the foundations of the government. Is it not the very affinity that holds together all our industrial, social, and religious institutions? And yet parents and citizens treat it as though it were one of the common blessings of heaven, that come without action and without volition. Are we insensible to the history or the value of a free government? Can our debt to the dead move us to give no pledges to the unborn? Have we no affection for the skies above us, or the soil beneath our feet?

"Where'er we tread, 't is haunted, holy ground;

No spot of thine is lost in vulgar mould."

Let us never forget that all our colonial struggles and national battles were for the planting of institutions of government and religion which nothing but the intelligence of successive generations can perpetuate.

But this is not the concern of isolated communities. Does not the constitutional guaranty of a republican government to each State carry with it both the right and the duty of the nation to demand and provide for each that measure and kind of intellectual culture without which the guaranty cannot be fulfilled?

At ancient Rome the Temple of Honor was entered through the Temple of Virtue. The classic conception is still true. The temple of our civic virtues is the school-house, and through it we

must enter the temple of civic honor. The selfgoverned must be self-controlled by an intelligence that has been instructed at the oracles of philosophy and religion.

To conserve civil order, to apprehend the principles of expediency in which governments have their birth and life, to disseminate and illustrate a practical political philosophy that may renovate the worn-out systems of less fortunate peoples, to find a peaceful solution of domestic antagonisms,, to develop statesmanship equal to the ever-recurring perplexities of public affairs, to adjust and prosper the mutual interests of business, and to. foster the moral forces that purify and ennoblenational character, are among the motives to the study of enlarged and elevated politics.

If the time shall come when society is fully informed in respect to its civic rights and duties, the factitious magnates who now sometimes cumber the places of power will remain in their natural obscurity, and men of enlarged intelligence and patriotism will be called to discharge the functions of office; and those better elements. of society that now withdraw from the arena of party strife, or reluctantly discharge their electoral duties, will gladly participate in these as among. the paramount functions of life.

The study of politics in the higher ranges of statesmanship calls for no encouragement. The

paths that have been trodden by Hamilton and Webster will have a perpetual fascination for the aspiring and ingenuous youth. The great principles of statecraft and diplomacy, changing with the progress of civilization and demanding new applications in the historic development of nations, will tax the subtilest powers and the profoundest research of the master minds of the age. No sphere of intellectual activity is more useful to mankind, and none brings us into more intimate converse with the divine economy. In tracing the developments of civil power, we discover the laws of social growth, and prepare so to correlate the forces of government as to secure a more perfect state in the future. The record is marked with injustice and stained with blood; but it is prophetic of a better day, when universal freedom shall be established upon a common recognition of the rights of man, and a common obedience to the dictates of justice.

LECTURE V.

THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF OUR COUNTRY, AND ITS RELATIONS TO OUR FUTURE CIVILIZATION.

BY CHARLES Carleton COFFIN.

WO hundred and seventy-four years ago the first permanent settlement by Englishmen in this country was made on the banks of the James. To-day we number fifty millions.

The rapidity of growth, the vastness of our country, its resources, fertility of soil, mineral wealth, varied climate and productions, free government and institutions; its geographical relations to Europe on the one hand, and to Asia, and to the new English nation rising under the Southern Cross in Australia, on the other; the regard for the Republic by people of all lands; the unparalleled tide of emigration flowing to our shores, -inspire the conviction that we are to perform some mighty part in the great drama of time.

The forces of nature are the different forms. of energy which we see in light, heat, electricity, magnetism, gravitation, chemical affinity, which are only different modes of motion. So far as our

knowledge extends, all the energy of this planet, all that sustains life, all the forces within our reach which can be used for our advancement in the scale of being, come from the sun. The sun formed the coal deposits of the geologic periods. The sun sets the currents of the air and ocean in motion, precipitates the rain upon the mountains, sends the rivers to the sea, enabling us to use the energy of gravitation to spin and weave and

hammer.

Not until the closing years of the last century did men begin to use the energy of nature, and to employ machinery to do the work of human hands. The inhabitants of Great Britain from earliest times knew that there was a black substance in the earth which they could use for fuel; they called it coal. It was carried from Newcastle to London by the sea, and hence was called sea-coal, in distinction from charcoal. As late as the year 1769, when the question of the supremacy of the Latin and Germanic races on this continent was being decided on the Plains of Abraham, the Academy of Science and Medicine in Paris was sitting in council upon the coal question, the dames of the court of Louis XV. declaring that its use was destroying their complexions, and asking for a prohibitory edict. The men of science declared it to be a valuable fuel; but nevertheless the ladies carried the day, and its use was forbidden.