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ernment as ours is to faction, strife, anarchy and dissolu tion. Let it be our effort to give, to the expecting world, a great, practical, and splendid refutation of this charge. If we cannot do this, the world may despair. To what other nation can we look to do it?

5. We claim no natural superiority to other nations. We have not the folly to think of it. We claim nothing more than a natural equality. But circumstances have conspired to give us an advantage in making this great political experiment which no other modern nation enjoys. The government under which the fathers of our revolution were born was the freest in Europe.

6. They were rocked in the cradle and nurtured in the principles of British liberty: and the transition from those institutions to our own was extremely easy. They were maturely prepared for the change both by birth and education, and came into existence as a republic under the happiest auspices that can ever again be expected to arise. If, therefore, our experiment shall fail, I say again that the world may well despair.

7. Warned as we are by the taunts of European monarchists, and by the mournful example of all the ancient republics, are we willing to split on the same rock on which we have seen them shipwrecked? Are we willing to give our enemies such a triumph as to fulfil their prophecy and convince the world that self-government is impracticablea mere chimera-and that man is fit only to be a slave to his fellow man?

8. Are we willing to teach the nations of the earth to despair, and resign themselves at once to the power that crushes them? Shall we forfeit all the bright honours that we have hitherto won by our example, and now admit by our conduct, that, although free government may subsist for a while, under the pressure of extrinsic and momentary causes, yet that it cannot bear a long season of peace and prosperity; but that as soon as thus left to itself, it speedily hastens to faction, demoralization, anarchy and ruin?

9. Are we prepared to make this practical admission by our conduct, and extinguish, ourselves, the sacred light of liberty, which has been entrusted to our keeping? Or, shall we not rather show ourselves worthy of this high trust, maintain the advanced post which we have hitherto occupied with so much honour, prove, by our example, that

a free government is the best pledge for peace and order and human happiness, and thus continue to light the other nations of the earth on their way to liberty?

10. Who can hesitate between these two alternatives? Who that looks upon that monument that decks the Park, and observes the statue by which it is surmounted, or on this that graces our Square, and recalls the occasion on which it was erected, is willing to admit that men are incapable of self-government, and unworthy of the blessing of liberty? No man, I am sure, who has an American heart in his bosom.

11. Away, then, with all faction, strife and uncharitableness from our land. We are brothers. Let no angry feelings enter our political dwellings. If we differ about measures or about men, (as, from the constitution of our nature, differ we must,) let us remember that we are all but fallible men, and extend to others that charity of which the best of us cannot but feel that we stand in need.

12. We owe this good temper and indulgence to each other as members of the same family, as all interested, and deeply interested, in the preservation of the Union and of our political institutions: and we owe it to the world as the van-couriers of free government on earth, and the guardians of the first altar that has been erected to Liberty in modern times. In the casual differences of opinion that must, from time to time, be expected to arise among us, it is natural that each should think himself right.

13. But let us be content to make that right appear by calm and respectful reasoning. Truth does not require the torch of discord to light her steps. Its flickering and baleful glare can only disturb her course. Her best light is her own pure and native lustre. Measures never lose any thing of their firmness by their moderation. They win their way as much by the candour and kindness with which they are conducted, as by their intrinsic rectitude.

14. Friends and fellow citizens, "our lines have fallen to us in pleasant places: yea, we have a goodly heritage." Let us not mar it by vindictive altercations among ourselves, and offend the shades of our departed fathers who left this rich inheritance to us. Let us not tinge with shame and sorrow, the venerable cheek of the last surviving signer of the Declaration of our Independence, whom heaven still spares to our respect and affections.

15. Let us not disappoint the world which still looks to us for a bright example, and is manifestly preparing to follow our steps. Let us not offend that Almighty Being who gave us all these blessings, and who has a right to expect that we will enjoy them in peace and brotherly love. It is His will that we should so enjoy them; and may his will be done.

LESSON LXXVI.

Dreams, Tokens of the Grandeur of the Soul.

While sleep oppresses the tired limb, the mind
Plays without weight, and wantons unconfin'd.

Though there are many authors who have written on dreams, they have generally considered them only as revelations of what has already happened in distant parts of the world, or as presages of what is to happen in future periods of time.

I shall consider this subject in another light, as dreams may give us some idea of the great excellency of a human soul, and some intimation of its independence on matter.

2. In the first place, our dreams are great instances of that activity which is natural to the human soul, and which it is not in the power of sleep to deaden or abate. When the man appears tired and worn out with the labours of the day, this active part in his composition is still busied and unwearied.

3. When the organs of sense want their due repose and necessary reparations, and the body is no longer able to keep pace with that spiritual substance to which it is united, the soul exerts herself in her several faculties, and continues in action till her partner is again qualified to bear her company. In this case, dreams look like the relaxations and amusements of the soul, when she has laid her charge asleep.

4. In the second place, dreams are an instance of that agility and perfection which is natural to the faculties of the mind, when they are disengaged from the body. The soul is clogged and retarded in her operations, when she acts in conjunction with a companion that is so heavy and unwieldy in its motions. But in dreams it is wonderful to

observe with what a sprightliness and alacrity she exerts herself.

5. The slow of speech make unpremeditated harangues, or converse readily in languages that they are but little acquainted with. The grave abound in pleasantries, the dull in repartees and points of wit. There is not a more painful action of the mind, than invention; yet in dreams it works with that ease and activity that we are not sensible when the faculty is employed.

6. For instance, I believe every one, some time or other, dreams that he is reading papers, books, or letters; in which case the invention prompts so readily, that the mind is imposed upon, and mistakes its own suggestions for the compositions of another.

7. I shall under this head quote a passage out of the Religio Medici, in which the ingenious author gives an account of himself in his dreaming and his waking thoughts. "We are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleep, and the slumbers of the body seem to be but the waking of the soul. It is the ligation of sense, but the liberty of reason: and our waking conceptions do not match the fancies of our sleeps.

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8. "At my nativity, my ascendant was the watery sign of Scorpius: I was born in the planetary hour of Saturn, and I think I have a piece of that leaden planet in me. am no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardize of company; yet in one dream I can compose a whole comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof.

9. "Were my memory as faithful as my reason is then fruitful, I would never study but in my dreams; and this time also would I choose for my devotions; but our grosser memories have then so little hold of our abstracted understandings, that they forget the story, and can only relate to our awakened souls a confused and broken tale of that which has passed.

10. Thus it is observed, that men sometimes, upon the hour of their departure, do speak and reason above themselves; for then the soul, beginning to be freed from the ligaments of the body, begins to reason like herself, and to discourse in a strain above mortality."

11. We may likewise observe, in the third place, that the passions affect the mind with greater strength when we

are asleep, than when we are awake. Joy and sorrow give us more vigorous sensations of pain or pleasure at this time, than at any other. Devotion, likewise, as the excellent author above-mentioned has hinted, is in a very particular manner heightened and inflamed, when it rises in the soul at a time when the body is thus laid at rest.

12. Every man's experience will inform him in this matter, though it is very probable, that this may happen differently in different constitutions. I shall conclude this head with the two following problems, which I shall leave to the solution of my reader. Supposing a man always happy in his dreams, and miserable in his waking thoughts, and that his life was equally divided between them, whether would he be more happy or miserable?

13. Were a man a king in his dreams, and a beggar awake, and dreamed as consequentially, and in as continued unbroken schemes as he thinks when awake, whether he would not be in reality a king or beggar, or rather whether he would not be both?

LESSON LXXVII.

The same continued.

1. There is another circumstance, which, methinks, gives us a very high idea of the nature of the soul, in regard to what passes in dreams: I mean that innumerable multitude and variety of ideas which then arise in her. Were that active watchful being only conscious of her own existence at such a time, what a painful solitude would her hours of sleep be? Were the soul sensible of her being alone in her sleeping moments, after the same manner that she is sensible of it while awake, the time would hang very heavy on her, as it often does when she dreams that she is in such solitude.

2. But this observation I can only make by the way. What I would here remark, is that wonderful power in the soul, of producing her own company on these occasions. She converses with numberless beings of her own creation, and is transported into ten thousand scenes of her own raising. She is herself the theatre, the actors, and the beholder. This puts me in mind of a saying which I am

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