While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children.  Beyond that, I seek not to penetrate the veil.  God grant that in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise.  God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind.  When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood.

Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured—­bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as, What is all this worth? nor those other words of delusion and folly, Liberty first, and Union afterwards—­but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart—­Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable! 
          
                                              —­Daniel Webster.

Note.—­This selection is the peroration of Mr. Webster’s speech in reply to Mr. Hayne during the debate in the Senate on Mr. Foot’s Resolution in regard to the Public Lands.

CIII.  THE INFLUENCES OF THE SUN. (364)

John Tyndall, 1820-1893, one of the most celebrated modern scientists, was an Irishman by birth.  He was a pupil of the distinguished Faraday.  In 1853 he was appointed Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Royal Institution of London.  He is known chiefly for his brilliant experiments and clear writing respecting heat, light, and sound.  He also wrote one or two interesting books concerning the Alps and their glaciers.  He visited America, and delighted the most intelligent audiences by his scientific lectures and his brilliant experiments.  The scientific world is indebted to him for several remarkable discoveries. ###

As surely as the force which moves a clock’s hands is derived from the arm which winds up the clock, so surely is all terrestrial power drawn from the sun.  Leaving out of account the eruptions of volcanoes, and the ebb and flow of the tides, every mechanical action on the earth’s surface, every manifestation of power, organic and inorganic, vital and physical, is produced by the sun.  His warmth keeps the sea liquid, and the atmosphere a gas, and all the storms which agitate both are blown by the mechanical force of the sun.  He lifts the rivers and the glaciers up to the mountains; and thus the cataract and the avalanche shoot with an energy derived immediately from him.