The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1892-08-11
fall, the realms now. fourishing must
expect similar fate.

Just as to-day travellers from Eng
land climb the acropolis to gaze upon
the desolate widowhood of Athens so,
Macauley tells us, some traveller from
New Zealand, shall, in the midst of a
vast. solitude, take his stand upon a
broken arch of London bridge to
sketch the ruins of ST. Pauls.
Nations are not like the men that
compose them, destined to die after a
short or long existence. There is no
such thing as anatural death and de-
cay of nations. The nations of the
past, OF whose downfall the orator so
eloquently declaims, fell by the sword,
or by disease; by sword which a
united people might have averted; by
disease, which, under proper condi-
tions of existence might have been pre-
vented, or cured. Time is not always
the fell destroyer the poet represents
him to be. England has stood for ten
centuries upon her sea-girt shores and
there is no reason to believe her foot
ing less secure to-day than ever it has
been. For fifteen hundred years
Switzerland has sat upon her lofty
peaks and watched the commissions and
the crumbling of the nations at her
feet. China was old ere antiquity be-
gan and as she has now stepped forth
from her seclusion into the sisterhood
of nations she has just entered upon a
new career. While there are these liv-
ing examples of a whole old age united
with youthful vigor is it not evident
that time is to a nation what that ma
ton makes it? Time is a tree from
whose richly laden branches, this ma
ton pluclzs luscious fruit and becomes
strong; in whose shade that nation lies
down and dies of starvation. Time is a
mine into which that nation delves,
brings up and appropriates hidden
treasures and becomes rich; at the
mouth of which that nation sits down
and dies a pauper. Time is a book
from whose pages this nation learns
wisdom, corrects it's abuses and shapes
a wise and comprehensive policy; and
upon whose dusty covers that nation
writes fool. Time is a highway up
which this nation marches to- glory,
down which that nation crawls o:hel..
When nation dies its end is untimely,
whether at the close of fifty years, or
fifty centuries. Under the proper con-
ditions of existence, the natural age of
a nation is between it's rise and the
worlds fall. Its destiny is not fulfilled
until the final contamination of all
things.
Let US examine some of the condi-
lions favorable to national perpetuity
and see to what extent they exist with
references to our country. An import
ant circumstance is
GEOGRAPHICAL SITUATION,
Examine your map of the world
and you will notice the signif-
can't fact that within the belt of terri
tory bounded by the 30th and Goth de-
grees of north latitude many great
Kingdoms have existed, but without
this, not. one. No great sovereignty
ever arose in the tropics, none in the
polar regions. A people to be great
must be so far removed from the
tropics that their frames are not en-
nervated by extreme heat, and so far
removed from the polar regions that
their energy and their industry may
not be frozen by extreme cold. No
student of history has failed to notice
that the tide. of emigration has ever
been from east to west. Each succeed
ing century has found the metropolis
of the world further toward the setting
of the sun.
Assyria is the first nation of which
history gives any record, situated upon
the table lands Of Mesopotamia. The
next great kingdom was Persia, hav-
ing it's seat westward of Assyria. In
about two centuries the sovereignty of
the world leaped across the Hellspout,
and Greece assumed the sceptre of the
worlds sovereignty. Again the seat
OF empire journeyed across
the Adriatic to Rome. During
medieval history Germany was
the leading state of Christendom.
Since the sixteenth century England
has stood pre-eminent. And now the
star of empire which has ever followed
the sun in his course around the world
is shining upon the western continent
in his most resplendent glory, and
America situated upon the most
favored spot of the earth's surface, in
the north temperate zone, by whose
bracing breezes have all the cradles OF
the worlds great kingdoms been
rocked, and which now stands looking
to the future, with outstretched hands
and longing eyes, is destined to become
the pride of the nations of the earth,
An important condition of existence is
a nations size. Little states like little