ore the desolating
hand of death. Alas, the ruins of the tomb! The ruins of the tomb are an
emblem of the ruins of the world; when not an individual, but a
universe, already marred by sin and hastening to dissolution, shall
agonize and die! Directing your thoughts from the one, fix them for a
moment on the other. Anticipate the concluding scene, the final
catastrophe of nature, when the sign of the Son of man shall he seen in
heaven; when the Son of man Himself shall appear in the glory of his
Father, and send forth judgment unto victory. The fiery desolation
envelops towns, palaces, and fortresses; the heavens pass away! the
earth melts! and all those magnificent productions of art which ages
heaped on ages have reared up are in one awful day reduced to ashes.
ELIPHALET NOTT.

From the sermon "On the Death of Alexander Hamilton."

* * * * *

"Westward the course of empire takes its way;
The four first acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama with the day:
Time's noblest offspring is the last."

This extraordinary prophecy may be considered only as the result of long
foresight and uncommon sagacity; of a foresight and sagacity stimulated,
nevertheless, by excited feeling and high enthusiasm. So clear a vision
of what America would become was not founded on square miles, or on
existing numbers, or on any common laws of statistics. It was an
intuitive glance into futurity; it was a grand conception, which they
have hitherto so hopelessly mismanaged, you must expect to go on from
had to worse; you must expect to lose the little prestige which you
retain; you must expect to find in other portions of the world the
results of the lower consideration that you occupy in the eyes of
mankind; you must expect to be drawn, on, degree by degree, step by
step, under the cover of plausible excuses, under the cover of highly
philanthropic sentiments, to irreparable disasters, and to disgrace that
it will be impossible to efface. LORD SALISBURY.

From "Speech on the Abandonment of General Gordon."

* * * * *

You will pardon me, gentlemen, if I say I think that we have need of a
more rigorous scholastic rule; such an asceticism, I mean, as only the
hardihood and devotion of the scholar himself can enforce. We live in
the sun and on the surface--a thin, plausible, superficial existence,
and talk of muse and prophet, of art and creation. But out of our
shall