What can we do but meet the future with an open intelligence and a stout heart?  And this I say,—­I, who am almost an extreme dissenter from extreme democracy,—­if our people bring to all future emergencies those qualities of earnestness, courage, and constancy which they have thus far contributed to the present, they will disgrace neither themselves nor their institutions; and it will be their honor more than once to extort some betrayal of dissatisfaction from those who, like yourself, are happiest to see a democracy behaving, not well, but ill.

“Peter of the North,” then, has made up his mind.  He is resolved on having three things:—­

First, a government; a real government; a government not to be whistled down the wind by any jack (or Jeff) who chooses to secede:  a government that will not dawdle with hands in pockets while this continent is converted into a maggot-swarm of ten-acre empires;

Secondly, a government whose purpose, so far as it can act, shall be to forward every man on the path of his proper humanity;

Thirdly, a government constituted and operated, so far as shall finally prove possible, by the common intelligence and common conscience of the whole people.

This is Peter’s business at present:  he is intently minding his business; and has been heard to mutter in his breast that “it might be as well if others did the same.”  What “others,” pray?

* * * * *

VOLUNTARIES.

    I.

    Low and mournful be the strain,
    Haughty thought be far from me;
    Tones of penitence and pain,
    Moanings of the Tropic sea;
    Low and tender in the cell
    Where a captive sits in chains,
    Crooning ditties treasured well
    From his Afric’s torrid plains. 
    Sole estate his sire bequeathed—­
    Hapless sire to hapless son—­
    Was the wailing song he breathed,
    And his chain when life was done.

    What his fault, or what his crime? 
    Or what ill planet crossed his prime? 
    Heart too soft and will too weak
    To front the fate that crouches near,—­
    Dove beneath the vulture’s beak;—­
    Will song dissuade the thirsty spear? 
    Dragged from his mother’s arms and breast,
    Displaced, disfurnished here,
    His wistful toil to do his best
    Chilled by a ribald jeer. 
    Great men in the Senate sate,
    Sage and hero, side by side,
    Building for their sons the State,
    Which they shall rule with pride. 
    They forbore to break the chain
    Which bound the dusky tribe,
    Checked by the owners’ fierce disdain,
    Lured by “Union” as the bribe. 
    Destiny sat by, and said,
    “Pang for pang your seed shall pay,
    Hide in false peace your coward head,
    I bring round the harvest-day.”

    II.