r OI.IIMRUS DAY COLUMBIA, S. C. WITH THE ADDRESS OF Hon. LeRoy F. Youmans. Pamphlet Colieowea Duke University Libraqi THE CELEBRATION l \ 0 E P OT.UMBUS DAY October 21, 1892. COLUMBIA, 3. C. G Q WITH THE ADDRESS OF Hon. LeRoy F. Yonmans. COLUMBIA, S. C. CHARLES A. CAL VO, JR., PRINTER. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 with funding from Duke University Libraries https://archive.org/details/celebrationofcolOOyoum COLUMBUS DAY. OCTOBER 21, 1892. Columbia, S. C. THE CELEBRATION. The 21st day of October, 1892, was generally observed as “ Dis- covery Day " in South Carolina, as in most of the States and countries of the civilized world. On the 24th of September, the Governor of the State issued the following proclamation, calling upon the people to observe the day appropriately : PROCLAMATION. Whereas the President of the United States, in accordance with the Act of Congress, has issued his proclamation setting apart Friday, the 21st day of October, as a general holiday com- memorative of the discovery of America by Christopher Colum- bus, and has invited all the people of the United States to par- ticipate in the celebration of that day ; and whereas the discovery of America was one of the most glorious and momentous events in the history of the world, and especially of this continent, in the blessed consequences of which our people now so richly partake : Therefore I, Benjamin R. Tillman, Governor of South Carolina, do hereby appoint and set apart Friday, the 21st day of October, as a general holiday and a day of thanksgiving. And I invite the people of South Carolina on that day to abstain from their ordinary occupations, as far as may be, and to unite in 4 such forms of private and public observance as shall duly cele- brate the notable events here commemorated and express their gratitude to Almighty God for the blessings of liberty, peace and happiness which have followed it. Given under my hand and the great seal of the State of South Carolina this 24th day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and ninety-two. B. E. TILLMAN, Governor. Several weeks before the event the State Superintendent of Education, Hon. W. D. Mayfield, published a circular letter in- viting all schools and school authorities to unite in imeparing appropriate exercises for the occasion, and offering to send to all applicants copies of the National Official Programme prepared by the National Association of School Superintendents. The suggestions of the State Superintendent were carried out in many communities of the State. The celebration at Columbia, the State capital, had a special significance, both on account of the general interest manifested and the fact that the chief exer- cises of the day were held in the Capitol building. As in most parts of the United States, the celebration took chiefly the form of a public school demonstration, although the banks, the Court House and many of the business houses of the city were closed, and the citizens of Columbia by their presence and active partici- pation in the exercises testified to their appreciation of the value of such an observance of the important anniversary. The Hall of Representatives was crowded to its utmost capacity by the throng of students and of citizens, including many of the leading men of the State, who had assembled to commemorate the great- est event of modern history and to do honor to the great dis- coverer, whose name has been perpetuated in the name of the city itself. The public exercises of the day began at 9 o’clock in the chapel of the Winthrop Normal College, which had been tastefully deco- rated for the occasion. The place of honor was held by a por- trait of Columbus, above which had been draped a large United States flag, while a picture of Washington and another of the authorized likenesses of the great Admiral were hung on either side. On the opposite blackboards drawings representing draped flags of the United States and of Spain had been executed in 5 colored crayons. In other parts of the hall United States flags, with here and there a blue Palmetto banner of South Carolina, were arranged among shields, mottoes and flowers, giving a festive and patriotic air to the apartment. After the usual devotional exercises, which had relation to the events of the day, historical exercises were presented. The programme was as follows : 1. Columbus — a. His Life, Miss Verdier. b. His Work, Miss Grant. c. What He Gave the World, Miss Pope. 2. Song — “ Star of Freedom,” Donizetti. 3. Historical Review — a. Salient Points in U. S. History, Miss Dunbar. b. The United States in 1492, 1592, 1692, 1792, 1892, Miss Tradewell. 4. Reading — “Columbus,” Miss Bonham. 5. Song — Keller’s American Hymn. An extract from Hon. Robt. C. Winthrop’s recent Report to the Peabody Board, referring to the approaching anniversary, was then read by Dr. E. S. Joynes, a member of the Board of Trustees of the college, as follows : “ By an unforeseen but by no means unwelcome or inappro- priate coincidence, we meet here in New York on one of the days which has been selected by this great commercial metropolis for celebrating the four hundreth anniversary of the discovery of America. The grand procession is being marshalled beneath these windows while we are entering on our deliberations. It commemorates the day — the 12th of October, 1492 — on which Columbus is recorded to have made his discovery of the New World, according to the calendar in use at the time. The Presi- dent of the United States, making the allowance of nine days for the change of calendar, agreeably to the resolution of Congress, has appointed the 21st of October as a general holiday for the American people. In his admirable proclamation for that pur- pose, after speaking of Columbus as the pioneer of progress and enlightenment, he proceeds as follows : ‘ The system of universal education is in our age the most prominent and salutary feature of the spirit of enlightenment, and it is peculiarly appropriate 6 that the schools he made by the people the centre of the day’s demonstration.’ ‘Let the national flag/ he adds, ‘float over every schoolhouse in the country, and the exercises be such as shall impress upon our youth the patriotic duties of American citizenship.’ “Beyond all question, the discovery of this great country and continent — if I may not say hemisphere — whether according to old style or new style, the J ulian or the Gregorian calendar, is pre-eminently worthy of commemoration and celebration by the whole American people ; and nothing could be more fit than for the schools to be made the centre of the day’s demonstration. It will be a signal recognition of the great truth that education is to be the main hope of our country in the future, as it has been our main support for the past. With the blessing of God, and a thorough system of popular education, we may look forward safely and confidently to the maintenance of our free institutions. The future of the country is in the very schools which we are establishing and supporting, and in those which others are main- taining, and shall continue to maintain, in all quarters of the land. “ Thus far the discovery of America has been an incalculable blessing to the world. If it is to be so in all time to come, edu- cation, with God’s blessing, will decide. We may thus pursue our work, gentlemen, with the proud consciousness that we are doing something for the enduring welfare and glory, not of the Southern States of the Union only, but of our whole country and of mankind.” Then followed a brief address, appropriate to the occasion, by Hon. W. D. Mayfield, State Superintendent of Education. At the close of Mr. Mayfield’s address another song, “Ark of Freedom,” was sung, and at 10 o’clock the visitors, with the teachers and students, dispersed themselves in groups to listen to the Columbian Exercises that had been prepared by the different grades of the City Schools in the Washington Street and Marion Street school buildings. These exercises were very varied, from the simple story of the wonderful voyage with map and picture illustrations for the little ones, to historical papers and readings in the older grades. Simi- lar exercises were held in the Laurel Street School and the Howard School. 7 At 11 o’clock the ringing of the bell on the Washington Street School building announced the formation of the procession. It formed at the corner of Washington and Marion streets, and moved through Marion and Plain streets, and thence by Main street to the Capitol. The order of the procession was as follows : 1. General Richbourg and his staff, and the military companies of the city. 2. Confederate Veterans. 3. City Council. 4. City School Board. 5. Boys of City Schools. Another procession formed of the young ladies of the Winthrop Normal College and the girls of the City Schools was formed upon the sidewalk, which, starting toward the State House by a nearer way, during the last part of the route moved down Main street in parallel column to the other, as an attendant procession. Seats on the floor of the House had been reserved for the Nor- mal College and the older grades of the public schools. The other colleges of the city also came to the State House each in a body and were seated in the galleries. When the schools and the military and the invited guests had been seated, the doors of the great Hall of Representatives were thrown open to the general public, and soon all seats and all available standing room were occupied. On the rostrum were seated Governor Tillman ; Hon. J. E. Tindal, Secretary of State ; Hon. W. D. Mayfield, State Superin- tendent of Education ; Col. S. W. Rowan, President Confederate Survivors Association ; Dr. A. N. Talley ; Rev. W. C. Lindsay ; Rev. S. P. H. Elwell ; Hon. John P. Thomas, Jr., Chairman City School Board; Hon. Wm. H. Lyles and J. T. Barron, Esq., members of City School Board ; the Mayor and members of City Council; Gen. LeRoy F. Youmans; and Mr. D. B. Johnson, Superintendent of City Schools and President Winthrop Normal College, who announced the programme. The exercises at the State House began at 12 o’clock and lasted a little more than an hour, the main features being the reading of Edna Dean Proctor’s Columbian Ode, which was effectively rendered by Hon. John P. Thomas, Jr., Chairman of the City School Board, and the eloquent address of Hon. LeRoy F. You- mans, the full text of which is given below. 8 The exercises were varied with singing by the Yormal College and the children of the Graded Schools, led by the cornet of Mr. A. W. Hamiter. The hundreds of young voices made an inspir- ing chorus as they sang to the tune of “Maryland, my Mary- land/’ “ What land is this we hail so free ? America, America.” The exercises at the State House closed the official part of the day’s programme. In the evening, however, a Columbian entertainment was given at the Opera House under the auspices of the Central World’s Fair Club, consisting of tableaux representing scenes in the life of Columbus, with music and other artistic features. “Columbus Day” will long be remembered by the school chil- dren and many others in Columbia as an occasion of far more than usual interest. The following is the programme of the official exercises at the State House : 1. Invocation, Rev. W. C. Lindsay. 2. Reading of Proclamation of the President of the Fnited States, Hon. ffm. H. Lyles, member of City School Board. 3. Reading of Proclamation of the Governor of South Carolina, Hon. W. D. Mayfield, State Superintendent of Education. 4. Reading of Columbian Ode, Hon. John P. Thomas. Jr. 5. Singing, “ What Land Is This,” by chorus of 500 voices. 6. Address, Hon. LeRoy F. Youmans. 7. Singing, “America,” by chorus of 500 voices. 8. Benediction, Rev. S. P. H. El well. 9 COLUMBIAN ODE. BY EDNA DEAN PKOCTOR. (Read by Jno. P. Thomas, Jr., Esq.) “COLUMBIA’S BANNER.” “God helping me,” cried Columbus, “though fair or foul the breeze, I will sail and sail till I find the land beyond the Western seas !” — So an eagle might leave its eyrie, bent, though the blue should bar, To fold its wings on the loftiest peak of an undiscovered star ! And into the vast and void abyss he followed the setting sun ; Nor gulfs nor gales could fright his sails till the wondrous quest was done. But O the weary vigils, the murmuring, torturing days, Till the Pinta’s gun, and the shout of “ Land !” set the black night ablaze ! Till the shore lay fair as Paradise in morning’s balm and gold, And a world was won from the conquered deep, and the tale of the ages told ! Uplift the Starry Banner ! The best age is begun ! We are the heirs of the mariners whose voyage that morn was done. Measureless lands Columbus gave and rivers through zones that roll. But his rarest, noblest bounty was a New World for the Soul ! For he sailed from the Past with its stifling walls, to the Future’s open sky, And the ghosts of gloom and fear were laid as the breath of heaven went by ; And the pedant’s pride and the lordling’s scorn were lost, in that vital air, As fogs are lost when sun and wind sweep ocean blue and bare ; And Freedom and larger Knowledge dawned clear, the sky to span. The birthright, not of priest or king, but of every child of man ! Uplift the New World’s Banner to greet the exultant sun ! Let its rosy gleams still follow his beams as swift to West they run, Till the wide air rings with shout and hymn to welcome it shining high, And our eagle from lone Katahdin to Shasta’s snow can fly In the light of its stars as fold on fold is flung to the autumn sky ! Uplift it, Youths and Maidens, with songs and loving cheers ; Through triumphs, raptures, it has waved, through agonies and tears. Columbia looks from sea to sea and thrills with joy to know Her myriad sons, as one, would leap to shield it from a foe ! And you who soon will be the State, and shape each great decree, Oh, vow to live and die for it, if glorious death must be ! The brave of all the centuries gone this starry Flag have wrought ; In dungeons dim, on gory fields, its light and peace were bought ; And you who front the future — whose days our dreams fulfil — On Liberty’s immortal height, Oh, plant it firmer still ! For it floats for broadest learning ; for the soul’s supreme release ; For law disdaining license ; for righteousness and peace ; For valor born of justice ; and its amplest scope and plan Makes a queen of every woman, a king of every man ! While forever, like Columbus, o’er Truth’s unfathomed main It pilots to the hidden isles, a grander realm to gain. 10 Ah ! what a mighty trust is ours, the noblest ever sung, To keep this Banner spotless its kindred stars among ! Our fleets may throng the oceans — our forts the headlands crown — Our mines their treasures lavish for mint and mart and town — Rich fields and flocks and busy looms bring plenty, far and wide — And statelier temples deck the land than Rome’s or Athen’s pride — And science dare the mysteries of earth and wave and sky — Till none with us in splendor and strength and skill can vie ; Yet, should we reckon Liberty and Manhood less than these, And slight the right of the humblest between our circling seas, — Should we be false to our sacred past, our father’s God forgetting, This Banner would lose its lustre, our sun be nigh his setting ! But the dawn will sooner forget the East, the tides their ebb and flow. Than you forget our radiant Flag, and its matchless gifts forego ! Nay ! you will keep it high advanced with ever-brightening sway — The Banner whose light betokens the Lord’s diviner day — Leading the nations gloriously in Freedom’s holy way ! No cloud on the field of azure — no stain on the rosy bars — God bless you, Youths and Maidens, as you guard the Stripes and Stars ADDRESS OF LeROY f. youmans. Columbus Day, October 21, 1892. Mr, Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen : To present any- thing like a contrast between the condition of the world in 1492 and in 1892, to glance even with a bird’s eye view at the earth-shak- ing events of those four hundred years in forty minutes, is simply impossible. The mere roll-call, compared with the length of which that of the catalogue of the ships in Homer sinks into utter insignificance— the mere roll-call of the men of power, the men with most iron in the globules of their blood,' who stamped their impress on those centuries — the mighty hunters before the Lord, the giants in the earth in those days, would exhaust the entire morning, and even then we should have all text and no sermon, and only part of the text at that. The year 1492 marks a memorable era in the annals of the human race. In that year Rodrigo Borgia, under the title of Alexander VI., ascended the Papal throne, the most characteristic incarnation of the secular spirit of the Papacy ; the successor of St. Peter, who appears for the last time in history as the ultimate Justiciar of appeal for Christian nations ; who administered jus- tice after a marvellous sort, and by tracing a line upon a map dis- posed of three-fourths of the family of man ; and who, the head of the Christian world, sought an alliance with the Grand Turk : strange union of the Crescent and the Cross ! He was father of the infamous Caesar Borgia, the greatest prac- tical statesman of the age, admired by Machiavelli the virtuous, the greatest speculative statesman of the age. Murderer, poi- soner, fratricide as Caesar Borgia was, blood never seemed to im- poverish the luxury of his genius or clog the melody of his verse. This sovereign Pontiff, Alexander VI., was the father also of 12 the beauteous Lucretia Borgia, a lovelier bride than whom never a Duke of all Alfonso’s royal race brought home to Ferrara ; the glory of whose golden hair, preserved in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, thrilled the poetic soul of Byron centuries after she was dust. “ Only a woman’s hair.” Worthy sire of such a progeny; worthy progeny of such a sire — sic pater, sic films, sic filia. Well may Garnett say in his sketch of him, that, while never according to mediaeval ideas had a Pope exerted his prerogative with grandeur equal to that of Alexander VI., the mediaeval conception of the Papacy was passing away, for in 1492 Martin Luther was nine years old. Religion has exercised more influence over the temporal affairs of man than all other causes combined ; and since the founda- tion of Christianity no event has had greater influence on civil- ization than the Reformation. Taken within its narrowest limits, the Reformation may, according to the view of Mullinger, be looked upon as commencing with the year 1517, when Luther’s theses were published at Wittenberg, representing the commence- ment of that direct and open renunciation of medieval doctrine which he initiated ; and as finding a certain consummation with the year 1545, when the assembling of the Council of Trent marks the renewed sanction and promulgation of that doctrine, whereby an insuperable barrier was erected between the commu- nion of Rome and the Churches of Protestantism. Yet for more than a century after its inception religious wars and controver- sies assaulted every tradition and opinion, and shook every insti- tution of the times. Macaulay fixes the treaty of Barwalde in 1631, when the coalition was formed between Richelieu, the first statesman of the age, a prince of the Catholic Church, whose indomitable heart had crushed the Huguenots, and Gustavus Adolphus, the first warrior of the age, a Protestant king of chi- valric heroism, who owed his throne to a revolution caused by hatred of Popery, as marking the time when the great religious struggle terminated and the war of sects ceased — the war suc- ceeding being a war of States for the equilibrium of Europe, for that balance of power at whose shrine so many hecatombs of human victims have been sacrificed, so many rivers of human blood have been poured out. From these religious wars and controversies, in the philosophic judgment of Hammond, sprung modern civil liberty, all sides contributing in turn to its develop- ment. 13 In 1492 died Lorenzo de Medicis — Lorenzo the Magnificent — the most munificent patron of art and letters, the most magnifi- cent Maecenas known to history since the great premier of Augustus Caesar ; whose palace, like Holland House, during the regime of the great Whig coterie, was the favorite resort of wits and beauties, of painters and poets, of scholars, philosophers and statesmen ; within whose walls were trained the two young Me- dici, to whose intellects Lorenzo gave the strong food on which the statesmen of Florence fed their pupil princes, both of whom subsequently ascended the throne of St. Peter — his son as Pope Leo X., his nephew as Pope Clement VII. So consummate a master of statecraft was he, so dominant in Italian politics, as to virtually unite Rome with Florence, and to be justly styled the “needle of the Italian compass/'’ Villari, professor in the Royal Institute, Florence, in his sketches of Italian statesmen, tells us that though he was lord of all, and virtually a tyrant, yet under Lorenzo’s rule all industry, commerce, and public works made enormous progress — that the civil equality of modern States, which was quite unknown in the middle ages, was more developed in Florence than in any other city of the world, and that even the condition of the peasantry was far more prosperous than elsewhere. And Guicciardini, the great historian, (of whom Charles V. said “I can make a hundred Spanish grandees in a minute, but cannot make one • Guicciardini in a hundred years/’) voices the verdict of history when he says, “If Florence was to have a tyrant, she could never have found a better or more pleasant one.” His picturesque life and equally pictur- esque death, were alike the wonders of the age, and his virtues and vices are alike embalmed in his classic biography by Roscoe, who is pronounced by Horace Walpole to be by far the best of our historians. In 1492 the Czar of Muscovy was Ivan III. , in whose reign we first hear of the terrible punishment of the knout. The knout for the back of the subject is what makes assassination act as that check on the overaction of autocratic government which in republican governments is effected by a constitution. The knout for the back of the subject is what makes the great White Czar of all the Russias ride in the procession at his coro- nation preceded by the assassins of his grandfather, accompa- nied by the assassins of his farher, and followed by his own. In 1492 Martin Behaim constructed at Nuremberg the first 14 terrestrial globe (world apple) of any importance, known to geo- graphers, which, while having most of the disproportions of the old Ptolemaic geography, embodies the geographic views of him- self and some of his great contemporaries, incorporated with information devived from Marco Polo, Mandeville, and other then recent travelers. In 1492 Henry VIII., the historic Blue Beard of England, was an infant of a year. In 1492, his father, Henry VII. of England, invaded France, of which Charles VIII. had been nine years king. Henry VII. had been seven years on the throne of England, having ended the Wars of the Roses by his victories in love and war ; uniting the white and red roses by his marriage with Elizabeth, daugh- ter of Edward IV., soon after defeating Richard III. at the battle of Bosworth. His reign marks the beginning of a new era in England : the iron rule of the Tudors. There is no more inter- esting or instructive portion of modern European history than that which recounts the phases of that terrible conflict, which went on, in the field and at the council board, in the camp and in Parliament, at every hearth and in all society, whose result has been the conversion of the Great Britain of Henry VII. into the Great Britain of Victoria, the conversion of Great Britain from the despotism of the Tudors into what Great Britain is to- day : a republic governed under monarchical forms. In 1492, King Ferdinand V. of that name of Castile, III. of Naples, II. of Aragon and Sicily, had the title of Catholic con- ferred on him by the Pope. In 1492, under his rule, the Jews were expelled from Spain. In 1492, under his rule, terminated the war of Granada, after ten years of incessant fighting, equalling the far-famed siege of Troy, and ending like that in the capture of the city, the account of which you have all read in the pleasing pages of Irving. Thus ended the domination of the Moors in Spain, involving the final extinction of Mahometan power there, which had lasted seven hundred and seventy-eight years, from the memorable defeat of Roderic, the last of the Goths, on the banks of the Guadalete. The name of Ferdinand the Catholic is inseparably associated with the most splendid of all periods in the annals of Spain. For it was under his guidance the kingdom was consolidated, and grew into its position of highest prosperity and greatest influ- ence as a European power. 15 In no European country have the rise and fall of national greatness been more marked than in Spain. It was the boast of Themistocles that he knew how to make a small State great ; but the student of the morbid anat- omy of governments can learn from the history of Spain how to make a great State small. Contrast the Spain of Ferdinand and his two immediate successors with the Spain of to-day, the Spain of 1492, with the Spain of 1892 : quantum mutatus ab illo. Charles I. of Spain, more generally known by his European title as the Emperor Charles V., was the grandson and successor of Ferdinand the Catholic. The first six years of his life were contemporary with the last six of the life of him whose greatest title to fame the old world and the new, the oixov^er?) Tfj to-day commemorates. This ablest and most powerful monarch of the 16th century was born to such vast possessions and weighty responsibilities as have seldom, if ever, fallen to the lot of other mortals. Eight years before his birth, the bravest, the wisest, the greatest of navigators had discovered for him, beyond the straits guarded by the Pillars of Hercules, territories of extent not bounded even by the signs of the Zodiac, more fertile than the foot of man has ever elsewhere trod, and teeming with mines of the precious metals sufficient to glut the “ auri sacra fames” of the world. When Charles Y. was only thirteen years of age, one of his sub- jects, Balboa, discovered the Pacific Ocean, the first European to see that marvellous waste of waters of whose existence a still greater navigator, the greatest of navigators, whose greatest exploit we to-day celebrate, was certain, and which he had long tried vainly to discover. Who that has read, can ever forget the ex- quisite pathos of the passage in “ The Damsel of Darien/'' in which our own gifted and lamented Simms pictures the emo- tions of Balboa when first he gazed upon the waters of that boundless and waveless ocean — an ocean whose slumbers the eye of European had never before 'seen, nor his footsteps broken, — pathos which stamps the passage as a gem and Simms as a mas- ter in our literature. And while Charles Y. was being crowned with the crown of Charlemagne and Barbarossa at Aix la Chapelle, another of his subjects, the great Portuguese navigator, Magellan, who had entered his service, was prosecuting the great voyage which was to result in the circumnavigation of the globe. And 16 still another of his subjects, the audacious Cortez, (who dared to say to him, “I am a man who has given you more provinces than your ancestors left you cities,”) was conquering for him the land of the Montezumas. And ere he had been twenty years on the throne of Spain, another of his subjects, Pizarro, had com- pleted for him the conquest of the land of the Incas, the children of the sun, whose edifices displayed marvelous building skill, whose workmanship is unsurpassed, and to whose skill and ac- curacy displayed in their structures, in the way of stone cutting and fitting, the world can show nothing equal. The empire of his son and successor, Philip II., was one of the most powerful and splendid that ever existed. For years his power over Europe was greater than Napoleon ever possessed ; for, fully recognizing the truth expressed by one of our own Carolina statesmen, Hammond, that “ amphibious man never attains half his national greatness until his domain on the water equals that upon the land — until the terror of his prowess makes his home upon the deep as secure as on the mountains,” Philip held what no other modem sovereign has ever held, the domin- ion both of the land and of the sea. His soldiers marched up to the capital of La Belle France, and his Armadas, the terror of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, hovered like vultures for their prey on the coasts “ of the inviolate isle of the sage and the free.” As it has been pithily summed up, this paramount ascendancy of Spain had been gained by unquestioned superiority in all the arts of policy and war. In the sixteenth century Italy was not more decidedly the land of the fine arts, Germany was not more decidedly the land of bold theological speculation, than Spain was the land of states- men and soldiers — statesmen who possessed “ more Romano ” that majestic art “ regere imperio populos ” — statesmen unsur- passed by Venetian diplomat or Florentine oligarch : soldiers who, with the cry of “ St. James for Spain,” charged armies which outnumbered them a hundred fold — soldiers who. when the waves of danger rolled high in front, dared to burn their ships behind them, resolved, with fearful odds against them, in the hush of desperation to conquer or to die. Seventy-one years after 1492 Philip II. laid the first stone of the stately Escurial, at once a convent, a church, a palace and 17 a mausoleum, and in this last there still repose, each in a massy sarcophagus, the departed kings and queens of Spain. But where be the couriers (annalists tell us of) bearing orders big with the fate of kings and commonwealths, who used to ride forth from the massive portals of the palace, once the head- quarters of the diplomacy of civilization, and the centre of the politics of the world ? The power, which once domineered over the land and over the sea has been succeeded by an utter prostration of strength. The vigor which crushed the Mussulman, the Protestant and the heathen has been succeeded by utter lassitude. The wealth of Attains has been succeeded by a bankrupt treasury. And whether it be true that Cervantes, by his great novel, laughed chivalry away in Spain, or that, while the crusades have been a mere episode in the history of other nations, the existence of Spain has been one long crusade ; it is unquestionably true that history — history in its broad sense of philosopy teaching by experience, philosophy teaching by example, teaches that all the causes of the apparently incurable decay in Spain resolve them- selves into one cause — bad government. All that has been or will be said, and further details, can easily be found in some one or other of the encyclopaedias, histories, biographies or other treatises on the subjects to which reference is made. But the greatest of all the events of the year 1492, the event which will forever, so long as time shall last, mark it with the whitest of chalk, and stamp it as the most memorable year since that from which all after ages date their history, the event which would keep its memory ever green, ever vivid, were every other vestige of its existence consigned to oblivion, is learned not from the pompous tomes of history, or the ponderous quartos of encyclopcedias, but was learned by us all in the first four lines of verse we lisped in infancy after Mother Goose’s Melodies and Watts’s Hymns : Columbus was a sailor braye. The first who crossed the Atlantic ware. In fourteen hundred ninety-two He sailed far o’er the ocean blue. What though young Bjorni, son of one of the comrades of the Viking Erik the Bed, or Leif, son of Erik himself, did discover America in 985 or 986 ? What though the Irish discovered it 18 earlier ? What though America had been known to the barbar- ous tribes of Eastern Asia for thousands of years before Colum- bus was born ? Certainly, none of these reputed discoveries attracted the atten- tion of either statesmen or philosophers. If Columbus did not discover America, he certainly rediscovered it, which was better : as his discovery, whether first, or in whatever numerical rank in point of time it may be placed, is the only one which has been of the slightest consequence to the fortunes of the human race. Does it detract from the validity of the claim of Copernicus to be the first expounder of the true theory of celestial motions, that Pythagoras said the sun, and not the earth, was the centre of the universe, and that the planets moved round it in elliptical orbits ? Is the great claim of Gutenburg on the gratitude of mankind, in connection with the art of printing with movable types, les- sened by the fact that the Roman bakers stamped their bread ? Or by the claims of the Chinese and Japanese ? Or even by the alleged Haarlem invention of Laurens Jansoon Coster ? Is the claim of Franklin on the gratitude of the human race for his discoveries, as to electricity and lightning, lessened by the fact that Thales gave a hint of electricity ? Or by the theory of Michaelis that the forest of very sharp spikes with golden or gilt points covering the roof of the Temple of Jerusalem was to serve the purpose of lightning rods ? Or by the ideas advanced by Salverte as to the worship of Jupiter Elicius, in his work on the occult sciences of the Ancients ? The theory generally entertained is, that while thousands had watched the tea kettle, and hundreds had speculated on its phe- nomena, James Watt first caught the imp that tilted the lid. Is his fame in connection with the steam engine impaired by the expressed belief of Aristotle, that the explosive power of steam was sufficient to produce earthquakes ? Or by the fact that Hero of Alexandria actually applied steam power to a toy machine two centuries before the Christian era ? Or by that most marvellous, most touching, letter of the great French beauty, Marion de Lorme, to the Marquis de Cinq Mars, written from Paris in February, 1641, wherein she details the wretched fate of the unfortunate Solomon de Cans of Normandy, whom Cardinal Richelieu imprisoned in the Bicetre as a mad- man for following him up with the most determined persever- 19 ance to press upon Mm the merits of an invention by which he claimed that with the steam of boiling water carriages could be moved and ships be navigated ? and of whom the English lord, the Marquis of Worcester, after examining him and reading his book, said : “ He is indeed mad now ; misfortune and captivity have alienated his reason, but it is you who have to answer for his reason — when you cast him into that cell, you confined the greatest genius of the age.” Each century as it adds itself to the many which have elapsed since Solomon, in his cedar palaces, sang the vanity of man, adds numberless confirmations to the truth of the words of the wisest of men that “ there is no new thing under the sun,” and enables us to perceive from what “remote sources the greatest ideas, unrealized, unsystematized, almost unheeded, have floated down the mighty stream of time — now far out in the current, now drawn near the shore, and finally thrown on some propitious headland, where they found a genial soil and bear the most- precious fruit.” Columbus was thoroughly prepared for his great task, both theoretically and practically. He was bred at the University of Pavia, where he devoted himself to the mathematical and the na- tural sciences, and received instruction in nautical astronomy from the most expert masters of the time. He was “learned in all the wisdom” of navigators. He read and meditated on the works of Ptolemy and Marinus, of Near- chus and Pliny, the cosmography of Cardinal Aliaco, the travels of Marco Polo and Mandeville. He mastered all the sciences essential to or in any manner connected with his calling, made himself an adept in drawing charts, and constructing spheres, and fitted himself to become a consummate practical as well as theoretical seaman and navigator. He made voyages to England, Iceland, the Guinea Coast, the Greek Isles, the Canary Islands, Madeira, the Azores, Porto Santo, Spain, Portugal. “ Wherever ship has sailed,” he writes “there have I journeyed.” He pondered over the logs and papers of his deceased father- in-law, who had been a captain in the service of the great Prince Henry of Portugal, the Navigator, and talked with old seamen of their voyages and of the mystery of the western seas. He had been in sea fights, in one of which he was wrecked, so far from land that only by being an expert swimmer and with the aid of an oar could he save himself. His training had been in some 20 respects like that of the great Apostle of the G-entiles, “ in ship- wreck and in the deep, in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils in the city, in perils in the sea, in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.” His mind, the genuine old Greek mind, was at once practical an'd speculative. In support of the idea that all really great minds are so, numerous instances have been cited by those who entertain it. In the palmiest days of Greece, history tells us that her philosophers were statesmen, her poets and historians were warriors. The astronomer who first predicted an eclipse made a fortune by dealing in olives ; to a successful usurper we owe the collection of the scattered songs of Homer ; the greatest of meta- physicians was the founder of the science of politics and trained the greatest warrior of antiquity. Bacon presided in the House of Lords ; Carnot organized victory. And in our own time George Grote, the man who has written by far the best history of Greece, was at once a marvel of Greek scholarship and a banker and politician, a business man compe- tent to deal in business matters with the keenest banker, mer- chant or politician of the age. The man who best understood Socrates, Plato and Aristotle was the man who could compete with Rothschild in bidding for a loan, and with Peel or Palmer- ston in debate in the House of Commons. Columbus was not only a seaman, he was a navigator, a mer- chant, a privateer, a savant, a warrior ; he knew all that a navi- gator and maritime discoverer of his time could know, what he should do, how to do it, could do it, and had been constantly doing it. The mere practitioner is necessarily a quack in medi- cine, a pettifogger in law, and a charlatan in politics. A mere practical seaman and navigator never could have accomplished the work of Columbus. The conception of the ideas involving such results as Columbus effected could come only through the higher processes of a mind strong by nature, thoroughly informed by learning and equipped cap-a-pie by art. A mere theorist never could have surmounted the practical difficulties in his way, never could have run the gauntlet of the perils through which Columbus successfully passed, never could have slain the lions or strangled the serpents in his path. He would have been killed or drowned or have perished by the way- 21 side in the earlier stages of Columbus’s career, with the goal still far out of view. Columbus had the power of thought, the magic of the mind. It is idle to deny the natural diversity of human intellects. It was due, after all, to the rich soil of Columbus’s mind that the noble seeds there planted took root and bore abundantly such precious fruits. His discovery of America was not a lucky incident or the result of mere chance. “We must,” says Emerson, “reckon success a constitutional trait. If Erik is in robust health and has slept well, and is at the top of his condition, and is thirty years old, at his departure from Greenland he will steer West and his ships will reach Newfoundland. But take Erik out and put in a better and stronger and bolder man, and the ships will sail six hundred, one thousand, fifteen hundred miles further, and reach Labrador and New England. There is no chance in results.” Columbus was that better, stronger and bolder man, with the brawn and muscle both of frame and mind, and, to crown all, no man of less exalted piety could have had his un- shaken confidence in the providence of God. When the hour for action came the man was not found wanting. By dint of long revolving in his mind every scrap of informa- tion obtainable from any and every quarter, every particle of knowledge that could then be known which could illumine the vast “ terra incognita et mare incognitum” of the geography of his age, by the most strenuous exercise of his brain and the cruel sweat of his face, he excogitated and evolved the idea that the world was a sphere, and that the farther the Asiatic Continent extended to the East the nearer it came round to Spain, and con- ceived the design of reaching Asia by sailing westward. All the arguments derivable from natural reasons, from the theories of geographers, and from the reports and traditions of mariners, when passed through the powerful alembic of his mind, told him that westward lay the sea path to the “ thesauris Arabum et divitis Indice,” to find which the great Portuguese Prince, Henry, the Navigator, had devoted the labors of his life. They all bade him go west, and west went the bold Genoese mariner, on a voyage the most momentous and big with fate man has ever sailed. For, “ seeking the back door of Asia, Columbus found himself knocking at the front door of America.” 22 When the conception had grown to its full magnitude in his capacious brain, though like Archimedes, the greatest mathe- matician and the most inventive genius of antiquity, he could say not only Evppxa! Evppua ! but also Aos nov arcb, na\ tov itoffpov uivpaoo, yet the patronage and aid of some European government to give its sanction and furnish the material equip- ment necessary to the enterprise were as indispensable to the execution of his grand conception as a sufficient fulcrum was to the execution of that of Archimedes. The story of his unsuccessful attempts to obtain that aid and patronage, of the discouragements, denials and rebuffs with which he met, and of the apparently insurmountable obstacles which gross ignorance and hoary geographical and theological error, perjury and treachery, seated in high places, piled up like Pelion on Ossa in his path, sickens one, even when read in cold print after the lapse of four centuries. And here the deep-seated conviction, the unconquerable purpose, the dauntless persever- ance, the fervent piety of Columbus stood him in good stead : for after repulses which would have forever crushed any spirit of less heroic mould, nitor in adversum was still his motto. He knew that whenever or wherever men meet to deliberate or act, in conflicts of opinion, the trained intellect, with truth, justice and earnest conviction on its side, the superior mind, the subtler address, the inflexible purpose, the gentle yet stronger will, must eventually prevail. ’Twere more than a thrice told tale, to tell of how he dis- patched to Henry VII. of England his brother Bartholomew, who on the voyage was captured by pirates ; of his earnest but fruitless applications to the Duke of Medina Sidonia ; to the Duke of Medina Celi ; to the senate of Genoa, of which city he was a native ; to John II. of Portugal, in which country he had wooed and won his bride ; and to Ferdinand the Catholic of Spain, of whom he had become a subject. Repulsed, but not disheartened, he turned his wearied steps to yet another court, that of France. Dickens, in his Tale of Two Cities, tells us, that in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, "there was a Queen with a fair face on the throne of France.” The Tale of Two Worlds tells us that, fortunately for Columbus, for Ferdinand, for Spain, for both the worlds, in the year of our Lord 23 one thousand four hundred and ninety-two there was a Queen with an heroic soul on the throne of Spain. A writer of verve who flashed through the literary firma- ment of our own time, the comet of a season, tells us, with the air half of a misogynist, half of an admirer of the sex, that while “ it is true that, unravelling the cord of a man’s existence, you will generally find the blackest hank in it twined by a woman’s hand, yet it is not less common to trace the golden thread to the same spindle.” There will be Queens in spite of Salic and other laws of later date than Adam and Eve. Not for the first nor for the last time in history did the fate of a people, in a crisis of na- tional life, hang on that exalted womanhood, that unselfish patriot- ism, that grand assumption of risk, that faith superior to man’s, which made “ Woman danger brave,— Last at the cross And earliest at the grave,” — virtues which so resplendently adorned Isabella’s queenly rank. History does justice to the moral influence of this “ Perfect woman nobly planned To warn, to comfort and command,” who raised the Castilian court from the debasement and de- gradation of the preceding reign to be the nursery of virtue and of generous ambition. But the words with which Isabella the Catholic, wife of Ferdinand the Catholic, recalled to her royal presence the illustrious wanderer Columbus, after he had ac- tually set out for France, “I will assume the undertaking for my own crown of Castile, and am ready to pawn my own jewels to defray the expenses of it, if the funds in the treasury should be found inadequate,” will forever embalm her memory as blessed, and forever be the richest jewel in the crown of the queens who repose in the mausoleum of the Escurial. On Friday, August 3d, 1492, Columbus sailed from Palos with three small vessels and one hundred and twenty men westward through an unexplored sea, “not” says Humboldt “as an adven- turer, but according to a preconceived and steadfastly pursued plan.” The newspapers of the last few months have made us so familiar with the incidents of that memorable voyage, that atten- tion will be called to only one. This is the change he made in his 24 course, whose effect lias so often been commented on as exempli- fying the influence of small and apparently trivial events on the world’s history. Uneasy at not having discovered Japan, which, according to his reckoning, he should have met with 216 nautical miles more to the East, Columbus, after a long debate, yielded to the opin- ion of his lieutenant, Martin Alonzo Pinson, and steered to the southwest. If he had kept his original route, he would have entered the warm current of the Gulf Stream, have reached Flo- rida, and then perhaps have been carried to Cape Hatteras and Virginia. The result would probably have been to give the United States a Roman Catholic Spanish population instead of a Protestant English one, and to make a different distribution of the first settlements in the new world between the Latin and Teutonic races. Pinson was guided in forming his opinion by a flight of parrots towards the southwest. Uever had the flight of birds more important consequences, though auguries have been made from flights of birds from the grey dawn of antiquity, time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. On October 12 0. S., October 21 N. S. 1492, Watling Island was discovered and “to Castile and Leon Columbus had given a new world.” Well may his biographer exclaim, “ what a triumjih for this extraordinary man, who had treasured in his breast for twenty years, amidst neglect, discouragement and ridicule, the grand truth, which his own incomparable skill, wisdom and firm- ness had now demonstrated, in the eyes of an incredulous world.” That for the rest of his life envy and malice shot their long poisoned arrows, and ignorance and corruption showered every missile on him ; that the greatest navigator of his or any age, who had done what man can never do again, discover a new world, was suffered by the imgrateful Old World, for which he had made this greatest of discoveries, to linger and die in neg- lect, poverty and pain ; and that since his death jackals have preyed on his memory, as the nobler beasts of prey had preyed on his liberty while he was living, is unfortunately but too much in keeping with the manner in which the world has so often treated its greatest benefactors — with that “ Vox popuh" which damned Galileo, murdered Socrates, and crucified Christ. 25 President Harrison, in liis proclamation appointing this as a general holiday for the people of the United States, says “Colum- bus stood in his age as the pioneer of progress and enlighten- ment. The system of universal education is in our age the most prominent and salutary feature of the spirit of enlightenment, and it is peculiarly appropriate that the schools he made by the people the centre of the day’s demonstration. Let the national flag float over every school house in the country, and the exer- cises he such as shall impress upon our youth the patriotic duties of American citizenship.” This morning’s demonstration in our schools shows how heartily Columbia has responded to this sug- gestion of the Chief Executive of the country. If the declarations of the President on which this suggestion is based be true, and true they are to the letter, then this fair city has fully vindicated her right to the proud name with which she was christened by her sponsors in baptism in testimonial of their admiration and veneration for this great pioneer of progress and enlightenment. Whatever may be said in praise or dispraise of the capital city of the State in other regards, it is conceded on all hands that the zeal and public spirit shown by her citizens for the educa- tion of all her youth, of both sexes and all conditions, and the number, acquirements, learning and ability of the teachers, pro- fessors and curators in her schools of every grade, from primary to the highest, are unrivalled- in any city not her superior in wealth and population. In many a happy household blessings are daily invoked on the heads of the instructors in her schools of higher culture for the inestimable benefactions conferred upon their children. And the services rendered by the corps of Professors in the crowning educational glory of the State, “the South Carolina College,” demonstrate that they are no unworthy successors of Maxcy, Barnwell, Henry, Thornwell, Lieber, LaBorde and their other predecessors, who trained the intellects of so many of her illustri- ous Alumni, living and dead. The bright, happy faces of the ingenuous youth of both sexes present with us, whose excellence in their various studies has made them such joyous participants in the exercises at their various schools this morning, justify the noble pride which Columbia feels in her teachers, her scholars and her schools, and the confidence with which she looks forward to a prosperous future for those so soon to assume the duties and 26 responsibilities of manhood and womanhood. “ Responsibility/’ said Edward Bnlwer, Lord Lytton, “that heaviest word in all our language.” “Duty,” said Robert E. Lee in still higher strain, “that sublimest word in all our language.” May teachers and taught ever appreciate with the same zest to-day’s demonstration has shown, not only the sentiment of the prince of the old British essayists, “ What sculpture is to marble edu- cation is to the human soul,” but also the sentiment that no higher earthly duties can be impressed upon our youth than those which the President suggests to-day’s exercises shall im- press upon them, “the patriotic duties of American citizen- ship.” If it be true, as Matthew Arnold says, that “America holds the future,” it is equally true that those now receiving instruction and training in American schools hold America. “We live,” says Emerson, “ in a new and exceptional age. America is another name for opportunity. Our whole history appears like a last effort of the Divine providence in behalf of the human race.” “This government,” said Jefferson, “is the world’s best hope.” It is the hope, it may be the only hope, for humanity. Of what avail, either in the material or political world, will be the truth of the Latin verse in which Turgot says of Franklin, “ Eripuit ccelo fulmen scepti'umque tyrannis,” if our future belie our past ? Motion is the law of human life ; we must advance or retrograde. To go forward is life, to go backward is death. Our material progress in the past has been marvellous, and our warriors, our statesmen, our philosophers and our inventors, have taken their places in the gallery of the Immortals. Several years ago Prof. Austin Phelps, D. D., said, “ Five hundred years of time in the process of the world’s salvation may depend on the next twenty years of United States history,” and Rev. Josiah Strong, D. D., General Secretary of the Evangelical Alliance for the United States, has written an exceedingly interesting pamphlet, under the title of “Our Country, its possible future and present crisis,” to show that such dependence of the world’s future on this gen- eration in America is not only credible, but in the highest degree probable. While many of his views have been challenged, no exception has been taken to certain historical, statistical and other statements of fact to which the attention of the younger persons present is especially called, and some of which will be freely used. To give a somewhat more individual and local, and therefore to 27 you more striking, illustration of the large proportion of the pro- gress in civilization which our century has seen, reflect for a moment that the pious, learned and venerable divine,* upon whose ministrations of the Gospel in yonder church successive congregations had attended for half a century, until he was re- cently translated to a better and brighter world — reflect when seven years old he might have seen Fulton’s steamboat on her trial trip up the Hudson ; until twenty years of age he could not have found in all the world an iron plow ; at thirty he might have traveled on the first railway passenger train. Many of us have heard his description of a journey by stage-coach from Charles- ton to Columbia, with John C. Calhoun as a fellow passenger, long before the sign was placed on our highways “railroad crossing, look out for the car while the bell rings or the whistle sounds.” Fifty years later he could see 222,000 miles of railway. For the first thirty-three years of his life he had to rely on the tinder-bos for fire. He was thirty-eight when steam communi- cation between Europe and America was established. He had arrived at middle life — forty-four— when the first news was sent by telegraph in a dispatch from Annapolis Junction to Washington, announcing the Whig convention’s nomination of Clay and Frelinghuysen made at Baltimore ; ere he was called to his rest he could see 604,000 miles of telegraph lines. Among the great ideas which have become the fixed posses- sion of men within the past hundred years, to which Dr. Strong calls attention, is that of individual liberty — so radically different from the conception of the freedom that lay at the foundation of the republics of Greece and Rome, and later of the free cities of Italy, reference to which in Florence nnder the rule of Lorenzo de Medicis has been made. Theirs was a liberty of class, clan or nation, not of the individual ; he existed for the government. The modern idea is, that as the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, so government was made for man, not man for government. At the close of the eighteenth century slavery existed in Russia, Hungary, Prussia, Scotland, in the British, French and Spanish Colonies, and in Forth and South America ; slavery is now practically extinct in Christendom. And Mr. Blaine, in his striking “Twenty Years of Congress,” tells us that the men of the South in the inception of the late terrific struggle took no heed of the power, stronger than the physical forces of *Rev. Peter J. Shand, D. D., of Trinity Church. 28 the North, East and West, which was sure to Avork against them : the enlightened philanthropy and the awakened con- science, which had abolished slavery in every other republic of America, which had thrown the protection of law over the help- less millions of India, and had moved even the Russian Czar to consider the enfranchisement of the serf. That they Avould not realize that the contest was not alone with the anti-slavery men of the free States, not alone with the spirit of loyalty to the old flag which came down on its mission of wrath, but that it carried with it a challenge to the progress of civilization and was a fight against the nineteenth century. Another of these great ideas, AA 7 hich, finding its root in the teachings of Christ, has grown slowly through the ages to blossom in our Oavu, is that of honor to womanhood, Arhose fruitage is woman’s elevation. Early in this century it was not very uncommon for an Englishmen to sell his wife into servitude — in a single year there were thirty- nine instances of Avdves exposed to public sale, like cattle at Smithfield. “Picture it ! think of it !” Abraham Lincoln in his message to Congress in 1862 said: “A nation may be said to consist of its territory, its people and its laws. The territory is the only part which is of certain dura- bility. That portion of the earth’s surface which is inhabited by the people of the United States is well adapted for the home of one national family, but it is not well adapted for two or more.” The United States are signally blessed in all three, territory, people and laws. The circulating medium of Europe, says a Avitty Avriter, is gold ; of Africa, men ; of Asia, women : of America, land. The extent of this country is simply immense, and five years after this message of Mr. Lincoln the United States acquired by purchase from and treaty with Russia the territory of Alaska, with an area exceeding a half million square miles. If the inhabitants of the various States and Territories of the Union were summoned to attend at a given time and place, they would have to be summoned as Herodian tells of the invita- tions of Commodus to the people of his dependencies to attend the Roman games : by circles of longitude and latitude. An eager desire to acquire, and an unerring sagacity to discover and settle choice lands, has ever been characteristic of the Saxon, to whom 29 the title of freeholder was a patent and passport of self-respect long before he wore the collar of the Norman. The response made to the rallying cry of “ lands for the landless and homes for the homeless,” by the passage of Federal and State home- stead enactments, shows the American appreciation of land. In one of his speeches, while a Representative in Congress, made in the earlier part of his stormy career, in support of the home- stead policy, Andrew Johnson sketches his ideal of a rural popu- lation thus : “You make the settler on the domain,” said he, “a better citizen of the community. He becomes better quali- fied to discharge the duties of a freeman. He is, in fact, the representative of his own homestead, and is a man in the enlarged and proper sense of the term. He comes to the ballot box and votes without the fear or the restraint of some land- lord. After the hurry and bustle of election day are over, he mounts his own horse, returns to his own domicil, goes to his own barn, feeds his own stock. His wife turns out and milks their own cows, churns their own butter, and when the rural repast is ready, he and his wife and their children sit down at the same table together to enjoy the sweet product of their own hands, with hearts thankful to God for having cast their lots in this country where the land is made free under the protecting and fostering care of a beneficent government.” Compare this with the eviction scenes in the house of an Irish tenant of an absentee -lord. David Wilkie’s great picture, “Distress for Rent,” involuntarily rises to the mind’s eye : “ Look here upon this picture and on this.” A theory which has taken a strong hold upon certain students of history, — history in its broad sense, — is that the ancient civil- ization of the world had been undermined and destroyed by two causes, the increase of standing armies and the growth of great cities. Our constitution scouts the idea of standing armies in peace, and history affords no parallel to the ease, rapidity and quiet with which the enormous bodies of soldiery were disbanded at the termination of our civil war. No great cities ever have or ever can dominate or menace this country as Paris does France in modern times, or Rome did the habitable world in ancient times. Our people, like Antams, the Pagan athlete of antiquity, 30 touch the restful bosom of mother earth, and will ever be more than a match for. those “ Pent in the city’s close and narrow bound. Held by its iron grip and endless round, Wrestling in conflict, spent with cure and dread, Battling with the giants fraud and greed.” In an emergency this country can bring into the field millions of soldiers — more than the fabled hosts of Xerxes. Think of the serried battalions of armed men that would spring up, were the dragon’s teeth sown throughout the soil of the reunited country by a foreign foe — soldiers equal if not superior to any the world has ever seen. They would not be dragged from the low haunts of cities nor the enervating atmosphere of crowded factories, but would come from the pure air and bracing pursuits of the coun- try. Men born on horseback and with arms in their hands. Bed in longum tamen aevum Manserunt, Jiodie qve manent Vestigia ruris said Horace, and revealed unconsciously one of the main ele- ments of Roman conquest. In despite of laws and lawyers, legislators and economists, who have labored for centuries to compel or persuade men to regard land as of no more value than money ; the American farmer equally with the X orman baron cherishes in his heart the law that declares his homestead the inalienable inheritance of his children. With the exception of Louisiana, where the civil law neces- sarily had sway, our country shows its original composition as English Colonies by the sway of that grandest, most powerful and most majestic of all the Colonies of England, the English Common Law. Our political institutions, our republican habits, and even our physical condition, have necessarily forced upon us very considerable changes in the system of the Common Law. dif- ferentiating many of its features from those it formerly exhibited, and those it presents as now administered in England. But its main features, mutatis mutandis, are still the same. And this grand old Common Law, when we consider it "'" in its minute adjustments and comprehensive outlines, how scrupulous of right and how instinct with liberty, how elastic and capacious to expand over the complicated transactions of the highest civil- 31 ization, yet strong and rigid to bend down within its orbit the most audacious power ; when we consider all the miracles that have been wrought by its spirit from Alfred to Victoria,” this grand old Common Law cannot but be regarded by us with the greatest love and veneration. In this grand confederacy of States, liberty is identical with law ; the greatest manifestation of this identity being that chief glory of our institutions, religious liberty, without which civil liberty cannot exist. The Constitution of the United States, our organic and fundamental law, forbids the enactment of any law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Every person is (not permitted but) privileged to worship God in such manner and with such rites as it seemeth to him best ; the only restraint being that imposed by that uni- versal maxim of all law, inculcated by the highest morality, “sic utere tuo ut non alienum laedas.” Immortal honor to the shades of Lord Baltimore, the Catholic of Maryland, and Roger Wil- liams, the Baptist of Rhode Island, the great pioneers and pro- tagonists of religious toleration. What amazing progress has been made in the enhanced valuation of human life, is evidenced by the amelioration of punishments imposed by the criminal law. At the beginning of the century the Criminal Code of England, like that of Draco, was written in letters of blood, not ink ; two hundred and twenty-three capital offenses ! McKenzie, in his History of the Nineteenth Century, calls attention to some of them : If a man injured Westminster Bridge, he was hanged. If he appeared disguised on a public road, he was hanged. If he cut down young trees, if he shot at rabbits (in the eye of English law the life of a rabbit was worth more than that of a man), if he stole property valued at five shillings, if he stole anything at all from a bleach field, if he wrote a threatening letter to extort money, if he returned prematurely from transportation for any of these offenses, he was immediately hanged. A striking instance of how long penal statutes entirely obsolete, and breathing the spirit of a semi-barbarous age, survive on the statute book, is furnished in our own State in the case of Antonio Dew, who in 1857 was convicted and sentenced to be hanged for picking a pocket, but so utterly irreconcilable was the infliction of such a punishment with the feelings of the age, that the Judge, the Attorney-General, the Jury and the Bar unanimously joined in requesting the interposition of the pardoning power, though 32 there was no doubt of the prisoner’s guilt. The barbarous Sta- tute of Elizabeth under which he was convicted has since been repealed, but the existence of such a law to a period so recent is an illustration of the incongruity between the ideas of a former age and the changed state of manners. All history, ancient and modern, shows that it is by the fusion of different types of race that all great and vigorous new types are made, and the fusion of peoples of different bloods has never been more thoroughly exemplified than in the people of the United States. The English leavening of the mass is immense. British Puri- tans, so fully treated of by Eeale, so vividly sketched by Macaulay ; English Catholics ; English Cavaliers and Churchmen, who have stamped an indelible impress on the history and the life, social, political and religious, of so much of the Union. The deeds of the founders of Virginia and The Knights of the Golden Horse- shoe of the Old Dominion, read like the romances of mediaeval chivalry. “ The knightliest of the knightly race. Who since the days of old Have kept the lamp of chivalry Alight, in hearts of gold ; The kindliest of the kindly band. Who rarely hating ease. Yet rode with Spotswood round the land And Raleigh round the seas; Who climbed the blue Virginian hills Against embattled foes. And planted there, in valleys fair The lily and the rose ; Whose fragrance lives in many lands. Whose beauty stars the earth. And lights the hearths of many homes With loveliness and worth. But the English themselves are a mongrel race at best, with a mongrel tongue — race and tongue, both, all the better for being so : Briton, Roman, Danes, Angles, Saxon, X or in an. and what not, a conglomeration of ancestors, a mince-pie of pedigree. In large quantities the Dutch, the Germans, the Scotch, the Irish, the Scotch-Irish so piquantly described by Parton. The name which Bulwer bestows upon one of his characters in “My Kovel or Varieties in English Life,” “ Stickto Rights” is characteristic of every genuine son of Ulster. The French Huguenots too. ‘ £ who added to other streams of worthy descent blood as pure, as sweet, as true, as has ever ennobled a race and given splendor to 33 the annals of history,” the Rhinelanders, the Welsh, the Kelt, the adventurous Norman, the sturdy Saxon, the Anglo-Saxon, the Anglo-Norman. Green’s studies show that Tennyson’s poetic line, “Saxon and ^Norman and Dane are we,” must be supple- mented with Kelt and Gaul, Welshman and Irishman, Frisian and Flamand, French, Huguenot and German Palatine. What took place a thousand years ago and more in England takes place to-day in the United States ; history repeats itself. When Dr. Strong says that nearly all of the civil liberty in the world is enjoyed by the English, the British colonists and the people of the United States, he is unquestionably correct. When he says that these are Anglo-Saxons, the question may be safely left to those learned in the diversities of races. Her- bert Spencer, whose work on “Social Statics” Jefferson ought to have lived long enough to read, tells us concerning our future : “ One great result is, I think, tolerably clear. From biological truth, it is to be inferred that the eventual mixture of the allied varieties of the Aryan race forming the population will produce a more powerful type of man than has hitherto existed, and a type of man more plastic, more adaptable, more capable of undergoing the modifications needful for complete social life. I think whatever difficulties they may have to surmount, and whatever tribulations they may have to pass through, the Ameri- cans may reasonably look forward to a time when they will have produced a civilization grander than any the world has known.” In the veins of the people of this Union there runs the composite blood of the bravest and most enterprising of all the nations of Europe, of all the sons of Japhet. We are the heirs of the best blood of all the ages. Since prehistoric times populations have moved steadily westward, as “if driven by the mighty hand of God,” producing almighty and unerring instincts like those which propel the migrations of the swallow or the life-withering marches of the locust. “ Westward the course of empire takes it way,” and we are the farthest West, and beyond us is the Orient. We are destined alike by poetry, prophecy and science, in the days which are yet to come, and which shall fill up our inherit- ance of glory, to a rich and lofty combination of characters above the level of our time ; to thoughts suited to that elevation ; to feelings more generous, vivid and majestic, and exploits uniting the soaring spirit of old Romance, with the sustained strength of modern energy, the glory th at was Greece in her brightest days 34 of intellectual lustre, and the grandeur that was Rome in her most heroic days of patriotism. The people of these United States purpose to celebrate in that great city of this farthest West, which has risen Phoenix-like from its ashes, and whose growth and splendor are alike the marvels of the age, the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, by holding an international exhibition of arts, industries, manufactures and the products of the soil, mine and sea ; whereat will be shown by the side of the exhibits from foreign and older nations the resources of this people, their development, and the progress of civilization in the New World. The display at this exhibition will be grander than any dis- play of which this planet has ever been the theatre ; grander than the display at Roman triumphs, imperial coronations, Eleusi- nian mysteries and the festivals of the old religions ; grander than the display in the temples of that mighty empire which once overshadowed, according to tradition, all the East — temples whereon gods long forgotten held court, accepted the tributes of peoples extinct, and received the worship of mighty mon- archs unrecorded ; grander than the display at the great games of antiquity, Pythian, Nemean, Isthmian and the famed Olym- pian, where to gain a prize was regarded as the crown of human happiness, where Herodotus read the wonders of his his- tory to the peoples of assembled Greece, the most agile-limbed and quick-witted of all the sons of Adam ; grander than the display at oriental fairs or occidental World Expositions, where are shown the marvels of the lands beyond the oceans. The concourse in attendance on this exhibition will be a concourse unequalled since the family of man was dispersed at the tower of Babel. The buildings will be worthy of such a celebration. They will be majestic palaces constructed on a scale of magni- tude in architecture hitherto unknown on earth ; and architec- ture is the one lone art in which mere magnitude is sublime. They will be colossal structures — covering areas of an immensity unprecedented, finished in the highest style and with the latest improvements of art — structures in which St. Peter's could be enclosed as a gem. There will be gathered together from all parts of the earth the representatives in person and in matter of every science and of every art ; the wise men and their wondrous creations, not only from the East, but from the four quarters 35 of the globe, from every point of the compass and from the farthest isles of the sea. There will be gathered together princes in purple and ambassadors of great kings and common- wealths, authors and artists, inventors and discoverers, railway kings and master navigators, warriors and statesmen, painters and sculptors, geographers and astronomers, electricians and philosophers ; orators on whose lips listening Senates have hung ; grace and female loveliness ; the poets who have raved over beauties and the beauties over whom poets have raved. There will be gathered together the merchant princes and the great financiers, the barons of coal and iron, the lords of cotton and the cereals, the incarnation of all industries, mental and mate- rial, the magnates who govern the world of thought and the magnates who govern the world of action. There will be gathered together the latest discoveries and inventions of an age of discoveries and inventions, the visible and tangible manifesta- tions of the progress of civilization in the New World, and of the development of its gigantic West, settled under the mighty whip of electricity and the mighty spur of steam. There too will be gathered together the choicest productions of the pencil and the pen, the chisel and the brush ; wealth “ which far out- shines the wealth of Ormus and of Ind pearl and gold beyond the “barbaric pearl and gold of the kings of the gorgeous East treasures beyond those of the Preadamite Sultans, and the pro- ducts of mines richer than the mines of Golconda. There will be gathered together the elite, the beauty and the glory of earth, with whatsoever is most wonderful in the worlds of mind, of matter and of man. And as the traveller from prehistoric times, who, centuries ago, when the world was young, bathed in the fountain of perpetual youth, wanders amazed amid the marvels on every hand, the marvels of the natural products of the soils, the mines and the seas, and the marvels of the artificial products of the arts, industries and manufactures ; in the vivid lustre of a light created by the hand of man, brilliant enough to prove of itself that man was created in the image of that God who said : “Let there be light and there was light;” to the voluptuous swell of “ music such as might have charmed Calypso and her nymphs ” — music varied to suit the songs of every clime and every tongue, from the hymns chanted by the fire worshipers to the sun at the crash of barbaric empires to the songs with which the serpent charmer charms the serpent : when this visitor to this 36 gorgeous scene asks the presiding genii, the Dii majores of this monumental celebration, Where is the monument to him who made possible all this display of the wonders of the New World by his grand discovery, whose four hundredth anniversary is so grandly commemorated ? Clio, the Muse of History, and the majestic shade of Columbus alike will answer : “ Si monumentum requiris circumspice.” Look around ! not only on the wonders visible to the physi- cal sight, tangible to the physical touch, such as mortal eye has never before seen, mortal hand has never before touched. But look around ! on this country, its territory, its people and its laws, its civil and religious liberty, its freedom, even in these hallelujahs of rejoicing, from “ the barbaric pride of a Norwegian or Hunnish stateliness its unbounded humanity, its reincar- nation of the old and elegant humanity of Greece, illumined and made to glow by the radiance of a Redeemer and a Revelation. Look around ! upon a land whose limbs are not bowed with toil nor rusted with a vile repose — a land which, though young, has outlived the chances of a child, and which, though still in the vigor of its youth, has already become a larger and more tolerant Geneva ; a larger, less tumultuary and not less patriotic Athens ; a larger, freer and more beautiful England. Look around 1 upon a Union which has redeemed a continent to the Christian world from the wild beasts and the wilder children of Shem ; — a Union which has extended over all this vast domain the laws, the language and the literature of the Anglo-Saxon race ; — a Union which has trained forty-four States'from infancy to the expanded manhood of National life ; — a Union whose forty- four States are one as the sea, but separate as the billows ; — a Union where there are States without Kings or nobles, Churches without Priests of State ; — a Union where the people are the only sovereigns, with their sovereign will peaceably expressed at the ballot box ; where the people are governed by grave magis- trates of their own selection, and equal laws of their own framing, under which there are equal rights to all and special privileges to none. Look around ! upon a people capable of falling from their high estate only by their own abnegation of their duties as citizens and sovereigns, by their own recreancy to the history and traditions of the past, by their own treachery to the duties of the present and the hopes of the future ; a people who, unless 37 their career be cut short by their own voluntary sell-destruction, are destined under the providence of God, “ When the war drums throb no longer and the battle flags are turled,” to the hegemony “ In the parliament of man, the federation of the world.” 28564