rt in peace, tell us so, and we shall know
what to do when you reduce the question to submission or resistance. If
you remain silent you will compel us to infer by your acts what you
intend. In that case California will become the test question. If you
admit her, under all the difficulties that oppose her admission, you
compel us to infer that you intend to exclude us from the whole of the
acquired territories, with the intention of destroying irretrievably the
equilibrium between the two sections. We would be blind not to perceive
in that case that your real objects are power and aggrandizement; and
infatuated not to act accordingly.

I have now, Senators, done my duty in expressing my opinions fully,
freely, and candidly, on this solemn occasion. In doing so I have been
governed by the motives which have governed me in all the stages of the
agitation of the slavery question since its commencement. I have exerted
myself during the whole period to arrest it, with the intention of
saving the Union if it could be done; and if it could not, to save the
section where it has pleased Providence to cast my lot, and which I
sincerely believe has justice and the Constitution on its side. Having
faithfully done my duty to the best of my ability, both to the Union and
my section, throughout this agitation, I shall have the consolation, let
what will come, that I am free from all responsibility.

CALLIMACHUS

(Third Century B.C.)

Callimachus, the most learned of poets, was the son of Battus and
Mesatme of Cyrene, and a disciple of Hermocrates, who like his more
celebrated pupil was a grammarian, or a follower of belles-lettres, says
Suidas. It is in this calling that we first hear of Callimachus, when he
was a teacher at Alexandria. Here he counted among his pupils Apollonius
Rhodius, author of the 'Argonautica,' and Eratosthenes, famous for his
wisdom in science, who knew geography and geometry so well that he
measured the circumference of the earth. Callimachus was in fact one of
those erudite poets and wise men of letters whom the gay Alexandrians
who thronged the court of Ptolemy Philadelphus called "The Pleiades."
Apollonius Rhodius, Aratus, Theocritus, Lycophron, Nicander, and Homer
son of Macro, were the other six. From his circle of clever people, the
king, with whom he had become a prime favorite, called him to be chief
custodian over the stores of precious books at Alexandria. These
libraries, we may recall, we