted, and moved, for our hosts and our ages. Under such an influence you ascend above the smoke and stir of this small local strife; you tread upon the high places of the earth and of history; you think and feel as an American for America; her power, her eminence, her consideration, her honor are yours; your compet.i.tors, like hers, are kings; your home, like hers, is the world; your path, like hers, is on the highway of empires; your charge, her charge, is of generations and ages; your record, her record, is of treaties, battles, voyages, beneath all the constellations; her image--one, immortal, golden--rises on your eye as our western star at evening rises on the traveler from his home; no lowering cloud, no angry river, no lingering spring, no broken creva.s.se, no inundated city or plantation, no tracts of sand, arid and burning, on that surface, but all blended and softened into one beam of kindred rays, the image, harbinger, and promise of love, hope, and a brighter day.

But if you would contemplate nationality as an active virtue, look around you. Is not our own history one witness and one record of what it can do? This day, the 4th of July, and all which it stands for--did it not give us these? This glory of the fields of that war, this eloquence of that revolution, this one wide sheet of flame, which wrapped tyrant and tyranny, and swept all that escaped from it away, forever and forever; the courage to fight, to retreat, to rally, to advance, to guard the young flag by the young arm and the young heart's blood, to hold up and hold on till the magnificent consummation crown the work--were not all these imparted or inspired by this imperial sentiment.

Look at it! It has kindled us to no aims of conquest. It has involved us in no entangling alliances. It has kept our neutrality dignified and just. The victories of peace have been our prized victories. But the larger and truer grandeur of the nations, for which they are created, and for which they must one day, before some tribunal, give account, what a measure of these it has enabled us already to fulfill! It has lifted us to the throne, and has set on our brow the name of the Great Republic. It has taught us to demand nothing wrong and to submit to nothing wrong; it has made our diplomacy sagacious, wary, and accomplished; it has opened the iron gate of the mountain, and planted our ensign on the great tranquil sea. It has made the desert to bud and blossom as the rose; it has quickened to life the giant brood of useful arts; it has whitened lake and ocean with the sails of a daring, new, and lawful trade; it has extended to exiles, flying as clouds, the asylum of our better liberty. It has kept us at rest within our borders; it has scattered the seeds of liberty, under law and under order, broadcast; it has seen and helped American feeling to swell into a fuller flood; from many a field and many a deck, though it seeks not war, makes not war, and fears not war, it has borne the radiant flag, all unstained.

THE LOVE OF COUNTRY.

There is a love of country which comes uncalled for, one knows not how.

It comes in with the very air, the eye, the ear, the instinct, the first beatings of the heart. The faces of brothers and sisters, and the loved father and mother, the laugh of playmates, the old willow tree and well and school-house, the bees at work in the spring, the note of the robin at evening, the lullaby, the cows coming home, the singing-book, the visits of neighbors, the general training--all things which make childhood happy, begin it.

And then, as the age of the pa.s.sions and the age of the reason draw on, and the love of home, and the sense of security and property under the law come to life, and as the story goes round, and as the book or the newspaper relates the less favored lot of other lands, and the public and private sense of the man is forming and formed, there is a type of patriotism already. Thus they have imbibed it who stood that charge at Concord, and they who hung on the deadly retreat, and they who threw up the hasty and imperfect redoubt at Bunker Hill by night, set on it the blood-red provincial flag, and pa.s.sed so calmly with Prescott and Putnam and Warren through the experiences of the first fire.