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And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports, was on thy breast to be
Borne like thy bubbles, onward from a boy
I wantoned with thy breakers-they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror-'twas a pleasing fear,
For I was, as it were, a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid

my hand upon thy mane-as I do here.

LESSON CXXX.

The Jubilee of the Constitution.-J. Q. ADAMS.

THIS is the day of your commemoration :-the day when the Revolution of Independence being completed, the new confederated Republic, announced to the world, as the United States of America-constituted and organized under a government founded on the principles of the Declaration of Independence-was to hold her course along the lapse of time among the civilized nations of the earth.

From this point of departure we have looked back to the origin of the Union; to the conflict of war by which the severance from the mother-country, and the release from the thraldom of a trans-Atlantic monarch, were effected, and to the more arduous and gradual progression by which the new government had been constructed to take the place of that which had been cast off and demolished.

The first object of the people, declared by the Constitution as their motive for its establishment, to form a more perfect Union, had been attained by the establishment of the Constitution itself; but this was yet to be demonstrated by its practical operation in the establishment of justice, in the ensurance of domestic tranquillity, in the provi sion for the common defence, in the promotion of the general welfare, and in securing the blessings of liberty to the

people themselves, the authors of the Constitution, and to their posterity.

These are the great and transcendental objects of all legitimate government, the primary purposes of all human associations. For these purposes the confederation had been instituted, and had signally failed for their attainment. How far have they been attained under this new national organization?

It has abided the trial of time. This day fifty years have passed away since the first impulse was given to the wheels of this political machine. The generation by which it was constructed, has passed away. Not one member of the Convention who gave this Constitution to their country, survives. They have enjoyed its blessings so far as they were secured by their labours. They have been gathered to their fathers. That posterity for whom they toiled, not less anxiously than for themselves, has arisen to occupy their places, and is rapidly passing away in its turn.

A third generation, unborn upon the day which you commemorate, forms a vast majority of the assembly who now honour me with their attention. Your city which then numbered scarcely thirty thousand inhabitants, now counts its numbers by hundreds of thousands. Your state, then numbering less than double the population of your city at this day, now tells its children by millions. The thirteen primitive states of the revolution, painfully rallied by this constitution to the fold from which the impotence and disuniting character of the confederacy, was already leading them astray, now reinforced by an equal number of younger sisters, and all swarming with an active, industrious, and hardy population, have penetrated from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains, and opened a paradise upon the wilds watered by the father of the floods.

The Union, which at the first census, ordained by this Constitution, returned a people of less than four millions of souls; at the next census, already commanded by law, the semi-centural enumeration since that day, is about to exhibit a return of seventeen millions. Never since the first assemblage of men in social union, has there been such a scene of continued prosperity recorded upon the

annals of time.

How much of this prosperity is justly attributable to the

Constitution, then first put upon its trial, may perhaps be differently estimated by speculative minds. Never was a form of government so obstinately, so pertinaciously contested before its establishment--and never were human foresight and sagacity more disconcerted and refuted by the event, than those of the opposers of the Constitution. On the other hand, its results have surpassed the most sanguine anticipations of its friends. Neither Washington, nor Madison, nor Hamilton, dared to hope that this new experiment of government would so triumphantly accomplish the purposes which the confederation had so utterly failed to effect.

The Declaration of Independence had promulgated principles of government, subversive of all unlimited sovereignty and all hereditary power-principles, in consistency with which no conqueror could establish by violence a throne to be trodden by himself and by his posterity, for a space of eight hundred years. The foundations of government laid by those who had burnt by fire and scattered to the winds of Heaven, the ashes of this conqueror's throne, were human rights, responsibility to God, and the consent of the people. Upon these principles, the Constitution of the United States was formed, was organized, and carried into execution, to abide the test of time.

LESSON CXXXI.

A Literary Dinner.-IRVING.

MR. Buckthorn called upon me, and took me with him to a regular literary dinner, given by a great bookseller, or rather a company of booksellers. I was surprised to find between twenty and thirty guests assembled, most of whom I had never seen before. Mr. Buckthorn explained this to me, by informing me that this was a business-dinner, or kind of field-day, which the house gave about twice a year to its authors. It is true, they did occasionally give snug dinners to three or four literary men at a time; but then these were generally select authors, favourites of the public, such as had arrived at their sixth or seventh editions

"There are,” said he, “certain geographical boundaries in the land of literature, and you may judge tolerably well of an author's popularity by the wine his bookseller gives him. An author crosses the port line about the third edition, and gets into claret; and when he has reached the sixth or seventh, he may revel in champaigne and burgundy."

"And pray,” said I, “ how far may these gentlemen have reached that I see round me; are any of these claret drinkers?"

“Not exactly, not exactly. You find at these great dinners the common steady run of authors, one, two-edition men; or, if any others are invited, they are aware that it is a kind of republican meeting. You understand me—a meeting of the republic of letters; and they must expect nothing but plain, substantial fare.”

These hints enabled me to comprehend more fully the arrangement of the table. The two ends were occupied by two partners of the house; and the host seemed to have adopted Addison's idea as to the literary precedence of his guests. A popular poet had the post of honour; opposite to whom was a hot-pressed traveller in quarto, with plates. A grave-looking antiquary, who had produced several solid works, that were much quoted and little read, was treated with great respect, and seated next to a neat dressy gentleman in black, who had written a thin, genteel, hot-pressed octavo on political economy, that was getting into fashion. Several three-volume-duodecimo men, of fair currency, were placed about the centre of the table; while the lower end was taken up with small poets, translators, and authors, who had not yet risen into much notoriety.

The conversation during dinner was by fits and starts; breaking out here and there, in various parts of the table, in small flashes, and ending in smoke. The poet, who had the confidence of a man on good terms with the world, and independent of his bookseller, was very gay and brilliant, and said many clever things which set the partner next him in a roar, and delighted all the company. The other partner, however, maintained his sedateness, and kept carving on, with the air of a thorough man of business, intent upon the occupation of the moment. His gravity was ex

plained to me by my friend Buckthorn. He informed me that the concerns of the house were admirably distributed among the partners. "Thus, for instance," said he, "the grave gentleman is the carving partner, who attends to the joints; and the other is the laughing partner, who attends to the jokes."

The general conversation was chiefly carried on at the upper end of the table, as the authors there seemed to possess the greatest courage of the tongue. As to the crew at the lower end, if they did not make much figure in talking, they did in eating. Never was there a more determined inveterate, thoroughly-sustained attack on the trencher, than by this phalanx of masticators. When the cloth was removed, and the wine began to circulate, they grew very merry and jocose among themselves. Their jokes, however, if by chance any of them reached the upper end of the table, seldom produced much effect. Even the laughing partner did not seem to think it necessary to honour them with a smile; which my neighbour Buckthorn accounted for, by informing me that there was a certain degree of popularity to be obtained before a bookseller could afford to laugh at an author's jokes.

After dinner we retired to another room to take tea and coffee, where we were reinforced by a cloud of inferior guests-authors of small volumes in boards, and pamphlets stitched in blue paper. These had not as yet arrived at the importance of a dinner invitation, but were invited occasionally to pass the evening "in a friendly way." They were very respectful to the partners, and, indeed, seemed to stand a little in awe of them; but they paid devoted court to the lady of the house, and were extravagantly fond of the children. Some few, who did not feel confidence enough to make such advances, stood shyly off in corners, talking to one another; or turned over the portfolios of prints, which they had not seen above five thousand times, or mused over the music on the forte-piano.

The poet and the thin octavo gentlemen were the persons most current and at their ease in the drawing-room, being men evidently of circulation in the west end. They got on each side of the lady of the house, and paid her a thousand compliments and civilities, at some of which I thought she would have expired with delight. Every

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