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with the dawn of freedom, who never had learnt to lisp its blissful name.

American independence induces the necessity for the foreign powers among the nations to treat their subjects well in order to prevent their emigration to America. This glorious necessity will have a lasting and a mighty influence in favor of mankind, and will produce a reformation even with tyrants, in whose minds the sentiments of justice and humanity never existed. By this great event Britain is convulsed, and seems like a lion in the toils, restrained, but not reformed. One ray of wisdom broke through the gloom of her long infatuated councils, which made a peace, and a better peace than her circumstances could promise; yet | her returning clouds of error shut out this ray of wisdom, execrated the peace (which saved her from perdition), and replaced the instruments of her ruin at the helm of Government.

This event is a high aggravation of all her former madness and guilt. Behold it, and be astonished, all ye that had any confidence in British wisdom. That monster of wickedness, that perfidious tyrant and murderer, whose name stinks in the nostrils of the world-even Lord North is again Minister of Britain !

At this event, even Tories (who had any symptoms of repentance) were constrained to say this country could never have been safe under the authority of that wretched nation. Wretched, indeed! pretending to rule the Western World, and cannot govern her own little island, where public virtue is divided, religion and liberty, and the public interest, are subjects of sport. The only contention is for peace and pensions, and a King nodding on his throne. This is the nation that wasted her blood and treasure for eight years to establish her power in America. This is the nation that called her power omnipotent, and to whom Tories paid

adoration.

From this impious nation Heaven hath separated America, and made her sovereign and free, for which infinite favor her sons should ascribe eternal praises.

CONSIDERATION.

Colonel Ward seems to have kept few copies of his private letters. It is thought desirable to lay one of these before the reader, and that one a letter to his life-long friend, John Adams, upon his election to the Presidency. Mr. Adams had now reached the highest honors in the power of the people, and Colonel Ward was enjoying his fifth year of quiet at Chestnut Hill. This letter reveals the intimacy existing between the two men, which time could not change.

The esteem in which Mr. Adams now held his humbler correspondent will become evident in the letters of the former, to be hereafter given.

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NEWTON, March 30, 1797.

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SIR: Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. Your exaltation has so perfectly fulfilled my wishes, and gratified the strong feelings of my heart, I cannot suppress the sentiments which it inspires. Having long indulged a belief in "the high destinies of our country," this event seems an additional omen, and brightens the glorious hope. The ruling characters of the world have generally had narrow views, limited to a kingdom or district. They calculated for a day, and lived by the hour. Your address opens a vast field for contemplation; contains a chain of ideas which encircles the nations, embraces the world and all its ages. "Your country first, and next all the human race.' It rises above the walk, and contains thoughts too big for birth in royal minds. It embraces being, reposes on Providence, measures time, and meets eternity. Contemplating such subjects, "assimilates the mind, and makes it great. That those who honor God, and acknowledge Him in all their ways, shall be honored and directed by Him is a truth little known, and less regarded, by the rulers of nations. Hence it is (as I believe) that they live and die like the worthless vulgar, and their names soon mingle with the forgotten millions. Immortal fame, as well as "the soul's calm sunshine and the heartfelt joy, is virtue's prize." It is so rare a sight to see great and cultivated minds devoted to the highest good of a nation, setting a pure example, inspired by the divine principles of Christianity, that when such a character appears, he is regarded like a new star in the planetary system. May your administration be a point of time, as it were, cut out of eternity, and destined by Heaven a light to the nations, to ages living and unborn, a star to the Western World to guide posterity in the paths of wisdom from era to era until time consumes all things else.

I bend an humble knee to Him who liveth forever, and implore His benediction that your life may be precious in His sight, your every step guided by wisdom, crowned with success, and that you may accomplish all possible good-that as time rolls on, your sun may brighten even while it descends, and its evening rays continue to surpass its meridian glory, until, satisfied with life and all the ways of Providence to man, your mind shall "clap the glad wing, and tower away to that world where God shines forth in one eternal day!"

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Eminent men, whose lives were most dear to the world, have seldom reached a high point in age. Great minds, destined to high and arduous employments, must often break the chain of ideas to let the mind play with little thoughts, as a perpetual strain upon the system will wear it out or untune it. They should study more for pleasures, everything that has music for the spirits, as a merry heart has been found a good medicine ever since Solomon first discovered it.

Even to acquire knowledge, precious as the gem

It

is, at the loss of health is not (I guess) a very good bargain. As you have enough of the former, I am anxious that you should by all means preserve the latter. If I dare offer anything from my limited observations upon this subject, it would be to adopt riding studies; take up subjects for contemplation while in motion. This will counteract the relaxing effect of intense thinking, and by custom may soon become natural; and giving vigor to all the powers, at once lengthen and sweeten life. A frequent attention to the playful conversation of ladies will tune the nerves and serve to break the tough thread of politics, and give the spirits time to recruit. may sometimes be as difficult for great minds to descend as for little ones to rise; but nature requires it. Variety is nature's law; it appears everywhere, and is necessary to the preservation of the human powers. The universe appears to be in motion, which points out exercise to man. I suspect celestial intelligences could not enjoy health without it. There are no angels in flesh, and so long as men live in bodies they must take care of them. Hence I conceive pleasing exercise and amusement must mingle with your immense labors, or you may too soon (for your country) mingle with the skies.

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| remain, some have been found on a late occasion weak, envious, jealous, and spitefull, humiliated and mortified, and duped enough by French Finesse and Jacobinical Rascality, to show it to me and to the world. Others have been found faithful and true, generous and manly. From these I have rec'd letters and tokens of approbation and friendship, in a style of ardor, zeal, and exultation similar to yours.

Your postscript is a moral of exquisite beauty and utility. My life will undoubtedly depend in a great measure on my observance of it. The labour of my office is very constant and very severe, and before this time you will have seen enough to convince you that my prospects as well as yours are grave. I should be much obliged to you for your sentiments, and those of the People in general about you, concerning what ought to be done.

I am, Sir, with sincere esteem, your friend and
JOHN ADAMS.

servant,

COL. WARD.

It remains to be said that Colonel Ward's only failure in life, the loss of his money, was not, at least as far as his public investments were concerned, due to his own indiscretion. He was ruined pecuniarily by the man for whom he had indorsed. Time will not admit of setting out his careful statement of the matter; but if this stateindividual States acted in bad faith with the ment be accurate, the United States and last man upon whom such ingratitude should be visited. Mr. Adams, in a letter dated

The above old-time epistle is taken from what must have been the first draft. It is full of erasures, and gives evidence of haste in preparation. No doubt the document was more finished as the President received it, but it could not have been more quaint. The contrast between the body of the April 15th, 1809, says, in regard to the validletter and the postscript is amusingly notice-ity of Colonel Ward's claim, "You long

able. Having done the honors, the author descends from the sublime to the homely and the practical. Such an extended treatise upon hygiene, aimed directly at his individual case, the President, amid all the cares of his official and private relations, could not overlook. He pondered upon it and penned the following reply.

DEAR SIR:

PHILADELPHIA, April 6, 1797.

I received yesterday your favour of the 27th of March, for which I thank you. The strain of joy at a late event, and of Panegyrick on the subject of it, Serve among Some other instances to convince me that old Friendships, when they are well preserved, become very strong. The friends of my youth are generally gone. The Friends of my early political life are chiefly departed; of the few that

of your claim, and I always thought it since let me in some degree into the nature founded in justice." Colonel Ward presented his petition for payment of this claim to the General Court yearly until his death; and, be it said with regret, left upon the records of his native State a will containing the following clause:

"As the greatest part of my property is in the hands of the Government of this Commonwealth, the possession and use of which is essentially necessary to the comfortable subsistence of my wife and children, it is my advice and desire that they never cease to demand and use proper means for the attainment of it. For this purpose I ask the assistance of wise and good men, to aid my injured family in necessary measures to obtain justice."

THE MARRIAGE KNOT.

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My lady will not sing the song.

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Why not?" I say. And she,
Tossing her head, "It is too long."
And I, "Too short, may be."
She has her little willful ways;

But I persist, and then,
"It is not maidenly," she says,
"For maids to sigh for men."
"But men must sigh for maids, I fear;
I know it is my lot,

Until you whisper, Come, my dear,
And knit our marriage knot!'"

Why is my little one so coy?
Why does she use me so?
I'm not a fond and foolish boy
To lightly come and go.

A man who loves, I know my heart,
And will know hers ere long,
For, certes, I will not depart
Until she sings my song!

She learned it all, as you shall hear,
No word has she forgot:

"Begin, my dearest." "Come, my dear,
And knit our marriage knot!"

The Centennial.

TOPICS OF THE TIME.

ALL good Americans are looking forward to the passage of the year 1876 with great interest; and it is not to be denied that they are animated by a new hopefulness. The financial failures that occur do not depress business circles as they once did. There is a belief that we have seen the worst, that it is well that the rotten houses should go down, and that we shall, practically, start, during our Centennial, on a new and prosperous national life.

steamboats will do an unprecedented passenger business, and hotels will be overwhelmed with guests. The whole Eastern coast of the country, north of Baltimore, will feel this great influx of life. Newport and Saratoga, and all the lesser summer resorts of the region, will be full. Every Englishman— every foreigner, indeed--will visit Niagara. There will be a tremendous shaking up of the people, a great going to and fro in the land, a lively circulation of money, and a stimulation of trade. Americans who would otherwise go abroad will stay at home, and spend their money at home. All these things will conspire to give us a notable year financially, and it seems hardly possible that the improvement should be ephemeral. But the hopefulness of the year does not relate entirely to business. It is "Presidential year," and the great question con

Of a certain kind of business there will undoubtedly be more done during the year than ever before. The passenger traffic on the railroads will be immense. All the West is coming East. All the men and women who have been desiring throughout their lives to visit the Eastern coast, yet have never found the occasion for such an expenditure | cerning the currency is to be settled, and settled as

of time and money, will come to the great Exhibition. The thousands in Europe who have long intended to visit America will naturally desire to take it at its best, and they will come this year. The Southern States will be similarly moved, and all the lines of travel converging upon New York and Philadelphia will be crowded. Railroads and

it ought to be. The good sense of the people and the good faith of the people will have a voice, and the "paper lie" will go into everlasting disgrace. The people believe that the future legislation of the country will secure a sound currency, and that a the rotten schemes of inflation, and all the demagogues who advocate them, will find a political death

and burial. Our people feel that the year is to lead us along politically toward a permanent cure of the evils consequent upon living too long upon an irredeemable currency, and they may well be hopeful.

In a

There is still another reason for hopefulness. The nation is to be brought together as it has never been brought before during its history. In one hundred years of intense industry and marvelous development, we have grown from a few feeble colonies to a powerful nation of more than forty millions of people. We have been so busy that we never have been able to look one another in the face, except during four terrible years of civil war. friendly way, for brotherly courtesies, we have never come together. Well, that which divided us is gone. We are now all members of a consolidated nationality, and this year, around the old family altar at Philadelphia, we expect to meet and embrace as brothers. We are profoundly hopeful that this year is to do much to cast into forgetfulness the bitterness engendered by the civil war, and to make the nation as united and sympathetic in feeling as it is in the political fact. Of one thing we are certain, if the South comes to the Centennial, it will receive such a welcome as will be accorded to no guests from any other part of the world. The glories of the old Declaration are a part of their inheritance, and without them, our festivals would be but a mockery. They are the guests without whom we cannot get along-without whom there would be bitterness in our bread, sourness in our wine, and insignificance in our rejoicings.

The Coming Man..

As

THERE was a very pleasant indication of a popular desire to depart from the stereotyped usage, at the late Convention in Massachusetts which nominated Mr. Rice for Governor. Two or three hundred delegates, unpledged and uninstructed, cast their ballots for Mr. Charles Francis Adams. we understand this action, it was in no way intended to indorse all of Mr. Adams's views of politics, or to recognize him as a party man. It was intended as a tribute to a statesman,-incorruptible and undefiled,—a scholar, and a gentleman by birth, culture, and character. It has not been often that party men have had such a privilege as this. We do not wonder that they availed themselves of it. To have an opportunity to vote for the best man in the State where one lives, would make a man feel clean for a decade, but most people die without it.

But all over the country there is a popular desire to vote for a statesman and a gentleman. Mr. Adams does not monopolize these titles, or the sort of manhood they represent. Though one of our greatest and purest men, he is not our only great and pure man. People are sick of seeing boors at the head of affairs. People are weary of being represented by boors abroad. There is a rapidly returning conviction, among the masses of the people, that the best men ought to be in the best places, and that those places are what the best men were made for. There is a growing popular conviction

that we have permitted ourselves to be led and fooled for nearly half a century, in order that a set of time-serving and self-serving demagogues might secure office. The man who can serve his party best, or who can make his party serve him best, is now seen to be the man who always goes to the head.

In the early days of the republic, we had Washington, and Adams, and Jefferson, and Madison, and Monroe, in the Presidential chair. These were not at all the sort of men we have had during the last forty years. We will not name them, but we ask our readers to pass them in review, and see how the people of America have been imposed upon by the party politicians. Some of these men-so insignificant were they have sunk already into oblivion. They never did anything in their lives to dignify their office, and their office could not dignify them. Hardly any objects stand between us and the early Presidents, to obstruct the view. It seems all blank, until we get back to them. John Quincy Adams, Jackson, and Lincoln shoot up along the track, but the long path is disgustingly low and level. There is no denying that we have neither put our best men in office, nor tried to do so. Gradually, good men have retired from politics. They could not remain in them and maintain their selfrespect. And now mediocrity and boorishness are everywhere in high places.

What stands in the way of a reform? As we are beginning another century of national life, it is well to ask this question and to answer it correctly. The politicians will never favor the election of any man to the Presidency whom they cannot use. That is the radical trouble with that small class of American statesmen to which Mr. Charles Francis Adams belongs. They cannot be used. They will not lend themselves to petty party schemes. They will not submit to being pawed over, and wheedled, and browbeaten. They cannot be held at the buttonhole by dirty-fingered office-seekers, and worried into the bestowal of political favors. To put a firstclass statesman at the head of affairs would amount to a political revolution. The men about the hotels in Washington would be obliged to wash their hands and keep their finger-nails clean. The representatives of foreign Governments would actually have a degree of respect for ours-a very notable change. The advantage of a republic over a hereditary monarchy would become more apparent than it is at present. Breeding rulers "in and in" has always appeared to the Americans to be a very ridiculous business; but choosing rulers who have no breeding at all, is, on the whole, a great deal worse. have a well-bred gentleman in the White Housea scholar, a wise and experienced statesman, above all trickery and all corruption, would be a spectacle so unusual and so satisfactory, that the sun and moon and all the stars might well stop to look at it.

To

There has been a sort of prejudice among common people against having men who are "too fine" in office. It is supposed, at least, that they like to be hailed familiarly by the men for whom they vote, and that they do not favor those who do not go out

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of their way to curry favor. It is for this crowd that our pet names, like "Old Abe," "Old Zach," "The Mill-boy of the Slashes," and " 'Tippecanoe," were invented. The attempt of the politicians has been to degrade their candidates to the point where the "intelligent voter could get into sympathy with him. And now we believe the "intelligent voter" has come to the point of intelligence where he sees that this kind of talk is all stuff, and that it is a great deal better for him, and for the country, that a man be in the highest office for whom politicians do not make nicknames,—a man who minds his own business and his country's business, and sets the "intelligent voter a good example. The "intelligent voter" is very rapidly learning that a great and good man may have more regard for him and his interests than the demagogue who slaps him on the back or treats him at the corner grocery.

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We think we see daylight. The press is becoming less slavishly partisan. Powerful newspapers, here and there, have cut entirely loose from party, and there certainly has begun a reaction against the disgraceful policy of the past forty years. Rings are being broken up. Corrupt intrigues are exposed, and there is a genuine call for better men and purer and more dignified politics. Laus Deo!

The Prices of Books.

ONE of the greatest anomalies of commerce is presented by the considerations which govern the prices of books. If we step into a retail bookstore, and inquire the price of a book of, say, five hundred pages duodecimo, we shall learn that it is about two dollars. On looking into it, we shall learn that it is a crude novel-the product of a young girl's brains, and of very little concern to any but girls of the age of the writer. The next book we take up shall be one of the same size, by the best novelist of his language, and the price is also two dollars. We pass along a little further, and pick up another book, of the same cost in paper and mechanical production, but this time it is a philosophical work. The author is eminent, and this is the latest declaration of a most fertile mind-the grand result of all his thinking-the best summary of all his wisdom. The price of it is two dollars. The next is a poem. It took the author years to write it. His art is at its best, and he does not expect to surpass it. He gives to the world, in this poem, the highest it is in him to conceive. His very heart's blood has been coined into its phrases and its fancies-price two dollars. The next book examined is a collection of the flabby jokes of some literary mountebank, and, on inquiring the price, we find that it costs about the same to print it that it did to print the others, and can be had for two dollars.

Our natural conclusion is, that the quality of the material put into a book has nothing whatever to do with the price of it. The work of a poor brain sells for just as much, if it sells at all, as the work of a good brain. Even when we find an extra price put upon a book that appeals to a limited class, we learn

that the fact has no reference to the quality of the work, or to its cost to the man who wrote it. The extra price is put on simply to save the publisher from loss. The printer and paper-maker must be paid. The author is not taken into account.

As the quality of a painter's work grows finer and better, his pictures command increasing prices. The master in sculpture commands the market. He gets such prices as he will. Quality is an element of price in everything salable that we know of, except books. The prices of these are raised or depreciated only by the printer, the paper-maker, and the binder. Quality of the mechanical parts of the product is considered only by the publisher. The quality of the brain that invented and elaborated the book, the quality of the life that has gone into it, the quality of the art which has given it form-this sort of quality is not taken into consideration at all.

Authorship, though more prosperous and independent than it was formerly, has not yet received its proper position in the world. It was a pauper for centuries, and still, among a large number of book publishers and book buyers, the author is regarded as a man whose property in a book is an intangible and very unimportant matter. The author has nothing whatever to say about the price of his book. He takes what the publisher, who is in direct competition with pirates, is willing or able to give him.

Now printing, paper, and binding involve processes of manufacture, the prices of which vary but little from year to year. They are easily calculable, and a publisher knows within three or four cents a copy just how much a book will cost him delivered at his counter. He receives his books like so many bales of cotton goods, or cases of shoes. Of the life, the education, the genius, the culture, the exhausting toil, the precious time, the hope, that went to the production of the manuscript from which the books were printed, he takes little account. A certain percentage upon the retail sales goes to the author, and the author takes just what the publisher says he can afford to give him.

Well, the golden age of authorship is coming, some time, and when it comes, the amount of an author's royalty will be printed on the title-page of his book. He can ask the public to pay him for royalty what he will, and if the public will not pay him his price, then-the book being produced and sold by the publisher at regular rates-the author, and not the publisher, will be compelled to reduce the price, by reducing the royalty. Printing and selling books form a very simple business, that men may pursue under the same rules that govern every other business; but in no way can an author get justice until he has a voice in determining the price of his books, and the public know exactly what they are paying him. At present, he has no direct relation with the public. No discriminations are made, either for or against him. He stands behind the publisher, and the public do not see him at all. We see no reason why there should not appear on the title-page of every book the price and the amount of the author's royalty--showing exactly

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