o, ^^U^/. '<-J^P 

 - n.% * <\^\ '? *> ~ t .* 

 >&. iVv \ ^<Jr' 



hood of the world. Not a spade turned 

 the soil, not an axe felled a tree, not a path 

 was made through the forest, that did not 

 leave, in the man whose arm put forth the 

 toil, some moral quality. In the obstacles 

 which she placed in their pathway, in the 

 difficulties with which she surrounded their 

 life, the wise mother taught her children 

 all the lessons which were to make them 

 great. It was no easy familiarity which 

 she offered them, no careless bestowal of 

 bounty upon dependents ; she met them as 

 men, and offered them a perpetual alliance 

 upon such terms as great and equal sover- 

 eigns proffer and accept. She gave much, 

 but she asked even more than she offered, 

 and in the first moment of intercourse she 

 struck in men that lofty note of sovereignty 

 which has never ceased to thrill the race 

 with mysterious tones of power and proph- 

 ecy. Men have stood erect and fearless 

 in the presence of the most awful revela- 

 tions of the forces of Nature, affirming by 

 their very attitude a supremacy of spirit 

 which no preponderance of power can over- 

 39 



