land, it would be indivisible. It would be as the opening of a great
fountain for the healing of the nations. It would turn back our thoughts
from these recent and overrated diversities of interest,--these
controversies about negro-cloth, coarse-wooled sheep, and cotton
bagging,--to the day when our fathers walked hand in hand together through
the valley of the Shadow of Death in the War of Independence. Reminded of
our fathers, we should remember that we are brethren. The exclusiveness of
State pride,--the narrow selfishness of a mere local policy and the small
jealousies of vulgar minds, would be merged in an expanded comprehensive,
constitutional sentiment of old, family, fraternal regard. It would
reassemble, as it were, the people of America in one vast congregation. It
would rehearse in their hearing all things which God had done for them in
the old time; it would proclaim the law once more; and then it would bid
them join in that grandest and most affecting solemnity,--a national anthem
of thanksgiving for the deliverance, of honor for the dead, of proud
prediction for the future!
R. Choate.


XX.

THE LOVE OF READING.

Let the case of a busy lawyer testify to the priceless value of the love
of reading. He comes home, his temples throbbing, his nerves shattered,
from a trial of a week; surprised and alarmed by the charge of the judge,
and pale with anxiety about the verdict of the next morning, not at all
satisfied with what he has done himself, though he does not yet see how he
could have improved it; recalling with dread and self-disparagement, if not
with envy, the brilliant effort of his antagonist, and tormenting himself