their literature and their arts; facilitating their intercom. munication; defending their frontiers; and making their name respected in the remotest parts of the earth! 3. Consider the extent of its territory; its increasing and happy population; its advance in arts which render life agrecable, and the sciences which elevate the mind! See education spreading the light of religion, humanity, and general information, into every cottage in this wide extent of our territories and States! Behold it as the asylum where the wretched and the oppressed find a refuge and support! 4. Look on this picture of happiness and honor, and say, "We, too, are citizens of America! Carolina is one of these proud States. Her arms have defended, her best blood has cemented this happy Union!" And then add, if you can, without horror and remorse, "This happy Union we will dissolve; this picture of peace and prosperity, we will deface; this free intercourse, we will interrupt; these fertile fields, we will deluge with blood; the protection of that glorious flag, we renounce; the very name of Americans, we discard!" 5. And for what, mistaken men! for what do you throw away these inestimable blessings? for what would you exchange your share in the advantages and honor of the Union? For the dream of a separate independence, a dream interrupted by bloody conflicts with your neighbors, and a vile dependence on foreign power? If your leaders could succeed in establishing a separation, what would be your situation? Are you united at home? are you free from the apprehentions of civil discord, with all its fearful consequences? Do our neighboring republics, every day suffering some new revolution, or contending with some new insurrection, do they excite your envy? 6. But the dictates of a high duty oblige me solemnly to unce, that you cannot succeed. The laws of the United - States must be executed. I have no discretionary power on the subject, my duty is emphatically pronounced in the constitution. Those who told you that you might peaceably prevent their execution, deceived you, they could not have been deceived themselves. They know that a forcible opposition could alone prevent the execution of the laws, and they know that such opposition must be repelled. Their object is disunion: but be not deceived by names: disunion, by armed force, is treason! 7. Are you really ready to incur its guilt? If you are, on the heads of the instigators of the act, be the dreadful consequences, on their heads be the dishonor, but on yours may fall the punishment; and on your unhappy State, will inevitably fall all the evils of the conflict you force upon the government of your country. 8. But there is yet time to show, that the descendants of the Pinckneys, the Sumpters, the Rutledges,* and of the thousand other names which adorn the pages of your Revolutionary history, will not abandon that Union, to support which, so many of them fought, and bled, and died. I therefore adjure you, as you honor their memory; as you love the cause of freedom, to which they dedicated their lives as you prize the peace of your country, the lives of its best citizens, and your own fair fame, to retrace your steps. 9. Snatch from the archives of your State, the disorganizing edict of its convention; bid its members to reassemble and promulgate the decided expressions of your will; to remain in the path which alone can conduct you to safety, prosperity, and honor; tell them that, compared to disunion, all other evils are light, because that brings with it an accumulation of all; declare that you will never take the field, unless the star-spangled banner of your country shall float over that you will not be stigmatized when dead, and dis you; * Pinck'neys, Sump'ters, etc., see notes on p. 358. honored and scorned while you live, as the authors of the first attack on the constitution of your country! - its destroyers you cannot be. 10. Fellow-citizens, the momentous case is before you. On your undivided support of the government, depends the decision of the great question it involves, whether our sacred Union will be preserved, and the blessings it secures to us as one people, shall be perpetuated. No one can doubt that the unanimity with which that decision will be expressed will be such as to inspire new confidence in republican institutions; and that the prudence, the wisdom, and the courage, which it will bring to their defense, will transmit them unimpaired and invigorated to our children. LESSON LXX. GRANDEUR OF ASTRONOMICAL SCIENCE.-N. A. Review. 1. Astronomy is certainly the boldest and most comprehensive of all our speculations. It is the science of the material universe, considered as a whole, Though employed upon objects apparently withdrawn from the sphere of human action and pursuit, it teaches us, nevertheless, that these objects materially affect, nay, constitute our physical condition. 2. The wide-spreading firmament, while it lifts itself above all mortal things, exhibits to us that luminary, which is the light, and life, and glory of our world; and, when this retires from our view, it is lighted up with a thousand lesser fires that never cease to burn, that never fail to take their accustomed places, and never rest from their slow, solemn, and noiseless march. 3. Among the objects more immediately about us, all is vicissitude and change. It is the destiny of terrestrial things to perpetuate themselves by succession. Plants arise out of the earth, flourish awhile, and decay, and their place is filled by others. Animals, also, have their periods of growth and decline. Even man is not exempt from the general law. His exquisite frame, with all its fine organs, is soon reduced to its original elements, to be molded again into new and humbler forms. 4. Nations are like individuals, privileged only with a more protracted existence. The firm earth itself, the theater of this change, partakes, in a degree, of the common lot of its inhabitants; and the sea once heaved its waves, where now rolls a tide of wealth and population. 5. Situated as we are, in this fleeting, fluctuating state, it is consoling to be able to dwell upon an enduring scene; to contemplate laws that are immutable; an order that has never been interrupted; to fix, not the thoughts only, but monuments of objects that, after the lapse of so many ages, and the fall of so many states, cities, human institutions, and monuments of art, continue to occupy the same places, to move with the same regularity, and to shine with the same pure, fresh, undiminished luster. 6. As the heavens are the most striking spectacle that presents itself to our contemplation, so there is no subject of philosophical inquiry which has more engaged the attention of mankind. The history of astronomy carries us back to the earliest times, and introduces us to the languages and customs, the religion and poetry, the sciences and arts, the tastes, talents, and peculiar genius, of the different nations of the earth. 7. The ancient Atlantides,* the Ethiopians, the Egyptian At-lan ́ti-des, descendants of Atlas, said to have been skilled in astronomy. priests, the magi* of Persia, the shepherds of Chaldea, the Bramins of India, the Mandarins ‡ of China, the Phœnician § navigators, the philosophers of Greece, and the wandering Arabs, have contributed to the general mass of knowledge and speculation upon this subject; have added more or less to this vast structure, the common monument of the industry, invention, and intellectual resources of mankind. 8. We remark, further, that astronomy is the most improved of all the branches of human knowledge, and that which does the greatest credit to the human understanding. We have in this obtained the object of our researches. We have solved the great problem proposed to us in the celestial motions; and our solution is as simple and as grand as the spectacle itself, and is, in every respect, worthy of so exalted a subject. It is not the astronomer only, who is thus satisfied; but the proof is of a nature to carry conviction to the most illiterate and skeptical. 9. Our knowledge, extending to the principles and laws which the Author of nature has chosen to impress upon his work, comprehends the future; it resembles that which has been regarded as the exclusive attribute of supreme intelligence. We are thus enabled, not only to explain those unusual appearances in the heavens, which were formerly the occasion of such unworthy fears, but to forewarn men of their occurrence; and, by predicting the time, place, and circumstances of the phenomenon, to disarm it of its terror * Maʼgi, a class of priests among the Persians and Medians, said to be in exclusive possession of scientific knowledge. Bra'mins, priests among the Hindoos and other nations of India. Phoe-ni'cians, inhabitants of a country on the east of the Mediterranean SeaThey were the first commercial nation of which we have any knowledge. |