The mountain sentinel. [volume] (Ebensburg, Pa.) 1844-1853, 1850-07-25

lures, are not much afraid of bankruptcy,
or danger, or even death, and they are
certain that there will be always land
enough for courageous American.
.To this vast social experiment, of
which the United States is the workshop,
must be added the physical experiment
that nature is necessarily carrying on
The rivers change their beds, Niagara is
receding, the forests fall, praires burn
up, the temperature becomes by degrees
milder and more temperate, the miasma
which exhale from newly stirred soil
lose their morbid power, the means Of
subsistence increase the population dou-
bles every twenty years, and 1t IS yet
only preparatory work. The heroic
age, the epoch of war announces itself;
this strong race, which absorbs many
others, is far from having filed up its bor
ders, from Russian, American and the
Samoyedes to the Istnmus Of Panama.
The tendencies of North America are,
then, to conquest on the one parton the
other to the expansion Of the confederated
groups; and not in any manner, as some
English travellers seem to believe, to the
transformation of republics into monarch-
les. The breaking up of the confederate
States into two or three groups is probable
when the whole shall be composed of frac-
tions too numerous and too powerful for
the borders destined to enclose them, AL
ready the inhabitants of the Mississippi
have some inclination TO detach themselves
from the States which form the Atlantic
broder. Texas. California and Oregon,
as yet are too little civilized. and with too
small a population to be of much account,
will make another sphere, which will be
formed in the Union
at is possible that Cuba, Florida, New
Orleans, Carolina, and all the valley of the
Mississippi will unite together, and the old
non-slaveholding States of the North, in
cluding Canada, will constitute second
group, and the third sterile in part, but
powerful on the other hand from the mines
Ct the 6gEgAs.a BllIo Blloteem teembrase the countries
civilization had not passed line which
prolonged from the Gulfof Mexico to Lake
Superior, and forming an angle at the eX-
tremity of this lake to join the mouth of
the River Lawrence. included nearly
third of North America. The point the
Americans have just carried in California,
crosses the whole continent from the At
iantic to the Pacific, an unforeseen event,
one the most considerable facts Of the age,
important, not only by the precious met
ais which come into circulation, but by the
Joint responsibility which it establishes
between the different parts Of the new
world.
sour Europe, that old country, whom
the mild Jester, Franklin, called without
irony, "his good grandmother, what is
she to become some day, in face of the in
evitable Developments of the New World!
something like ancient Greece with re-
gard to modern Europe. The neo-Ro-
mans of this worn out world, have they
reason TO seek, in spite of the past, the A
merIcan autonomy, the germ which they
do not possessa This questions concerns
the masters of our destinies, political men
i leave it to them. If [ should resolve
it, and if should say what | know, the
Byzantines of my time, ever dececelved
by the subtlety of their minds and the
falsehoods which they practice would not
fail to believe that | wish to put my hand
to the affairs of the country, and that [
pretend to be philosopher, that | may
become something like the head of the
party. They may be assured-and [
should much prefer to go and draw their
portraits in some solitude, and practice
what they counterfeit under some modest
puritan roof near Rome in New Hamp-
shire, or Carthage IN Massachusetts,
There | would listen again to that beauti-
fui canticle, rude in versifcation, adrnira-
bic in sentiment, the motto of America,
and which has never ceased to resound in
my heart since | heard it England:
''Oh God what need we have of strength,
The strength to toll, the strength TO bear,
The strength mid terrors TO hope on,
Strength feeble women 10 protect
strength 20 submit strength to endure
Even pain and dea.h-vigor Of arm
Vigor of soul--faint not.
And God will keep you!'