THE SPIRIT OF INQUIRY.

29

What a sublime and prophetic picture of the future did that old majestic king of men paint on the sky on that eventful night, as he sent the war news flashing on gold pinions of fire from Mount Ida to the Saronic Sea. Those great signal fires have long ago gone out on Ida and Athos, and the cliffs of Citharon are silent and dark, but the immortal spirit of inquiry which kindled the light that gilded all their glorious summits, cannot die. In all ages it has dared the terrors of unknown and savage seas, and invaded the wilds of untrodden lands, and filled the world with the imperishable monuments of its increasing search for knowledge. It has seized the speed and power of steam, and bridled the lightning to bear its winged words from land to land. Its conquests achieved under the genius of liberty have girdled the earth with fires of intelligence which burn not for an hour or a day or a year, but perennial in their brightness.

It chained Prometheus to the rock. It burned the martyrs of the press at Tyburn and Smithfield. It was the silent pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night which led the heroes of humanity through the long, dark, despotic years of the past up to freedom. There are no more flaming swords to bar the way of man to knowledge. There is no tyrannical Jupiter to impale the impious mortal who dares to seize the bolts of thought. There are no stakes and racks and tortures for the followers of heroic John Twyn.

It is now the greatest glory of life to think, and the grandest liberty to utter; and he who highest dares to scale the mountainous, craggy steeps of thought, or dives the deepest into the eternal abyss of unsolved doubt, stands as the world's real hero.

F. E. BELTZHOOVER.

Note 13.

THE FALL OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC.

MODERN history contains no exception to the rule which the fate of ancient republics has established. Aspirations for freedom have at different periods ascended from almost every portion of modern Europe. A system of confederated states built up and nurtured the free institutions of Holland for more than three hundred years, while the night of despotism lay thick and heavy on all the surrounding horizon. As revolted colonies, as states in rebellion, the Dutch Republic maintained a defensive war for thirty years against the whole power of Spain when Phillip II. controlled the councils and commanded the wealth of the civilized world. Their proudest cities were besieged and fell a prey to pillage and murder. In pitched battles they seldom triumphed over the superior numbers and equipments of the powerful Spaniard. Their country was trodden underfoot, their houses plundered, their fields laid waste, and the wild boar and the wolf roamed unmolested through the streets of once populous towns. But the endurance and patriotism of a people, to whom no terms were offered except abject, unconditional submission, outlived and broke the rage of their oppressors. A free commonwealth, the United States of Holland, arose and extended the spirit of enterprise, commerce, and refinement into all the four quarters of the earth. She conquered the sea and subdued distance. The peaceful victories of her trade were celebrated at the Cape of Good Hope, and in the harbor of New York, in the Indies of the East, and in every latitude of the Western Hemisphere. Nor was she less renowned in war. The broom at the masthead swept the ocean of her enemies, and the only guns of a foreign power whose hostile roar ever penetrated the Tower of London, were the guns of the free States of Holland. Louis XIV., the grand monarch of imperial France, when Turenne and Luxembourg and Condé led his armies, poured the torrents of his power against her

AMERICA'S DEBT TO FRANCE.

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for conquest and subjugation; but they were poured in vain. She fought with the inspiration of freedom, and made her history secure and illustrious as long as a generous heart shall be found to throb in sympathy with the welfare and happiness of a heroic people. But where now is that noble prodigy of liberal institutions? Why does she lift her beautiful head to the heavens no longer? Her glories declined under the burden of unbounded wealth and overflowing prosperity. Her people relaxed the vigilance of their guard over the citadel of their liberties, and slumbered at their posts, while unlawful power fortified itself beyond successful attack. Thus she perished ignobly by her own hand, having throughout her whole career defied and held at bay a world in arms. And how still and heavy has been her long repose! No awakening convulsions shake her rigid limbs, or disturb her frozen arteries. Once fallen, and forever lost is the mournful epic of her fate.

DANIEL W. VOORHEES.

Note 14.

AMERICA'S DEBT TO FRANCE.

Ir may perhaps be suggested that the fact that France lavished her favors on the American people in the past does not explain her present action. Logically-the objector may say-America should send bronze statues to France, not France to America. We never sent armed men to her aid when all Europe was banded against her. While her land was overrun, and German, Russian, English armies swept over her fields and towns, leaving a track of ruin behind them, only French blood was shed in her behalf. Our ships did not go down with French ships at Trafalgar, our treasure did not melt away in the fiery furnace of French tribulation and German triumph. If we are paying

taxes to support our credit and diminish our debt, no part of that debt was incurred to save French interests or French territory. True-but he knows little of the hidden springs that control human action who does not know that there is no gratitude like that which is felt by the benefactor. It is far easier to forget the favors that we have received than those that we have conferred. That pattern of shrewd worldly wisdom, Benjamin Franklin, ingenuously tells us that when he wanted to secure the good-will of influential men, he always sought to place himself under some slight obligation; he borrowed (and returned) a book, or asked some small service. The obligation incurred was never heavy enough to trouble him, but it always encouraged the other party to renewed bounty. The habit of generosity is apt to grow with exercise, and it is precisely because France was the friend and loyal ally of America upward of a century ago, that she is now ready and always has been to testify the warmth and fidelity of her attachment. And if there ever has been at any time, on the face of our friendship, coldness or estrangement, or the appearance of it, such a change has never been exhibited by France.

If I were called upon to pick out from the mass of concurring testimony proof of the priceless value of French aid to the American colonies, I should go to that dark and dreary winter at Valley Forge, when even the stoutest hearts were despondent. All that makes victory possible was absent except courage and faith, and they were fast failing before the cruel blows of adverse fortune. What must other men have thought of the future and its promises when Washington from the midst of his shivering, half-clad, and half-fed followers, wrote this: "Unless some great and capital change takes place the army must be inevitably reduced to one or other of three things-starve, dissolve, or disperse."

Only a miracle could save the cause! Who would help the struggling band of enthusiasts that had nothing to offer as a reward for the aid which they prayed for? Was it

not against all history and experience that the vanquished cause should so commend itself to the world that troops, and money, and friends, and sympathy from strangers— strangers in blood, in tastes, in language-should be provided as though a rich return were sure to follow? It all came, and strangely enough, the prime mover in the battle against monarchy was a king, the volunteers in the people's fight were nobles, the treasury that made success possible came from a well-nigh bankrupt State! If logic had had a voice in French councils, and French sentiment had not guided French action, Lafayette would have stayed at home, Louis XVI. would have closed his royal ear to these earnest appeals, French gold would have remained in French hands, and the galaxy of bright, brave, loyal, chivalrous Marquises, Dukes, and Counts would never have fought, flirted, suffered, danced, and-died on American soil.

FREDERIC R. COUDERT.

EUTHANATOS.

FORTH of our ways and woes,
Forth of the winds and snows,
A white soul soaring goes,
Winged like a dove;

So sweet, so pure, so clear,

So heavenly tempered here,

Love need not hope or fear her changed above.

Ere dawned her day to die,

So heavenly, that on high
Change could not glorify

Nor death refine her;
Pure gold of perfect love,

On earth like Heaven's own dove,

She cannot wear above a smile diviner.