wise it imagines to be doomed. On the first | prosperous. On the second supposition we supposition we may trust to the healing in- can but denounce the wickedness of such a fluence of time to bring it to that wiser and policy, and express our earnest hope, as well cooler frame of mind, when it will distinguish friends from foes, and when it will acknowledge that England has no other desire than to see both of them happy and as our firm conviction, that it will utterly fail of its mark, and perhaps bring about a second and still more deplorable and damaging disruption on the heels of the first. | admissible into the academy has been enlarged by the addition of but twenty-three. The complement in 1812 was two hundred and fifty. The visitors, therefore, recommend that the corps be raised to four hundred cadets, that each United States Senator, and each United States Representative, be allowed, respectively, to nom by the President at his discretion. the late Board is, that the cadets be hereafter Another and quite important suggestion of taught the use of the telegraph, so as to become practical operators. The course of study now reduce it to four years, which was the term origcovers a period of five years. It is proposed to POLLY THE PORTER.—The Messager du Nord states that on the Edinburgh and Glasgow line the Directors, in consequence of the neglect of the porters to call out the names of the stations, have placed parrots at those points, and that the well-tutored birds shriek out the necessary information, to the perfect satisfaction of travel-inate one, and that the remainder be appointed lers. A contemporary affects to discredit the statement, but Mr. Punch believes that it is perfectly correct, except that the employment of the parrots was not rendered necessary by the neglect of the porters, but by their inability to make their provincial utterances comprehended by educated travellers. The same inconvenience is felt in Yorkshire, Lancashire, Lincoln-inally adopted. The graduation of two classes shire, and other semi-civilized regions, and Mr. Punch is happy to hear that the Directors on most of the lines have resolved to meet the difficulty in the same way as the Scotch authorities have done. A large and choice assortment of gray parrots is now being trained at the Geographical Society's house, and as soon as the birds are sufficiently apt, they will be placed upon the various stations. They will not interA COMPLIMENT TO THE NORTH.-The Safere with the present porters, who will yelp, clip, vannah Republican says, “In times of great pubscream, grunt, and make the other noises comic excitement a great many stories are invented prehensible by the inhabitants of the localities, while to the inquiry of the Christian traveller, the accomplished parrot will politely and distinctly state, in English, the name of the station at which the train may be stopping. A brute of Mr. Punch's acquaintance (a hateful brute) adds that this finding employment for parrots is a logical consequence of the new system of creating occupation for-but, no, Punch will be hanged if he writes a word against women. Punch. AFFAIRS AT WEST POINT.-The Board, which has just closed its session, recommended an increase in the number of cadets. The maximum number that ean now be admitted, is two hundred and seventy-three, while the barracks to the buildings are capable of accommodating four hundred. Although, in the last forty-nine years, the population of the country has been multiplied fourfold, the legal number of cadets this year, the fourth and fifth, will create a large number of vacancies, and will considerably increase the size of the class which will enter upon there remains but thirteen cadets from the South, In the whole corps and but one of these is from the Cotton States. its studies this summer. Of course in both sections with the view of adding to the. POETRY.-Parting Hymn, 322. Two Moods, 322. National Hymn, 322. The Drum's Wild Roll: Phi Beta Kappa, 368. SHORT ARTICLES.-Slang, 349. S. Austin Allibone, LL.D., 384. peculiar to Infants and Mothers, 384. The Blackbird, 369. Treason in Texas, 354. The Envelope Mania, 367. NEW BOOKS. EXPLORATIONS AND ADVENTURES IN EQUATORIAL AFRICA; with Accounts of the Manners and Customs of the People, and of the Chase of the Gorilla, the Crocodile, Leopard, Elephant, Hippopotamus, and other animals. By Paul B. Du Chaillu. With numerous Illustrations. Harper and Brothers, New York. THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA: or the Slaveholder's Conspiracy. By the Rev. Wm. Henry Channing. Published in Boston by Walker, Wise, & Co. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL, SON, & CO., BOSTON. For Six Dollars a year, in advance, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded free of postage. Complete sets of the First Series, in thirty-six volumes, and of the Second Series, in twenty volumes, handsomely bound, packed in neat boxes, and delivered in all the principal cities, free of expense of freight, are for sale at two dollars a volume. ANY VOLUME may be had separately, at two dollars, bound, or a dollar and a half in numbers. ANY NUMBER may be had for 13 cents; and it is well worth while for subscribers or purchasers to complete any broken volumes they may have, and thus greatly enhance their value. PARTING HYMN. BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. "Dundee." FATHER of Mercies, Heavenly Friend, From blasts that chill, from suns that smite, In camp and march, in siege and fight, Though from our darkened lives they take Our blood their flowing veins will shed, Let cach unhallowed cause that brings Thine are the sceptre and the sword, Reign thou our kingless nation's Lord, -Atlantic Monthly. TWO MOODS. BY WILLIAM ALLINGHAM, I. SLOW drags this dreary season; The vacant skies, blue skies or brown, I cannot find a reason To wish I were not dead,Unfastened and let slide, gone down A dump and dusky slope. I recognize the look of care In every face; for now I share What makes a forehead wrinkles wear, And sets a mouth to mope. A sombre languid yearning For silence and the dark: Shall wish, or fear, or wisest word, Arouse me any more? What profits book-leaf turning? No comfort for the dismal day; With no good thing in store. NATION of nations, whom God has brought forth We know by their blessedness they are God's gift. 'Tis he made our nation so long to endure, Glorious and happy and peaceful and pure. Ruler of nations! before thee we bow. Thou didst exalt us, and thou bringest low; Purge us with trials and we shall be clean: Wash us completely from national sin. Then shall our nation forever endure, Glorious and happy and peaceful and pure. Blest 'mong the nations our Union shall stand, Though chastened betimes, yet upheld by God's hand; Her virtues exalted, and still shall she be "The land of the brave and the home of the free." Thus shall our nation forever endure, Glorious and happy and peaceful and pure. R. T. T. AN THE GREAT CONSPIRACY, AND ENG LAND'S NEUTRALITY character of the men who laid the foundation of our national glory and of the broad prin ADDRESS DELIVERED AT MT. KISCO, NEW ciples of right on which they based the edifice of American freedom! YORK, ON THE 4TH OF JULY, 1861, THE 86th ANNIVERSARY OF AMERICAN INDE PENDENCE, BY JOHN JAY, ESQ. My Fellow-Countrymen :- We have assembled to celebrate the eighty-sixth birthday of American Independence, and we come together under circumstances that seem to make us contemporaries and co-actors, as it were, with our fathers of the Revolution. The crisis which they met, and which their heroism decided after a seven years' war with Great Britain, again meets us face to face. The early scenes of their struggle for constitutional liberty have found in our recent experience a historical parallel of even chronological exactness. Those years have passed; their results are written on the map of America, on the page of history, and to-day, the 4th of July, 1861, the American Congress convenes again at the call of the President at the capital bearing the name of Washington, to meet the question, whether the republic is to be maintained in its integrity with the Constitution proclaimed by Washington, based on the will of the majority, or whether it is to be sundered and shattered by a defeated faction that sets at defiance the will of the people, and would trample the Constitution in the dust. If ever the spirits of the departed are per hover like angels around the steps of their successors, we may suppose that Hancock and the Adamses, Sherman and Wolcott, Carroll and Livingston, Jefferson and Frank The blood of Massachusetts, shed at Lex-mitted to revisit the scenes they loved, and ington on the 19th of April, 1775, was not shed more gloriously than that of the sons of the same old commonwealth, who, marching by our national highway to the defence of our common capital, were slain at Balti-lin, Robert and Lewis Morris, Wilson and more on the 19th of April, 1861. The midnight ride of Paul Revere, famed in history and song, rousing the sleepers as he passed to hasten to defend their country, created no deeper emotion among the colonists of that day than did our electric wires flashing far and wide the news of the assault on Sumter, and the massacre at Baltimore, and thrilling with a simultaneous burst of sympathy the loyal heart of the American people. On the 4th of July, 1776, the Congress that met in the state-house at Philadelphia approved the solemn instrument that declared the independence of the American colonies, and announced to the world the birth of a nation. Eighty-five years have rolled by; the actors in that eventful scene have long since gone to their graves; their names belong to history; their sons have grown to manhood and age and have followed them to the unseen world; and we of the third and fourth generation occupy the stage they trod, and represent the nationality which then was born. Eighty-five years of almost uninterrupted prosperity and unexampled growth! eighty-five years of culture and experience in a century of progress such as the world has never seen before! eightyfive years of thoughtful reflection on the Rush, and all their noble compeers, look down from heaven in this hour upon the Congress at Washington; and God grant that the sturdy spirit which inspired the first Congress may equally inspire the last! "Whatever may be our fate,” said John Adams, with prophetic vision, after the adoption of the Declaration, "be assured that this Declaration will stand. It may cost treasure and it may cost blood, but it will richly compensate for both. Through the thick gloom of the present I see the brightness of the future as the sun in heaven. We shall make this a glorious, an immortal day. When we are in our graves our children will honor it. They will celebrate it with thanksgiving, with festivities, with bonfires, with illuminations. On its annual return they will shed tears, not of subjection and slavery, not of agony and distress, but of exultation, of gratitude and of joy. Sir, before God, I believe the hour is come: all that I have, all that I am, all that I hope for in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it, and I leave off as I began, that live or die, sink or swim, survive or perish, I am for the Declaration. It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment-Independence now, and independence forever!" The integrity and independence of our action of the Congress now assembled will decide whether the national independence es tablished against the united strength of the British empire in '76 is to fall ignominiously before the attacks of a rebel minority of our own countrymen in '61. country are again in peril, and to-day the is-orable-perhaps as memorable in history as sue is with us. We come together now, not that which we have met to celebrate. The as in past years, to rejoice over a national domain boundless in extent, peopled by countrymen differing it may be in their views and institutions, but united in loyalty and affection, at peace in their own borders, and with the great arm of the Union protecting its citizens alike on sea or land, at home or in foreign climes. But we meet in sadness to overlook a divided nation, and to listen to the tramp of martial forces larger than ever before trod the soil of America: the one army bearing proudly aloft the stars and stripes, and keeping step to the music of the Union; the other grasping the banner of rebellion and the black flag of piracy, proclaiming death to the Constitution and the Union, and ruin to the commerce of the republic. ever!" It is to decide the question whether in the next century our descendants shall refer to the 4th of July as the forgotten birthday of an extinct republic, or whether, when we shall sleep with our fathers and our children shall slumber by our side, their grandsons shall meet as we do this day to bless our memories as we bless those of our Revolutionary sires: to spread to the breeze from the Atlantic to the Pacific, on every hill-side and in every valley, the flag of our Union, the stars Several states, about one-fourth of our and stripes that we so proudly love, and join whole number, profess to have resumed their their voices in swelling the cry of Adamssovereignty and seceded, as they term it, from" Independence now, and independence forthe Federal Union; and certain persons professing to act in their name, have extempor- While the great issue, the success or failure ized what they call the Southern Confederacy, of the American experiment, the continuance elected a President, Jefferson Davis, and a of our Union or its disintegration, rests imVice-President, Alexander H. Stephens, or-mediately with the President and with Conganized an army, issued letters of marque,gress, it rests in an almost equal degree upon and declared war on the people and the each one of us. The American people are at Government of the United States: and they once citizens and sovereigns the fountain have publicly announced, through Walker, and source of the supreme authority of the the Secretary of Davis, their intention of land, and to us, the people, will our servants speedily seizing our capital at Washington, in Congress naturally and properly look for with its national archives and muniments of guidance in this extremity. Already have you seen how fairly an honest executive represents the sentiment of the majority of his countrymen, availing himself of their counsels, gathering strength from their energy and determination, and so directing the Government that its action keeps time to the beating of the national pulse. Already in response to the nation's call has the national Government arisen in gigantic strength from the depths of imbecility to which it had fallen, to a position of grandeur, dignity, and power, which has silenced the half-uttered sarcasms of European declaimers about the internal weakness of popular institutions. title. To meet the rebel force arrayed against the capital, President Lincoln has called upon the loyal states, and at the word, fresh from the plough, the loom, and the work-shop, fresh from college seats and the professor's chair, from the bar, the pulpit, and the countinghouse, fresh from every department of American industry, the army of the Union is in the field, and the world awaits the impending crisis. Europe looks on with undisguised and wondering interest, and while France and Germany seem instinctively to appreciate our situation, the British Cabinet and the British press have strangely blundered, and have muttered something we do not understand, about "rights of belligerents," "a wicked war," and the "bursting of the bubble of democracy." Such, in brief, is our position at home and abroad, and this day is destined to be mem Most of you-perhaps all of you-have made up your minds deliberately, intelligently, and dispassionately in regard to your duty, and it is a general and proper sentiment among us that this is a time for energetic action, not for discussion. But still as I am here, honored by your appointment |