Alternating with these glories of the starry firmament, the moon at the full fills the lower air with a soft, yet bright light, in which you can read without difficulty the smallest print.  Under this milder illumination, the overpowering luxuriance of the landscape loses its oppressiveness, the hills assume more rounded forms, and from the general obscurity, the palms, a tree made for moonlight, stand out in soft distinctness.  At such a time we forget the foul crimes which disfigure the past, and the vices which degrade the present of this fair land, and can easily imagine ourselves in the garden where the yet unfallen progenitors of mankind walked under a firmament ’glowing with living sapphires,’ and together hymned the praises of their Creator.  Daylight chases away this illusion, but brings back the reality of Christian work, whose rugged but cheerful tasks replace the delicious but ineffectual dreams of Paradise Lost, by the hope of contributing, in some humble measure, toward restoring in a province of fallen earth the lineaments of Paradise Regained.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 8:  This was during the Crimean war.]

THE RESTORATION OF THE UNION.

God is on the side of our country.  Let us reverently thank him that he has favored the general march of our arms toward the sacred end of our exertions—­the defeat of the daring attempt against the unity of our national power and the integrity of our free institutions.  Not always in human affairs has the cause of right and freedom prevailed.  In the gradual development of human society, as unfolded in the lapse of long ages, the oppressor has generally triumphed, and history has full often been compelled to record the failure of the noblest efforts, and the downfall of the most righteous designs conceived for the benefit of man.  Such has been the experience of the race in those parts of the world which have longest been the theatre of human enterprise and of established government.  But the American continent seems to present an exception to this uniformity of sinister events:  it is destined to be the seat of civil liberty.  The success of our institutions in withstanding the awful trial to which they have just been subjected, indicates the existence of providential designs toward our favored country, not to be thwarted by any mortal agency at home or abroad.  Such a combination of hostile elements, so powerful and determined, has never before assailed any political structure without overthrowing it.  The failure in the present instance shows that our great destiny will be accomplished in the face of all obstacles, however insurmountable they may appear to be.