highest possible degree, and transmit to our families and to posterity, as the true greatness of the country and the world.
We are to look at this enlarging elevation of the working classes of men—a fact which may be considered the main index of our age—not as a difficulty to be limited, but as an attainment in which we greatly rejoice. And, if our heraldry is in the hammer and the ax and the awl and the needle, we are to feel it a higher honor than if, in their place, we could have dragons and helmets and cross-bones and skulls. Our country’s greatness is to be the result, not of foreign war, but of domestic peace; not of the plunder of the weak, but of the fair and even principles of just commerce, a thriving agriculture, a beautiful and industrious art. Let us glory in everything that indicates this fact, as an index also of our desire for renown. This great lesson—honor to the working classes, in the proportion of their industry and merit—the world will yet completely learn.
And when the great, exalting, leveling system of Christianity gains its universal reign, mountains will be brought down and valleys will be filled; a highway shall be made for human prosperity and peace—for the elevation and dignity and security of man—over which no oppressor's foot shall pass; the poorest of the sons of Adam shall dwell unmolested and fearless beneath its own vine and fig-tree; the united families of earth shall all compete to acquire and encourage the arts of peace; nation shall not rise up against nation, and men shall learn war no more.
TRIBUTE TO GENIUS AND LABOR.
The camp has had its day of song;
The sword, the bayonet, the plume.
Have crowded out of rhyme too long
The plow, the anvil, and the loom.
O, not upon our tented fields
Are freedom’s heroes bred alone.
The training of the workshop yields
More heroes true than war has known!
Who drives the bolt, who shapes the steel,
May, with the heart as valiant smite,
As he who sees a foeman reel
In blood before his blow of might!
The skill that conquers space and time.
That graces life, that lightens toil.
May spring from courage more sublime
Than that which makes a realm its spoil.
Let Labor, then, look up and see
His craft no path of honor lacks;
The soldier’s rifle yet shall be
Less honored than the woodman’s ax.
Let art his own appointment prize.
Nor deem that gold or outward hight
Can compensate the worth that lies
In tastes that breed their own delight.
And may the time draw nearer still.
When men this sacred truth shall heed,
That, from the thought and from the will,
Must all that raises man proceed.
Though pride should hold our calling low.
For us shall duty make it good;
And we from truth to truth shall go.
Till life and death are understood.
