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9. As soon as the sun arose, all their boats were manned and armed. They rowed towards the island, with their colors displayed, with warlike music, and other martial pomp. As they approached the coast, they saw it covered with a multitude of people, whom the novelty of the spectacle had drawn together, whose attitudes and gestures expressed wonder and astonishment at the strange objects which presented themselves to their view. Columbus was the first European who set foot in the New World, which he had discovered. He landed in a rich dress, and with a naked sword in his hand. His men followed, and, kneeling down, they all kissed the ground which they had so long desired to see. They next erected a crucifix, and, prostrating them selves before it, returned thanks to God for conducting their voy age to such a happy issue.

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ROBERTSON.

LXXXV.

- FIRST VOYAGE OF COLUMBUS.

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1. WHAT did the ocean's waste supply
To soothe the mind or please the eye?
The rising morn through dim mist breaking,
The flickered east with purple streaking
The mid-day cloud through thin air flying,
With deeper blue the blue sea dyeing;
Long ridgy waves their white manes rearing,
And in the broad gleam disappearing;
The broadened, blazing sun declining,
And western waves like fire-floods shining;
The sky's vast dome to darkness given,
And all the glorious host of heaven!

2. Full oft upon the deck while others slept-
To mark the bearing of each well-known star
That shone aloft or on the horizon far,
The anxious Chief his lonely vigil kept.
The mournful wind, the hoarse wave breaking near,

The breathing groans of sleep, the plunging lead,
The steersman's call, and his own stilly tread,
Are all the sounds of night that reach his ear.

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3. But soon his dauntless soul, which naught could bend,— Nor hope delayed nor adverse fate subdue,

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With a more threatening danger must contend
Than storm or wave-a fierce and angry crew!
"Dearly," say they, "may we those visions rue
Which lured us from our native land,

A wretched, lost, devoted band,
Led on by hope's delusive gleam,

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4. To thoughts like these all forms give way156 Of duty to a leader's sway;

And, as he moves, ah! wretched cheer!
Their muttered curses reach his ear.

But all undaunted, firm, and sage,

He scorns their threats, yet thus he soothes their rage:
"That to some nearing coast we bear,
How many cheering signs declare!
Wayfaring birds the blue air ranging,
Their shadowy line to blue air changing,
Pass o'er our heads in frequent flocks;
While sea-weed from the parent rocks,
With fibry roots, but newly torn,

In wreaths are on the clear wave borne.
Nay, has not e'en the drifting current brought
Things of rude art, by human cunning wrought?
Be yet two days your patience tried,
And if no shore is then descried,
E'en turn your dastard prows again,
And cast your leader to the main."

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6. Dark, solemn midnight coped the ocean wide, When from his watchful stand Columbus cried,

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"A light, a light! - blest sounds that rang
In every ear. At once they sprang
With haste aloft, and, peering bright,
Descried afar the blessed sight.

7. "It moves! it slowly moves like ray

Of torch that guides some wanderer's way!
Lo! other lights, more distant, seeming

As if from town or hamlet streaming!

'Tis land, 't is peopled land! man dwelleth there,

And thou, O God of heaven, hast heard thy servant's prayer!'

8. Returning day gave to their view

The distant shore and headlards blue
Of long-sought land. Then rose on air
Loud shouts of joy, mixed wildly strange
With voice of weeping and of prayer,
Expressive of their blessed change
From death to life, from fierce to kind,

From all that sinks to all that elevates the mind.

9. Those who, by faithless fear ensnared,
Had their brave chief so rudely dared,
Now, with keen self-upbraiding stung,
With every manly feeling wrung,
Repentant tears, looks that entreat,
Are kneeling humbly at his feet:
"Pardon our blinded, stubborn guilt!
O, henceforth make us what thou wilt!
Our hands, our hearts, our lives, are thine,
Thou wondrous man, led on by power divine!"

10. Columbus led them to the shore

Which ship had never touched before;
And there he knelt upon the strand
To thank the God of sea and land;
And there, with mien and look elate,
Gave welcome to each toil-worn mate.
And lured with courteous signs of cheer
The dusky natives gathering near,
Who on them gazed with wondering eyes,
As missioned spirits from the skies.
And there did he possession claim
In royal Isabella's name.

JOANNA BAILLIE

LXXXVI. - UNITY AND PROGRESS OF MANKIND.

1. THE authors of the American Revolution avowed for their object the welfare of mankind, and believed that they were in the service of their own and of all future generations. Their faith was just; for the world of mankind does not exist in fragments, nor can a country have an insulated existence. All men are brothers; and all are bondsmen for one another.

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2. All nations, too, are brothers, and each is responsible for that federative humanity which puts the ban of exclusion on New principles of government could not assert themselves in one hemisphere without affecting the other. The very idea of the progress of an individual people, in its relation to universal history, springs from the acknowledged unity of the race.

3. To have asserted clearly the unity of mankind was the distinctive glory of the Christian religion. No more were the nations to be severed by the worship of exclusive deities. The world was instructed that all men are of one blood; that for all there is but one divine nature and but one moral law; and the renovating faith taught the singleness of the race, of which it embodied the aspirations and guided the advancement.

4. In due time appeared the mariner from Gen'ŏa. To Columbus, God gave the keys that unlock the barriërs of the ocean, so that he filled Christendom with his glory. The voice of the world had whispered to him that the world is one; and as he went forth towards the west, ploughing a wave which no European keel had entered, it was his high purpose not merely to open new paths to islands or to continents, but to bring together the ends of the earth, and join all nations in commerce and spiritual life.

5. While the world of mankind is accomplishing its nearer connection, it is also advancing in the power of its intelligence. No period of time has a separate being. We are cheered by rays from former centuries, and live in the sunny reflection of all their light. What though thought is invisible, and even when effective seems as transient as the wind that raised the cloud? It is yet free and indestructible; can as little be bound in chains as the aspiring flame; and, when once generated, takes eternity for its guardian.

6. We are the children and the heirs of the past, with which, as with the future, we are indissolubly linked together; and he that truly has sympathy with everything belonging to man will with his toils for posterity blend affection for the times that are gone by, and seek to live in the vast life of the ages. It is by thankfully recognizing those ages as a part of the great existence in which we share, that history wins power to move the soul. She comes to us with tidings of that which for us still lives, of that which has become the life of our life.

7. And because the idea of improvement belongs to that of continuous being, history is, of all pursuits, the most cheering. It throws a halo of delight and hope even over the sorrows of humanity, and finds promises of joy among the ruins of empires and the graves of nations. It sees the footsteps of Providential Intelligence everywhere, and hears the gentle tones of His voice in the hour of tranquillity;

"Nor God alone in the still calm we find ;

He mounts the storm and walks upon the wind."

8. Institutions may crumble, and governments fall, but it is

only that they may renew a better youth, and mount upwards like the eagle. The petals of the flower wither, that fruit may form. The desire of perfection, springing always from moral power, rules even the sword, and escapes unharmed from the field of carnage; giving to battles all that they can have of lustre, and to warriors their only glory; surviving martyrdoms, and safe amid the wreck of states.

BANCROFT.

LXXXVII.

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ON KINDNESS TO BRUTE ANIMALS.

1. In past time, man's unkindness to man has not been more conspicuous than his unkindness to the lower animals. In most parts of the earth these have constantly been sufferers from his rude impulses and recklessness; and the consequence is, that most animals have acquired, from the effect of habit transmitted from generation to generation, a fear of man, which we ought to be humiliated in contemplating, and which is, in itself, a negative, if not positive evil, since there is a great pleasure to be derived from their kindly companionship. It is by many thought prob able that, from the dragooning system which we pursue towards them, we have never yet realized one-half of the benefits which the domestic races are calculated to confer upon us.

2. Take the horse alone for an example. In Europe the sagacious powers of this noble animal are most imperfectly developed. In fact, notwithstanding his outward beauty and his pampered form, he exists there in a state of utter degradation; for he is generally under the power and in the company of the capricious and cruel, of grooms, horse-jockeys, post-boys, and black-legs, many of them without sense, temper, or feeling. Some horses are well fed, it is true, and duly exercised - and happy their fate: the rest are abused with a cruelty that has become proverbial.

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3. Now, what knowledge can a horse acquire under such treatment?-how is he to display, to exercise, to increase the bestowed on him by nature?. powers - from whom is he to learn? Being gregarious by nature, he is here secluded from his own species; he is separated, except for a short time, from his master, who attends only to his animal propensities: when not employed about a heavy, cumbersome machine, dragging his dull companion to and fro," he is shut up in the walls of a stable. But this beautiful creature, we repeat, is existing all this time in a degraded state; or, as the newspapers call it, in a false position. Who does not know how soon the horse will meet every advance

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