by the philosopher as equally false and equally useful?  Is there nothing more cheerful for us to contemplate than what the old Pagan philosophy holds out,—­man destined to live like brutes or butterflies, and pass away into the infinity of time and space, like inert matter, decomposed, absorbed, and entering into new and everlasting combinations?  Is America to become like Europe and Asia in all essential elements of life?  Has she no other mission than to add to perishable glories?  Is she to teach the world nothing new in education and philanthropy and government?  Are all her struggles in behalf of liberty in vain?

We all know that Christianity is the only hope of the world.  The question is, whether America is or is not more favorable for its healthy developments and applications than the other countries of Christendom are.  We believe that it is.  If it is not, then America is only a new field for the spread and triumph of material forces.  If it is, we may look forward to such improvements in education, in political institutions, in social life, in religious organizations, in philanthropical enterprise, that the country will be sought by the poor and enslaved classes of Europe more for its moral and intellectual advantages than for its mines or farms; the objects of the Puritan settlers will be gained, and the grandeur of the discovery of a New World will be established.

     “What sought they thus afar? 
        Bright jewels of the mine? 
      The wealth of seas,—­the spoils of war? 
        They sought for Faith’s pure shrine. 
      Ay, call it holy ground,
        The soil where first they trod;
      They’ve left unstained what there they found,—­
        Freedom to worship God.”

AUTHORITIES.

Prescott’s Ferdinand and Isabella; Washington Irving; Cabot’s Voyages, and other early navigators; Columbus, by De Costa; Life of Columbus, by Bossi and Spatono; Relations de Quatre Voyage par Christopher Colomb; Drake’s World Encompassed; Murray’s Historical Account of Discoveries; Hernando, Historia del Amirante; History of Commerce; Lives of Pizarro and Cortes; Frobisher’s Voyages; Histories of Herrera, Las Casas, Gomera, and Peter Martyr; Navarrete’s Collections; Memoir of Cabot, by Richard Biddle; Hakluyt’s Voyages; Dr. Lardner’s Cyclopaedia,—­History of Maritime and Inland Discovery; Anderson’s History of Commerce; Oviedo’s General History of the West Indies; History of the New World, by Geronimo Benzoni; Goodrich’s Life of Christopher Columbus.

SAVONAROLA.

* * * * *

A.D. 1452-1498.

UNSUCCESSFUL REFORMS.