Say, can the South sell out her share in Bunker's gory

height,

Or can the North give up her boast of Yorktown's closing fight?

Can

ye divide with equal hand a heritage of graves,

Or rend in twain the starry flag that o'er them proudly

waves?

Can ye casts lots for Vernon's soil, or chaffer 'mid the gloom That hangs its solemn folds about your common Father's tomb?

Or could you meet around his grave as fratricidal foes,
And wake your burning curses o'er his pure and calm repose?

YE DARE NOT! is the Alleghanian thunder-toned decree : 'Tis echoed where Nevada guards the blue and tranquil sea; Where tropic waves delighted clasp our flowery Southern shore,

And where, through frowning mountain gates, Nebraska's

wasers roar !

THE PRESERVATION OF THE UNION.

BY DANIEL WEBSTER.

I PROFESS, Sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the preservation of our Federal Union. It is to that Union we owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that Union we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That Union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues, in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign influences, these great interests immediately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings; and although our country has stretched out wider and wider, and our population spread further and further, they have not outran its protection, or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, social, personal happiness. I have not allowed myself, Sir, to look beyond the Union, to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty, when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to see whether,

with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this Government whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how the Union should be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the People when it shall be broken up and destroyed.

While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that, in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise! God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind! When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the Sun in Heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance, rather, behold the gorgeous Ensign of the Republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured,-bearing, for its motto, no such miserable interrogatory as— -What is all this worth? nor those other words of delusion and folly—Liberty first and Union afterwards—but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole Heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart-Liberty and Union, now and for ever, one and inseparable!

ODE FOR THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1833.

BY MARIA JAMES.

I SEE that banner proudly wave

Yes, proudly waving yet;

Not a stripe is torn from the broad array,

Not a single star is set;

And the eagle, with unruffled plume,

Is soaring aloft in the welkin dome.

Not a leaf is plucked from the branch he bears
From his grasp not an arrow has flown;
The mist that obstructed his vision is past,
And the murmur of discord is gone:

For he sees, with a glance over mountain and plain, The Union unbroken, from Georgia to Maine.

Far southward, in that sunny clime,

Where bright magnolias bloom,
And the orange with the lime tree vies

In shedding rich perfume,

A sound was heard like the ocean's roar,
As its surges break on the rocky shore.

Was it the voice of the tempest loud,
As it felled some lofty tree,

Or a sudden flash from a passing storm
Of heaven's artillery?

But it died away, and the sound of doves
Is heard again in the scented groves.

The links are all united still

That form the golden chain,

And peace and plenty smile around,
Throughout the wide domain:

How feeble is language, how cold is the lay,
Compared with the joy of this festival day-

To see that banner waving yet—
Ay, waving proud and high-

No rent in all its ample folds,

No stain of crimson dye :

And the eagle spreads his pinions fair,
And mounts aloft in the fields of air.