Was Civilization Cradled in America?

SHOW THYSELF A MAN. 833

It is a great and Godlike thing to do!

Tis a great thing, I think, to be a man. Man fells the forests, plows and tills the fields, And heaps the granaries that feed the world. At his behest, swift Commerce spreads her wings, And tires the sinewy sea-bird as she flies, Fanning the solitudes from clime to clime. Smoke-crested cities rise beneath his hand, And roar through the ages with a dm of trade. Steam is the fleet-winged herald of his will. Joining the angel of the apocalypse, - 'Mid sound and smoke and wond'rous circumstance, And with one foot upon the conquered sea And one upon the subject land, proclaims That space shall be no more. The lightnings veil Their fiery forms to wait upon his thought, And give it wings, as unseen spirits pause To bear to God the burden of his prayer. God crowns him with the gift of eloquence, And puts a harp into his tuneful hands, And makes him both his prophet and his priest. 'Twas in his form the great Immanuel Revealed himself; the Apostolic Twelve, Like those who since have ministered the word, " Were men. 'Tis a great thing to be a man.'

There is none of us who can say these estimates of manhood are overdrawn. They set forth the true standard; but how sadly deficient many are when measured by it! False ideals, low or in- different aims, and unnatural or perverted appetites, have lowered them so far beneath their prototype that in some cases the relation- ship is mere parody. Instead of being, as Hamlet says, the paragon of animals, the highest of God's creations, we too often find him sunk below the level of the beasts themselves. "Freedom and reason," the poet says, are what "make us men;" but with will dethroned, and reason —as too often evidenced by conduct—sadly crippled,

man is really and truly lower than the beast; for he has not the God-given instincts to guide him to the fulfilment of the purposes of his creation. Ruskin speaks figuratively of the Nebuchadnezzar curse that